The Startup Wife(18)
Cyrus shakes his head. “I can think of a dozen ways this can go wrong.”
“Be the change,” Jules says.
“Shut up, Jules.”
But Cyrus is considering it. He’s holding his mug with both hands, and looking out across the long table that must have belonged to several generations of Cabots, and allowing himself to think the same thing that has been going around in my mind since yesterday. What if we did something unprecedented, something novel and possibly even revolutionary?
Cyrus shifts his weight, leaning on the table. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll do it. But only because you’re promising me, right here and now, that we’re not just going to rewrite some neoliberal script and put a bow on all the fucked-up shit that happens in the world.”
“Totally.” I nod.
“And I have conditions. I will come to New York, and I’ll keep helping with the algorithm. But just as a researcher, nothing more. Don’t drag me into the startup thing.”
Cyrus wants to stay pure.
“Whatever you want, Cy,” Jules says. Then he turns to me. “Asha, are you in?”
Here’s my chance. I can say no, and I can return to Dr. Stein’s lab, and we can forget this whole thing ever happened. I’m tempted, I really am. But then there are these two people right in front of me, and more than ever I’m feeling like we belong to one another, and that if we stick together, we can quit one life and start another. I’m thinking about the look on Li Ann’s face, how she took our idea so seriously, as if it really could become one of the things that survive a major planetary event. It’s the first time I’ve turned my lines of code into something tangible, and I can’t deny that it made me feel something about my work that I’ve never felt before. “What the hell. I’m in,” I say.
At this very moment, our phones beep with a message from Li Ann. Congratulations! Welcome to Utopia.
Jules says, “It’s a sign.”
And Cyrus says, “We need a manifesto.”
There are people who may have marked this moment with a drink. But Cyrus wants to mark it with a manifesto, so that is what we do. We get a sheet of paper from the printer, and after about thirty seconds of back-and-forth, Cyrus writes it all down.
We are equal partners and make all decisions together.
We don’t spy on anyone.
and
We don’t sell our souls (we don’t sell anything).
We consider spitting into our palms but settle for signing at the bottom of the page. Cyrus folds up the piece of paper and tucks it into his pocket, and we toast with our mugs of tea.
“Oh, and there’s one more thing,” Cyrus adds. “We need a name.”
“True.”
“I was thinking we could call it WHY. Except spelled W-A-I.”
“What does it stand for?” Jules asks.
“We Are Infinite.”
We Are Infinite. Trust Cyrus to come up with the perfect name.
The next day, we sign our agreement with Utopia and start packing.
* * *
Even though I have made up my mind, I want Dr. Stein to try to talk me out of it. To tell me that my brain is too valuable to waste on something as ordinary as a website. She will tell me how important my work is, commit to giving me more time, promise not to ridicule me in front of the third-years. Plead with me to stay.
But that is obviously not what happens.
I tiptoe into her office, and as usual when I am with her, my voice gets high, like I’ve just French-kissed a helium balloon.
“Dr. Stein, I’ve been thinking about the module, and it’s just not going where I need it to go.”
“Hm, yes. Your assumptions are all wrong.”
Her office is bare. There are books arranged neatly on the shelves, but there is not a single piece of paper on her desk, as if someone just brushed off all the clutter and had table sex with her.
“In order for the module to work fully, I need to wait till the brain is reverse-engineered.”
She fixes her eyes on me, and I can feel my heart beating in my throat. “That’s what I told you: 2029.”
“In the meantime, I was thinking I could make it do something a little more—achievable.”
She tilts her head. “Like what?”
“Just a different application. I’ve been thinking it might be interesting to experiment with the module in a commercial setting.”
“Oh? And what precisely would that be?”
“A platform that anticipates people’s need for meaning and ritual,” I mumble, then gave her a long, overly detailed explanation of the site.
“And you’re going to do, what, raise money and move to the Valley?”
I start plucking at a piece of dry skin on my upper lip. “I don’t know anyone in the Valley,” I say lamely.
She pauses and her voice is half a degree softer when she says, “And you think this is a good way for you to spend your short time on earth?”
I feel like the shallowest person in the world when I say, “Yes.”
“Then that’s what you should do.”
“Thank you, Dr. Stein.”
Dr. Stein looks at her watch, a thick black band that tells her a number of things, including the time. “Well, good luck,” she says, shuttering her little window of humanity.