This document contains backstory on the main character and the linear player progression for the first sequence of the game. Story was written for exposition, not literary merit.
Story summary:
Tommy’s dad is the president of a paint factory. When Tommy goes to his dad’s office in the factory one day after school lets out early, his dad locks him so he’ll keep out of trouble.
An alarm goes off, convincing Tommy that the factory is about to burn down with him trapped in his dad’s office.
Attempting to escape, Tommy hurls a can of paint at the locked window. The paint can bounces off the window, popping open, and spilling paint across dad’s floor, walls, and desk. Tommy, too, is flecked with paint. The paint can has knocked over dad’s golf trophy, breaking it.
With the alarm still sounding, Tommy uses the golf club that’s broken off the trophy to pick the lock, thinking it will be better to perish rushing through the flames than to wait for them to reach him in dad’s office.
In the hall, he finds that there is no smoke. A pair of executives stand calmly chatting. The alarm shuts off, and the executives explain that the alarm was a normal factory alarm.
Having spilled paint all over his dad’s office, and broken his dad’s prized trophy, Tommy must now journey through the factory in order to fix his mistakes and clean up his messes before the close of business, when dad will return to his office and, finding it in disarray, disown his son.
Story
Tommy is in his dad’s office at the paint factory. He didn’t want to come here, but he didn’t know where else to go. He knew his dad wouldn’t be happy to see him. School was cancelled early because of a gas leak. His classmates went to the park to play baseball. Tommy could have followed them. They probably would have let him play. But he didn’t want to ask them if he could play. He’s never asked them before, and now it seems too late. He knows all the positions. He likes listening to the ball games on the radio. His classmates talk about baseball at school. Their dads have taken them to the game over the weekend. They were there when the Tulip Kid hit a clutch double in the bottom of the eighth. They were there when Mario Knuckles closed out the game. Tommy heard it all on the radio. He wishes he could have gone, but his dad doesn’t have time to take him to the baseball game.
He knows all the positions, but he’s never played one. He’d be happy to play wherever they put him. He’s afraid that if he asks them to let him play, they’ll ask him what position he’s good at. And then he’ll have to admit that he’s never played. So he didn’t follow them to the baseball field.
Tommy is in fourth grade. In school, he sits at his desk hoping not to be called on. The girl who sits at the next desk is named Cathy. She copies off Tommy’s paper and flicks the back of his head every time she gets up to sharpen her pencil. Then when she comes back with her sharpened pencil, she jabs Tommy with it. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to hurt. Tommy is careful not to yelp. He doesn’t want to draw attention. He doesn’t know what he did to make Cathy want to flick him and jab him with her pencil. He never tries to stop her from copying his paper.
When school was canceled due to a gas leak, everyone cheered. Tommy mouthed cheering. He opened his mouth in the shape of a cheer, but no sound came out. No one noticed. It looked like he was cheering. Usually Tommy goes to the school library after school, where he reads books about pirates and men who have washed up on shore. The men build shelters out of thatch and palm fronds. They build spears out of bamboo. If there’s a tribe on the island, they somehow become part of it. The tribe dances around them as they sit on a throne of tropical fruit. Tommy wants to sit on a throne of tropical fruit while a tribe dances around him.
After school, Tommy goes to the school library until he’s allowed to go home. The butler at home has instructions not to let Tommy in until 5:30 pm. This is so that Tommy will have a sense of discipline and order. School might be over at 3:00, his father says. But work goes until 5:00. Work used to go from sunup till sundown, says Tommy’s father. Work used to be something that men accepted. They used to feel lucky if they were employed. Now look. Now they just want more time off, more pay for less work, assurances that if they get sick the company will look after them.
Tommy’s father talks about these things when he gets home, at dinner, which is served by the butler. Dinner is usually something severe and unappetizing, like a boiled fish head, or an almost-raw steak, served by the butler.
Tommy’s grandmother lives with them, upstairs. She comes down for dinner and tells Tommy’s father that he’s running his father’s business into the ground. Some nights she doesn’t come down for dinner. Loud banging noises come from upstairs. Tommy asks his father what she’s doing up there. Tommy’s father says, “Keep questions like that to yourself.”
Tommy asks his father where his mother is and his father says, “Keep questions like that to yourself.”
When Tommy asks his grandmother where his mother is, she says, “Your mother was a selfish girl. She expected my son to take care of her. When she realized he expected her to pull her weight, she took off. She left you here. That’s how much she cared about you.”
Tommy’s house is up a long winding driveway, behind wrought-iron gates. When school was cancelled, Tommy walked past his house and looked up the driveway. The gate was locked. A button on the intercom would connect him to the butler, but the butler wouldn’t let him in.
He walked past the public library, but that isn’t where he goes after school. He doesn’t have a card that will allow him to check out books, and he’s afraid he’ll need a parent with him to sign up for a card.
So he kept walking, to his dad’s paint factory.
He came in through the lobby and asked the receptionist if he could see his father. She called upstairs and told Tommy to go up to his dad’s office.
Tommy’s dad says, “Why are you here?”
Tommy says, “School was cancelled.”
Tommy’s dad says, “You’re lying. You’re skipping school.”
Tommy says, “Honestly. There was a gas leak.”
“You think I got to my position by skipping school and making up lies? I got here through hard work. I paid attention in school and did all my assignments.”
“But it’s the truth, dad. You can call them and ask. But there won’t be anyone there, because they all evacuated.”
“A likely story. Full of improbabilities and coincidences. Don’t think you can fool me. Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?”
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Not very resourceful, are you? When I was your age, if school had been cancelled, I would have taken the opportunity to go into the woods. I would have discovered a plant with a color no one had yet seen, and I wouldn’t have turned up at my father’s door until I’d learned how to derive pigment from it. I would have created a new color of paint, and it would have sold a hundred thousand gallons in its first week of production. Because I would have known if I turned up at my father’s without something useful, nothing would have waited for me but a beating.”
“Will you show me how to make a pigment?”
“You think my father taught me to make pigment? I had to learn it, like anyone else. It was all written down in books. I read useful books when I was your age. I had a vision of who I’d be, and I made myself into my vision. If school was really cancelled, why aren’t you playing baseball with your friends?”
“They didn’t invite me to play baseball.”
Tommy’s dad shakes his head. A cruel smile creeps over his face. “That’s very bad, not being invited to play baseball. Even the lowliest creep was invited to play baseball, when I was in school. Baseball was a chance for that lowly creep to redeem himself. If they’re not inviting you to play baseball, it means you’re beyond redemption.”
“What can I do dad?”
“I think I might know what the problem is.”
“What is it?”
“I think the problem might be, they know who you are. They know who your father is. And they know you don’t deserve the easy life that my hard work has earned you. That’s why they despise you. Perhaps if you show that you’re worthy of the United Paint name, they’ll respect you.”
“How can I do that?”
“See these books on my shelf? They’re about paint. Read them until it’s time to go home. I expect you to tell me what you’ve learned. I’m going to lock the door so you won’t cause any more trouble.”
Tommy’s dad leaves the office, locking the door behind him. Tommy is standing alone in the office. Dad told him to read the books about paint. He’s tried reading them before, but they’re so boring. Dad doesn’t have a single adventure book on his shelf. The closest thing he has is “Adventures in Dry Coating.”
Tommy thinks, “What if I need to go to the bathroom?”
Tommy thinks, “What if I’m not meant for paint? The kids at school will never like me.”
Tommy thinks, “Dad will just think I’m a waste of space.”
Tommy thinks, “I wish I’d gone to the baseball field with the other kids.”
Tommy goes through the books on dad’s shelf again. They’re all boring. The clock tells Tommy there are six hours before the factory closes for the night and dad will come back. The door is locked, and anyway, dad told Tommy to stay in the office.
Tommy wonders what would happen if there was an emergency. Dad’s desk is covered in news clippings about disasters that have befallen other paint factories. Their boilers have exploded, causing fires that have killed dozens of workers. Their ventilation systems have failed, causing workers to hallucinate and start fires. Their cafeterias have served tainted meat, causing their workers to become sick and fail to tend to equipment, which, left to self-regulate, has started fires. Dad is a collector of industrial accidents.
What if the paint factory caught on fire while Tommy was locked in dad’s office? Everyone would be left to fend for themselves. No one would even know he was here.
As Tommy thinks these thoughts, an alarm goes off.
“The factory’s on fire!” thinks Tommy.
He tries dad’s door again, but of course it’s still locked. There’s a rope sitting under dad’s desk. Tommy wonders if he could tie the rope to something and lower himself to safety on the ground. He doesn’t know where the fire in the factory is, or how long he has before its flames reach the door of dad’s office. The alarm is louder than the air raid sirens they play in school.
“Oh fiddlesticks,” thinks Tommy. “I hope I don’t die in a tragic inferno.”
Tommy ties one end of the rope around dad’s radiator and opens the window. He tosses the rope out. The rope dangles twelve feet above the ground.
“I can’t make that drop!” says Tommy. “I’d break both of my legs!”
But dad’s office is locked. Tommy looks for something to break the window with. He tries one of the cans of paint, but it just bounces off the window and spills paint all over dad’s floor.
Tommy says, “Dad’s gonna go ape when he sees his office. Good thing he probably won’t ever see it, because it will burn down with the rest of the factory. Even if he did see it, he’d forgive me because he’d be happy I escaped the terrible flames.”
Tommy looks through dad’s desk for a spare key, for a paperclip, for something to pick the lock with.
“Aw gee whiz, I hope I don’t die in this fiery inferno,” says Tommy.
On dad’s shelf, Tommy notices a golf trophy. “I wonder if I could use that golf club to pick the lock,” Tommy says.
In dad’s desk, Tommy has found a pair of pliers. Using the pliers on the trophy, Tommy breaks off the golf club, which he then takes and puts in the keyhole. The lock opens, and Tommy goes into the hall.
Two executives are standing in the hall, sipping coffee and talking to each other in voices loud enough to be heard over the alarm.
“So, Bill, I heard you’re having your lawn reseeded.”
“Yes, the color wasn’t vibrant enough. It’s hard to play croquet on a lawn that isn’t the right shade of green.”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
Tommy approaches them. “Aren’t you going to evacuate? Isn’t there a fire?”
“A fire?” says the one named Bill. “No, these alarms go off all the time. Probably a work stoppage at one of the conveyor belts. It’ll stop ringing any minute.”
“Our factory has a perfect safety record,” says the other one. “No major accidents in over five years.”
Tommy thinks about this. “No major accidents in over five years is a perfect safety record?”
“Well, to get an average safety record, a factory needs to record no major accidents over a three-month period. So our safety record is almost unheard of.”
Tommy wonders whether to congratulate the men on the safety record.
“Say, what’s that in your hand?” says Bill.
Tommy opens his hand. The golf club is sitting there.
“It looks like a golden golf club,” says the other one.
“Looks like it came off a trophy,” says Bill.
“Not my trophy, I hope.”
“Or mine! I didn’t score below par on every hole at Crystal Downs last year to have my trophy torn apart for scrap. Where did you get that, young man?”
“Nowhere,” Tommy says. “I just found it.”
“Just found it. Well you’d better give it to me so I can find its proper owner.”
Tommy hands over the golf club.
“Now, get back to work. Don’t you have a conveyor belt you should be minding?”
Tommy thinks about how he should respond. These men don’t seem to know who his father is.
The alarm shuts down. The executive says, “Yes, you’d better get back to work. The alarm’s stopped, there’s no reason for loafing now.”
The men turn back and continue their conversation with one another. Tommy thinks about his dad’s office. There’s paint all over the floor, and his dad’s golf trophy is now a broken heap. If dad comes back and finds his office such a wreck, he’ll disown me! Tommy thinks. He’ll kick me out of the house and I’ll have to eat scraps of fish from trash bins outside the fish market. That’s what dad always says I’ll end up doing if I don’t study heard and learn to make pigment like he spent his life doing. Dad always says that once I turn fourteen, I’ll have to earn my keep, unless I want to eat fish scraps from a trash bin outside the fish market.
But if he sees what a wreck I’ve made of his office, he’ll kick me out of home and lock the gates!
It won’t matter if I explain to him that I thought there was a fire. That’s still no reason for making a mess, he’ll say. He’ll say I should have known better than to doubt the factory. The factory would never catch on fire, unless dad wanted it to. And if it caught fire with me locked in dad’s office, it would only happen like that because dad meant for it to.
There’s no excuse, dad will say.
Tommy wonders who could help him get the paint off dad’s floor. How can he fix dad’s trophy? The little golf club is with one of the executives now. Didn’t they say they have similar trophies?
I wonder where their offices are, Tommy thinks.
