Captains of Industry
March 8, 2013 1:05 pm Game Development, Jokes, Life, Stories, UncategorizedThe sun was trying its damnedest to press through the thick clouds above Megalocorp.
Deep within the corridors of this titan of technology, two game designers solemnly walked into a small conference room and slid the heavy glass and metal door behind them. Mismatching, cast away chairs from various cubicles haphazardly circled a small round white table. Cardboard boxes from an office move years ago were still piled in the corner. Definitely a place where birth is given to creative inspiration. Definitely.
The two plopped down and signed nearly simultaneously.
“So, we never really talked about what happened,” he let the words hang in the air for a moment, hoping the other designer would carry the thought forward. When his counterpart didn’t, he pressed on.
“How do you feel about what happened? You know… how it all went down?”
The other designer slumped over a bit and spun back and forth in his chair. He looked up at one of walls. The all-glass surface was filled with hand drawn phrases and diagrams, plans for the future that he knew would never come to fruition. Then he spoke.
“It was like… we were all aboard a battleship… and our Captain ended up disobeying orders… but as a result, we won the battle and our fleet was saved.”
He paused for a moment. The other designer took a sip of his tea from his compostable cup, emblazoned with the Megalocorp logo.
“Even so, the Admirals angrily boarded our ship to make an example of the Captain. So they tried to execute him in front of the crew, but the gun didn’t go off.”
He was done with his analogy. However, the other designer decided to keep the line of thought going.
“Except they kept pulling the trigger but the gun never fired. Then the Captain snatched the gun from their hands, showed them how to properly load and fire their own weapon, then handed it back to them and waited honorably for his end. When the gun finally fired, the bullet only grazed him. Then when the gun didn’t kill him, they told him to walk the plank. But then the board snapped in two and he fell into the sea, hitting the sides of this ship the entire way down. Then a group of sharks came by and the Admirals hollered with greedy revenge since the pouring blood from all the wounds would send the sharks into a frenzy. Instead, they only swam around a bit then left. The entire time, the crew looked on in abject horror. Then another, larger ship made of gold scooped up the Captain and they sailed off into the sunset. Then one of the Admirals lit his pipe with some satisfaction as the Captain was finally gone, but a spark fell below deck onto a black powder keg, which caused the Captain’s old ship to explode and catch on fire.”
Another pause. The designer who started the analogy now finished it.
“Yeah. And the Captain was going to retire and give up control of the ship as soon as the battle was won, but Admirals wouldn’t let it happen. They wanted his blood on their hands.”
They both sat for a moment, apart from one another, looking down a bit but never at each other. Another sip of tea passed one of the designer’s lips.
The two moved onto other topics.