Metaworld HopeCore

When they returned to Curon’s office, her father took the lift down to the Mueller Suites to clear the technician’s schedule, while Eppie took the time to make a call to someone back in LA.

It was two o’clock in New York, which meant eleven in Glendale. She called Kessler’s mobile number, expecting to be at work, and she was absolutely correct.

“Kessler here.” The husky voice of the Imagineer who had built the red-string gore simulator came through the speakerphone. “Eppie… is that you?”

“Sure is!” Eppie said happily. “Are you free? Can we talk a little?”

“Of course,” Kessler said, sounding delighted. “I am glad the show went down well. I read the reviews. You guys used the heck out of those string props!”

“Thanks.” Eppie felt warm and fuzzy inside. This was the reason why, against Davis’ advice, she had wanted Kessler involved. A chapter of her life had been instrumentally impacted by the work of a prop artist—and she had felt a deep-seated desire to make it up to the woman who had spent hours of her own time making something, only to receive nothing but a line of credit in the draft of a script. “You made it all possible. Now, I have a request in a similar vein—but this time, it's much bigger.”

“Oh?” Kessler sounded surprised. “Did you get hired by Disney? Are we making Eppie, the ride?”

Euphemia shuddered at the thought of Eppie the Family Coaster.

“I want to make a whale. A talking sperm whale that sings back at the audience.”

“What?!” Kessler chortled.

“Have you seen the video?”

“Of… the whale?”

“Ah… let me send you a link.”

Her email chimed. Kessler loaded up the song on her laptop.

O blow, my bully boys, blow,

You’ll take my name where’er you go;

You’ll have the tale and not the hide—

O blow, my bully boys, blow.

One video later, Kessler was speechless.

“So, it answers you,” said Kessler. “Cuz the shanty is a beckon-and-respond, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Isn’t the talking fish patented?”

“Not my one,” Eppie laughed. “Especially not a sperm whale one.”

There was silence, then Kessler made a Hmm… then she said, “No whale.”

“Eh?” Eppie made the same bewilderment she had made for Davis.

“No one mounts whales,” Kessler said. “Besides, aren’t you the whale? You want your fans to have a trophy-Eppie, in their house? That’s a strange message, no?”

“Ah…” Eppie was beginning to see her short-sightedness.

“And if you make a whale, you need fresh moulds, new production lines… delays…” Kessler’s response dunked her dream again and again. “But er… yeah, The Bauble Company still has the patent and the moulds for their original fish, I am sure of it. It’s only been like a decade. I can make a new mechanism, improve the software, perhaps, but everything else they can supply… No… yeah… I think it’ll work.”

Her voice had gone flat and quick, the way people go when they stop being polite because they are busy. “Motion sensor, then, a button for on and off. A sensor for the beckon-and-respond, that’s going to live on as the gag of the decade.”

Kessler’s voice, and her passion, increased with the cadence of her speech. “Can I ask who’s paying for this?”

“Not you,” said Eppie. “I want you to have credit, though. As the co-inventor.”

“Eppie, no…” Kessler’s voice fell lower. “That’s… too much.”

“Nonsense,” Eppie replied confidently. “I owe you more than you can know. That’s why I want you to make it. Call it… a celebration of the craft. Every single one that goes out of a factory door, anywhere, for as long as they make it—you get paid.”