Fishbowl’s employees knew what was happening. There was no reason to hide it. Someone coined the term ‘Fish Farming’ for it, and the second office soon became known as the Fish Farm.
Andrei spent very little time there. It was an entirely commercial place without a software engineer in sight. He was far more at home in the office at Embarcadero, which had expanded to occupy all five floors of the building. A new COO, Jennifer McGrealy, had been brought on board to replace James Langan, retaining Louise Sternberg as one of her executives. She had a strong commercial background in a number of tech firms and was fully aware of operations at the Fish Farm when she came on board. Jennifer saw it as a fascinating new revenue stream and, as part of her remuneration package, negotiated a deal that gave her a percentage of its growth.
Chris had been right – Fishbowl users seemed to have accepted that this was the shape of the world now. And he was right about the more efficient model crowding out the less efficient, just as the more efficient species in evolution crowd out the others. Rumours were circulating of other social media companies experimenting in Farming. Once someone started doing it, it seemed, everyone would. In addition to selling products, information gleaned from conversations on Fishbowl was fed back to the advertising companies, allowing them to tailor and improve their offerings. Naturally, companies were willing to pay for feedback of this quality. Jenn McGrealy soon saw the opportunity and built a lucrative business in customer intelligence.
Andrei didn’t keep track of the mounting revenues that Farming was bringing in. For him, all of this was merely a facet of Deep Connectedness, with information flowing in both directions, and the additional revenues it generated merely provided even more funds for Fishbowl to continue refining and improving the service. When interviewed, he spoke as if the massive valuations that were regularly put on the company were a side issue in comparison with the mission of delivering Deep Connectedness. To listen to him when he spoke at tech gatherings, it would have been easy to imagine he was still a dewy-eyed novice running a start-up in a dorm room without a cent of revenue to its name.
Sandy Gross, who was now in graduate school at Stanford and living with Andrei in the condo, supported what he was doing. If what wasn’t illegal was legitimate, and if this was the most efficient model – as the rumoured efforts to copy Fishbowl suggested – there was no reason to hold back.
In other respects, however, Andrei did pay something of a price. Farming had made him a controversial figure, and many of the internet moguls who had befriended him were now wary of being seen with him. His weekend visits to Jerry Glick’s barbecues came to an end. But Jerry, he thought, had always had something of the holier than thou about him, and Andrei had already been getting a little tired of him. Andrei was starting to build a small but vocal following in the tech press and amongst other young internet executives who saw him as a brave, radical visionary of the new world that the net was inevitably ushering in. It was hard not to begin to think of himself somewhat in this way.
Only one thing happened in the months after the Farm was set up to disturb his equanimity. And that came not from outside the company but from within.
By the time the Fish Farm had been set up and was functioning fully, it was over a year since Ben had finished his degree and been back full time at the company. One night he called to see if he could come around to Andrei’s apartment. He arrived at about ten o’clock. Sandy had gone to a club with some friends. Andrei opened the door for him in shorts and a T-shirt and found Ben holding a large, flat package wrapped in brown paper.
‘What’s that?’ asked Andrei.
‘It’s for you.’ Ben walked past him into the apartment, still holding the package. ‘Want a beer?’ he said, opening the fridge and helping himself.
They sat together with a beer each on the only sofa in the huge living room of Andrei’s condo. By now the paucity of furniture had become a source of pride for him.
Ben handed him the package.
Andrei looked at it warily. ‘What is it?’
‘The convention when someone gives you a gift is that you open it to find out.’
Andrei put down his beer and unwrapped the package. It was the napkin from Yao’s on which he had written his growth projections back in the January after Fishbowl was founded, the day he had asked Kevin and Ben to buy into the company. Ben had had it framed, with a brief description of the event and the date inscribed underneath.
‘I’m going to leave the company, Andrei.’
Andrei continued to gaze at the napkin, then put it down on the floor.
‘Andrei?’
‘I heard you.’ He looked at Ben. ‘Why?’
‘I’m done. I don’t really feel I offer anything. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be doing.’
‘You offer a huge amount. Ben, we wouldn’t have got anywhere if you hadn’t been there. Right at the start—’
‘That’s a long time ago now, Andrei.’
‘I still need you.’
Ben gave a short laugh. ‘You’ve got Chris.’
‘Chris isn’t the same.’
Ben shrugged. ‘Could have fooled me.’
Andrei felt a slight sense of panic. There had never been a time when Ben hadn’t been a part of Fishbowl. Even during his senior year at Stanford he had been involved. Andrei knew that Ben’s earlier functions at the company had dissolved and that he should have found a more concrete role for him. Ben had told him that he wanted more to do, and James Langan had talked to Andrei about the need for Ben to have defined responsibilities. Ben had no team, unlike Kevin, President for Getting Things Done, who was responsible for the hardest of the hard core of programmers, coding the most challenging innovations that went on the site. James had had Ben sit in on meetings of the customer intelligence team, and he had come up with ideas from time to time and overseen the research that followed. Some of the ideas eventually made it into practice, but that wouldn’t have justified the position he held or the salary he earned. But none of that, or that fact that Ben and he no longer spoke as they used to in the old days, meant that Andrei was ready to lose him. He had never even contemplated a time when Ben wouldn’t be around. He was one of the original three, the founding Stakhanovites. That was a bond that could never be broken.
‘We can be more specific about your role,’ said Andrei. ‘I know I should have done that.’
Ben shook his head.
‘We’ll give you some people. You can have a team.’
‘To do what?’
‘To do … I don’t know … stuff …’
‘Andrei, there are other things I want to do. I want to be a therapist.’
‘You want to listen to people whine about what their parents did to them when they were in diapers?’
Ben smiled. ‘You want to tell me?’
‘You really want to do that?’
‘Yeah, I really do. That’s why I finished my degree. I’ve got postgraduate training to do. It’s, like, it’s time for me to do it, Andrei. I’ve organized a place in New York on a doctoral program. And, to be honest … I’m just not that interested in Fishbowl any more. It’s not my thing like it’s your thing. It never was. I mean, it’s been a hell of a ride. I wouldn’t have missed it and I’m grateful you gave me the chance. Really. The day you wrote that thing …’ he gestured to the framed napkin on the floor ‘… the day you asked me to be a part of this … you only get one chance at something like that in life. In many lifetimes, and that’s if you’re lucky. You gave it to me. Not to mention nine per cent of … what was the latest valuation I heard? Fifteen billion?’
‘Something like that.’
‘How much is nine per cent of that, anyway?’
‘Around one and a third billion.’
‘I think I’ll be comfortable.’
‘You could have had fifteen per cent if your folks could have raised another twenty thousand.’
‘You know what? I’m not going to lose any sleep.’ Ben look
ed around. ‘And buy yourself some furniture.’
‘I’m OK.’ Andrei sighed. ‘You really want to leave?’
Ben nodded.
‘Let me ask you the Chris question. Is being a therapist the ultimate, absolutely most important thing you can do?’
‘I never liked that question. I don’t think anyone can really answer a question like that. There’s no one answer. There’s multiple answers.’
Andrei looked at him blankly. He didn’t see why there couldn’t be one answer.
‘Look, Fishbowl has been a hell of a ride. Really. It’s been awesome.’
‘OK, so if there are multiple answers, is Fishbowl one of the most important things?’
Ben sighed again. Andrei was looking at him as if it was desperately important that he said yes.
‘Is it?’
‘Maybe. Yes, OK, it is, one of them. But right now there are other things that have risen up the scale.’
‘So maybe Fishbowl will rise up again.’
Ben shrugged.
‘So maybe you’ll want to come back.’
‘Nothing’s impossible.’
‘So you should stay involved. That way, when you’re ready to come back, you can just step back in.’
‘Andrei, I can’t stay involved. I mean, we can always talk, I’ll always be there. But I have to be able to concentrate on other things. I have to be able to put my whole mind to it.’
‘You did that in your senior year and you stayed involved.’
‘No, I didn’t. It was hell. I was constantly torn. I couldn’t do anything properly. I hated it. I don’t know how I got through. I shouldn’t have come back. I should have left then. I knew it, actually. It’s my fault.’
Andrei was silent. He gazed down at the framed napkin. For some reason he thought of the notebooks in which he had written his thoughts about Fishbowl. He hadn’t looked at them since putting them away after the move from La Calle Court.
‘Hard to believe it was only three years ago,’ said Ben, glancing at the napkin as well. ‘It feels like longer. It’s like we’ve lived a lifetime.’
Andrei frowned. It felt like yesterday to him.
‘I just thought it wouldn’t hurt for you to have the evidence of how wrong Andrei Koss can be. A memento mori, if you will.’
Andrei didn’t smile.
‘That came out wrong. Look, I just thought you might like to have it. We don’t have much from those days. We should have kept the aquariums. Where did they get to, anyway?’
Andrei shrugged. Robinson House, La Calle Court, Ramona Street, they had each had an aquarium.
‘Is this because of Farming? said Andrei suddenly. ‘Is that why you want to leave?’
Ben shook his head.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t involve you. You just didn’t … you didn’t want to know about it.’
‘It’s fine. I’m over it. I didn’t want to be involved. You did the right thing.’
‘But you don’t like it.’
Ben shrugged. ‘Andrei, it’s your company. It’s always been your vision—’
‘It is because of Farming! Ben, we always said we’d debate freely and move on. That’s what always made it work.’
‘I have moved on.’
‘I don’t mean like that.’
Ben sighed. ‘It’s not Farming. OK. I mean, it’s not only Farming.’
‘People had the chance to say no and they didn’t.’
‘A lot of them did.’
‘No, not a lot. A tiny fraction. And they said it, but they didn’t mean it. They weren’t prepared to do anything about it. It’s a form of Deep Connectedness. We gave them a chance to say no and they didn’t.’
Ben watched him. ‘Andrei, do you really believe it’s about Deep Connectedness?’
‘Yeah. I do. Your conceptualization of Deep Connectedness was always a little too narrow.’
‘Don’t you think there’s a deceit involved?’
‘What deceit?’
Ben almost smiled. Yes, which deceit? The deceit involved in Farming, or the one going on inside Andrei’s own head? Could he really believe that this was about nothing but Deep Connectedness?
‘Ben, people know they might encounter palotls. What difference does it make if it’s a person or a company? If people don’t like it, they’ll leave.’
‘It’s not that easy.’
‘Sure it is. It takes about a minute to deregister.’
Ben took a deep breath. That was Andrei, he thought, no emotional intelligence. When you talked to him about deregistering, he thought of the series of mouse clicks involved, not the barriers inside someone’s head. But, still, Ben didn’t dislike him. They went back too far, and he genuinely admired Andrei for all that he had achieved. Ben didn’t want to dislike him, even if there had been moments in the past year, as Farming had been unveiled and it had become clear that Chris had finally supplanted him as Andrei’s confidant, when he had felt that he might start to.
‘Look, even if it is about Deep Connectedness,’ said Ben eventually, ‘you didn’t have to implement it.’
‘That would be hypocritical,’ replied Andrei, with no apparent irony. ‘It’s not my role to tell people what they can and can’t do. It’s my role to give people what they want as efficiently as I can.’
‘Andrei, you’ve got to have more of a moral yardstick than efficiency. You did after Denver.’
‘I was the same after Denver as I always am.’
‘You insisted on giving the content to the FBI when everyone was telling you not to. That had nothing to do with efficiency.’
‘Yes, it did. It was most efficient for the business.’
‘You said it was about responsibility.’
‘Exactly, and taking that responsibility was most efficient for the business.’
‘You said you’d only give it about something like that, not about a lesser crime. Isn’t it hypocritical to do it in one case and not the other?’
‘It was a business decision, Ben.’
‘James argued the opposite.’
‘Well, James was wrong. The best thing for the business was to hand over that data. That was the most efficient way of exonerating ourselves. And it worked.’
‘So, that was the only reason, was it? Because it was best for the business? Because it was efficient?’
‘Yes,’ said Andrei.
Ben gazed at him, remembering the phone call the night Andrei had written the Mea Culpa statement, the way Andrei had been agonizing. No matter what Andrei said now, it was the one time, Ben thought, that he had seen him driven by something other than efficiency, consistency, logic. Something deeper, he was sure, had been at play.
‘You’re better than that, Andrei,’ he said quietly.
Andrei looked at him blankly.
‘Andrei, you’ve got to have a measure that’s better than saying that what people want, they get. Sometimes people want the wrong thing.’
‘How can that be?’
‘Look at the country you were born in!’
‘The people didn’t want the wrong thing – the Communists didn’t let them say what they wanted. I’ve always said Fishbowl isn’t something three guys at Yao’s impose on the world. The Communists were the epitome of three guys at Yao’s, Ben. They were the exact opposite of us.’
Ben sighed. ‘Fishbowl’s just a business now, Andrei.’
‘No! Don’t say that! Money? How much do I need? How much can one person use? It’s about Deep Connectedness, Ben! Fishbowl will always be about Deep Connectedness! Farming is part of that. That’s the thing you can’t see. You know what the proof is? If it was about money, I wouldn’t have bothered with Farming. It’s high-end goods. It’s niche. For the trouble it’s worth, it doesn’t make enough. I’m bothering because it’s about Deep Connectedness. My responsibility isn’t to protect people from themselves. It’s to offer them Deep Connectedness in its truest and most varied forms. It’s exactly the same responsibility I had after Denver,
which was to do what I had to do to keep the Deep Connectedness of Fishbowl alive. They’re two aspects of the same thing. It’s not only to keep Deep Connectedness alive, but to make it as big and multifaceted as I can. And I don’t know how you can say we haven’t succeeded.’
‘I’m not saying that.’
‘Look at the people who talk to each other! Look at what happens when they get together! We’re changing the world, Ben.’
‘I told you, I’m not saying I disagree with that.’
‘So how can there be anything more important? How can you say there’s anything else you would rather be doing?’
‘Maybe I don’t want to change the world. Maybe I just want to help people change their lives a little bit at a time.’
Andrei was silent for a moment. ‘Why did you say it’s just a business? Take that back.’
Ben shrugged. ‘There’s a lot of business about it.’
‘Take it back, Ben!’
‘All right. Whatever. I take it back.’
‘It can’t be avoided. Deep Connectedness comes at a cost.’
‘I know it does.’
‘So I don’t understand your issue.’
‘Andrei, I don’t have an issue.’ Ben sighed again. ‘Look, it’s just time for me to move on.’
Andrei opened his mouth to say something, but didn’t. He glanced at his watch.
Ben didn’t want to depart in bitterness. When he said he was grateful for the chance to be part of Fishbowl, he meant it, no matter how unsatisfying the last year had been. He had much more to thank Andrei for than to complain about.
‘We’ve had some good times, Andrei. La Calle Court … that was crazy, That was a once-in-a-lifetime experience … You remember when Mike Sweetman offered you a hundred million dollars?’
Andrei didn’t reply.
‘Come on, Andrei. That was a hell of a day.’
‘That wasn’t when were at La Calle Court,’ muttered Andrei. ‘We were still in the dorm.’
Really?’ Ben laughed. ‘Was it that early? Amazing. I’ll never forget it. We’re at Yao’s and you’re sitting there telling us Sweetman’s offered you a hundred million – just like that – and you said no, and Kevin and me are sitting there thinking, What the fuck?’
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