Killer App

A novel about love, money, and the web.

by Martin Schecter

[circa 1995]...., excerpt.

So it is that every day, I go to work and look up sites for my boss, scouring the Web, sorting through hits, copying URLs. I write them into a daily report for the V.P. of P.R., then e-mail a copy of the interesting ones to my private account, for me to go home and editorialize into Sure Site along with all the other recommendations people send me. The job that Linda first got me here was as an assistant producer for an interactive game show they were doing, as part of their infamous Interactive Television Tests (perhaps you've heard of them). That quickly failed: they caught me trying to auction off the tickets to one of their stupid interactive tapings. Their idea was that they would pay people to show up and be part of the audience (they needed people to supply every possible reaction to every possible choice the viewer might make--laughs, guffaws, shucks, etcetera--and since there were many possible interactive outcomes to any single event, that made the taping four times longer than a normal show, which they thought no right-minded audience would sit through for free) and that they would pay them like they paid all their focus groups. I tried to argue that this interactive thing was such a novelty, such an honor to be part of, that auctioning the tickets would make them seem more valuable, and they could actually make some cash, rather than lose it; I was calling the press, telling them what the street value was but that I had a few pairs left I could give out for free. Our marketing gurus got wind of my activities, and thought I was muscling in on their territory. Thought I would make them look foolish. Never mind that there was a standing room crowd at that stupid pilot that day (which was pulled from the schedule, as it happens, when the producers decided they needed something more interesting for the home trials-don't blame me that it was the stupidest idea for a game show that I'd ever heard). But who knew? It just seemed like a good idea to make money, to me. Didn't occur to me that you had to watch out about being too good at the job. So these marketing guys expressed their disgust about me with my boss, and they put me in a desk in the library where they'd just installed their internet connection. Thought I'd stay out of trouble there.

But I tell you, I don't mind being here, in the library rather than the promotion room. It's these insignificant tasks like this that really put you into the heart of these giant corporations, really get you into the structure of what's actually going on. And I've seen some pretty interesting things.

Like, did you know that TCT tried to create their own private internet? This was the top-secret-doomed-from-the-start project they started on after they scrapped the top-secret-doomed-from-the-start Interactive TV Stuff. These boondoggles tend to last about a year and a half, before the next futile waste of money starts. Oh, sure...TCT was rather ahead of the game, in the beginning. Came out early. One of the first big companies in New York to even have the internet coming into the office. Wanted to study it. Thought that it might mean something, to someone, one day. Wait, wait, I think I have the press release somewhere. Ah, yes.

We at Trans Cable and Telephone will soon be introducing to the public an "inter-connection" system that will catch on everywhere and become a household name just in time for the fall season. Working much like the government-regulated system known as "the internet," TCT's "inter-connectivity system" will supply each subscriber with a hand-held device, hooked conveniently into the cable box, that will allow users to send a message to any other subscriber simply through the press of a button.

The TCT System will revolutionize communication as we know it. Early tests in Daytona Beach, Florida, have shown many promising results, with users reporting enjoyability factors as high as 72%.

Yeah...like, duh. I hadn't even cruised my first web site and I already knew that these Florida tests were the biggest joke around here. Word was, being sent to Daytona was what they did if you really screwed up and they hated you so much they didn't want to do something so painless as fire you. But it's a year later, and the big Mucky Mucks at TCT are still making announcements to the press like this TV-remote technology thing is about to replace the internet, as though everyone's going to wake up tomorrow and go, duh, you mean, I've been sending e-mail and surfing web sites when all this time I could have been clicking "Yes/NO" on a little TV box? Where Have I Been?

Killer App is currently being agented by Jill Grinberg at Scovil, Chichak, Galen Literary agency.