“I’m positive.  Candy Clinton was at Cable Beach when we were there.  She was sitting there with some guy that was certainly not Paul Murphy, having some drink with an umbrella in it.”

“I wish you’d said something at the time instead of just rushing us back to the ship.”

Amy was a bit perturbed with the line of questioning.  It had been a wedge between them for a few days. 

“Regardless, your dad said that he thought Paul had disappeared two and a half years ago from his boat in the Bahamas,” Amy said.  “I guess it isn’t unrealistic that Candy was there.  That’s where they went after they left the US.  I wonder what happened to them after that, and where Paul disappeared to in 82,” Jack replied.  He hoped to smooth over the division.  He wanted to believe her, and he had absolute trust in her.  He was just having a hard time with the coincidence of Amy running into her. 

Author’s Note

This was the story of Jonathan (Jack) and Amy getting engaged and married. I loved sneaking in the little tidbit about Candy Clinton. She shows up in another of the short stories from book four, as do Paul and Sean Murphy. We aren’t quite done with them yet.

I hope to have this book edited and out by the end of March. The story of Nicole and Rolf, and what happened with Nicole and Amy that is at the end of book three was originally the closing story in book four, but I felt it was better suited to the other book. That meant I needed to write a good closing story for book four before setting it free…

I hope you’ve enjoyed these and perhaps I will add some more of this content in the future.

At the opening ceremony, Amy was part of a round table discussion on new products and companies.  She gave a five-minute presentation on their new concept in decision-based gaming, as well as the new company.  When she was done, the Master of Ceremonies asked her a few questions.  She was the youngest CEO ever at their show, as well as one of the very rare females running a tech company. 

“Amy, how did you get here?  You’re eighteen years old, and the President and CEO of a rising game company,” Tripp Tyler, the show MC asked.

“Well, Tripp, it might be as much of a shock to me as everyone else.  My boyfriend’s sister… I mean, my sister-in-law… is an amazing chef, but she was having trouble organizing herself to build a business around it.  I offered to help her put together a business plan and procure funding, then build out her kitchen and launch her business.  As we were in the later stages, my father’s company had a computer game that had been mostly developed by one of the programmers in his spare time.  They wanted to get it finished up and I was asked if I could take on managing the project.”

“And that led to this?”

“Largely, yes.  The game was pretty well developed… but I saw it as limited.  I hired some gamers I knew to consult and see if they could push the boundaries of the game… make more decisions, have more valid game paths.  Then I hired another consultant to clean up the story and make it flow more like a book.  Finally, I went back to the programming team with the new material and had them code it all in.  We added some randomization that makes gameplay different each time it is played and made some other tweaks to make play more challenging and not just a matter of making a flow chart of how to get through it.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, I had the opportunity to play a pre-production version of the game and it is really cool.  It reads like a novel, but I was controlling the steps,” Tripp told the crowd before turning back to Amy, “So what’s next for Prince Interactive Gaming?”

“We are hard at work on our next projects.  I don’t want to give away the details yet, but we expect several titles in the first half of next year.  We are going to focus on some educational gaming opportunities, using real historical events and how they could be affected by different decisions.  We are also looking a couple of generations down the road and designing some games for platforms that haven’t been developed yet.”

“I bet everyone would love to hear about that?”

“I bet they would,” Amy said with a laugh, “but I can’t talk about those projects for quite a while.”

There were scattered laughs around the audience at that comment… indeed, any of their competitors would have loved to know what their next steps were going to be. 

“One other thing, Amy,” the MC asked, “your logo is a pig and you have an animation of the Three Little Pigs playing a computer game while the Big Bad Wolf rages outside of the brick house.  Can you tell us about that?”

“Sure, Tripp,” Amy said with a smile.  “The initials of Prince Interactive Gaming form PIG.  We were pretty confident that it wouldn’t take long for everyone to figure that out.  Instead of hiding from it, we decided to get in front of it and have fun.  And the story of The Three Little Pigs is a perfect metaphor decision-based gaming.”

Apparently, she did a good job, because on the show’s first day, they had commitments from retailers for more sales than any other new game presented at the show.  One of the computer manufacturers was also trying to work a deal with them to have the game included with the purchase of their computers. 

***

“Baby, you knocked it out of the park today,” Jack told his wife at dinner after the close of the show for the day.  “You were amazing.  Your presentation was incredible and the poise you showed when you were interviewed was perfect.  I’m so proud of you.”

“You really think so, Jonathan?” she asked.

“Amy, I have seen a lot of leaders that had decades of experience that didn’t come off as smooth as you did today.  In every conversation, in addition to what Jack said about the presentation and interview, you were knowledgeable, confident, humble and well-spoken.  That is a tough combination for anyone to have,” Melody Grafton added. 

“Thanks, Melody.  I really appreciate that.  I was scared to death.”

“It didn’t show, Sweetheart,” her father told her.  “I don’t think anyone could have done it better.”

“I just felt like there were probably people thinking, ‘oh look, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a tech CEO just got handed an opportunity for free, without really deserving it’,” Amy responded.

Ed spoke up, “if they thought that before you presented, they didn’t think it after.  Being as objective as I can, what I saw was a very well put together young woman that knew her product and was at ease with everything around her.”

“Thanks.  And I think I know what we need to do next.”

“What’s that, Amy?” Bill asked.

“Well, the pig logo and the Three Little Pigs thing was a lark, but I think we need to do a mini-game with different options for the Three Little Pigs and offer it up as a freebie.  Maybe when people register their product or something.  That way we can build a database of our customers as we roll out new titles.”

“Bill, she’s smarter than us,” Ed said in response. 

“No doubt, my friend,” Bill replied.