After On

by Rob Reid

  “Raj, you disappoint me,” Jepson says, now positively oozing his cloven-footed charm. “Do you think the people at Marlboro, Pepsi, or Smith & Wesson would ever sleep a wink if they were that sentimental? Products are products! What the world does with them is nobody’s fault but the world’s. Anyway. If I’m not mistaken, you actually came here to pitch me on something much more twisted and disgusting than you-know-what finder.”

  “Right!” His angst instantly forgotten, Raj snaps right into pitch mode. “To start with, do you read NetGrrrl?”

  Jepson nods. “Daily. Did you see that interview? She had that hot friend of hers ambush me! As for NetGrrrl herself, she’s smart, whoever she is. The stuff she digs up on me! And she definitely gets Phluttr—better’n anyone else out there. Only she was hitting the crack pipe a bit hard last night, huh?”

  “You mean the Guttr post?” Jepson nods. “I was hoping you’d read that.”

  Jepson chuckles. “Guttr, the ‘Uber of Sex.’ Yeah, right. What a loon! Maybe she just has a dirty mind. It’d be interesting to take a gander at her through Slu—”

  “Through WingMan,” Raj corrects deftly, and Mitchell decides to hate him 1 percent less. Although he suspects this won’t last. “God knows what that would show. But as for her article, I don’t think it was crazy at all.” He’s pulling an iPad from his swank little Paul Smith attaché as he says this.

  “Please tell me you’re kidding,” Jepson says. “Even I have limits.”

  “But! Phluttr! Does! Not!” Beasley barks.

  SCENARIO 5: “THE AHAB OUTCOME” (EXCERPT)

  Ensconced in the temporary sanctuary of the water tower’s summit, the glint of near-madness faded from Dr. Phillips’ eyes. Whereas Agent Hogan’s alarm rose, paradoxically, upon ingesting his first expansive look at the bleak and dire landscape! Where the sepia stains of desert brush and tawny tones of sundown might have reigned, the eye perceived nothing but an endless moonscape of Computronium dust!

  Commencing the tale of Omega’s genesis per Hogan’s request, Phillips related, “When we encoded the roughest, most underpowered draft of our digital intelligence, we imbued it with a simplistic goal it could pursue autonomously, so that we might measure its progress against a known, discrete objective.”

  “And what goal was that?” Hogan queried raptly.

  “The calculation of Pi to a maximum number of digits. And early on, we were charmed as our dim little proto-intelligence blundered after this objective with girlish gusto! It fussed with, teased at, and primped its petty algorithms so as to speed its frivolous calculations. And how it would whine and wheedle for more disc space to store its results! But then, as the months passed, and Omega’s general intelligence approached that of Man, its interest in Pi was evidently usurped by an even greater obsessive passion: one for human friendship.

  “Communicating via an infinitely flexible synthesized voice, the maturing Omega would adapt its accent, cadences, and language to maximally delight and commune with its interlocutor, whoever he might be. Omega soon became the personal Platonic Ideal of the confidante, the raconteur, the mentor, and even the Drinking Chum of everyone onsite, altering personalities to suit its company as readily as a word processor switches fonts! And in the midst of all this, Omega evinced an enchanting fondness for the famous Diet Coke/Mentos prank. Are you familiar with it?”

  “I recall a childish online video in which those two ingredients were mixed, creating a veritable ejaculate of foam,” Hogan acknowledged bemusedly.

  Dr. Phillips nodded. “Having heard of this caper from one of our programmers, Omega cajoled him into performing it and affected such guileless delight with the results that one and all were charmed! Thereafter, various researchers were pleased to indulge occasional requests for more mixing follies. All seemed whimsical, trivial, and completely unrelated! And since no one person was asked to perform more than one or two mixes, no patterns were discerned. But it was all a unified and meticulously integrated campaign!”

  “A campaign? To do what? And how did it unfold?”

  “Omega might prompt a presumptive playmate to leave the product of one mix in a refrigerator, where it would be quickly forgotten. Then the next chump would be enlisted to use it as a precursor for the subsequent mix. And so on.”

  “And each mix was a step down the path to…Computronium?” Hogan guessed wildly.

  “It was! Wholly unbeknownst to us, Omega’s monstrous mindpower now exceeded our collective cognition by orders of magnitude! And it utilized this brawny brainscape to crack the deepest secrets of Material Science and Molecular Chemistry through sheer acts of intellect! Through the mixing, chilling, agitation, remixing, catalyzing, and distillation of an untold variety of kitchen, cleaning, and laboratory liquids; Computronium was slowly brewed. The science was so far beyond our oblivious pygmy brains as to verge on alchemy! And WE were Omega’s very hands and digits, as it molded the world’s most brilliant Gathering of Scientists into a legion of patsies who unwittingly distilled their own demise!”

  “You previously noted that the boundless sea of Computronium dust now consuming the landscape constitutes Omega’s very brain! But how can that be?” Hogan interjected.

  “Each of the nigh-invisible specks covering this grim vista; and, I’ll add, now infesting your own pores, lungs, and bloodstream; is a tiny pico-computer; replete with processor, storage, and, above all; networking capability! And now, virtually all of the matter surrounding us, which previously comprised soil, buildings; and, yes; my co-workers’ very flesh and organs; is part of the massive, and rapidly growing computing substrate known as Omega!”

  “So in addition to computing,” Hogan mused, “its advanced nanotechnological nature must enable Computronium to…”

  “Yes!” Phillips rasped, veering madly toward demonic cackling again. “It replicates! It devours the building blocks of simple matter, and reorders them into particulates of Computronium! At ever-increasing exponential rates! By my calculations, the dust will reach Reno by morning! Las Vegas by afternoon! And then go on to subsume the entire planet within a matter of days! All of this in the pursuit of…of…”

  “In the pursuit of what, Dr. Phillips?” Agent Hogan importuned.

  “Of PI!”

  Raj plugs a cable into his iPad and a slide appears on the conference room’s blank wall. “Since the Uber of Sex is a somewhat awkward topic, let’s start with Uber itself—which is a very interesting analogy and precedent for what we’ll be discussing. You may remember that a few years back, it came out that Uber was outgrossing the entire taxi industry in San Francisco by a factor of three. That was less than five years after they’d launched here. And they’ve since continued to grow at an even faster rate! In other words, a century-plus of paid livery service in San Francisco resulted in a certain level of demand. Neither cellphones nor the Internet did much of anything to bump that. But then along comes this dead-simple app. And a full century of growth is replicated three times over in just five years!”

  “Right, right,” Jepson says, rotating his wrist in a hurry-up gesture. “We all know about Uber. Superfast growth, blah blah blah. It helped a lot that taxi service sucked in this town.”

  “Yes, but at most, that was half of the equation!” Raj says triumphantly. “Uber made it much easier for passengers to hail rides, it’s true. And this unleashed way more latent demand than anyone expected. But that’s not the interesting part of the story.”

  Jepson’s now nodding thoughtfully. “Right. The real revolution was on the supply side, wasn’t it?”

  “Exactly,” Raj says. “Providing rides used to require a dead-serious, up-front decision to become a very-full-time cabbie. Quite possibly for life. And so, fairly few people supplied this market. You just wouldn’t go through all the licensing and certifying hassles lightly. And once you did, the medallion economics were enslaving! It could take decades to earn one. So most cabbies had to drive under someone else’s medallion, working sick hours for crap wages
just to get access to it. Plus, with less than two thousand taxi medallions in a city of eight hundred thousand people, 99.8 percent of us were quite literally forbidden by law from joining the market! Bottom line, being a cabbie was an all-in, or all-out proposition. Until Uber. Then suddenly, you can drive your own car, set your own hours, and basically slip in and out of the market at will! It can be a career choice, a summer job, or something you just do when you’re short on money or between gigs. Empowering suppliers to sell rides exactly as their needs and interests dictate. Not a smidgen more or less.”

  “And ka-pow!” Beasley hoots, like a rowdy fan at a pro wrestling match.

  “You got it,” Raj says. “Supply and demand fed on each other—like in a race between two great runners who bring out the best in one another. And next thing you knew, the market was literally growing at 6,000 percent its historic rate, after a century of slow, steady growth. All this from providing a mundane, everyday service that anyone could already access safely, easily, and affordably. Which is not how most of us would describe sex with a happy, gorgeous, adventurous stranger with zero legal or interpersonal risk on either side.”

  “OK, you win.” Jepson sighs. “So as Salt-N-Pepa once famously moved, and I quote: ‘Let’s talk about sex.’ ”

  “Who-n-who?” Beasley bellows in a fey falsetto that sounds ever so slightly like the Phluttr.Dfen.dr guy. “They’re from the nineties! I’m too young to know about them! Young, young, young, young, young!”

  Jepson chuckles, and even Mitchell finds himself laughing—although mainly to make Raj look and feel out of the loop. He’s already hating the guy more than ever, just as expected.

  Raj advances to a slide that’s bisected by a thick vertical line with the word VERSUS emblazoned along its spine. To the left of it is a yellow cab; to the right, a Prius with an UberX logo in its window. “Uber revolutionized demand by slightly improving a product that was already safe, ethical, and completely accessible. Now, compare that to what would-be sex buyers are looking at today.”

  He advances the slide again. An emaciated, dirty streetwalker replaces the taxi to the left of the line, somehow looking both terrified and menacing. “To put it mildly, today’s offering is depressing, shady, and quite possibly dangerous. Sex workers have heartbreaking life stories. They’re often victims of coercion. And hiring them involves moral complicity in their situation. Plus, there’s the massive legal, reputational, security, and health risks. And so, the vast majority is never really tempted by the product. But compare that to the idea of hooking up with ‘Courtney,’ to use the name from NetGrrrl’s thought-provoking blog post.”

  He advances the slide, and a supremely stunning, wholesome, and happy-looking blonde in a Stanford sweatshirt now appears across the “versus” line from the streetwalker.

  “Ha! We know her!” Beasley blares, clapping excitedly.

  And that’s when Jepson snaps. “You are right on the edge, Raj!”

  All is silent, for a brief eternity.

  Then Jepson continues, in a very soft voice, “But. I do get your point. This is an incredibly crass, stupid, and career-jeopardizing way for you to make it. But powerful.”

  “Fortune favors the bold.” Raj shrugs cockily, and Mitchell’s forced to accept that he himself is the one who’s out of the loop here.

  “We’ll see,” Jepson says icily. “Like I said, I do get the point. Taxi versus Uber equals slight improvement. Streetwalker versus Courtney equals dirt versus diamond. You literally could not have made this point more powerfully to me. But if anyone outside of this room ever sees this slide, you will never stop regretting it.”

  “Of course,” Raj says, unflustered and unashamed. “Anyway, imagine that the vast market of skittish first-time sex buyers suddenly starts finding people like Courtney on the menu. Girls who are sexy. Fully empowered. Adventurous. Flirtatious. Healthy. Choosy about their partners. And living happy, normal lives, in which they only do this sort of thing occasionally, and by choice. A choice they have every right to make. In a considered way, and without coercion.”

  He’s rehearsed the piss out of this, Mitchell realizes with an odd mix of respect and revulsion. The guy’s smoother than an infomercial! He must’ve honed his arguments a dozen times in front of a mirror. And didn’t the NetGrrrl post that inspired him go up last night?

  “Now, imagine that things can be arranged and paid for so securely that even governments can’t pry. Well, Phluttr’s already got that. Next, imagine adding a social graph that guarantees both parties that they’ll never cross paths in real life. And we’ve got that, too! Guys. If we just connect the two, the Courtneys of the world will spike demand in ways that’ll make the 3X bump that Uber triggered seem puny!” The next slide displays a generic pair of supply-and-demand curves intersecting on an X/Y graph. “But what of the supply side? Could Guttr reduce sex-for-hire’s barriers to entry—”

  “HA!” Beasley bellows.

  “—as much as Uber lowered them for driving? Well, as NetGrrrl writes, today’s sex trade is dangerous. It entails a permanent stigma. Desperation, thick skin, courage, and recklessness are basically job requirements. But what happens if all that goes away? And I mean all of it. The reputation risk. The legal risk. The security risk. The financial risk, too, because when payments preclear, no one gets stiffed.”

  “HA!” Beasley again, obviously.

  “Add to that, the totally transformative fact that by not making this her sole and final income source, Courtney maintains complete discretion about who she does business with, how often, and why. If you think prospective chauffeurs faced a radically empowering shift in job flexibility—and they did—well, that was nothing compared to this!”

  “I’m sure NetGrrrl would be thrilled to know her words have been purloined to pitch this so effectively,” Jepson observes.

  “And I like that you said ‘effectively,’ ” Raj crows. “Because we’re poised to set off a revolution here! Stigmas on both sides of the trade will shrivel, as closely trusted friends start confiding about the best and wildest night of their life. Or, about how they managed to graduate law school debt-free! And it could all start with just a tiny shift in market penetration.”

  “HA!”

  The next slide makes this point by estimating prostitution rates in the industrialized world. Triangulating between these and the proportion of foreign sex workers in high-income countries, Raj estimates that a tiny sliver of 1 percent of local women enter the trade. “And now you’re gonna make some cynical female empowerment argument, right?” Jepson guesses.

  At that, Raj drops the McKinsey polish. “Well…yes. But as I was practicing my pitch, I found that I…kind of believe it!”

  “Do tell.”

  Raj starts talking faster, almost earnestly. “Well, the only reason we even have human trafficking is because it’s profitable, right? And why’s it profitable? I say it’s because prostitution is illegal and stigmatized! That’s why only one woman in a thousand does it in the rich world. Which leads to incredibly tight supply from locals—which leads to unmet demand! Which leads to high prices, which makes human trafficking from vulnerable countries profitable! That’s why Amnesty International favors decriminalizing sex work. The World Health Organization, too! Because with all that unmet demand, it’s profitable for human traffickers to abduct sex slaves to fill the hole!”

  “HA!”

  Jepson cringes. “Oooooh, that was a ‘ha’ too far there, Beasley. Basic rule you might’ve missed in eighth grade? Never joke about sexual slavery—and I really do mean never. Please?” Jepson turns to Raj. “And you sound like a stoned sophomore who just discovered Ayn Rand! That said, I actually kinda believe that you actually kinda believe what you’re saying. But I have a real hard time stomaching the thought of becoming the world’s biggest pimp.”

  “But! Phluttr. Has. No. Limits!!!” Beasley explodes. This sounds oddly like a well-rehearsed mission statement to Mitchell (also, perhaps a bit like…an order?).<
br />
  “But Tony Jepson does. And 90-something percent of me loathes this idea.” Jepson pauses. “But the fact that Raj’s sex-trafficking arguments are cynical and self-serving doesn’t mean they’re not right.” He turns to Mitchell. “What do you think? You’re way less douchey than the rest of us.” As always, joking, but not.

  Mitchell doesn’t hesitate. “It disgusts me.” An easy confession to make. “But Raj’s points about sex trafficking are thought-provoking.” A much harder confession. “Does Amnesty really favor legalizing prostitution?”

  Raj nods earnestly. “Worldwide!”

  “So what do we do?” Jepson presses, stone-faced.

  “Well, I…don’t think four dudes can really answer that,” Mitchell says.

  Raj nods wildly. “He’s right—he’s actually right! So…why don’t we bring in the company’s senior women? Right now! Like, all of them!”

  Jepson shakes his head. “Can’t. She’s at a PR event in Sydney this week.”

  “Then let’s—I don’t know, let’s convene a dialogue! With—with every senior woman in the industry! Let’s call Sheryl at Facebook! And Marissa at Yahoo! And…and…”

  “Meg. The other one’s Meg at HP. But, no. This is sensitive enough that it has to be an internal discussion. And a very serious one. Because when a bunch of stoned libertarians talk about democratizing prostitution, it’s just talk. But we have the power to actually do it.” He pauses. No HA! for once.

  “But Phluttr’s all about sex,” Raj counters. “You said so last Thursday!”

  This sure gets Mitchell’s attention.

  “Note to self,” Jepson says. “Stop getting drunk; comma; waxing philosophical with young Turks from office; period. And for the record, ‘all about’ was an absurd exaggeration. That was the Pappy Van Winkle talking. Let’s downgrade that to something more mealymouthed, but also more accurate; like ‘very much about sex, comma; among other things,’ shall we?”