Eagle Strike

Ahead of him was a triangular entrance. Alex stepped forward and went into the dome: a huge area fitted out with high-tech lighting and a raised stage with a giant plasma screen displaying the letters CST. There were already about five hundred guests spread out in front of it, drinking champagne and eating canapes. Waiters were circulating with bottles and trays. A sense of excitement buzzed all around.
    The music stopped. The lighting changed and the screen went blank. Then there was a low hum and clouds of dry ice began to pour onto the stage. A single word—GAMESLAYER—appeared on the screen; the hum grew louder. The Gameslayer letters broke up as an animated figure appeared, a ninja warrior, dressed in black from head to toe, clinging to the screen like a cut-down version of Spiderman. The hum was deafening now, a roaring desert wind with an orchestra somewhere behind. Hidden fans must have been turned on because real wind suddenly blasted through the dome, clearing away the smoke and revealing Damian Cray—in a white suit with a wide, pink and silver striped tie—standing alone on the stage, with his image, hugely magnified, on the screen behind.
    The audience surged towards him, applauding. Cray raised a hand for silence.
    “Welcome, welcome!” he said.
    Alex found himself drawn towards the stage like everyone else. He wanted to get as close to Cray as he could. Already he was feeling that strange sensation of actually being in the same room as a man he had known all his life … but a man he had never met. Damian Cray was smaller in real life than he seemed in his photographs. That was Alex‟s first thought.

    Nevertheless, Cray had been an A-list celebrity for thirty years. His presence was huge and he radiated confidence and control.
    “Today is the day that I launch the Gameslayer, my new games console,” Cray went on. He had a faint trace of an American accent. “I‟d like to thank you all for coming. But if there‟s anyone here from Sony or Nintendo, I‟m afraid I have bad news for you.” He paused and smiled.
    “You‟re history.”
    There was laughter and applause from the audience. Even Alex found himself smiling. Cray had a way of including people, as if he personally knew everyone in the crowd.
    “Gameslayer offers graphic quality and detail like no other system on the planet,” Cray went on.
    “It can generate worlds, characters and totally complex physical simulations in real time thanks to the floating-point processing power of the system, which is, in a word, massive. Other systems give you plastic dolls fighting cardboard cut-outs. With Gameslayer, hair, eyes, skin tones, water, wood, metal and smoke all look like the real thing. We obey the rules of gravity and friction. More than that, we‟ve built something into the system that we call pain synthesis. What does this mean? In a minute you‟ll find out.”
    He paused and the audience clapped again.
    “Before I move on to the demonstration, I wonder if any of the journalists among you have any questions?”
    A man near the front raised his hand. “How many games are you releasing this year?”
    “Right now we only have the one game,” Cray replied. “But there will be twelve more in the shops by Christmas.”

    “What is the first game called?” someone asked.
    “Feathered Serpent.”
    “Is it a shoot-„em-up?” a woman asked.
    “Well, yes. It is a stealth game,” Cray admitted.
    “So it involves shooting?”
    “Yes.”
    The woman smiled, but not humorously. She was in her forties, with grey hair and a severe, schoolteacher face. “It‟s well known that you have a dislike of violence,” she said. “So how can you justify selling children violent games?”
    A ripple of unease ran through the audience. The woman might be a journalist, but somehow it seemed wrong to question Cray in this manner. Not when you were drinking his champagne and eating his food.
    Cray, however, didn‟t seem offended. “That‟s a good question,” he replied in his soft, lilting voice. “And I‟ll tell you, when we began with the Gameslayer, we did develop a game where the hero had to collect different-coloured flowers from a garden and then arrange them in vases. It had bunnies and egg sandwiches too. But do you know what? Our research team discovered that modern teenagers didn‟t want to play it. Can you imagine? They told me we wouldn‟t sell a single copy!”
    Everyone broke into laughter. Now it was the female journalist