Intro

In the early 1990’s Ganymede.com started selling CD’s online, its name derived from Jupiter’s largest moon whose underground ocean harbored more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined.

With distribution in place the company began selling toys, then clothes, then pretty much anything else people wanted to buy. It survived the dot com crash, bought a video game company, and from its newly minted perch, reigning high above Seattle’s skyline the sea-beast birthed a hundred other businesses.

When the smart watch flopped under its devices division, CEO and founder John Alby expressed great satisfaction with the size of the failures they were willing to make.

Chapter 1

Thursday, Fifteen Days Before The Premiere

Jenny Whitford caught her breath at the wall of windows. The pane cooled her forehead but the Puget Sound in the distant periphery didn’t help. Water used to soothe her. Thirty-five floors below, the trio of intersecting biodomes looked like a giant molecule of H2O. Ganymede’s tribute to biophilic whatever. She righted herself and took a breath.

The text message lingered, the one she’d sent to the universal call-out line. A number she’d just been signaled to contact. A number she’d attempted to forget over the past four years, along with the other stuff. Her phone buzzed with a response:

Who’s this?

Jenny clenched her jaw and went to type when a familiar voice sounded behind her.

“Miss Whitford!” Ed Hayes, an inch shorter and the kind of colleague for whom the timing could never be right sidled up. Jenny stuffed her cell phone halfway into the back pocket of her jeans.

“That went well,” Ed said.

Jenny attempted to switch focus from the surreal frustration in her pocket to the tangible one now standing here beside her. She pinched the bridge of her nose.

“I don’t see how you can be smiling,” Ed said.

“I asked if you wanted to help with the premiere,” Jenny said. “What else do you want from me?”

She breathed in through her nose then out through pursed lips and divided her brain the way her father had taught, thus quarantining all thoughts about the texts. Split your mind. As far as she knew, there was no other place to read about or study these techniques, but this certainly wasn’t the intended use.

“Well?” Jenny said Everything about Ed grated her, especially the faded ketchup and mustard flannel again.

“Pray tell,” he said. “What am I supposed to do at Telluride next month? And Toronto after that?”

“Make friends.”

“A developmental exec with no budget? Gee.”

“Try pairing back the whole movie snob thing. I read your last post, Life Before CGI.”

“Worldwide audiovisual entertainment is not cinema,” Ed said. “There’s no—.”

“Emotional stakes. This is what I’m talking about.”

“I articulate my passions,” Ed said. “Which is more than I can say about you.”

Jenny bit her lip. It was one thing to have an airtight legend, it was another to go toe-to-toe with someone who could take you the distance.

The glass corporate office tower, Modus Tollens, stood straight ahead, a near mirror image of the building they currently occupied, Conception; book ends of Ganymede’s two-block urban campus. Such was the realm to which Jenny’s fanciful backstory provided asylum.

“Have you ever heard of the Winsome Watch?” Ed fiddled with his twenty-year old black digital Nokia timepiece.

“We’re not the Winsome Watch,” Jenny said.

“Well the final marketing bill we just presented to The Council was two hundred and fifty percent of their launch costs.”

Jenny’s nostrils flared. “We’ll be given twice the acquisition spend next year after The Legion becomes an international hit.” The more Jenny repeated it the more she found herself questioning her original thesis.

“They pulled the plug on Winsome” Ed said, “after four years in development. The Council took a $190 million dollar write down without flinching. You know what the Directors who ran Winsome are doing now?”

“Talk to me after Comic Con,” Jenny said. “You can wait two weeks to write off our future.”

“We could have bought five movies at Cannes with half the money you spent on this.” Ed’s voice rose.

“Superhero IP is a better bet than your niche arthouse portfolio.” Jenny still found it odd applying her old skills of distillation to this strange new world with its oft bizarre terminology.

“Dream Enormous,” she said.

“Don’t quote Ganymede Doctrines on me,” Ed said. “This gold rush on Intellectual Property is the downfall of film.”

“Sounds like your next post.” Jenny knew they were both aware that the upcoming launch would determine their fates, which made this conversation moot.

“By the way,” Ed said. “I’m sending our white paper up for approval.”

“No,” Jenny said. “Co-development heads means we both have to sign off.”

“I don’t remember signing off on The Legion.”

“That didn’t have both our names,” Jenny said. “The business plan does and it’s a multi-year investment strategy so it will have to go to Alby. If he doesn’t like it he’ll bring in some external ass wipe to run this studio instead of us.”

“Instead of one of us,” Ed said. “And it’s quite convenient that you’re the only one with any action this quarter.”

“I’m not playing politics,” Jenny said. “It needs work.” Which it did, though The Legion had given her pole position. But if that flopped it was her neck.

“Premiering at Comic Con,” Ed said. “You’re right about some things, I’ll give you that, but you’re wrong about charging for GanVOD.” Ganymede Video on Demand. “Have you ever actually met with Alby?”

Jenny wasn’t about to give him any leverage so instead of answering said, “We can’t just eliminate the post box office waterfall.”

“It’s not his style,” Ed said. “Streaming should be included in the existing subscription, just like every other service.”

“You’re the one always harping on cash flow,” Jenny said.

“And I still think you overpaid for The Legion but, Surprise and Delight.”

“Don’t quote Doctrines on me,” Jenny said. “And don’t submit the proposal.” She let the silence hang as Ed gazed into the middle distance. If he had anything more to add she’d let him get to it.

“It still doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “Your first festival and you come away with the biggest distribution deal pre-screening.”

Jenny raised an eyebrow as Ed gave an amused breath. She knew credit was owed to whoever listed her first as Ganymede’s contact in the Cannes Marche Du Film directory. But she also knew that luck favored the prepared mind and her talents throve in this business. Her phone vibrated with a call.

“You want to know my secret?” Jenny grabbed her mobile and wiggled it as Ed’s eyebrows raised. “Sorry got to take this.”

He looked at her through narrow slits before tramping back towards the kitchen area. Jenny undid the split and her prior angst came rushing back.

The handle on the nearby phone booth stuck, a big neon green toybox, one of the perks of open-floor seating. With her back to the lounge and the coffee machine where Ed interrogated the interns, she shimmied her retractable ID badge into the jam until it released then tapped the speaker icon on the encrypted app and a series of dial-up beeps and hisses filled the pod. A local number. 206?

“Cuz!” The male voice reverberated through the stale air. Jenny could almost hear his unruffled smile and turned it down a click.

“There were twelve people in that conference room who could fire me,” she said.

“Well, you never gave me your new email address.”

“I’m not the only one who could notice fake window washers, Mac. They’re not idiots here.”

“You’re the only one who would have memorized their schedule.”

Jenny sucked air through her teeth.

“Tech life treating you well?” he said.

“Why are you here?” Jenny heard Mac yell something muffled on the other end.

“Sorry,” he said back on the line.

“You’re not running a job on my premiere,” Jenny said.

“Can we get something straight?” Mac chortled. “You’re hosting diamond exhibits now?”

“You need to leave,” Jenny said.

“Meet me after work.”

She gazed through the plexiglass backing of the calling pod flat against the windows and she looked down towards the grass-rooved Exhibition Center at the foot of Modus Tollens. Tiny bodies marched around the plaza like a mass role-playing game of ants.

“You see me waving?” Mac said.

Jenny closed her eyes and shook her head. The list of follow-up questions from The Council needed to be sent out ASAP, but this wasn’t going away over a phone call. Jenny caressed her inscribed bracelet, two ears.

“I’ll be down in ten,” she said.

It may have been inevitable that these worlds would collide but she hadn’t planned on it today. Faces remained glued to their workstations as she whizzed by the whiteboards on the way to her office. How difficult would it be to close this door again? She grabbed her purse which swung as she stormed towards the elevators, knowing it didn’t matter because this time she’d be bolting it shut.