After On

by Rob Reid

  Interviewer: Hey, Phoundr! I’m filming this for my YouTube channel, d’you mind? (giggles moronically)

  PHOUNDR (Not minding one bit): Do I have a choice?

  Interviewer (giggles, giggles, giggles): I was hoping to ask a few questions about your, like, philanthropy! [EDITOR’S NOTE: IN AN ANNOYINGLY SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO SOFTEN HIS SKEEZY IMAGE, THE PHOUNDR HAS PROMISED TO MAYBE SOMEDAY DONATE SOME SHIT TO BALTIMORE, A CITY I CAN ALL BUT GUARANTEE HE HAS NEVER SET FOOT IN (UNLESS YOU COUNT BWI AIRPORT, AND EVEN THAT’S UNLIKELY, AS I’LL BET HE’S A DULLES INTERNATIONAL GUY).]

  PHOUNDR: Well, I believe it’s important to give back if you’ve done well. You know, from the meritocracy.

  Interviewer: Wow!! So, how’d you pick Baltimore as your, like, recipient?

  PHOUNDR: I grew up near DC. And Baltimore was our Oakland.

  Interviewer: God, that’s noble.

  PHOUNDR: Thank you. You know, self-empowerment begins in youth. I did Junior Achievement, myself.

  Interviewer: And just look at you now! So that’s why you promised to build the…Baltimorians all those youth centers?

  PHOUNDR (ogling Interviewer’s pert upper torso): Yep. Yep.

  Interviewer: Will you be funding them with, like, cash?

  PHOUNDR: I’ve actually bequested a certain percentage of my personal Phluttr stock. This should be worth far more than cash over time. Making this a way to be even more giving.

  Interviewer: So it’s like a…charitable remainder trust?

  PHOUNDR: (pauses). Uh-huh.

  Interviewer: That’s, like, so tax-efficient (giggles dizzily).

  PHOUNDR: (pauses). Yep.

  Interviewer: (suddenly dead serious) So unless Phluttr actually achieves liquidity, you won’t ever fund any youth centers.

  PHOUNDR: (pauses). Nope.

  Interviewer: Cynics might dismiss this as a stunt since it won’t actually cost you a dime unless you get so crazy rich it won’t matter.

  PHOUNDR: (pauses). They might.

  Interviewer: Anyway. What neighborhoods did you spend the most time in as you researched Baltimore’s needs?

  PHOUNDR: (Awkward silence).

  Interviewer: I mean, apart from Terminal C?

  PHOUNDR: Next question?

  Interviewer: Sure. How’d you manage to get so rich starting a failed company during the first Internet bubble?

  PHOUNDR: I don’t consider ePetStore.com to be a failure. Many of our most radical ideas are now commonplace.

  Interviewer: You mean like…using colors on webpages?

  PHOUNDR: (Awesomely long pause). For instance.

  Interviewer: After that patent was invalidated, it became Exhibit A for reform laws that finally put many egregious patent trolls out of business. Like you! But damn, you sure made a fortune before that.

  PHOUNDR: Was that a question?

  Interviewer: My question’s about the fortune you made. Which is, where’d it go? You were killing it, forever! And then you declared bankruptcy. You didn’t just…spend tens of millions of dollars. Right?

  PHOUNDR: I didn’t answer that for Charlie Rose. So why would I answer it for a—what are you, a blogger with an iPhone?

  Interviewer: It’s a Galaxy. Anyway, there’s a rumor that you stumbled into an exotic derivative contract connected to bitcoin. And that when the feds seized the BitDAQ Exchange, the market got so squirrelly and illiquid that your derivative’s pricing somehow created infinite liability for you. That’s literally the term I heard—“infinite liability.” Total black swan stuff.

  PHOUNDR: Who the hell told you that?

  Interviewer: Sounds like I’m warm?

  PHOUNDR: Let’s just say you’re a lot smarter than Charlie Rose. Seriously! But what’re your sources?

  Interviewer: I got it from the girl I’m shooting this for.

  PHOUNDR: Wait. You’re not working for…NetGrrrl, are you?

  Interviewer: Bull’s-eye.

  PHOUNDR: Coooool! Hey, I’m dying to know, who is she?

  Interviewer (mimicking Phoundr): Next question?

  PHOUNDR: OK, then at least tell me about her sources! I basically admitted that you guys nailed me on the bitcoin option. So—well played! But the least you can do is tell me where she got that.

  Interviewer: Russian black hats. Very connected ones. NetGrrrl makes some odd friends at hacker cons.

  PHOUNDR: (laughs, almost sweetly). Well, hats off to her, she’s good. And remind me not to cross her!

  Tarek ushers Danna and Kuba out of Jepson’s conference room for a quick spin around the offices en route to their new desks. For now, Phluttr’s mostly situated in a nondescript B-grade high-rise in the financial district. Rumors of a brash urban campus worthy of its glitz and self-importance have been lighting up the real estate blogs. But construction and permitting will take years. So for now, hundreds of world-class techies are stranded in the bland output of a midbudget, midseventies architect who blueprinted with actuaries in mind. It feels fundamentally off—like penning up leopards in a suburban backyard.

  “Don’t I know you?” Danna asks, as they head toward the elevator bank.

  Tarek sighs, then confesses, “We met briefly over a discussion of Prohibition-era literature at Bourbon & Branch. Right before you guys kicked our asses. Which we completely deserved.”

  She all but rears back. “Oh, it’s you. I didn’t recognize you without your augmented reality glasses on!”

  Tarek shakes his head. “I was the idiot sidekick who didn’t know the Black Keys don’t have a bassist. The guy wearing the glasses was Raj, a co-worker of mine. Or, I guess I should say, of ours, now.”

  Danna stares hard at him. “Right. Sorry to mix you up. It was dark in there, and you and I barely talked. But now that we have that cleared up? Fuck you.”

  Tarek sighs again, visibly miserable. “A lesser man would blame it all on Raj. And I’m definitely that lesser man! But since you clearly won’t let me get away with that, I’ll courageously accept full responsibility.”

  “Thanks, Galahad. You’re off the hook if you let me play with those glasses.”

  Tarek looks more miserable still. “I can’t, until your company’s acquisition formally closes, and you guys become official employees, which’ll take a few more days. And even then, you’ll have to sign an NDA the size of a phone book before you can touch those things! But it’ll be worth it, trust me. Also, Kuba’ll be working in the PhastPhorwardr with me, so you can see them whenever you come by to visit.” They’re now at the elevator bank, and Tarek hits the down button.

  “Wait. Aren’t I in the PhastPhorwardr, too?” Danna asks.

  Tarek shakes his head. “Jepson has bigger things in mind for you.”

  “Bigger than the PhastPhorwardr? But isn’t that the shit around here?”

  “I said bigger things, not cooler ones. You’ll be working with O.”

  “Whoa.” Danna shudders. “That bald Brooklynite who’s always spouting off in ArsTechnica?” Phluttr’s lead designer and his transeastern gibberish are all over the industry blogs these days. Jowly and perfectly hairless, O is the living, breathing doppelganger of his own printed name. Particularly using Phluttr’s corporate font, in which the capital O (handily prominent in the phrase “Social Operating System™”) is conspicuously shaped like a jowly, shaven head.

  “Yeah,” Tarek says. “Just between us, O’s got great design sense—but he’s not what you’d call ‘great’ at distilling it into apps or websites. So we’ve been leaning way too hard on agencies.”

  “Wow, you’re really selling me on working for him!”

  “Well, paying up for all those outsiders is getting old. And Jepson’s blown away by your design chops, as you saw. So…”

  “Wait!” Kuba says, just as the arriving elevator dings, briefly giving things a game-show feel. “Are you saying Danna’s going to…run design?” He beams proudly.

  “Well, not immediately. And definitely not officially, because O’s like this grea
t, big, monster electromagnet for PR! But if she rises to it? Sure!” Tarek waves them into the empty elevator. “We have a huge vacuum over there, and Jepson’s definitely one to bet big on someone when his gut tells him to, regardless of their age. And though the man’s definitely got his faults, his gut’s pretty reliable, believe me! He’s also got good design sense himself. And Danna’s work on Dribbble blew him away, so…” The elevator doors open, and they pile out on twelve to visit the company’s cafeteria.

  “So then why’d he mess with me like that?” Danna asks. “Pretending to think I’m in PR just because I’m a woman, and whatnot?”

  “That’s just Jepson,” Tarek says. “He’s constantly, constantly, constantly messing with you to keep you on your toes. Except when he’s not! Which makes it even harder to stay on your toes, if ya know what I mean.”

  “I definitely don’t.”

  “Well…occasionally, the ridiculous stuff he says is from the heart. Which means he can be completely outrageous or politically incorrect when he feels like it. Which is handy, because he’s a somewhat outrageous, politically incorrect guy. But only somewhat! So it takes lotsa practice to figure out when he’s being serious. And you could pretty much say Phluttr’s the same way as a company.” He starts herding them toward the cafeteria’s entryway. It smells impeccably delicious.

  “Like that press release about Iceland,” Danna asks, “or the silly spy stuff, with the black helicopters?”

  “Exactly. And the latter case may illustrate a deeper aspect of this.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Well…I’m still kind of new-ish at Phluttr myself,” Tarek says, idly inspecting a palette of star fruit and kiwis (the produce section seems to be in some kind of arms race with Whole Foods). “But there’s something genuinely creepy going on around here. So Jepson may actually be serious when he seems to joke about that spy stuff. Unless he isn’t. No one’s quite sure! And everyone secretly gets a kick out of not being sure, because it’s kinda fun to think you might be part of some top secret operation, right? So we all end up joking about the creepy stuff all the time. Which makes it feel like it must be a joke. Which, when you think about it, is truly ingenious if it actually isn’t a joke!”

  “What creepy stuff?” Kuba asks.

  Tarek waves broadly with both arms. “Look around a bit after you settle in, then you tell me. Everyone has a slightly different take on what seems off, which is part of the game. Or the genius, I guess. But look at some of the weirder data we collect. The weirder markets we’re pushing into. And then, of course, there’s Beasley.”

  “Who?”

  “Beasley. Beasley! That weird, weird, weird, balding redheaded guy who was just in the meeting with us. He’s been here forever, pretty much since the beginning. And he’s number two in the org chart. But no one can figure out what he does! Other than lurk around Jepson constantly. It’s almost like he’s babysitting him. Or watching him! He’s also always scribbling—longhand, and long form. Some people say he’s writing a book about Phluttr.”

  “A book about Phluttr?” Danna asks.

  “A book about Phluttr.”

  “Seriously? But why would anyone write a book about Phluttr?”

  “Well, maybe you should ask Beasley,” Tarek says, shrugging. “He’s definitely writing something, I’ll tell ya.”

  “Weird,” Danna says.

  “Yeah, but that’s nothing,” Tarek says, growing incautiously candid as he bonds with his new friends. “If you really want to freak out, see if you can get access to your Phile! Most people can’t. But you may be able to pull it off since Jepson likes you.”

  “My Phile?” Danna says, cringing at the very sound of this. “What’s that?”

  “The full record of everything Phluttr knows about you. All of it legally gathered, according to an entire floor of lawyers, one block south of here. And some of the data goes back decades before Phluttr was even founded! The company’s constantly buying databases, filing Freedom of Information requests, and so forth. And they’ve built up some crazy archives.”

  Danna freezes, looking flat-out aghast. As she’s apparently gone mute, Kuba takes over. “Have you ever seen a Phile?”

  Like a prole about to gripe about breadlines in a police state, Tarek carefully looks both ways, then almost whispers, “From helping out on the Giftish.ly acquisition, I saw yours, Kuba. And Mitchell’s! Because when we buy companies, we always check the Philes on the founders, to make sure we don’t get into business with any felons.”

  “Well, you have now,” Kuba says coldly.

  Tarek shakes his head. “Come on, you were never convicted of anything. You weren’t even accused of anything! You were just deported. And in any event, your record was expunged before they let you back into the country, so no one’ll ever know about any of it.”

  “Except Phluttr!”

  “Well, sure. But Phluttr knows everything.” This without a hint of irony or self-conscious exaggeration.

  It’s all Danna can do to keep from trembling. “Did you, uh…see my Phile?” She somehow maintains a poker face and (mostly) a poker voice.

  Tarek shakes his head. “No. We just do deep dives on founders, like I said.”

  Kuba rarely gets mad but is now seething. Not at Tarek, but at Phluttr. He was snooped upon so aggressively for so long—first by Polish commies, then later by the NSA—that he defensively boycotted social media for years. This amounted to absenting himself from his generation’s public commons. Which was no small sacrifice! He joined the main social networks as a practical move after co-founding Giftish.ly (seeking business partnerships with them would’ve been awkward otherwise). But being highly wary of Phluttr, he made that profile especially minimal. And yet! The company has still amassed more data on him than every cop and spy on the planet! “How far back does it go?” he asks, icily.

  “Y-your Phile?” Tarek stammers, realizing too late that once again, he’s been too forthright a bit too early into a friendship (a pattern that goes clear back to middle school). “Please don’t get me fired by telling anyone that I told you! But…well, because you’re co-founders, I was shown lots of digital communications between you and Mitchell. And because the two of you go back so far, some of it was…old. Really old. Especially the SMSs.”

  “How old?”

  “Um…high school?”

  Kuba’s eyes widen. And being Kuba, he pivots instantly from offended-civilian mode to fascinated techie. “How did they get that?” he marvels.

  Tarek shrugs, basking in the palpable tension drop. “Once something’s recorded digitally, it never really goes away. And then, you can count on Phluttr to find it. Eventually.”

  Kuba turns wistful. “I’d like to see those transcripts, actually. That was a really happy time for me. High school, I mean. I met my wife then.”

  “Did you ever,” Danna says sweetly. She’s decided that Tarek’s an honest soul and is now taking his word that he didn’t see her Phile. And what a happy topic to shift to! She just adores Kuba and Ellie’s story. Partly because Ellie has become something of a big sister to her over the past year—maybe even a cool young aunt! A treasured confidante, for sure. In most ways, Danna’s first. Oh, Ellie! Danna adores and respects her. And like many adoring youngsters, she’s conjured an idealized vision of her adored mentor’s history. One that’s almost saintly. And in this case, oddly chaste.

  Kuba chuckles. “Actually, you know what would be great? If you could dig up the old texts between Mitchell and Ellie. From when they were a couple! Or better yet, the ones from right before they started dating!”

  Those very texts almost singed Tarek’s prim eyeballs when he read through them—above all, the ones sent by that sex-mad nymph, Ellie! But before he can embarrass himself by mentioning this, Danna voices a request for clarification. “WHAAAAA­AAAAA­AAAAA­AAAAA­AAT?” The girl can holler like a banshee when the spirit moves her, and boy, is it moving her now. Her voice stuns an entire quadrant of the cafeteria,
causing a guy at the condiment table to spill Kewpie mayonnaise and elderberry syrup all over his quinoa frittata!

  “Wait,” Kuba says, genuinely baffled. “You didn’t know they used to date?”

  Well, of course she didn’t know, you social moron! But Kuba—being Kuba—doesn’t know she didn’t know. He just knows he hasn’t mentioned it to her himself. And he isn’t clueful enough to realize that nobody else would have mentioned it to her either. Mitchell never mentioned it because, close as he feels to Danna, she was a goddam employee until the acquisition, and founders don’t talk to goddam employees about love triangles involving other founders (duh)! And Ellie never mentioned it because however sisterly (or niecely) Danna feels toward her, Ellie’s feelings toward Danna are downright maternal. And no mommy, ever, wants her little one to think she used to fuck a certain uncle!

  Not that anything would shock Danna, really. Not that anything could shock her! Because it’s not like Danna hasn’t engaged in dozens of crazy acts for every naughty little thing in Ellie’s past. Well. However you cut it, this is all news to young Danna. And Kuba has no idea how very, very big the news is. Because again: he’s Kuba (I mean, I love the guy. But he’s so tone-deaf sometimes)! And even if he weren’t, he’d have no way of knowing how Danna’s history colors her own presumptions about what two (or three, or even more) people tend to do (and do, and do again) the instant they’re alone behind closed doors. So he just chuckles obliviously, saying, “It’s a great story. Those texts! And the way they started!”

  “What texts?” Danna says flatly. “And how did they start?”

  “Well, it all began in high school. In a Creative Writing class Mitchell and Ellie took together. And those texts were mighty creative, I’ll tell you!”