Chapter 46: Big News
** Harper **
Wednesday's excursion had ended too soon, and it felt like a dream too sweet to be true. But the toll of scratchiness that Harper's voice had taken from all the screaming was solid proof that it was real indeed, and when she strode into her office the next morning, she was still overloaded with enough cheeriness that she hummed a romantic song the entire way to her cubicle.
"Look at our literal game changer!" Lindsey popped her head up from behind her computer, grinning widely as Harper turned into their shared space. "Good to see that you apparently feel just as jolly as Brandon. Congrats!"
Harper stopped mid-hum, her various daydreams of Eli interrupted by a blast of words that made no sense. "... Congrats? What for?" she asked at a loss. "And why is Brandon feeling jolly?"
Lindsey looked at Harper with a somewhat funny expression over her glasses. "You don't know yet?" She waved a hand in the general direction of Brandon's office. "I won't spoil the surprise for you then. Boss wants to talk to you in his office — about big news, I heard."
Oh, that was quick. Harper wondered what the big news could be. It was too soon for the investors' decision to have come back already, so it had to be about her project specifically. She downed the remainder of her morning coffee to mentally prepare herself, then went to find her boss.
The office door was open, and Brandon was standing in front of a giant flow chart drawn on the whiteboard wall, studying it earnestly. Something quite out of the ordinary for him, Harper thought. She hesitated a little before knocking lightly on the door.
"Ah, there you are." Brandon gestured at the flow chart in lieu of hello. Lindsey was right — his expression did seem noticeably excited. "This is the most ambitious project timeline I've seen in many years! It'd really be nothing short of 'Miracles' if we manage to pull this off."
Harper glanced over the chart. Either it was extremely detailed, or the project in question was enormous, because the colored boxes all but filled the entire wall. "Is this ... what you wanted to talk to me about?" she asked.
"Oh yes. Come on in. I have some very good and very grand news for you." Brandon put on a your-manager-is-super-pleased smile as Harper closed the door behind her and took a seat. "We've decided to start implementing your space RPG proposal. Or space tactical adventure, as you have renamed it. As part of the plan to accelerate the development schedule, you are also getting a big promotion. It will guarantee all the resources you need to push things through the concept phase by the end of August."
Harper blinked. Her brain hit a momentary pause after processing the very first sentence. "We're going straight to implementation?" she asked, uncertain if she'd heard it wrong. "But ... The typical process still requires marketing studies, user surveys ... and a few other relevant types of research, I thought?"