Dead Certain

lose myself in the music, and by the time I get back to my desk, I feel not just happy, but reenergized. “Dead Man’s Party” in and of itself is usually good for at least two more hours’ worth of work.
    I was prancing around my office probably looking like a chicken in mid-seizure when I suddenly realized that I was not alone. Stopping in midstrut, I turned and found myself face-to-face with a nondescript little man whose salt-and-pepper beard and perfectly round tortoiseshell glasses made him more recognizable than any movie star.
    “How did you get in here?” I blurted to Gabriel Hurt ungraciously, my heart pounding furiously from the combination of dancing and fright.
    “The security guard downstairs told me where to find you,” he explained mildly.
    “He’s supposed to call before letting visitors up after hours,” I pointed out, still struggling to regain my composure. I did my best to pull my hair away from my face and tuck my silk blouse back into the waistband of my skirt. When I looked down, I realized that my big toe was protruding comically from a hole in my black stockings, which had a massive run directly up the front.
    “I guess he was willing to make an exception in my case,” Hurt apologized. Even under the circumstances I found his tone of modest understatement endearing. “I told him you had sent me a gift and I wanted to surprise you by coming up and thanking you personally.”
    “You’re welcome,” I replied somewhat incoherently. “I see you’re a fan of Danny Elfman’s music,” he observed, cocking his head to one side quizzically as I lunged for the CD player and hit the PAUSE button. “Too bad he mostly writes soundtracks nowadays.”
    There was a stillness in Hurt’s demeanor that worked as an effective counterpoint to the power he wielded in the world. Dressed in wrinkled chinos and a nondescript polo shirt, he stood perfectly still, his sneakered feet together and his hands clasped in front of his thighs. When he spoke, he was in the habit of keeping his voice soft and his speech slow, like a patient naturalist trying to approach a skittish animal.
    “Would you like to sit down?” I asked, scrabbling for my shoes with one hand while gesturing toward the visitors’ chairs with the other.
    “Thank you,” said Hurt proceeding to sit as deliberately as he’d stood. “I really did come to thank you for the game. I know it’s hopelessly low tech, but it really is fun to play and it brings back such wonderful memories of my youth.” For a minute I wondered if he was joking. Hurt’s oft-cited age was thirty-one. But then again, he was the old man of an industry that used to joke that time progressed in dog years, but had now changed to hamster years.
    “I’m glad you liked the gift. I was afraid you’d think it was presumptuous of me to send it.”
    “It was,” he remarked. “But I like it anyway.” He glanced around my office pointedly, adding, “In my world everything is so new, how we do things hasn’t had time yet to develop into protocol. Besides, it showed initiative. Sometimes the person who wins the prize is the one who wants it more.”
    “And?”
    “And sometimes it isn’t.”
    “Is that why you canceled at the last minute instead of coming to the Wednesday meeting? Have you decided you don’t want what Delirium is offering badly enough?”
    “You’re also direct,” he said. “I like that, too. Let’s just say that I was approached by another group that has developed an input driver very similar to Delirium’s. I wanted to have a chance to see it before I began negotiating with you in earnest.”
    If the three days’ worth of wrangling that had preceded the aborted meeting with Gabriel Hurt had only been a warm-up, I wasn’t sure I wanted to experience the real thing.
    “So which one do you think is better?” I asked, figuring if I was going to get bad news, I might as well get it over with.
    “ Better is such an interesting word when it’s applied to new technology,” mused Hurt. With his white shirt and his hands neatly folded in his lap, he looked for all the world like a schoolboy reciting a lesson. “The natural response would be, ‘better’ than what? Or ‘better’ for what application? Of course, what complicates the whole question is the fact that a new technology is an evolving continuum. Comparing them is like comparing two rivers. At any given point one river may seem far superior to any given point on the