Ren and Stimpy

"She's all yours," Barbara said to the two men in the cluttered office. Then she stepped out and closed the door behind her leaving me alone with them. They both stared at me in wide-eyed wonder like children seeing a leprechaun riding a unicorn. Finally one of them jumped up and offered me a chair to sit in.

"I'm afraid I'm not allowed to sit on office furniture, sir," I replied. "I can kneel on the floor if you like."

"Um, yeah. Sure. That'd be cool." The man speaking to me was a large, thick man with a mop of untamed brown hair on his head and a thick, scraggly beard. He wore olive colored cargo pants, an untucked Aloha shirt, and ankle high leather boots. The other man was thin and wiry with matching dark brown stubble on both his head and face. He wore blue jeans, white sneakers, and an untucked faded polo shirt. I assumed they were both managers of some sort even though neither one of them dressed even remotely like any of the managers in the tower. The running joke in marketing when I'd worked there was that you could tell who the managers were in the north wing because they had mustard stains on collared shirts instead of t-shirts.

I found a spot in the middle of the office and kneeled down as both men continued to gape at me. "Holy shit!" the large man laughed. "Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine I'd have a smoking hot naked woman kneeling on my floor!"

"That's been in pretty much all of my wildest dreams," the thin man replied.

They both continued to stare for a few moments before the large man snapped out of it. "I'm sorry, my name is Stan and this is Lenny," he said pointing to the thin man. "We're both production managers for 'Gangsta.' Everyone calls us Ren and Stimpy, though." He paused for a moment as if expecting a reaction from me. When I didn't respond he added, "You know, like the cartoon characters."

I shook my head. "I'm afraid I'm not familiar with them, sir." His face fell slightly when I didn't recognize his cultural reference.

"Um, that's cool. You can call me Stimpy and him Ren, though, if you want."

"I'm only allowed to refer to each of you as 'sir.'"

"Yeah, weren't you paying any attention at the meeting yesterday, dumbass?" the skinny guy called Ren said.

"Dude, I didn't hear a single thing Barbara Anderson said after this girl got up on the stage."

"We're supposed to call her 'Nine.' I can't believe Barbara finally let us have her."

"Yeah, we have to call her by a number," Stimpy said. "That's some crazy shit." Then he turned his attention back to me. "Barbara came to us a few months ago to see if we could do something with mailgirls in the game but we weren't really that interested. I mean the nudity thing is awesome but there's not a lot of game play in delivering mail. Maybe we can throw in a few obstacles to dodge and avoid guys trying to grab your ass as you try to meet your deadline, but that's about it."

"Plus we'd have to design it so the player could control you with just one hand," Ren added,

"Dude, I cannot believe you freaking said that out loud," Stimpy said.

"Not much point in a mailgirls mission unless you can get a good wank in as a bonus."

"You're so freaking vulgar, dude. Anyway I wasn't really interested in doing it until a couple of weeks later I had to attend a meeting in the tower and I saw you go by naked carrying a package. I thought to myself, dude you've got to put that girl into the game. She's freaking awesome!"

"Yeah, he showed me a picture of you and I said we'd do it but only if we could use you as the model for the character," Ren said. "Barbara kept turning us down, though. Said we had to use an actress and that you were only allowed to be a mailgirl."

"Yeah, but for some reason Barbara changed her mind today while you were taking your shower," Stimpy said. "By the way that was un-freaking-believable. If we get to see that every day I'll never ever quit my job. Anyway, during your shower Barbara came up to us and said that if we still wanted you in the game we could have you."

I thought about what Barbara had said to me after the shower about how no matter what she did I was going to be a star and I wondered if something had changed. Her original plan was to keep me as a lowly anonymous mailgirl but maybe now she'd decided it would be better to humiliate me in front of the whole world. Who the hell could ever know what was going on in her mind?

"We're in the middle of working on an expansion pack for Gangsta 4 and it's too late now to do anything but put in a simple mailgirl side mission," Stimpy continued. "I doubt we could do much more than have your character deliver packages on a timer. We might be able to expand on that down the road in the second expansion pack."

"Maybe we could make her a mailgirl by day and an assassin by night," Ren said. "A naked ninja assassin."

"A naked ninja? Dude do you know anything about ninjas? Ninjas are all about stealth. Is there anything more unstealthy than a hot naked woman? If you put Nine here in a room with a hundred people your eyes are going to be drawn to her immediately. Who the hell is she going to sneak up on?"

"Yeah, that's a good point. Maybe she could be an assassin's partner. While everyone is looking at her the assassin could slip a knife into the back of his victim."

"Yeah, that might work. At least it's not as completely idiotic as your first suggestion. That's already kinda been done though in 'The Whole Nine Yards' with Bruce Willis and Amanda Peet."

I have to admit it was hilarious listening to these two interact with each other and I had to stifle a laugh several times. Even though they were berating each other I got the feeling that they were good friends and did this to each other all the time. It was definitely a looser environment here in the north wing than it was in the tower.

"So what are we going to do with her today?" Ren asked Stimpy.

"We'll at least get some pictures taken of her and some mo-capping done."

"She won't be able to wear the mo-cap suit."

"We'll use organic motion."

"Is the room free?"

"Yeah, I checked."

I had no idea what they were talking about until Stimpy turned to me and explained.

"Normally we'd put you in a motion capture suit with markers on it to render your movements to use in the game. Barbara said you're permanently banned from ever wearing clothes here though which, by the way, I think is freaking awesome. So anyway we've been developing new technology that allows us to capture motion without the suit and we're going to do that today."

"Yes sir," I replied.

"So all we're going to do is a Mailgirls side mission where Nine delivers packages in the Hiromoto building against a deadline?" Ren asked.

'Yeah, what the hell else do we have time to do? That will at least get her into the game and then we'll see what the modders do with her."

I understood what Stimpy meant by "modders." There were whole communities of gamers who would modify the software of games to add new and often creative elements to gameplay. I was confused by Ren's reference, though. "The Hiromoto building, sir?" I asked.

"Yeah, in the new DLC we're adding more strategy elements to give the player a chance to become the ultimate crime boss of the city," Ren replied. "He or she will end up on the top floor of a building we're modeling after the Hiromoto building in Tokyo."

'Yeah, we chose that building even before we knew DDE was going into business with them with this Mailgirls thing," Stimpy added. "Old man Hiromoto is yakuza, which is kind of like a Japanese mafia member, so we immediately thought of the Hiromoto building in deciding what to model our crime building after. Hiromoto Industries is mostly legit now but he started it as a money laundering front. Hiromoto is one dude you definitely don't want to mess with. He's got a few skeletons in his closet and I mean that literally."

I could never forget my own encounter with the man in Tokyo when he'd whipped Mariko in front of me. Despite his age and short, thin build, Hiromoto had exuded control and power. I read afterwards that many yakuza have tattoos covering their entire body and I wondered if he was covered with them beneath that meticulous business suit he wore. Is that why he banned tattoos on mailgirls, because he felt they weren't worthy of them?

I also thought about how Barbara told me she was bypassing Mariko and communicating directly with Hiromoto in establishing their Mailgirls partnership. Did she know who she was really dealing with? Of course she did. She's too smart to have not done her research. Barbara does nothing with blinders on.

"So anyway as much as I'd love to escort a naked hottie around the building to get things rolling I'm afraid that we're too busy right now," Stimpy said, interrupting my thoughts.

"I'm not. What could be more important than a Mailgirls mini-game?" Ren replied sarcastically.

"Oh, I don't know, how about meeting the deadline in getting this fucking expansion out and not losing our jobs? Let's get Lin to take her down to the second floor."

"Lin? Why in the hell would we have Lin..." Ren paused before he could finish as if it suddenly struck him what Stimpy was saying. "Yeah, Lin can do it. She'd be perfect."

Several minutes later the door opened and I heard someone walk in. I had my back to the door and was unable to see the person but I heard a female voice say, "You guys wanted to see me?"

"Yeah Lin," Stimpy said, "Mailgirl Nine here has appointments on the second floor to get pictures and mo-capping done. Take her to Photography first and then Organic Movement."

"Why do you want me to do it?" Lin asked. "I don't know anything about that stuff and I have my own work to do."

"Because I'm asking you to do it, Lin. You've been bitching and moaning about wanting to get more involved in game production so I'm giving you the chance. I've called down with instructions on what I need done so they'll know what to do. Just stay with her until everything is done and give me a call if there are any questions."

"Alright, whatever. But I know what you're doing, Stimpy."