The Parable of Myst II

Chris grins as if to say: And they pay me for doing this.

Bonnie feels left behind. Not always, but occasionally, she feels as if her husband, Josh Staub -- they were married only two months ago -- has gotten snubbed, in a way. Rather than being given his own office and the rank of game designer -- like Robyn and Richard, he's out in the bullpen with all the other model-builders. Josh is only 21, but in the garage he was an integral part of that design team. Now he's more of a shop foreman.

Rand's aware of this. He knows how Bonnie and Josh look at the situation, but he doesn't know how else to organize the place. He needs Josh just where he is. "We've told Josh he's incredible. We need him to be the person people go to with questions. It limits his focus, but that's the necessity. Josh can move into design eventually. It depends on him."

Rand knows they may be losing the family ethos they had in Chris Brandkamp's garage. People feel cut off now. Bonnie wishes they still had spontaneous pizza parties late into the night to brainstorm ideas. Rand wants her to know the key people haven't changed. The spirit lives, though the pizza got cold a long time ago.

Give Me That Old-Time Religion

It's the end of the work day, when pizza used to happen. Rand sends out a general invitation for an impromptu dinner at Azteca, a Mexican restaurant downtown. It isn't pizza. It's lamb shank and burritos, but what the heck. Only Bonnie and Josh take him up on the offer. Conversation is tentative at first, and then the newlyweds start talking about their honeymoon. Next they discuss Chuck Carter, who left the company as "Myst" was coming out to return to freelancing as a game designer.

"Remember that haircut he gave himself?" Rand asks.

"Oh yeah. He was using this thing with this collapsible tube and it collapsed while he was using it," Bonnie says, laughing too hard to continue, then recovering. "He had this one little patch down to his scalp."

"Right. So he had to finish the job," Josh says.

The volume of laughter rises around the table until everyone has trouble breathing, let alone eating. Finally, Rand opens up. His mind's a cauldron of funny observations: why nutritionists don't normally consider french-fries-and-onion-rings a good vegetarian lunch; what attachments to use on his Flowbee Precision Home Haircutting System to get just the right look over his ears without inflicting a Chuck Carter-style haircut on himself; why the pixie-dust setting on his new software doesn't make a QuickTime waterfall dribble properly.

By the end of the evening, they've returned to that original state Bonnie misses most. They're back in the garage. For one more evening, the old team comes alive -- but when they head into work tomorrow, they'll find the new organizational life right where they left it.

This is what it's all about. Four guys in this little conference room, coming up with ideas. Robyn, Richard, Rand, and Tony Fryman, 39, their project manager, an old friend of Rand's from Texas. The bagels remain on the conference/Ping-Pong table from yesterday's meeting where Rand announced profits. Now they're deciding how much work will go into each of the taped sequences in the game -- little films of live action, using real actors. They've hired a small company, North by Northwest, to do the casting, staging, directing, and taping.

"Will these be close-ups?" Rand asks.

"I have no idea yet. Will you see his pen and glasses?" Robyn asks.

"Possibly," Richard says. "There could be other scenes here. Probably it won't all be in one room."

They go from one scene to the next, figuring each one out, planning the logistics, ranking their difficulty by number.

A young woman brings in a box, a delivery from Seattle. It's a prop they commissioned from the company that does props and costumes for the Seattle Opera. Nobody wants to open the box -- if it isn't what they want, it would be a bad omen, too discouraging to take at this uncertain point in the game's development.

"Click on that box," Rand says.

"It's not going to be good. I know it," Richard says.

Robyn picks up the box and slowly removes the tape, pulling out a small pipe: it's what a hashish pipe out of "The Hobbit" would look like, if Frodo Baggins were into that sort of thing.

"That's cool!" Rand says.

Everyone examines the pipe: Maybe this game will happen!

"How much?" Rand asks.

"Guess," Tony says.

"I don't know. Four thousand?"

"Three hundred," Tony says.

Everyone is really happy. The old spirit of the garage and the new one of the profit-making company harmonize -- then they move on.

The new "Wired" magazine makes its way around the office. Finally, it arrives on Rand's desk. Robyn comes in and picks it up, and starts rifling through it, looking for the usual page. He finds the list: what's Tired, what's Wired. He scans the list intently. Nope. "Myst" hasn't made it onto the Tired list yet. Only 10 more lists to come out before "Myst II" hits the shelves.

Rand doesn't even look up from his computer as he listens to Robyn thumb through the magazine. He knows what's going on.

"Still not on it?" he asks.

"Not yet."

"Cool."

David Dorsey (dedorsey@aol.com), author of "The Force" (Random House, 1994), explores business and plays "Myst" from Rochester, New York.