Drop dead gorgeous

   Fur and different types of fabrics covered the floor of the warehouse. At the center, a man with tight clothes threw everything around, apparently looking for something in particular. He stopped for a moment, having a bright yellow patterned fabric on one hand and a bright pink vest in the other, covered in glitter and feathers of many colors. He gave them those to an assistant and then stepped out of the mound of clothes as if nothing had happened. He walked elegantly and steadily towards the warehouse’s exit.

 The rest of the people had to stay there and get everything in order. They had to put everything into the proper bags and boxes and those bags and boxes into very tall shelves where everything was kept in order and very clean. When the last worker left the warehouse, they realized their boss was still there and he seemed to be drawing something on a notebook, against the hood of his car. He didn’t seem to be conscious of his surroundings, only focusing on  the movement of his hand and the trace of the pencil.

 His personal assistant, the young man who had grabbed the selected pieces of clothing, touched his shoulder and whispered in his ear something about a meeting he was late to. The man seemed a bit startled at the beginning, but then he just closed the notebook and entered the car. Later that day, he attended several meetings, having to do with his next collection and with everything that had to do with the financial results achieved by the company. However, he wasn’t really there in any of them.

 Colors flew all over his brain, as well as textures and different kinds of fabrics and so on. He kept drawing in some of those meetings and people knew he had to be left alone while he was being creative. The only thing he had to say in meetings was about the clothes and the line that was about to come out was already in production, so he had not much to say in those last few meetings. They just invited him because they knew he was essential to the success of the company but not because he was actually needed.

 The truth was that some of the people on the board felt that he was losing his touch. People didn’t seem to like his most recent creations, with many critics chiming in saying that it all seemed a little bit too boring and that “it had been seen before”. He was very aware of these criticisms but the had already said, several times, that he thought creativity could not be judged by anyone and that people saying whatever they wanted without context was just an insult to his imagination and his skill as a designer. He thought he should have all the freedoms needed to create and that was it.

 However, the company was secretly against this. They didn’t tell him any of it, but it was clear that if he didn’t deliver results, he would be kicked out without any consideration to his talent of his past results. At the end of the day, the only thing those people considered was money and if he wasn’t the one bringing it into their lives, they would find some other person that could have his vision and theirs, at the same time. It was clearly a possibility and they had in their minds at all times, even if he didn’t realize it.

 In his creative studio, everything was about lights and colors and all the beautiful fabrics that could be brought from every corner in the world. Everyone there was as beautiful as what they used to make dresses and other fashion products and everyone also seemed to be young and always happy, smiling and showing their teeth every step of the way. For an outsider, it was a very strange place to be in, even intimidating because of the attitudes of the people working there, some for years.

 The biggest office there was for him, the top designer, the one that had been the head of the whole creative area for the last two years. And he was a young man but he was already tormented by everything he had done in the past and his present ideas. He felt he was being left behind by his surroundings and that his past work was the result of some silly ideas that had come up from the mind of a naïve young man. And he always felt like that, never really feeling great about any of his work.

 He would spent his days drawing and coloring and checking new products and fabrics, talking to other creative like him and with people creating new things to be used in fashion. His whole life was about being creative and imaginative and sometimes he felt he just didn’t have enough of it. He even felt he had landed his job because of some astronomical mistake, because it was often that he felt like a failure, unable to make what people expected from him. He felt he was not what he was supposed to be.

 As a designer, he was very aware that he had to bring in results in order to have the chance to have such a group working for him, so he had recently visited some stores to check out his success with his own eyes. However, he noticed the latest collection was not working as well as he intended. He had worked so had and his team had put everything on it, all at once if that was possible. But apparently people were not nearly as excited about as they were while making it. That made him feel something he had not experienced before in his very short career filled with success.

 He realized that success could have really disastrous effects in a young man. After all, he had been forced to grow up very fast in order to be the person that was needed in such a competitive world. He remembered the days when he drew several drawings every single day, the days when he would be happy just coloring some nice drawing and then buying his own fabrics to make his creations a reality. He had to make the effort and it was hard and that felt good when he had a final product in his hands.

 The massive appeal of his designs had been his downfall; a crazy idea that had grown inside his head but that was only a lie. They had made him believe he was the only one doing fashion that young and that he was a special little flower growing in some kind of dark moat. But that sure wasn’t the case, and he noticed that from the beginning, with his first fashion show, where he was able to see how talented people was. They were better than what he was lead to believe, beautiful and creative people.

 And it was a mosh pit between them, a storm of talented souls that clashed one against the other. It was horrible for them and for the people that worked with them but they mostly never realized how vicious their world could be. They only thought about the imaginative process, about how beautiful it was to combine one thing with the other. They felt it was the best job in the world, the most glamorous and beautiful in all of existence, and that it couldn’t be topped by anything on the world.

 So he just decided to stay in his office for a whole day, working and working, not caring about anything else. He tried to create something that could really make him someone different, that could really tell others that he was a very unique soul and that his creations were much more than just clothes and accessories, more like works of art being carried around by beautiful people that knew how much effort and imagination had gone into their creation. He didn’t stop until his hands hurt.

 They found him the following day, dead on his working area. According to the doctors that examined him afterwards, he had died of a heart attack. It was very uncommon for such a young man to die like that, but his body had been under severe pressure and it was a very obvious conclusion to his story.

 However, others took his drawing and everything he had created that whole day in order to make one last collection. They said it was in his honor but it was only to make money out of his talents and his death. And people did fall into that trap, buying it in large numbers, save the company from its own demise.

In fashion

   Every single night, Maddie Compton would fix every single piece of clothing she had been able to find in the second hand stores she visited that week. Sometimes they weren’t even fashion stores but places where she could buy the fabric she liked the most and modify it enough to create something no one had ever wore before. She had the advantage of having a great eye for design and a great taste in clothing. After all, she read all the magazines she could get her hands on, for free of course.

 Maddie was not a wealthy woman but she pretended to be, going to the most prestigious parties with the elite of the city. Many loved her designs and praised her for it. She even got some friends during those parties but the truth was that she had accepted the fact she couldn’t’ really get too close to anyone. Realizing that she was not who she said she was wouldn’t have been too hard for someone close to her, so she tried hard not to overstay her welcome in such events.

 She had made some mistakes in the past, as going out after with a guy she had met at the party. It would normally be a one-night stand, as she would escape the room as silently as she could and then leave to her life far away from the skyscrapers and lovely apartments those people had. Sometimes it was really hard for her, because she really wanted to be like them. She wanted that life which was certainly much easier than her own. She wanted to feel people cared about who she was.

 Of course, Maddie knew many of the people she met in those parties were not fully honest with her but it wasn’t possible that among so many people there wasn’t at least one person that actually liked what she did. One of her ideas at first had been to find someone willing to give her money to design dresses for some brand, at least as a test. They were certainly the type to do that but it came to be much more difficult than what she had anticipated. Rich people were too in love with themselves.

 To be fair, she was too. Maddie was the kind of woman that always looks at her own reflection on the mirror in the morning and then several more times during the day. She couldn’t avoid taking pictures of herself and it wasn’t even to share with friends or family, it was just to take a look at herself and try to reinforce some weird acceptance of her own being in her brain. She knew she needed people’s approval to feel she had made it and that’s why she had gone after the opinions of people who mattered, the ones that had money and could take decisions.

 The young woman had made several dresses and then she would sell them in the same stores she bought the ones that she modified and turned into sensations. Many store owners were very grateful for what she did because many of her designs sold very well with younger women that wanted something different to wear at an affordable price. It was the only way for her to make some money, besides working some days in a call center, helping with pizza deliveries from around the world.

 Maddies wanted to live of her designs. That or get one of those rich men to make her a rich woman through marriage but that was a lot trickier because she would began their life together by lying at that was never the best way to initiate a new relationship. Luckily, none of the guys she had dated had ever asked too much about her. Most men her age were too focused on themselves and their own achievements to even ask about what she really wanted out of life.

 It wasn’t the life she would have wanted for herself but it was the one she had and the one that made sense. She needed to insist on her only talent and if making clothes were the way to go, she would try it as long as she could. She made a very small amount of money out of it but it was the only activity that clamed her down and made her feel the world is not as awful as one would think it is, at least sometimes. The sound of her machine was the perfect way to distract her brain.

 It was the exact opposite of the parties she attended where most people were vicious and just loved to tear others apart, especially the women. Maybe it was because they had always been under appreciated, even when they were such wealthy people, but the ladies could be savage with newcomers and when the tastes of others didn’t match what was generally accepted. Maddie had to check all that out before going out to one of those events, in order to be praised but never mocked.

 She was very successful that way. She even decided to learn a bit more about make up and how to achieve a complete look that would fool anyone. She would imitate looks from magazines or inspire herself from those, with her cheap fabrics and dresses and accessories she practically remade herself. She always laughed alone in her apartment, thinking that if a policeman found her there he would think she was managing the least successful pirating ring ever. She did it all perfectly but always in a very small scale, in order not to attract the wrong attention.

 After a very long time trying to make it, Maddie finally attracted the right person for what she wanted to do. Her name was Emilia Gobstone and she was one of the wealthiest women in the city. She had an amazing apartment where many parties were held, having appeared in numerous occasions in many magazines. She fell in love with Maddie and one of her dresses and asked the young woman to make her and her daughters the same dress for a special party in a country club.

 Maddie did as asked and Mrs. Gobstone could not have been happier. The fabric Maddie had used was one of the best she had ever worked with, spending a very large sum to get it. But she knew she needed the best to be successful with that particular request. She was right. The wealthy woman was so happy, that she paid double what they had agreed on in the first place and asked Maddie to make her clothes for every event in the fall season that was getting nearer by the minute.

 With such a success, she decided to retire from going to parties and such and focus more on her dresses and their quality. From the point of view of her craft, she had made the best choice. However, many people wondered where she had left to and it was then when they found out who she really was. Everyone made fun of her in social media, posting pictures they had with her and telling the most awful stories about her. Some were based on things she had said, but they all twisted her words and some were only lies.

 She finished her work on Mrs. Gobstone’s dresses and wrote her a letter apologizing for everything. She sent her creations and the letter one afternoon and then decided to leave the city for a while, needing some fresh air, something she wouldn’t be able to get in such a city, which felt a little bit too crowded sometimes. She grabbed a suitcase, put some of her clothes and just left, trying not to think too much about everything that had happened in the last few years. 

 To her surprise, Mrs. Gobstone’s personal butler found her in her parent’s home, many kilometers away from the city. He told her his mistress needed her urgently and that it couldn’t wait. Maddie accepted the ride and, a few hours later, she was in the woman’s apartment.

 There, the socialite gave her a check to pay for her dresses and told her she wouldn’t be able to hire her again. However, she could do something else for her, as a personal way to thank her for her work. The following week, an specialized magazine called Maddie, in order to arrange an interview.

Gaming

   The video game presentation was going perfectly. Everyone in the arena was talking about booth number 45 and its very interesting game. Of course, as many games in exhibition, it was a virtual reality game. People put on some glasses and that was enough to immerse themselves in a very big and interesting world. The people at Rakami, the company that had created the game, were very nervous about the reception of their new product but after one day, they had to be confident everything was going to be just fine with their sales.

 The second day of the expo, they were named the game to be looking for, Lines formed from an early hour to try out the game and Rakami had to send another console and copy of the software in order for people to try it out. And even with two copies, it wasn’t enough to show everyone willing to try the most fascinating game ever. Or at least that’s what the people in the booth started calling it after the very warm reception.

 The truth was that Rakami had been born very recently, not even five years ago. It had been a group of friends who had decided they wanted to create the game they wanted to play. In other words, they wanted to make the best video games in the market by making the players and integral part of them. Of course, the player is always the most important part of the creation process, but these guys wanted the future gamers to be very involved in their creative process.

 The first thing they did once they gathered to work together, was define what everyone would do. It was a small group of four people: three men and one woman. The men were mostly fluent in programming and designing and she was very good at marketing and all the legal language they needed to know before starting to do anything. They bought legal versions of every single program needed and rented a space in order to work there, as an office.

 Of course, every single penny invested into it came from their own bank account. Although one of them was fairly wealthy, the other two were not at all so one of the first moves was to ensure they had money to make the first game from beginning to end. Investors were not easy to come by, especially for such a technology and idea, which would take years to actually be a reality.

 However, they managed to receive a grant given by a university who supported young creators all over the world. The money was not a lot but it was a great way to start and not worry about anything for at least two years or a bit less. At the end of that time, the university would demand results and would decide if more money would be invested.

 The first year was the most difficult one as starting such a project is always something very hard. As the boys started doing sketches and different types of screenplays of what they thought the story should be about, the girl decided to ensure they would not have money issues by use of crowd funding. She designed a website with a friend where people could go and give in whatever amount they wanted to make the videogame come to life. But not only that, the particular investors could leave a comment, telling the designers what they wanted in a game, what they were looking forward.

 Picking up ideas from that big pool was very hard and an extensive job that required various meetings during a long period of time and heated discussions about what the game should be about. They were all friends and really loved each other but those few months were very tense and it wasn’t uncommon that they would argue with each other every single day, fighting over every single thing.

However, after a while, they were able to make some compromises and decided to organize their work in a more organic way so everyone was able to do a part of the game. That way, no one would really feel pushed aside from the project and participation would be just in its perfect point. Their friendship was put to test that first year and they were able to show themselves how mature they had become after graduating from college.

 Entering the second year of development, they had many more problems. Money was and wasn’t one them. The problem was not that they didn’t have any but rather that they couldn’t touch it unless they released some kind of sneak peek. They tried to put together some short animation and a video of the designs and thought that should be enough for the people that had invested in the game and the university that supported them

 However, that wasn’t the case. The university told them they were seriously considering removing their sponsorship because of he poor advances in the design and general development of the game. And the reception in their crowd funding website was even worse. People did not get the footage and were not really digging the designs and what they had put together. That response made them get together again and think about hey needed to do.

 The first thing was not to listen to every single thing people said about the game, as it was obvious that not everybody could be pleased. The other thing was that they really needed to step up their game and work twice as hard because the university was right: they had not done enough in the first year and they really needed support if they wanted to fulfill their dream of seeing their game finished.

 The following months were very hard on all of them. They had to stay in the office for several hours, sometimes even sleeping there and having lunch while waiting for the images to render. They bought more computers in order to be able to do more work at the same time and had to make some adjustments to the room in order to make it a nice place to work in. They put every part of their soul and body in the game and they were sure it was going to be good and that people would like it, no matter what.

 At the end of that year, they had a meeting in the university. A board made up of six people would review their results and everything they had on their computers and the amount of work they had done. They would rate every single aspect of their jobs and finally decide if what they had done was worth another investment from them with which they could be able to finish the game as such.

 It was a tense few days and the final response of the university came after Christmas but before New Year’s Day. The university had decided to pass on their game and pulled off any additional funding. Needless to say, the group had the worst beginning of the year ever but once they reunited again they decided to go forward with the help of the people. They would release more of the game and people would love it and they would finish the game with their support.

  However, something unexpected happened. The girl was contacted by a group of private investors looking for new companies and ideas to invest in. She organized a visit to the offices and they were mind blown when they realized it was one of the executives of Garmin Entertainment, who was visiting them. Garmin had released two of the best titles in the last year and was a leading company in the development of virtual reality technology.

 Their proposal was quite simple: they would give the money to finish the game in exchange of the title to be a virtual reality game. They thought the idea they had was perfect for that kind of gaming and they even promised help achieve the level needed to have a playable game in that sort of environment.

 Again, work was very intense and they did receive a lot of support, with very experienced people coming to their offices and helping them with the design of a far larger world that they had envisioned before. Everything had gotten bigger and more ambitious and it was a bit scary for them but also very exciting. They felt they were involved in something important, so the hours of sleep were the least of their worries.

 The expo was just the magnificent result of their incredible work process. And people loving the game was the perfect gift for all of them. However, they were still many surprises ahead, for both the developers and the gamers. The recent born Rakami was en route to greatness.