The Swank Gallery, located in the Pleasure Strip, is one of several almost prophetic concepts which the Give Me Head team accidentally came up with (for another example take a look at the visionary Candy Coins dreamt up by Myra Lippit). It was going to be a fully functioning marketplace for buying and selling weird digital paintings and sculptures by the best Swankers in Cyberia.

Sometimes the buying method was by auction (including the ability to attend via a Skanna for a small fee or a monkey chip for free) and other times it was set at a specific price on a first come, first served basis. However–and this is the Nostradamus part–all the buyer actually receives is a tiny marble with some unique code printed on it which wasn’t even visible to the naked eye. The artwork itself remained floating in the gallery.

On a weekly basis, the Swank Gallery was going to update the values of marketplace objects which would either increase or decrease depending on certain factors. These factors weren’t finalised, but it appears that it was basically owed to some complex mathematical equations which actually made sense (see below). However, there was going to be frequent crashes in value plus financial penalties so players could find themselves immediately flat broke and would then have to grind out some petty crimes in the underworld.

All of this was scrapped and instead prices were going to be set by Daddy Swank. A tragedy, but one we’ve managed to archive.

So Who was Responsible for this Ingenious Concept?

George Khan had taken an extended trip to California, escaping the freezing cold summer streets of Manchester. He was hoping to put his recently acquired economics degree to good use with one of the big Silicon tech companies which were booming in ’88.

But when George tried knocking on the doors of those guys, he would be greeted either by security guards or some hippy PA who had the job of boring people back out of the door.

During his last attempt at contacting this strange alien world, George found himself inside what some fella had told him was the deep reflection room.

“We normally come here to meditate and be at one with Mother Earth,” he said. “But this morning, perhaps we can invite our resident shaman to help you connect with your spirit animal and discover what exactly you want out of this life and also the next one.”

George didn’t hang around. He said he needed the toilet, left through the fire exit and jumped into the first dive bar he could find. He bought himself a beer, took a seat in the corner and stared into space, thinking that perhaps he’d made a whopping mistake.

“You look like somebody’s just pissed in your glass,” George suddenly heard, breaking him out of his thousand yard stare.

He looked in the direction of the voice and saw some fella dressed in a sharp suit and a pair of wayfarers looking over at him.

“You what, mate?”

“You’re English,” he said. “Damn, I love England. God save the Queen, the bubonic plague, Paris, Italy, terrible food, umbrellas… I think that’s everything.”

George didn’t know what to say so he opted for a smile.

The fella came walking over to him. “Lawrence Cassidy,” he said, offering his hand. “CEO of Give Me Head Productions.”

“Is that a chat up line because I’m not–.”

“You’re funny,” Cassidy said with a chuckle as they shook hands. “You Europeans are great on humour but terrible at everything else. I mean not everything else, but I wouldn’t ever want to live there.”

“Me neither if I can help it.”

“Say, man, I could do with some of that European humour in my company. Why are you stateside…,” he said, looking for a name.

“George. George Khan.”

“George Khan. I like it. What brought you over to good old America?”

“I’m good with numbers so I thought I’d try my luck with the best paying companies in the world. Turns out they’re all very fucking weird.”

“Yeah, man,”Cassidy said. “Those guys all went to Burning Man in ’86 as venture capitalists and came back a year later as free love philanthropists. I saw it happen with my own eyes. So how about coming to work for me? Sound good?”

“Tell me more.”

“Well, we only set up a couple of weeks ago and we’re now making the best cyberpunk television series of all time. But it’s also interactive. There’s going to be collectors’ cards so our viewers can play along each week. Merch, video games…. The market potential is astronomical according to our market research team.”

“Sounds great but it really isn’t my field.”

“Do you seriously think that Bill Gates’ field is megabytes and floppy dick drives? Man, dude, we’re all just blagging it out here, grabbing hold of every cheque thrown our way. We’re a nation of dreamers. Besides, you’re funny as hell, man, you have talent. Wait until you meet Fergus. He can’t get enough of the cartel big bud either. You two will be, like, Cheech and Chong or some shit. So what do you say?”

Meanwhile George had sat back and listened to Cassidy’s pitch. Figuring he had a couple more months and nothing to lose, he agreed to get on board.

On day one, Cassidy introduced George to Fergus, still utterly convinced that the two were going to bounce hilarious jokes off each other and then get married in Las Vegas. He told them he was off on a party run and disappeared.

“I swear that guy is losing the fucking plot,” Fergus said. “He was telling us yesterday that he thought he’d lost his cock in the shower and spent all night looking for it. Did he also tell you that we were going to be like Abbot and Costello?”

“I got Cheech and Chong.”

“I don’t even touch the stuff.”

“Neither do I.”

“Just ignore anything coming out of his mouth. He will soon be asking for you to remind him who you are again.”

Like many Give Me Head employees, George tried to melt into the background and observe what exactly was going on. On the first day he could only see confused people drinking heavily while yelling nonsense at each other. On the second day the penny dropped: he was working for a carnival show.

By the time George scarpered, he’d already completed the Swank Gallery project in a matter of days just to keep himself busy. Nobody had asked him to, so it was a complete surprise when he handed Fergus a file.

“Fuck this,” he said. “I can’t stay here for another minute. I’m off back to England.”

“I’d go too,” Fergus said. “But I’m too invested in this nonsense now. I also don’t trust anyone else with filing the engineering reports.”

“Well, good luck, Chongstello,” George said, passing him a file. “Before I go, I thought I’d give you this.”

“What is it?”

“When I realised Cyberia was one of those role-playing games, I started to map out how some of the economy might work. I’ve always thought that when the tech allows it, there will be a new emporer’s new clothes economy where people will sell pixilated garbage to each other for eye-watering amounts of money, claiming they are culturally and historically important. Take a look and if you like the idea, pretend it’s your own.”

They said their goodbyes and Fergus returned to his desk. He thumbed through the file and discovered the most immaculate blueprint he’d ever seen.

“You son of a bitch,” Fergus muttered. He then turned to the team and said, “Hey, guys, look what I’ve come up with…”

While George’s blueprint was soon abandoned by the Give Me Head team, it went down a storm with some complete strangers a couple of months hence.

A Happy Ending

After the collapse of the Cyberia project, Fergus mournfully packed up all of his things and left the office flat broke. A couple of weeks later he was thumbing through his files, trying to make sense of what had happened. That’s when he came across George’s blueprint.

The next morning Fergus called up a reputable and ambitious role-playing games company which was getting ahead of the competition. He asked if they could make use of the economic model. They told him probably not but to fax it over anyway so they can take a peek. Fergus did as told and thought nothing else of it.

The next day he received a call from the company. Their enthusiasm was a nice surprise.

“O’shea,” the man said. “You should’ve mentioned just how talented you are. We’ve been holding a board meeting this afternoon and, should you agree, we’ve unanimously decided to purchase the intellectual property for your model and then roll it out across all of our games.”

“Glad you could make use of it,” Fergus said, failing to comprehend what was going on.

“So we’d like to offer you $100,000 plus some shares…”

“You what?!”

*

A year later, George Khan was making a fortune in investment banking, having secured a job with one of the best companies in London. One afternoon he was reading Your Numbers’ Up; a trade magazine for serious economists.

When he got to the centre page, he squinted his eyes, trying to remember who the familiar face was staring back at him. As he began to read the article, it all came flooding back.

George burst out laughing.

“Congratulation, Chong. You deserve it.”

---

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