I was excited as 1999 brought many other surprises including the fact that Doug McBride was hired as a CG artist for CYAN ( moving his new family from
Utah to Washington State ) and would be actively involved with the new project. Based on this change, I had decided to return to Spokane in May of this year
for further research and exploration and to visit with a long time friend. Little did I know what I was going to see or experience. Much had changed and there simply was no turning back.
The flight to Spokane was pretty much uneventful and upon arriving at the airport I
grabbed my rental car and proceeded north to Mead. For those of you who are not familiar with the area, CYAN headquarters is located just north of Spokane on the edge of town in a small
community called Mead. The countryside is beautiful with lots of pine trees, rolling hills and cool buildings.
You have to be careful entering the CYAN parking lot, as the driveway is
twisting. I was greeted by the familiar CYAN building located amongst the trees
an rocks. The gardens were somewhat late this year but Byron, the staff landscaper, had once again worked wonders. What did surprise me though was that the yard and the rocks looked
different. New rock clusters had appeared that had not shown up in pictures I had taken the previous year. I did immediately recognize the EDGE course though and
my heart warmed as I pictured the CYAN group out competing on what many consider one of the premiere disk golf courses in the pacific northwest.
After I entered the building, I met Eloise, one of the newer employees. Eloise is the lady who answers the phones and runs the office and merchandise area.
Her warm and friendly greetings made the trip worthwhile and I had only been there 10 minutes.
Reaching the main part of the building, the visit started with a quick trip to meet with Tony Fryman and Rand Miller. Both were hard at it, in their offices. As I
rounded the corner near the infamous green door, I was astounded to see some major changes to the building. In fact, the entire west wing of the building had been remodeled and
what used to be cubicles was now a large living area complete with leather couches, beautiful old fashioned tables and plants. Plants everywhere. Unusual plants. The mystery was starting to unfold.
Even during our first visit in 1998, Doug and I both had noticed that CYAN had taken a number of precautions to hide certain items and "filter" what we had
seen. If we noticed something that we maybe shouldn't have seen, they would quickly remove it after we had reentered the room.
Here was my chance to enter exploration mode, Rand and Tony were both
summoned to the phone and asked that I be seated for just a moment
before we began our visit. I found a nice comfy chair and then parked myself next to the table. This was no ordinary table but one that was very old. An antique I figured. The wood top was very weathered and the metal
clamps and supports holding it very cool. Strewn on the top of the table was a number of coffee table style books. One in particular grabbed my eye. It too was very old. Unlike any of the ancient books I
had run across during my first trip to CYAN, this booked appeared to be about 5 - 10 years old.
I reached for the book when I felt a hand on my shoulder. "I think it best that
you not look at that particular book at this time" commented Rand. I quickly made a mental note of the title. It didn't appear to be an english name
though...something unique. "chugui" or was it "echg"?? D'ni maybe...? I didn't think so...
Expecting some more surprises, I then ventured down the hallway towards the elevator. At first I didn't notice the changes but they quickly became
apparent. A number of new drawings, all originals had lined the walls. These drawings included pictures of Catherine, and early prototype sketches of Riven and the many devices found on Riven. To the
naked eye these appeared quite normal and straight forward but something was out of place. I started going back and looking at each picture when I was immediately summoned to return to the
office, Rand wanted to show me where Doug worked. 
This was one of the most
exciting parts of my trip as I had only met Doug the once last year and I was excited to see him again and poke my nose around at the new project.
