The clock had counted down and read zero for a few days now. Weeks, maybe. It was hard to keep track without its steady, reassuring decrementation. The bright-red digits saying: There's still time. Or: It will happen soon. Depending on your point of view.
I stood beside Bob's desk as he reviewed a hardcopy of my website edits.
"The clock's at zero," I remarked.
"Hmm? Oh, yeah. Yeah," he replied, and looked back down at the marked-up pages.
"Are we going to reset it to something?"
"I don't know. Why?"
"Isn't zero when we launch?"
"Zero came and went."
"We launched? The Product?"
Bob grimaced and rolled his head from side to side. "Not exactly. Sort of."
"Did we blast off into space?"
"The current strategy is to soft-launch," he said.
"When's the soft launch?"
"Super-soft."
"But did it happen? Or is it going to happen?"
He sighed. "It's happening right now."
I looked around us. The office was enveloped in the characteristic hush of digital industry, everybody seated, pointing, clicking. Occasionally a desk phone emitted a soft, electronic burble.
"Really?"
"The idea is to let the Product seep into the world rather than to inject it. It's more authentic that way. It's organic. The virality should really benefit."
I nodded.
"It's a known strategy," he continued. "I think it's Japanese. Possibly Finnish."
"Seeping?"
"Not sure what they call it. And plus, the feeling at the tippy-top was that the Product is not ready. You didn't hear it from me."
"The feeling out west?"
"The feeling out west. Back east, too."
I stared at the expired clock and pondered it all.
"We did change our name. I'm working on a new logo for the business cards. By the way, they're going to need you to weigh in on the press release. Cindy's going to reach out to you tomorrow morning."
"Prizm? With a Z?" I asked.
"No. Our lawyers did some investigating and there's a conflict with some fucking consulting company. Probably not a big issue but they judged it to be imprudent."
"So what's our name?"
"Intracto."
"Intracto," I repeated.