Page 83 of The Wish
‘Water will be fine,’ Frank says, sitting down at the kitchen table.
Alex gets Frank a glass of water and sits opposite him. He runs his hands through his hair, making it stand out completely around his head in a mad halo.
‘Look, Frank, I know Ian’s pissed off with me for spending too much time out of the office, but . . .’
‘It’s OK, we’ll get to Ian. I’ve just come from the hospital where I met two young men, I believe you know them: Ryan and Luke.’
‘What! Yes, I know them, what were you doing with them?’
‘I had a call from Ryan this morning, he asked me to come to the hospital to talk to him and Luke about you.’
Not knowing where this is going, Alex involuntarily stands.
‘Sit down, Alex, you’re not in trouble. Somebody else in the office might be, but not you. Now tell me what you’re doing and how I can help.’
Gathering his thoughts, Alex is quiet for a while.
‘You’d better come into my office, it’s confession time.’
Frank follows Alex and Max into his office. As he walks in, he stops, surveying the equipment in front of him, half the monitors are black, others are lit up with images of Jesse.
‘What the hell have you got here?’ Frank asks.
‘Sit down, I’ll show you what we’ve done.’
They both pull chairs up to the monitors and Alex runs the program he and the others have created. It requires no explanation from Alex, this is also Frank’s domain as creator of TriOptic Studios. As the last video finishes and the music fades out, he turns to Alex.
‘And now you need the studio to create the wish.’
‘Yeah, what we’ve got is great, but it needs everyone in the studio to complete it.’
‘Well then, lucky for you we have some time between projects.’
‘You mean it? We can go ahead with your knowledge, not behind your back?’
Frank laughs. ‘You could have come to me, you know?’
‘I’m sorry, I should have, it’s just you gave me a brief to make a game for Jesse, but I’ve gone a bit beyond that.’
‘A bit! You’ve got a bloody feature film here.’
‘Can I show you something I’ve been working on?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘In my own time I’ve been developing a product we could market to the public. It could be made affordable for budding filmmakers and game creators, allowing them to take their projects to the next level.’
‘Let’s see it.’
Alex shows Frank a film he has created using Max. He has him under water in a submersible, flying a light aircraft, running through a forest and emerging in a desert. Real-life Max looks on proudly.
Frank whistles. ‘This could be just what TriOptics needs to keep the wolves from our door. It could subsidise the company in between the big projects. How much do you want for the IP? I can help with marketing and the contacts to get this worldwide.’
‘Make me an offer.’ Alex forces himself to sound more confident than he’s feeling. Half an hour ago, he was waiting for Frank to give him the sack.
‘Seventy-five, twenty-five. You keep seventy-five. I demote that useless son-in-law, and you take over.’
Alex waits for a moment. ‘What do you think, Max?’
