by Amor Towles
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2019 by Amor Towles
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle
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eISBN: 9781542004343
Cover design by Will Staehle
You Have Arrived at Your Destination
It had been years since Sam had been this far out on the expressway. For a few summers when he was a boy—before his family moved out west—they had driven almost to the end of it on their way to a seaside rental on Orient Point. At the time, there was nothing from Exit 40 to Exit 60, not even a gas station. Each of the off-ramps led to a little tree-lined road that led to a little tree-lined town with its own movie theater, pharmacy, and hardware store. When Sam was twenty-two, he traveled it again to spend Labor Day weekend with a college roommate. By then, every few exits you would come upon a cluster of big-box stores like AutoZone, Home Depot, and Toys “R” Us—the category killers designed to make the small towns even smaller. Now, twenty-three years later, Sam was paying witness to the latest phase in the expressway’s evolution: the so-called Millennium Miles. Thanks to a demographic analysis that sought to maximize proximity to an educated workforce, a university center, and reasonably priced housing, various members of the “new economy” had opened large, gleaming facilities along this stretch of road.
In one mile, take Exit 46, then bear left, said the pleasant voice of the GPS.
Earlier that month, having told Annie that he didn’t want anything for his birthday, Sam had bought himself a Model S. The car had cost him more than he’d intended to spend, but as his colleague covering luxury goods never tired of observing: You get what you pay for. The Model S could accelerate from zero to sixty in two seconds, travel three hundred miles without a recharge, and the engine had been designed with such care, you could hardly hear it hum. It also came with a self-driving system. By means of cameras mounted on the four corners of the car, it could follow roadways, moderate speed, make turns. The sales consultant at the dealership had conceded that it wasn’t quite foolproof yet (there had been a fatality, in fact). So the official recommendation was to use the system with one’s hands on the wheel, one’s foot on the brake, and one’s eye on the road. For the fun of it, Sam took his hands off the wheel and his foot off the gas, then watched as the blinker turned on, the engine decelerated, and the car followed its own instructions onto the off-ramp. Bearing left, the car passed over the expressway, took another left onto an access road, and a right into a parking lot.
You have arrived at your destination.
Sam wasn’t particularly surprised to find that Vitek had a crowded parking lot. But as he reassumed control of the car and steered toward the building’s entrance, he was surprised to find just six spaces reserved for customers, three of which were empty. Sam knew that Vitek’s services were expensive; he just didn’t know how expensive. When Annie had returned from an introductory meeting saying that the price was almost “unconscionable,” he had brushed the matter of expense aside. But having done so, he felt that to wade back into specifics would have diminished the nobility of his gesture. So he had never found out the actual price. That only three customers were currently shouldering the entire cost structure in front of him probably didn’t bode well. But then, by all accounts, at Vitek you got what you paid for too.
The clock on the dashboard indicated that Sam was a few minutes early. Looking through the windshield, he saw a sunlit sitting area just outside the main entrance, where some younger employees (or associates or stakeholders) were drinking coffee by a fountain.
Sam shook his head.
In the last decade, he had visited hundreds of regional power companies across the country. The meetings with management generally took place in offices that could have been in the administration suite of a public high school from the 1960s—with gray synthetic carpets, ceiling tiles, and fluorescent lights. Sam always took some comfort from the outmoded decor, because there was no better predictor of an earnings disappointment than a brand-new corporate headquarters. And while one “disruptive” business model would inevitably replace another, the good old power company would always be there to turn on the lights.
From the passenger seat came the ting of a text message. Picking up his phone, Sam saw that it was from Annie: Have Fun!
Sam typed: Will do
Then, after a moment, he added a reciprocal exclamation point.
Orientation
At the front desk, Sam gave his name to an attractive young woman wearing a wireless headset. She promised that someone would be with him in a moment and invited him to take a seat. Sam chose one of the Mies van der Rohe chairs arranged around the white marble coffee table. From somewhere in the sunlit lobby came the sound of moving water.
“Is there a waterfall in here?” he asked.
The woman at the front desk looked up. “Excuse me?”
He gestured around the lobby with a smile. “I can hear the sound of water.”
Smiling back, she pointed outside. “Dr. Gerhardt had a microphone put in the fountain so that the sound could be piped in. Isn’t it soothing?”
Before Sam could answer, another attractive young woman—this one in a black skirt suit, holding a black portfolio—emerged from an elevator.
“Mr. Paxton?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m Sybilla. I work with Mr. Owens. Won’t you come this way?”
Sybilla took Sam up to the third floor. When the elevator door opened, there was the distinct smell of popcorn. Sam wondered if Dr. Gerhardt was having that piped in too. But as they passed through a sitting area, he saw the brightly lit carnival-style popcorn machine in the corner.
“I think you’re really going to enjoy meeting Mr. Owens,” Sybilla said with what appeared to be genuine enthusiasm. “He’s been with Vitek practically since the beginning. No one knows the company better.”
She led Sam through an open-plan workspace to a small conference room with a flat-screen television mounted on the wall. At her invitation, Sam took a seat. It was one of those ergonomic office chairs that rock and spin.
“Would you like some coffee? Sparkling water?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“Mr. Owens will be joining you in just a few minutes. I’m sure you’ve read our brochure and that your wife has told you all about our work, but while you wait, Mr. Owens thought you might want to watch a short introductory film on the company.”
Without waiting for a reply, Sybilla opened her portfolio, which turned out to be an iPad, and tapped on the screen. The television on the wall lit up with the company’s logo, and as she quietly closed the door behind her, the video began.
“Welcome to Vitek,” said a voice that was at once friendly, assured, and upbeat. What followed was a typical ten-minute informational video, complete with photographic shots of Dr. Gerhardt and his partners as younger men, an animated graphic of a spinning double helix, clips of white-coated technicians in labs, news of a breakthrough, and testimonials from “actual�
�� customers as indicated by the names, ages, and cities of residence at the bottom of the screen.
Sam hadn’t actually gotten around to reading the brochure, but the video recapped what he had gathered from Annie. A twenty-first-century fertility lab, Vitek had combined the decoding of the human genome and recent advances in behavioral science not simply to help couples become pregnant but to give them some influence over the intelligence and temperament of their child. When the company’s logo returned to the screen, the conference room’s door was simultaneously knocked upon and opened. In walked a good-looking man who was a little bit taller than Sam, and maybe a little bit younger too.
“Sam!” he said with a hand outstretched. “HT Owens. It’s so good to meet you.”
Sam stood and shook HT’s hand, thinking his voice sounded familiar. It took him a moment to realize that it sounded familiar because it was the voice of the narrator in the video he’d just watched.
HT sat down and immediately rocked back and forth in his chair, making the most of its engineering. Then he drummed the top of the table with his open hands. Sam suspected that if HT had been born a generation later than he was, he would have been raised on Ritalin.
“Did you have any trouble finding us?”
“Not at all.”
“Great.”
He pointed at the logo on the screen. “And you got a chance to watch the video?”
“I did.”
“Great. Let me start by saying how much fun we’ve had getting to know Annie. You’re a lucky man!”
“Thanks,” replied Sam, though it had always seemed to him that the observation of a man’s luck in regard to his wife was a bit of a slight.
HT shifted gears. “I don’t have to explain to you why you’re here, Sam. You know why you’re here. And you’ve been a utilities analyst for, what? Almost twenty years? So I think we can skip the dog and pony show. Instead, let me give you a quick overview of our work, then we can talk about what’s going to happen today. Sound good?”
“Sounds good.”
“Great,” said HT for the third time. “Now, we all understand that child development is a combination of nature and nurture, and for hundreds of years, parents have sought to influence both of these factors for the benefit of their offspring. From the genetic standpoint, we have carefully selected our mate with his or her attributes firmly in mind. While from the nurture standpoint, once we’ve had children, we have tried to provide them with a healthy environment, a strong education, and a system of values. Why do we do this? So that our offspring can lead happy and productive lives. Well, Vitek was launched in recognition of the fact that, given recent advances in various fields of science, parents can now pursue this goal with an unprecedented level of intentionality.”
“Through genetic engineering,” Sam said.
HT put up both hands in soft protest. “We don’t really think of our work here as genetic engineering, Sam. We’re not brewing things up in a lab. We’re not going to introduce any new elements into your DNA, nor are we going to take any existing elements out. Rather, having taken a peek into the traits that your child will naturally receive, with your and Annie’s guidance, we’re going to push a few into the forefront and a few into the background. We like to think of it as genetic nudging.”
“Okay,” said Sam.
“But that’s only half the picture. You see, what we’ve done here—what’s so unusual about our approach—is that we’ve combined the genetic component with predictive modeling founded on large pools of demographic data.”
HT paused.
“Do you know what a credit score is?”
Sam was a little surprised by the question.
“It’s a tool the banks use,” he said after a moment, “to determine creditworthiness.”
“Exactly,” said HT. “But do you know how it works?”
Sam had to admit he didn’t, so HT obliged.
“The credit score was invented in the late 1980s by a mathematician and an engineer who realized that by analyzing historical patterns of consumer debt repayment, they could design algorithms that could predict an individual’s reliability as a mortgagee. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say you examine the credit histories of ten thousand Americans with similar incomes, expenses, and credit card balances who, twenty years ago, all took out fifteen-year mortgages. In looking at this cohort, what you discover is that virtually everyone who borrowed two hundred thousand dollars to buy a house ended up repaying the loan in full, while only half of those who borrowed three hundred thousand dollars to buy a bigger house succeeded in doing so. And those who borrowed four hundred thousand dollars to buy an even bigger house? Nearly every one of them defaulted. Practically speaking, what this means is that if I identify someone today with a similar profile to that cohort (making some adjustments for inflation and what have you), without even having to talk to him I know that if I loan him two hundred grand to buy a home, he’ll repay me; if I loan him three hundred grand, he might; and if I loan him four hundred grand, he won’t. The pattern becomes predictive.”
HT held out his upturned hands as if to say: Voilà.
“We are doing the same thing here, Sam, but instead of looking at aggregated financial histories to anticipate individual financial outcomes, we are looking at aggregated biographic histories to predict individual biographic outcomes. Drawing from a wide array of sources, we’ve assembled a database on three generations of Americans that includes not only their gender and ethnicity but information on the environments in which they were raised—like their parents’ religions, educations, professions, and political identifications. Then we have traced how the lives of the subjects actually unfolded. By mapping the foundational information of this large population alongside their eventual experiences, we can start to identify meaningful patterns that help us clarify how nature and nurture have combined to shape the lives they’ve led.”
The door opened, and Sybilla came in with a small ceramic cup and a thick green file, both of which she set on the table in front of HT.
“Were you offered something to drink? Do you want an espresso?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
Sybilla exited.
“Where was I?”
“The lives they’ve led . . .”
“Right! So let’s turn our attention to you and Annie. What we do here is we take the science I’ve just described, and we apply it to an individual case like yours. We use our analysis of your and Annie’s genomes, along with a little nudging, to refine the traits your child is going to be born with. We use the detailed profiles you’ve given us on yourselves to understand the environment in which your child will be raised. Then, by using those elements as a filter, we can identify within our proprietary database a significant cohort of people with a similar genetic makeup who were brought up in a similar environment and, based on their actual experiences, begin to anticipate—within a margin of acceptable error—the shape of the life that your child will lead.”
Having slowly leaned closer and closer to the table as he delivered this speech, HT now sat back in his chair and smiled.
“Crazy, right?”
Sam found himself sitting back in his chair too.
In retrospect, he’d had no idea what to expect from this meeting. When Annie had first suggested (in a rather emotional conversation) that maybe it was time to try IVF, it was Sam who had suggested they turn to Vitek—having heard about it from a colleague in the life science area, and then from a wealthy client who was a happy customer. But Sam hadn’t talked to either of them about the company in much detail. Once he and Annie had decided to go forward, he had filled out all of Vitek’s questionnaires to the best of his ability and dutifully generated a specimen at its lab in the city. But up until this afternoon, he had assumed that he and Annie would be able to pick their child’s sex, eliminate the risk of birth defects, and maybe get a marginal boost in IQ. A leg up in a competitive world, as it were. Not unlike sending your kid to a private
school or securing him a well-placed internship. But what HT was talking about seemed like a far more elaborate value proposition . . .
“Pretty crazy,” Sam agreed after a moment.
“Crazy amazing!” HT said with a smile. Then he shifted gears again. “I know you’ve been on the road for the last few weeks. So, while we’ve gathered all your background materials, we haven’t had a chance to talk about options. The good news is that Annie has done a lot of the legwork for you. She’s spent hours here, meeting with me and a few of the other counselors, going through our catalog of profiles, and she has narrowed the opportunity set down to three choices for you to consider.”
HT paused for emphasis.
“I’ve got to give your wife a lot of credit, Sam. Most people who narrow our universe down to three choices for the benefit of their husband or their wife make a classic mistake: they end up with three candidates who, in the grand scheme of things, are virtually identical. In a way, they’ve already made the choice about the child they want to raise—they just haven’t gotten around to telling their spouse.”
HT gave Sam a wink.
“In retrospect, he’d had no idea what to expect from this meeting.”
“But Annie . . .” HT laid a hand on the file that was still sitting beside his untouched espresso. “She has chosen three very distinct profiles. I mean, these three are totally different people who would lead totally different lives, and yet would all be children whom you two would be proud to have raised. Now, at this point, I could hand you our detailed biographs to give you a sense of the three candidates, but we’ve found that it’s hard for most people to translate all the relevant data into a mental picture. So what we’ve done is we’ve taken the information in the biographs and translated it into three short films which will introduce you to the three different children who, with our assistance, you and Annie could have. We call them projections. The films are each just a few minutes long, but they should give you plenty to think about, so that you and Annie can make the best possible choice.”