MANHATTAN
I SHOULD BE HOME WITH MY FAMILY, THOUGHT ROGER NEWELL. It’s Christmas Eve, for god’s sake. I feel like Bob Cratchit facing old man Scrooge.
Sitting across the tiny round table from him, Darryl C. Trumball seemed to take no notice of the crowds scurrying homeward outside the window of the cocktail lounge. The lounge was half a block from Newell’s office in the network headquarters building. He was a frequent customer, immediately recognized by the hostess who sat them by the window. Newell wished for a booth further away but never had the nerve to demand one.
Knowing that it would take a long limo ride from the airport to get to Manhattan, Trumball had taken the jet-speed express train to Grand Central Station specifically to have it out with the news media chiefs. It had been a long and potentially very profitable day for him.
“I’ve told all the others and I’m telling you, you’re free to use any and all of the footage they’ve taken,” Trumball said as he hunched over his scotch on the rocks, “but not the VR stuff.”
“But we have our own virtual reality network now,” Newell replied, “and we could—”
“No,” said Trumball firmly. “We sell VR tours of the Martian village to our own customers. We could make five hundred million on the first tour, easy.”
“Our audience—”
“Can you put up five hundred mil for the VR material?”
“Five hundred million dollars?” Newell squeaked. “Of course not. Not even close.”
“You see?” Trumball leaned back in his chair, smiling coldly.
“We’re preparing a prime-time special on the village,” said Newell. “Prime time! A science special on prime time. That hasn’t been done since—”
“That’s all well and good,” Trumball interrupted, “but neither you nor any of the other news nets are going to get our VR footage. Not unless you come up with five hundred mil.”
Newell shook his head. He had been against the idea of a prime-time special about the Martian village, but the suits upstairs had ignored his advice. Science shows get no audience, Newell knew. Well, maybe this special about the Martian building would do better than most, but still, everybody’s seen all the regular footage already. The building doesn’t do anything, it just sits there, an empty shell. It’ll be talking heads, with some of them inside space suit helmets, so we won’t even be able to see their faces, for god’s sake.
“Of course,” Trumball said slowly, reaching for his drink, “once we’ve shown the VR stuff to our own customers, it might be possible to work out a deal for the first network broadcast of the material.”
Newell immediately leaned closer to the older man. “How much?”
Trumball sipped thoughtfully at his scotch, smacked his lips once, and replied, “Global News offered me ninety-five million this afternoon. Can you top it?”
* * *
Harry Farber’s nose was practically touching his phone screen. He could see his own reflection in the screen, superimposed on the dumb schmuck of a manufacturer’s rep from Minneapolis. Harry was sweating, red-faced, grimacing.
“We can’t keep ’em in the stores,” he was almost screaming. “They’re selling ’em so fast we blew out the inventory program this morning!”
“Well that’s wonderful, Mr. Farber,” said the dumb schmuck. “You know, all our retailers are reporting the same kind of sales. Virtual reality sets are disappearing from the shelves all over the world.”
“Yeah, but I need another six gross, and I need ’em now!”
The manufacturer’s rep seemed only mildly distressed. “Mr. Farber,” he said, with a rueful little smile, “if only you knew how many times I’ve heard that same request over the past few days …”
“But I need ’em!” Farber insisted. “I got customers waiting in the store right now!” He waved a hand in the general direction of the line of increasingly impatient customers standing by the service desk.
“And you’ll get them, Mr. Farber. Just as fast as we can get them to you.”
“How soon? When?”
The manufacturer’s rep glanced down, probably at some schedule or invoice. “A week to ten days, Mr. Farber.”
“A week? Are you nuts? The show from Mars is gonna be aired tomorrow! From Mars!”
“It’s the best I can do, Mr. Farber,” said the rep, with a sad little shake of his head. “Since they discovered that village or whatever it is up there on Mars, everybody wants to buy a virtual reality rig.”