Leila begged me to come back in mid-October instead of November. “By November all the graphics will be done,” she said. Doe eyes.

My last two days at Broderbund were insanely hectic and rushed, but we got the most important things done. At 5 pm on the last day I sat down with Nicole and we went through the opening sequence that she’d got running for the first time in 8-bit PC-size graphics. It was like cutting a film. She manned the keyboard, I gave directions, and in the space of a hour we completely recut the sequence. Without having to create any new graphics or record any new dialog, we made it work better than it ever had. It looks like it was always meant to be that way. An editing miracle. We were both thrilled.

Ken Goldstein has been promoted to associate producer. He’s second-in-command to John Baker and is supervising all entertainment product development.

[Paris, rue Boutarel] It’s been drizzling all day. The kind of day that makes it hard to remember the sun ever shines here.

Spent the afternoon with Aarón. We dove right in, talking about the film and listening to the music tapes. He’s eager to get started. First priority is to arrange a screening of the rushes for tomorrow.

Bought a monitor for my computer, carried it back here, and promptly blew out the power in my apartment. Luckily, Bernard’s band was playing that night at the Texas Blues restaurant, and his drummer was able to explain to me how I should connect the computer so this wouldn’t happen.

Showed Aarón and Patrick and Sandrine the Prince 2 editor. They were duly impressed.

Sandrine was feeling down, so Patrick and I brought a bottle of wine and three glasses to where she was sitting alone by the Seine writing a letter. She cheered up slightly, and we drank the bottle as the sun set behind Notre Dame. “We’re like characters in a Jim Jarmusch movie,” Patrick said.

It’s my one-year anniversary since I came to Paris. I realized this when I went to the United office to try to change the date of my still-unused return ticket and was told that, sorry, the ticket is only good for one year. I’ll have to leave tomorrow morning or not at all.

I bought a ticket for San Francisco for next Thursday.

“What are you doing in France?” Patrick said. “Go to San Francisco! Finish the game! They need you. Stay for a couple of months. Nothing’s going to happen here. We won’t forget you.”

Spent the whole day at rue Boutarel making Level 3, “First Cavern Level.” I’m quite pleased with it. Some nifty little puzzles, not too hard, not tedious either.

Stayed up till 5 am last night making Level 6, “First Ruin Level.” A good day’s work.

Edited at Atria until eleven o’clock last night, when Patrick came and rescued me. I had a fax to send to Brian before midnight. Where can you go to send a fax in Paris in the middle of the night? Answer: back on the Ile, at the hotel on the corner of rue Boutarel. The night clerk sent the five pages to San Francisco and only charged me the France Telecom charges. The Ile St-Louis really is a special island within Paris, a world unto itself.

“I was taking the night train to Berlin…”

Thus begins the noir eve-of-WWI adventure Tomi and I are cooking up. Now, finally, I’m excited.

Ken expects me to come in as an author-for-hire, Prince 2 style, to build Broderbund an adventure game system. But I have a different idea.

An independent development group. Tomi and me and Robert, maybe Corey, maybe Glenn Axworthy, and a couple of artists, in an office in San Francisco. Two years, $500K, and we could develop an awesome adventure game for Broderbund to publish.

Best of all, we’d be building a company—an asset that, years down the line, could actually be sold for real money. Better than royalties.

Prince 2 is coming along nicely. No worries.