The Player (three word Wednesday - ebb, negotiate, random)

“Eric I admit at first that I didn’t have faith in your product… but you’ve really proven me wrong.” Mr. Parker changed his volume to address the rest of the board meeting. “It’s no secret our active accounts have declined, the ebb of our income has been partly slowed due to Eric’s contribution. It is a good step, but it is not enough. If we look at the graph over the last six months…”

An Asian woman across the table from Eric rubbed her nose after catching eye contact with him. Eric responded to her tease with a playful glare. He imagined lunging across the table, throwing her glasses to the floor, and cleaning the back side of her teeth with his tongue while Mr. Parker played the background with facts and figures. Her reciprocating gaze told him she could read these thoughts, and were not repulsed by them.

“Jen?” Mr. Parker infiltrated their eye intercourse and awaited a response.

“Sorry Mr. Parker,” she tuned in seamlessly to the boss’s prompt, “Our programmers and designers are working many hours to make sure our product will be complete for mid-June.”

Mr. Parker scratched the top of his hairless dome, “I know that June was the discussed deadline, any way to push it up to the end of May?”

Eric swallowed hard. The end of May? Releasing a game expansion even by the June deadline would involve a miracle! He was well aware the industry of MMORPGs (Massive Multi-player Online Role Play Games) moved quickly, but Mr. Parker’s request was outright absurd. Eric admired Jen’s ability to remain cool throughout his request, “I will negotiate with the engineers and push for an earlier release.”

The boss smiled with confidence. “Excellent. It is imperative we are ready as soon as possible. That is all I have for now. You are dismissed.”

#
Eric stepped into his office and retrieved a loose sheet from the second draw of his desk. He brought the sheet to the fax machine, when he found Jen at his doorway.

“Your little invention is quite successful,” Jen spoke with a subtle detection of a Japanese accent. Eric’s claim to fame was the introduction of an account identification “authenticator” that plugged into a USB port and served as a physical password for an MMORPG account. Sure each account had its own account name and password securities, which initially was cause for the skepticism behind his invention, but this second checkpoint provided an impossible firewall that key loggers and hackers could not do anything about. Joshua from the security department informed in the meeting that account hacking had been on the rise, and Eric’s product found itself quite popular rather quickly.

“People put a lot of time into our game, and everyone likes to feel safe…”, Eric beamed.

“How did you come up with it?”

“Why don’t I tell you over dinner,” Eric winked. Jen’s sparkling teeth smiled in flattery. He thought again of cleaning the backside of those glistening teeth. “That sounds great,” she spoke warmly.

“Fantastic! I will meet you in the lobby in a couple minutes, I just have to finish up something here.” Jen bowed upon dismissal as she would have back in her home in Kyoto. Eric completed operation of the fax machine, peered up and down the hall outside his office, and shut the door. He flipped open his cell phone and selected a fast dial option.

“Hello.”

“Hi Greg. I just sent you another twenty five.”

“No authenticator on these?”

“Nope. I made sure. None of them have purchased one.”

“They don’t all know each other like last time right? I gotta say that was funny watching ‘em all blame each other…“

“No Greg, these are all random accounts. Take them to the bank. You know what to do.”

“Fax is coming through now. Don’t worry, I’m on it. Consider ‘em hacked.”

“Good. I will check in later, do not call me, I have a dinner date.”

“You got it amigo. Peace out.”

Click.