The Wall

Posted by dave

January 10, 2006

So, I was sitting at my desk the other day, minding my own business, trying to think of things for Fone Bone to say when he looks at loaves of bread, when a toothy, Tom Sawyer-looking guy came into the office carrying a large can of paint and a brush. He mumbled something unintelligible, a name I think, and then shuffled off to the back and began slathering white paint onto a wall. I didn't think too much of this. It happens all the time: people come wandering in off the street and paint our walls for us. If they're any good we hire them to do games -- Mai Nguyen's work on the north end of the conference room is still much admired and has been the subject of many a lunchtime conversation.

It wasn't until an hour or so after he left that I suddenly realized that the wall he'd been painting hadn't been there the day before. It had popped up unbidden and unexpected, like gout or the highway patrol, an implacable white rectangular policeman standing beefily atop the Blue Line.

Imagine coming home to discover that someone has broken into your house and left new furniture there, or remodeled your kitchen. It's disorienting to find something where you were expecting nothing, more so than the reverse. I was baffled, perhaps a little frightened. But also curious, so I investigated further, thoughts of the obelisk from 2001 zipping through my feverish little brain.

As it turns out, the wall was standing beefily, yes, but not quite squarely atop the Blue Line -- the Line angles out from beneath the wall, so about half of it is still on our side. Now, I don't know if I ever mentioned this before, but the Line is made of tape, and thus could easily have been removed from the carpet before putting up the wall. The fact that it wasn't speaks of great haste on the part of the builders, suggesting that the wall was an emergency measure.

I wondered if perhaps Gregfrank had erected the wall out of fear, after his recent harrowing voyage into the mysterious country beyond the Line. Then it occurred to me that it might be more likely that someone on the OTHER side had done so, for exactly the same reason. Maybe someone is trying to physically contain the explosive creativity that is Telltale. Or maybe, maybe the wall has something to do with the strange disappearance of Graham Annable. I have heard frequent chuckling from the vicinity of the wall, and it sounds suspiciously like the insidious laugh of Brendan Q....

Whatever the cause, the wall is there now, and I feel it looming like a deadline over all that I do. Watchful. Disciplinarian. Final. Although I know rationally that it isn't, it feels like the office is shrinking, inexorably closing in over time.

As things tend to do.

In other news: all and sundry continue to build quality entertainment for you, you, you!

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9 Comments

	Paint your walls? Is that what it takes to get a job at Telltale? And I thought I would have to be some kind of super mega senior software engineer* just to get noticed. *Note: I am nothing of the sort. But hire me anyway. I could be the office fool/jester.
	Comment by artwking4 January 10, 2006, 11:07 pm

	I think this blog is the first signs that Dave has begun to lose his mind..
	Comment by hierohero January 10, 2006, 11:28 pm

	Brendan Q? You mean he's still alive?
	Comment by JP January 11, 2006, 2:13 am

	Wait...You mean to tell me that Graham and Brendan are two different people? I've been using the names interchangeably on the person who sits in front of me for some time now. I could swear that others have been doing it too.What's going on?
	Comment by DanH January 11, 2006, 10:57 am

	I'm scared....
	Comment by Bartlebycs January 11, 2006, 9:08 pm

	Heh, JP, Brendan's name has been removed from the noticeably (and thankfully) updated team page. The whole thing smacks of conspiracy!
	Comment by Udvarnoky January 12, 2006, 2:42 pm

	If Graham and Brendon are indeed the same person perhaps now is a good time to make sure he/they/it has not been drawing two salaries? Two salaries after all would help fund a plot of world domination better then one. He would only have to spend some of one sallarie on food and so on, the other could fund an army of robot doppelgangers. Are you sure the person next to you is really human? Well perhaps not but are they a robot?
	Comment by Demi January 13, 2006, 1:42 am

	wait.. I thought brendan was actually dudeborough
	Comment by hierohero January 13, 2006, 3:50 am

	I am not Graham. I am not Dudebrough. In fact, I am not any other person. But what really gets me, what really chills me to the bone, is that I have no way of proving it. No terror can match that of realizing you cannot prove you are not someone else.
	Comment by Brendan Q. Ferguson January 17, 2006, 5:27 pm

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