The most cautious contributors were MCI’s lawyers, or whoever else had written the legalese for one Web site. All writers and artists had to send in releases saying they wouldn’t sue MCI for using accidentally similar material. The lawyers warned, “All work that is submitted electronically over the Internet needs to be accompanied by a hard copy of the release form, sent in separately by postal mail. We will not look at any work placed on our server until we have received the hard copy of the release form. All files on the server older than 14 days, for which we have not received a release, will not be reviewed....” I remembered the essay on theology. It was uninspired enough for an attorney other than Scott Turow to have written it, and sure enough, the author’s note said he was “happy with the practice of law.” Despite the less-than-striking short stories and the soporific essay, I loved the sparkle of Gramercy Press as a whole. I recalled an area on the Web known as Bianca’s Smut Shack. Its creators let you get inside the head of a virtual woman, let you know what books she read, what movies she watched, what records she listened to, and you could add your own opinions. At the time I’d told the Shack crew, “Watch out, folks. Don’t be surprised if a big company creates characters in an ad where _everyone_ buys the right products.” Well, it had happened. And MCI and its advertising agency had done many good things that people with their resources could more easily accomplish. Building Notre Dame, thousands of workers had pieced together the stone, fashioned the gargoyles, assembled the stained-glass windows. And the MCI Web area, while hardly art, was somewhat like a cathedral. The area’s masterminds had bungled in some ways, but they had used sheer staff power to toil over countless details. I was sorry when Mark Pettit told me that some Real People in Publishing had hated Gramercy Press. Didn’t they get it? Granted, the publishing company was stereotypical to the point of being self-satirizing. But so what? I was no more expecting MCI to be a first-rate publisher than I was expecting Random House to lay fiber-optic cable. As a display of the Web’s potential to attract a mass audience, of course, the Gramercy endeavor had triumphed. For consumer business on the Net to take off, ads would have to be a complete departure from those on television, and MCI had done just that—even if it was able to benefit from characters from the older medium. Many small-timers could never have discovered an actress as perfectly suited to play Darlene as Katy Selverstone was. This was a real coup. MCI was brilliantly drawing in a big crowd through a skillful interplay of television, print, and the Net.