Chapter 2 – Console Wars, Day One
The morning after the storm, Charming woke to a new kind of noise.
Not Harleys. Not sirens. Not the prowl of a news helicopter waiting for a brawl outside Teller-Morrow. This was the sound of a warehouse building a future: pallet jacks squealing, forklifts chirping backward, ratcheting straps crackling tight. The big bay door on the east wall rolled up, coughing light across a grid of shrink-wrapped cartons. The cartons wore a jagged star like war paint.
Northern Star One. Lot A. Batch 0001.
Ivar was already there, hair damp from the fastest shower a human had ever taken, black hoodie over yesterday's white shirt, sleeves shoved to elbows, hands on a clipboard he didn't need but liked for the theatrics. He'd learned early that people trusted a man more if he held a prop that made sense. A pen could be a gavel if you tapped it right.
"Count them," he said to no one in particular.
"We counted them twice," answered Rosa, the floor boss, a woman with forearms like coiled rope and a smile she handed out on a punch card. "They're yours."
"They're theirs," Ivar corrected, and turned to Louise like he'd said something romantic.
She stood in boots and a black tee with AFFORDABLE GAMING IS THE BEST VERSION OF GAMING across the chest in small, unignorable letters. Her hair was braided today. Her expression said she'd slept three hours and would forgive the world for nothing except excellence.
"Say the thing," she prompted.
He grinned. "Ship."
Rosa lifted two fingers and whistled. The floor moved as a single animal. A forklift slid its forks into the first pallet, lifted, pivoted, and glided toward the loading dock. In the alley, the first truck idled with that diesel patience you can feel in your teeth. The driver—a woman with a Saints beanie and the eyes of someone who had outlasted every man who'd tried to explain her job to her—killed the engine to sign the bill of lading. Ivar took the clipboard back from himself to hand to her because rituals matter.
"First run," he said.
"Not the last," she said, already climbing into her cab.
He slapped the side of the trailer twice the way he'd seen Clay do to tankers, and for half a heartbeat the gesture made a ghost of his father walk through him. He let the ghost pass without begging it to stay.
"Number?" Louise asked.
"Preorders?" he said. "Forty-nine thousand, six hundred something."
"Something?"
He angled his head toward the projector on the mezzanine rail. The digits marched like disciplined ants: 049,6 8 1 … 049,6 9 9 … 049,7 1 3.
"By lunch," he said, "we cross fifty."
"And the investors wire?"
"They'll pretend not to, then do."
Louise handed him a to-go coffee he didn't deserve. "Pretend not to first."
He sipped, winced. "Tastes like a tire that learned to cry."
"Drink your humility."
He drank. He watched the first truck pull away with the measured grace of a heavy thing that knows exactly where it's going. The second truck slid into its place like a second sentence in a paragraph that had decided on its tone.
Phones started pinging at 7:12 a.m. Not the hollow PR pings—real ones. Photos from warehouse partners in Fresno and Flagstaff. A grinning twenty-something in a reflective vest hugging a carton like it was a cousin home from war. A receiving clerk in a small-town shop, eyes wet, thumbs up, star logo visible through the cut tape behind him. A manager in a big-box chain texting a blurry shot of a line at his door. "We don't even open for two hours. What did you do to them?"
I told them the truth, Ivar typed, then deleted it because it sounded like a campaign poster. He sent a star emoji and a "see you on the other side" instead.
By 8:00 a.m. the preorder counter rolled to 050,001, then hiccupped like it had remembered to be human, then leapt to 050,437 in a burst that made the room cheer. Ivar didn't cheer with them; he listened. The sound wasn't giddy anymore. It was committed. You can hear it when a team decides the metaphor is over and the work is all that's left.
Rosa's radio hissed. "We got a heat question in QA," someone said. "Unit runs fine until hour three of stress, then the right rear vent likes to act shy."
"Shy how?" Ivar said, already moving.
"Fan curve hunts."
"On which firmware?"
"Zero-four-eight-b."
"Roll back to 047f, then push Delta-3 to the test floor only," he said. "If it stabilizes, we patch every pre-production unit before they leave the county."
"And if it doesn't?"
"We replace the fan, eat the margin, and sleep like men who didn't light kids' living rooms on fire," he said, and the runner on the radio laughed because the answer had been right before the question finished.
Louise kept pace. "You know you just gave up fifteen dollars a unit if it's hardware."
"Fifteen dollars is a pizza," he said. "I'll eat fewer."
"You won't."
"Then I'll steal bites off yours."
She shook her head, but the corner of her mouth conceded.
They hit QA like paramedics into a kitchen. Two techs had a unit open on a static mat, guts exposed with the indecency of surgery. On the monitor: a rolling fan curve, temperature plateau, a small, obnoxious hunt. Ivar scanned, cursed softly, and snapped his fingers for a Torx. He popped the shroud, ran a finger along a cable run, repositioned a clip with the tenderness he reserved for machines and the rage he reserved for men who lied, then nodded to the engineer on firmware. "Push Delta-3 and breathe slow."
They did. The line steadied. The hunt stopped. He exhaled like he'd been holding his breath since the invention of heat.
"Cable chafed," he said. "A devil wrote the tolerance doc hungover. Rosa?"
"Yeah."
"We need a third clip on that run and an updated assembly SOP. I'll take the hit."
"We'll eat you later," she said. "Ship now."
He wanted to hug them all. He didn't. He clapped once, hard, and the room reset itself to confidence.
By 9:30 a.m. the first unbox hit the internet. A high-schooler in Ohio with a poster of a football team peeling off a wall held a box knife in two hands like it was a ceremonial blade. He looked into the camera and said, voice cracking, "I got it. I actually got it." The comments went feral in the kindest way.
"Find him," Ivar said.
"Already DM'd," the community lead answered, without glancing up from the dashboard that looked like an air-traffic controller had learned to love Twitch.
Another video—two little girls unsealing a unit on a kitchen table, their grandmother narrating with a drawl so warm the algorithm should've apologized for every time it had amplified anything colder. "Now this one," the grandmother said, tapping the star logo, "this one your uncle says don't cost what the others do. You make them controllers talk to each other nice now."
Louise put a hand on Ivar's sternum, palm flat as if holding him on the ground. "Remember this," she said.
He swallowed. "I will."
At 10:11 a.m., PantslessPaladin texted a five-second clip: his sister—tiny, serious, destructive in the way small geniuses are—pressing the star and squealing when the boot chime hit. we named it _The Meteor he wrote. she already told me she's player one.
Good, Ivar wrote back. Tell her I said so.
"Tell who what?" asked a voice he could pick out in a stadium.
Jax leaned in the bay door, sunglasses making his smirk look official. He wore the day like an old jacket. Behind him, a couple of Sons idled by their bikes, undecided if this was a zoo or a church.
"Player one," Ivar said.
"Always was you," Jax said, coming forward to take in the organized chaos without pretending he understood it. "Clay wants to know if you're going to hire security or if you want to keep trusting good luck and God."
"Hire," Louise said. "Today."
"Hire," Ivar echoed. "And not your guys," he added, because sometimes love sounded like boundaries.
Jax's mouth did that thing where it admitted respect without admitting defeat. "You're learning."
"I'm stealing," Ivar said. "From the best."
Jax glanced at the pallets, the people, the charts on the rail. "This is real."
"It's weather," Ivar said.
Jax clapped his shoulder once and left, taking the Sons with him like shadows retreating under a spotlight.
At 11:02 a.m., the preorder counter rolled to 060,000. Someone rang a bell. Someone else cried. Rosa told them to keep working, but her voice had sand in it.
At 11:16 a.m., the investors wired half the tranche with a subject line that said INITIAL and a body that said nothing. Two minutes later, the white-blouse investor called with a voice that had learned how to like him without letting him know. "We'll send the auditor," she said.
"Send two," Ivar said. "Let them fight over who gets to be my favorite."
Louise wheeled a whiteboard into the middle of the floor and wrote in thick black marker: OPEN PLAY – 1000 UNITS FOR HOSPITALS/LIBRARIES – TODAY. The room cheered. Ivar added: MATCHED BY ME and drew a star so sloppy it looked like an angry snowflake. The room cheered louder.
By noon, three things happened like a chord:
—A pundit on a streaming finance show called him a "glib enfant terrible with a bleeding-heart gimmick."
—A picture of the first Northern Star display in a small-town shop—with hand-cut black paper stars dangling from the ceiling—hit a hundred thousand retweets.
—A lawyer from a very large company sent a letter that said WE HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR COMPATIBILITY CLAIMS in the passive voice of people who expect to be obeyed.
"Frame it," Ivar said, handing the letter to Louise. "Bathroom."
"Men's room or all-hands?" she asked.
"All-hands," he said. "In the stall with the broken lock."
The phone in his pocket rang with a vibration that felt like history clearing its throat. STAN LEE – PA.
He stared. He let it ring twice, because chaos loves cadence, then answered. "Teller."
A warm, wry voice that had charmed three generations said, "Kid, you sure know how to make a lot of friends in a day."
Ivar swallowed so softly even Louise didn't see it. "Mr. Lee—Stan—thank you for calling."
"I watched your little show," Stan said. "A lot of men your age sound like a fire they can't control. You sound like a fire that knows where it's going."
"I know where I want it to go," Ivar said, honest to the bone because lying to legends is how cowards become anecdotes. "I want the stories in one world. I want the kids who can't afford the tickets to still see themselves in capes. I want mutants at the table from the first meal."
Stan chuckled. "You want everything."
"I do."
"You remind me of me," Stan said, and Ivar leaned against the cinderblock wall because his knees had decided to audition for a tremor. "But, kid, you know I'm not the only cook in this kitchen."
"I know," Ivar said. "I also know kitchens change when the right guest arrives with the right bottle of wine."
Stan laughed outright. "You're trouble."
"Yes."
"I like trouble."
"Yes."
"Come to L.A.," Stan said. "Tomorrow. We'll talk in person. Bring your storm."
"I'll bring my anchor," Ivar said, looking at Louise.
"Even better," Stan said, and hung up like he knew the value of leaving a man floating in hope.
Louise didn't ask if it was real. She held out her hand for the phone, typed Flight – Burbank – 9:45 a.m. – two seats, then tucked the phone back into his palm like she was returning a weapon he'd dropped.
"You're going to meet Stan Lee," she said.
"We are," he corrected.
"You're going to ask for everything."
"I am."
"Then eat," she said, shoving a foil-wrapped burrito into his free hand that he hadn't seen her fetch. "You don't negotiate on low blood sugar."
He bit. It was perfect. He wanted to marry the burrito and Louise in a joint ceremony.
A commotion at the loading dock pulled them. Two men in gray—their polos carried the precise logo of the Very Large Company that had sent the letter—stood at the threshold with clipboards and faces tuned to Concerned for the Industry.
"Gentlemen," Ivar said brightly. "Welcome to the indie film. We're between explosions."
"You received our correspondence," the taller one said.
"It moved me," Ivar said. "We're putting it where it belongs."
"We have technical questions."
"Of course."
"Where are your legal representatives?"
"Alive," Ivar said. "And expensive. But you have me."
They didn't smile. They never did. "If your box enables interoperability beyond what license holders permit—"
"It doesn't," Ivar said. "It enables players to talk to each other when publishers say they can. We're not cracking doors. We're oiling hinges."
The shorter one tried a different angle. "Your advertising implies parity of catalogue."
"My advertising implies possibility," Ivar said. "Which terrifies men who profit from limits."
"Will you commit to restricting cross-platform functionality unless explicit bilateral agreements are in place?"
"No," Ivar said. "But I'll commit to honoring developers' wishes over platform feuds. Which is to say—if a dev wants their community to play together, we won't be the reason it can't."
"That will make you enemies."
He shrugged. "I already have more than I can feed."
They didn't like that. They left a second letter written in legal on linen paper as if paper weight could compensate for moral weight, and departed in a sedan so glossy it reflected other people's decisions.
Louise slid the letter into a clear sleeve and labeled it with a Sharpie: Bathroom – Stall 2 – Above TP.
At 2:03 p.m., two auditors arrived for the investor's satisfaction. One wore a tie that hurt feelings. The other wore sneakers that had seen better sidewalks. They asked smart questions. They pulled a fan at random from a sealed crate. They checked vendor certifications, toured the ESD mats, spot-tested a unit for thermal throttling. They asked about the Open Play line item, and when Louise explained it, the sneaker auditor nodded like something in him had been restored to factory settings.
At 3:12 p.m., the QA issue went from fix to standard. Every assembly station received new clip inventory; SOP v1.3.2 pushed to tablets; the pit ran a ten-unit sample that sang like well-fed wolves. Ivar wrote THANK YOU HEAT on the whiteboard and drew a heart that looked like a potato. People loved it anyway.
At 4:00 p.m., the first truck of returns arrived—empty pallets and packing slips stamped RECEIVED from three states away. Logistics is a boomerang when it likes you. He instructed Rosa to bonus the dock team. She told him to stop making her soft.
At 4:37 p.m., the preorder counter crossed 075,000. The room didn't erupt. It inhaled. There's a number after which shouting is just redundancy. People started texting rent-due parents and exes they didn't hate. Someone FaceTimed a kid from a hospital bed and held the phone toward the star on a unit like they'd raised a new flag over a fort.
At 5:06 p.m., a message came from the CW's head of programming—a woman whose calendar could frighten sharks. We should talk. Your pitch about no fractured worlds is insane. Which means I want to hear more. Louise typed a reply that sounded like velvet that could cut you. Tomorrow night. We're in L.A. anyway. Dinner. We'll bring the map.
At 5:28 p.m., an email hit from an address that only a few men could claim: fox.board@…. It was short. We're listening. No signature. The ghost of an empire sniffing the air for weather.
At 6:02 p.m., the floor lights dimmed to reasonable. People sat on pallets and ate cold pizza and better burritos. The playlist finally hit something besides classic rock—a moody synth track that made the big space feel like a cathedral for machines that had learned to love their users back.
Ivar climbed a step ladder because a stage would have taken an hour and an ego, and he only had time for one. He raised a hand. The chatter thinned. He didn't shout.
"I don't want to give a speech," he said. "We're tired and not nearly tired enough. But I need to say two things.
"First—" He pointed at the projector. "That number isn't magic. It's the arithmetic of a good idea married to people who work like their name is on the building. Your names are on the building. We're going to make a plaque, not with donors, but with all of you. The first storm crew. Your grandkids can visit and roll their eyes."
A soft laugh rolled the room.
"Second—" He pointed at the OPEN PLAY line on the whiteboard. "We're shipping that like it matters, because it matters. And I'm matching it because I like crying for the right reasons. We're going to put these in places where kids need a window. If any of you have a hospital or a library or an after-school program that saved you when the world didn't—bring me names. Tonight. We'll start there."
Someone clapped and then everyone did and then nobody could stop because sometimes clapping is how you keep from breaking open.
He climbed down. People hugged him like a mascot and like a boss and like a friend. He let himself be owned for ten minutes, then slipped out the side door with Louise into a dusk that had the decency to cool.
They sat on the loading dock with their feet over the edge, ankles brushing the steel skin of the ramp. The air smelled like heat soaked out of concrete and the basil from the food truck that had learned, wisely, to never leave.
"Say it," Louise said.
"What?"
"Say the thing you're not saying because you think it turns you into a Hallmark card."
He rolled his head to look at her. "I'm proud."
She didn't smile. She let the word settle between them, a big dog finding the right place to sleep. "Good."
"And I'm scared," he added.
"Also good."
"And I want more."
"Essential."
"And I want you in all of it," he said, because even storms can practice precision. "Not just beside me. In it. Rogue. And when we call the CW, Zatanna. The shows. The meetings. The kills, the kisses, the quiet parts. All of it."
"Two capes," she said, amused and assessing. "One for each shoulder."
"Two capes," he said. "And if anyone calls it nepotism, they can audition for better."
She leaned her head on his shoulder. "You'll have to make me earn it."
"I know."
"I'll make you pay for it."
"I know that, too."
They watched the last truck of the day sink into the road and disappear. Somewhere inside, Rosa yelled at a pallet for disobeying gravity. Somewhere farther, an engine note that sounded like home stitched itself across the horizon.
His phone buzzed with a notification from the preorder dashboard. 080,000. He didn't show Louise. He didn't have to. She felt it.
"Tomorrow," she said, "we fly, we meet a legend, and you ask for the keys to a kingdom."
"Not keys," he said. "A map. Keys assume locks. I hate locks."
She huffed a laugh against his sleeve. "Of course you do."
He slid off the dock and offered his hand. She took it and hopped down. The city—small as it was—had begun to hum with the news of itself: a coffee shop barista telling a customer whose tattoo would look like regret by forty, a cop texting a nephew he only saw at Christmas, a woman counting the hours to her second job and deciding to buy the thing anyway because joy is also a bill you pay.
Inside, the warehouse lights clicked one by one into night mode. The star on the prototype unit on the demo table glowed with the lazy pulse of a good heart at rest.
"Come on," he said. "We've got three hours to pack and four to sleep and a meeting with a man who helped invent the oxygen I breathe."
"And after that?"
"After that," Ivar Teller said, voice soft like a loaded promise, "we make the rest of them share."
They walked out together, and the door rolled down behind them with a finality that belonged to a day that had chosen not to break them. The sign over the entrance hummed. A moth considered the star, decided to worship it, and bumped the light until it felt like part of something bigger than wings.
The storm moved on, but it left the air clearer.
Tomorrow would be louder.