Chapter 5
Jonathon looked really confused, so I reminded him about my run-in with the dog and the van and the hoodies.
"Are they telling us that the Evangelical Free Church of America has been threatening a game developer to screw with the release of a computer game? And they stole her dog to get her to frag the game?" Jonathon sounded incredulous.
"Yeah, I think so. I'm not sure I buy it, though. Now, I'm no fan of the 'whatever Falwell says must be added to the Constitution immediately' folks, but I don't believe that our friends over at the EFree are really behind this. Press releases, boycotts, and leafleting cars are really more their style, don't you think?"
"Well, clearly, someone's threatening them. And someone took that dog."
"I wonder how we can actually talk to this mystery clue-leaver. Do you think it's actually Divinity?" Now I sounded a bit incredulous.
"I didn't even know that Divinity lived in Kirkwood. That's so cool! Well, I suppose it makes sense, what with the Fantasy Shoppe being so involved in the game release and all that. That's probably why she approached them with her game in the first place, to get them to be the middleman between her and GoGeekGames."
"Yeah, she's apparently so shy; I'd be really surprised if she's reaching out to us like this. I'd bet it's a friend of hers who's trying to get some help without endangering Divinity or the dog. Someone must have watched me seeing the dognapping last night and then saw me placing the clues. He probably stayed up all night solving them and writing his own clues at the same places. That's kind of creepy."
"Hey!" An angry looking Scott from team 2 was standing in front of Jonathon and me. "Everyone else is already gone and we're getting nowhere with this clue." He was waving a piece of sheet music around in frustration.
I could understand why Scott was short on patience. His team comprised his very competitive wife and two of his ex-girlfriends. Even though they're all "great friends," that can not be a walk in the park.
"Leigh Anne reads music, Scott. Did you let her look at the clue?"
"Yeah, she read me the notes. But they don't spell anything!"
"Let her have another look at it. She should recognize the song." It's really hard for Scott to let go of the clues; I'd been on his team last year and ended up giving up and reading a book in the backseat of the car because without seeing the clue what could I do? I'm a bit of a control freak too. "Give us a call if you're still stuck in 15 minutes."
Jonathon, Maggie, and I got back into our car for the short trip back downtown. The music was "Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God." Everybody on this hunt had been to our wedding, so hopefully they'd all know to go to our church for the next clue.
The mysterious clue dropper, however, had presumably not been at our wedding. He would have hit a wall here, since I had placed the clue at the church earlier on Sunday and he wouldn't have been watching me then. Presumably. So what was I supposed to do with the strange message translated from binary code? I didn't think that the police would be interested in my story of a dog in a van, especially since I didn't have a plate number for the van.
The Fantasy Shoppe is across the street from the church, so we parked around back and snuck inside to watch our friends through the plate glass store window. Fortunately, the Shoppe was open on Labor Day. Jonathon went straight for the window to watch for the hunters, while I meandered over to Tami, the assistant manager, who was standing behind the counter.
""Morning," I said, since she didn't seem to notice me standing there. In fact, she didn't seem to notice that anyone had come into the shop at all. She jumped when I spoke.
"Oh! Good morning. Um, can I help you find something?"
"Actually, I was in here yesterday and I overheard you talking about Spirit Scheme 2. It sounds like the game might miss its launch?"
"Oh, God." She dropped her face into her hands and her long, wavy blond hair fell forward, hiding her.
"I worked in public relations for years before I decided to do the freelance from home thing. Maybe I can help you out?"
"What?" Tami looked confused.
"I'm not a hardcore gamer, here to whine about when I'll see my long-awaited copy of SS2. But I am a frequent customer here and I'd hate to see The Fantasy Shoppe go out of business. Maybe there's something a little PR magic can do?"
"Well, thanks for the offer – totally not what I was expecting! – but I don't see how a press release could get us out of the mess we're in. We've promoted the hell out of this game launch for tomorrow and we don't have anything to launch. The developer has the final version of the code and she's gone AWOL." Tami's mouth slammed shut and twisted. She looked like she thought she'd said too much.
"Don't worry, I'm not working for the competition and I'm not going to go home and pan you in my blog. Actually, I think that a bit of press here could do wonders for you." I'd had all night to think about this. No publicity is bad publicity, right? We've all seen the flyers from that church, the Evangelical Free Church of America people. Why don't I whip up a press release that we can fax over to the Kirkwood Press and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. We'll explain that due to pressure from a local church, the launch party is being pushed back a week. That should buy you some time to figure out what's going on with the developer or find an alternative solution. You can give rain checks for free copies of the game to the people who traveled here from out of town for the launch so there shouldn't be too much bad publicity for the store, either. You could come out of this way ahead. The local news is sure to pick it up and come out here for interviews so you'll get some free air time."
Plus, it got the EFree thing out there in the public domain, so if they were really threatening Divinity and holding her dog, they'd think they won. I was pretty proud of myself, and Tami seemed willing to give it a try. Of course, she was pretty low on options and she might have agreed if I'd suggested that we conduct a Wiccan ceremony to bring good fortune.
Jonathon called over that all the teams had come and gone and were off to the next clue site, which involved a lengthy research project at the library. Jonathon took Maggie in her sling and walked one block over to the library to be a resource for the hunters while I worked with Tami on the wording of the press release.
No sooner had we faxed it off when the Shoppe door opened again with a tinkling of bells. I looked up, expecting to see Jonathon back to tell me something he'd forgotten, and was surprised to see a crowd of angry-looking kids in hoodies and baggy jeans. OK, they probably weren't very much younger than me. But I associate that whole uber-casual look with youth. In my experience once you start dressing up for work – like a real job – every day, you sort of get in the habit of showering and doing laundry.
"Hey, guys," Tami said. "Have you heard from – " she broke off. "Nevermind." She was definitely not looking my way. "We’ve pushed the release party back a week, OK? So pass that along to your . . . friends, anyone who's interested, OK?"
I said my goodbyes and walked to the door. One of the hoodies followed me outside. It was a guy, and when I actually saw him in the light I realized that he was at least my age, maybe a year or two older.
"Hey," he said.
I just looked at him.
"I saw you last night."
Yeah, I'd figured as much. These were the dog chasers. And, presumably, the mysterious clue-leaving people. "What's up?"
"You got the message?" After I nodded, he said, "Divinity's been getting threats. Said they'd hurt her, hurt her dog if she said anything to anyone or released the game." I nodded again; we'd guessed as much.
"How do you know it's the EFree?"
"Well, they're the ones with all the damn flyers, aren't they? The ones boycotting the store? And the threats D's been getting have had bible verses and stuff. She's majorly freaked out. Some loser even came right up to her on the street and tried to save her, convince her to come to church, whatever."
"And the loser said she was from EFree?"
"Isn't it freakin' obvious? They're totally the only ones who care."
"Well, we bought a week to figure out what's going on. I recommend that you report the missing dog to the police."
"Are you crazy? D would kill me if she knew I was talking to anyone about this. I can't go to the freaking cops."
I sighed. Poor dog. "I'm going over to the library. Can you bring me some of the threats that Divinity has been getting?" My new friend, called Raj, as it turned out, told me that he'd forward me one of the emails so I gave him my spam-collecting email address and jogged over to meet Jonathon and tell him what he'd missed. I looked back once and saw the whole group of hoodie kids standing on the sidewalk, staring after me.
"Are they telling us that the Evangelical Free Church of America has been threatening a game developer to screw with the release of a computer game? And they stole her dog to get her to frag the game?" Jonathon sounded incredulous.
"Yeah, I think so. I'm not sure I buy it, though. Now, I'm no fan of the 'whatever Falwell says must be added to the Constitution immediately' folks, but I don't believe that our friends over at the EFree are really behind this. Press releases, boycotts, and leafleting cars are really more their style, don't you think?"
"Well, clearly, someone's threatening them. And someone took that dog."
"I wonder how we can actually talk to this mystery clue-leaver. Do you think it's actually Divinity?" Now I sounded a bit incredulous.
"I didn't even know that Divinity lived in Kirkwood. That's so cool! Well, I suppose it makes sense, what with the Fantasy Shoppe being so involved in the game release and all that. That's probably why she approached them with her game in the first place, to get them to be the middleman between her and GoGeekGames."
"Yeah, she's apparently so shy; I'd be really surprised if she's reaching out to us like this. I'd bet it's a friend of hers who's trying to get some help without endangering Divinity or the dog. Someone must have watched me seeing the dognapping last night and then saw me placing the clues. He probably stayed up all night solving them and writing his own clues at the same places. That's kind of creepy."
"Hey!" An angry looking Scott from team 2 was standing in front of Jonathon and me. "Everyone else is already gone and we're getting nowhere with this clue." He was waving a piece of sheet music around in frustration.
I could understand why Scott was short on patience. His team comprised his very competitive wife and two of his ex-girlfriends. Even though they're all "great friends," that can not be a walk in the park.
"Leigh Anne reads music, Scott. Did you let her look at the clue?"
"Yeah, she read me the notes. But they don't spell anything!"
"Let her have another look at it. She should recognize the song." It's really hard for Scott to let go of the clues; I'd been on his team last year and ended up giving up and reading a book in the backseat of the car because without seeing the clue what could I do? I'm a bit of a control freak too. "Give us a call if you're still stuck in 15 minutes."
Jonathon, Maggie, and I got back into our car for the short trip back downtown. The music was "Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God." Everybody on this hunt had been to our wedding, so hopefully they'd all know to go to our church for the next clue.
The mysterious clue dropper, however, had presumably not been at our wedding. He would have hit a wall here, since I had placed the clue at the church earlier on Sunday and he wouldn't have been watching me then. Presumably. So what was I supposed to do with the strange message translated from binary code? I didn't think that the police would be interested in my story of a dog in a van, especially since I didn't have a plate number for the van.
The Fantasy Shoppe is across the street from the church, so we parked around back and snuck inside to watch our friends through the plate glass store window. Fortunately, the Shoppe was open on Labor Day. Jonathon went straight for the window to watch for the hunters, while I meandered over to Tami, the assistant manager, who was standing behind the counter.
""Morning," I said, since she didn't seem to notice me standing there. In fact, she didn't seem to notice that anyone had come into the shop at all. She jumped when I spoke.
"Oh! Good morning. Um, can I help you find something?"
"Actually, I was in here yesterday and I overheard you talking about Spirit Scheme 2. It sounds like the game might miss its launch?"
"Oh, God." She dropped her face into her hands and her long, wavy blond hair fell forward, hiding her.
"I worked in public relations for years before I decided to do the freelance from home thing. Maybe I can help you out?"
"What?" Tami looked confused.
"I'm not a hardcore gamer, here to whine about when I'll see my long-awaited copy of SS2. But I am a frequent customer here and I'd hate to see The Fantasy Shoppe go out of business. Maybe there's something a little PR magic can do?"
"Well, thanks for the offer – totally not what I was expecting! – but I don't see how a press release could get us out of the mess we're in. We've promoted the hell out of this game launch for tomorrow and we don't have anything to launch. The developer has the final version of the code and she's gone AWOL." Tami's mouth slammed shut and twisted. She looked like she thought she'd said too much.
"Don't worry, I'm not working for the competition and I'm not going to go home and pan you in my blog. Actually, I think that a bit of press here could do wonders for you." I'd had all night to think about this. No publicity is bad publicity, right? We've all seen the flyers from that church, the Evangelical Free Church of America people. Why don't I whip up a press release that we can fax over to the Kirkwood Press and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. We'll explain that due to pressure from a local church, the launch party is being pushed back a week. That should buy you some time to figure out what's going on with the developer or find an alternative solution. You can give rain checks for free copies of the game to the people who traveled here from out of town for the launch so there shouldn't be too much bad publicity for the store, either. You could come out of this way ahead. The local news is sure to pick it up and come out here for interviews so you'll get some free air time."
Plus, it got the EFree thing out there in the public domain, so if they were really threatening Divinity and holding her dog, they'd think they won. I was pretty proud of myself, and Tami seemed willing to give it a try. Of course, she was pretty low on options and she might have agreed if I'd suggested that we conduct a Wiccan ceremony to bring good fortune.
Jonathon called over that all the teams had come and gone and were off to the next clue site, which involved a lengthy research project at the library. Jonathon took Maggie in her sling and walked one block over to the library to be a resource for the hunters while I worked with Tami on the wording of the press release.
No sooner had we faxed it off when the Shoppe door opened again with a tinkling of bells. I looked up, expecting to see Jonathon back to tell me something he'd forgotten, and was surprised to see a crowd of angry-looking kids in hoodies and baggy jeans. OK, they probably weren't very much younger than me. But I associate that whole uber-casual look with youth. In my experience once you start dressing up for work – like a real job – every day, you sort of get in the habit of showering and doing laundry.
"Hey, guys," Tami said. "Have you heard from – " she broke off. "Nevermind." She was definitely not looking my way. "We’ve pushed the release party back a week, OK? So pass that along to your . . . friends, anyone who's interested, OK?"
I said my goodbyes and walked to the door. One of the hoodies followed me outside. It was a guy, and when I actually saw him in the light I realized that he was at least my age, maybe a year or two older.
"Hey," he said.
I just looked at him.
"I saw you last night."
Yeah, I'd figured as much. These were the dog chasers. And, presumably, the mysterious clue-leaving people. "What's up?"
"You got the message?" After I nodded, he said, "Divinity's been getting threats. Said they'd hurt her, hurt her dog if she said anything to anyone or released the game." I nodded again; we'd guessed as much.
"How do you know it's the EFree?"
"Well, they're the ones with all the damn flyers, aren't they? The ones boycotting the store? And the threats D's been getting have had bible verses and stuff. She's majorly freaked out. Some loser even came right up to her on the street and tried to save her, convince her to come to church, whatever."
"And the loser said she was from EFree?"
"Isn't it freakin' obvious? They're totally the only ones who care."
"Well, we bought a week to figure out what's going on. I recommend that you report the missing dog to the police."
"Are you crazy? D would kill me if she knew I was talking to anyone about this. I can't go to the freaking cops."
I sighed. Poor dog. "I'm going over to the library. Can you bring me some of the threats that Divinity has been getting?" My new friend, called Raj, as it turned out, told me that he'd forward me one of the emails so I gave him my spam-collecting email address and jogged over to meet Jonathon and tell him what he'd missed. I looked back once and saw the whole group of hoodie kids standing on the sidewalk, staring after me.
© 2004 by Sarahlynn at 3:49 AM
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