ShelfLife

by Barrie Seppings

‘Because if you can,’ Charles leaned in as far as his girth would allow, ‘I’ll match it.’

  Trent tried not to let his disappointment show. A hundred k would vanish like smoke once they started to ramp up.

  ‘That’s not the actual investment, in case you were worried,’ Charles grinned, showing he’d read Trent like a menu. ‘It’s just to prop up the balance sheet and pump the initial valuation. Then I’ll recommend you to my investors. They’ll snap us up. Nothing surer.’

  ‘How quickly do we need to have this balance sheet funding in place?’

  ‘That’s up to you. But without it I can’t move forward. If I take this deal to my institutional investors in your current state of liquidity, they’ll use their incentives to flood the balance sheet, take you out of effective equity and put you on salary.’

  ‘They can do that?’

  ‘Can and will. It’s not pretty, but that’s how the game is played. I recently engineered exactly that play for another group of investors I consult to. Got them total control of a mid-tier e-commerce travel platform in Europe without breaking a sweat. You’re lucky you’ve got me as a gamekeeper, Trent. I usually play the poacher.’

  ‘And how much cash do you think they’ll want to invest?’ said Trent, trying not to sound like he was trying to sound disinterested.

  ‘If you’re looking for the payday, my boy, you won’t find it in this round. These investors give you the tools you need to reach your payday: office space, staff, marketing budgets, legal counsel. This way gives you far more bang for your buck, trust me.’

  ‘I learn something valuable from you every time we meet, Charles,’ Trent raised his glass.

  ‘Well I wouldn’t be earning my share if I didn’t bring something extra to the table now, would I?’ said Charles as they clinked glasses. ‘Now, how quickly can you get hold of your side of the cash?’

  ‘It’s kind of locked up at the moment. Technically I’m not supposed to touch it.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘It’s holding company stock.’

  ‘But the stock is legally yours?’

  Trent nodded.

  ‘The way I see it –’ Charles signalled to the waiter for another bottle, ‘you can either be a minority shareholder in your parents’ version of the future, or make a serious investment in your own.’

  ***

  ‘Breathe in. Feel the energy come into your body,’ said the slim, dark-haired woman as she padded through the room. The bodies on the mats around her inhaled, more or less in unison. Shanti let the earthy scent of the incense linger in the back of her throat, imagining that this was the energy the teacher spoke of. She wanted to believe she would be ready to tackle the change requests and updates and debugging and capacity upgrades and affiliate negotiations and tracking reports waiting for her back at the villa.

  ‘Shanti,’ a gentle voice pried her away from her task list, ‘don’t forget to breathe out again.’

  Shanti opened her eyes to find the teacher’s face hovering above her own, a ceiling fan circling without urgency in the background. A ripple of laughter rolled through the room and was subsumed by the waterfall of gamelan coming from the portable speaker on the window shelf.

  ‘Yes. Sorry, I was…’ Shanti offered.

  ‘Somewhere else. Be here with your body, Shanti,’ the teacher helicoptered out of view and resumed walking among the students. ‘It’s a beautiful temple.’

  ***

  ‘You want to do something tonight?’ asked the instructor quietly as she watched the others file out of the studio and into the early morning sun.

  Shanti had been lingering, pretending to look for something in her shoulder bag. ‘I do,’ she said with a smile, ‘but can I meet you later? The boss is on a trip to meet some investors. He keeps sending me emails with a hundred different requests.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll be at that new bar those guys from Zimbabwe opened just down from the temple. Called The Inverted Octopus, or something equally pretentious.’ The instructor settled on the bench next to Shanti, their shoulders almost touching.

  ‘What if I’m late?’

  ‘Then I might be a little bit tipsy.’ The instructor’s eyes widened as she moved closer. ‘And who knows what I might agree to at that point.’

  ‘Then I’ll make sure I’m not too early,’ Shanti purred, deliberately rubbing her shoulder against the instructor’s as she rose to leave.

  Shanti made a mental note to slap herself the next chance she got. The schoolgirl act was completely off brand and she needed to put a lid on it before anyone noticed. It wasn’t that Shanti was immune to the charms of her own sex, but this whole lingering glances, holding hands, getting-to-know-you business was new for her. Low-calorie stress relief was really all Shanti required right now, yet Amber’s relentless honesty and cosmic intensity was drawing her into a more emotionally-charged entanglement. It was thrilling, but it did not sit well with the task list. She wrestled the small motorbike off its stand, donned the open-face helmet and gave it a couple of sharp raps with her knuckles. It was time to get back to work.

  ***

  ‘You look happy this morning,’ said Gavin, almost as a question. ‘I’d say yoga agrees with you.’

  Shanti fumbled with her bag and blushed, but made no effort to hide it – her caramel skin did that already. Her ancestry had not always provided upsides. The racism she had encountered in Europe was relatively easy to avoid when breezing through a city for a weekender, harder when you take up residency. By contrast, her skin offered almost complete invisibility in England. For a girl who didn’t really belong anywhere, the nowhere she had felt most comfortable was in London. As a gentle breeze brought jasmine, incense and benzine fumes through the open windows of the villa, the cobblestone streets of Shoreditch seemed very distant indeed.

  ‘You see the note from Trent overnight?’ asked Gav. ‘He sounded pretty pumped.’

  ‘He sounded pretty drunk, actually,’ said Shanti, unlocking the small safe in the bottom of the kitchen cupboard to retrieve her laptop. ‘How come he suddenly had to rush to Singapore? Wasn’t he going to set up a meeting for us with guru Charles? We haven’t even met the guy.’

  Flipping open the laptop and waiting for the apps to load, Shanti distracted herself with a few mild leg stretches while conceding that Gavin’s choice of old-school Jamaican dancehall dub was probably the right choice for the morning ahead.

  ‘Site’s kinda slow this morning,’ Gavin called from the kitchen. ‘Anything crazy happen while we were asleep here in paradise?’

  ‘Yes and no. Traffic is up in Hong Kong. Looks like the expat bankers there have discovered Andy’s surfboat story,’ said Shanti, scrolling through her inbox. ‘We’re also getting a decent kick out of our appearance on BetaList yesterday. And apparently, a crew of low-level LA gangsters are planning on renting out their lives to middle class white kids. They’ve done the math and reckon renting will be more profitable than “dealing in crack and bitches”, which surprises me.’

  ‘Not really. That Freakonomics guy found the same thing. Unless you’re the king, you’re a slave.’

  ‘Is that a rap lyric, Gav?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Gavin.

  ‘Oh, hey, the Honduran government is considering banning us and we have an interview request from a PhD student at the University of Arizona.’

  ‘Interviews are Trent’s wheelhouse,’ said Gavin, returning with a plate of cut papaya and lime.

  Shanti stopped scrolling at an email with the subject line: Pre-emptive bandwidth throttle – urgent response required. It was from their hosting company.

  The pieces started snapping into place for Shanti. She scanned the email for key phrases: valued customer…high levels of traffic activity…payment history…ensure continued service… mutually agreeable solution…blah, blah and furthermore blah.

  Diving back into the safe, she retrieved a small ring binder, located the banking details, logged on and surveyed the fiscal landsca
pe of the official ShelfLife operating account.

  ‘Do you have any money?’ asked Shanti without looking up from the screen.

  ‘I got maybe a coupla hundred US on me. How much do you need?’

  ‘No, I mean like real money, that the company can borrow.’

  Gavin walked behind Shanti, leaning in to peer at her screen. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Our hosting provider has got us on throttleback because our traffic is spiking,’ she looked up at Gavin with a frown. ‘And we haven’t been the most timely in settling our account.’

  ‘Hey, making things look good is my department,’ said Gavin, raising his hands. ‘I thought keeping dollars in the bank was Trent’s job.’

  ‘Me too,’ she muttered, attacking the keyboard.

  ‘Did he say when he was coming back?’

  ‘Tomorrow if things go well.’

  ‘And if they go badly?’

  ‘Maybe never.’

  After several failed attempts to reach Trent, Shanti knew she would have to contact the hosting company. She made a cup of green tea and walked into the small courtyard to make the call.

  ‘I need to speak to someone about our hosting account. We’re on throttleback at the moment,’ she said as calmly as she could.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. Standard policy, you understand.’

  ‘It’s really affecting our business, so I wanted to see how we could go about getting un-throttled.’

  ‘You mean, besides paying your hosting bill?’

  She gave a small, nervous laugh. ‘Well, yes. We’re kind of pre-revenue right now, but we’re accelerating pretty hard and –’

  ‘We’ve been monitoring your company since you got out of beta. At your current trajectory, your next bill from us would be somewhere between twenty and twenty-five thousand dollars, US.’ He paused to let the figure sink in. ‘We’re very impressed.’

  ‘You are?’ Shanti’s tone conveyed more surprise than she wanted it to.

  ‘We have a special program designed for what we call our “high potential” customers. That’s people like you. I’d love to talk to you about the benefits of the program.’

  ***

  ‘We have an image problem,’ said the immaculately dressed woman on the other side of the large desk. The small meeting room was bleached by overhead fluorescents, which made two dancing rectangles of the woman’s fashion-forward glasses. It was impossible to read her eyes. Trent suspected the entire situation – the room, the lights, the eyewear – had been calibrated for precisely this effect.

  ‘I’m not sure exactly what you mean, Ms Lim,’ Trent said, not wanting to offend his hosts. Charles had prepped him the night before: keep it calm, keep it professional, and don’t start flirting unless she does first.

  ‘There’s no need to be polite, Mr Carlisle,’ said the younger, but equally well-tailored man sitting next to her. ‘The Google auto-complete results are quite specific: rich, clean, healthy – ’

  ‘And boring,’ Ms Lim cut in. ‘That’s the part we need to fix. It’s a directive.’

  ‘You’re saying the government wants Singapore to appear more exciting?’ Trent probed.

  ‘Just to be clear, my colleague Mr Shaw and I are not officially representatives of the Singapore Government. Our organisation is a private think tank and incubator. We are closely aligned with many government policies and priorities, but I think you’ll find that goes without saying for most organisations on the island.’

  ‘Of course. My apologies, Ms Lim. I’m just trying to understand your objectives so I can see where ShelfLife may or may not have a role to play. You were saying something about being boring?’

  ‘The issue we have is that the average Singaporean is convinced their life is boring, even though the life of the average Singaporean is relatively stimulating, when measured against the global index,’ said Ms Lim, adjusting her eyewear. ‘That has translated into a global perception. It’s affecting tourism, trade and, to a lesser extent, direct investment.’

  ‘Our three-year target is to have our name disassociated with boring,’ added the younger Mr Shaw.

  ‘We’ll evaluate our progress and recalibrate our goals at that point, depending on directives,’ said Ms Lim.

  ‘That’s when we’ll be aiming for exciting,’ Shaw jumped in, earning himself a withering look from his colleague.

  ‘It’s always good to have a plan.’ This was Trent’s third meeting of the day. He’d met with a government-backed incubator and a private VC firm, which sourced all of its funding from the government. The meetings had all been attended by similar pairs of Singaporeans: a young, enthusiastic chatterbox accompanied by an older, more circumspect leash-holder. This particular meeting also contained an older white man in a boxy tweed jacket and thick glasses.

  ‘A key plank of our strategy, Mr Carlisle, is to attract early-stage technology businesses to develop services that ameliorate the perception of a lack of vivacity among the population and the urban environment.’

  ‘I see,’ offered Trent, trying to disguise the fact that he didn’t.

  ‘Our innovation consultant, Mr Archer-Ellis, believes your company has developed a product that may offer this type of service. Which is why he sent you to us.’

  ‘We think your company is cool,’ Shaw enthused. He was stared down again by Ms Lim.

  ‘I’d like to introduce you to our macroeconomics consultant, Professor Jensen,’ Ms Lim motioned towards the greying white man in tweed. ‘He is helping us evaluate your offering against our selection criteria.’

  ‘Well, yes, can I just say that my official remit is actually to recommend fiscal policy to stimulate innovation, growth and – ’ the Professor was shut down by a raised finger.

  ‘And today, Professor,’ said Ms Lim, lowering her finger and taking up a sheet of paper from the desk, ‘we would very much like your opinion of Mr Carlisle’s offering.’

  ‘Let me bring up my report,’ said the Professor, tapping the screen of his tablet.

  ‘Executive summary, if you please,’ commanded Ms Lim.

  ‘ShelfLife appears to offer a low-risk, high-impact methodology that enables people to briefly experience the sensation of genuinely changing their lives, facilitated by an online platform, optimised for desktop and mobile,’ the Professor removed his glasses.

  ‘Would you say that’s an accurate description of ShelfLife, Mr Carlisle?’ asked Ms Lim.

  Trent sat back for a moment and smiled. ‘Broadly, yes. Although we prefer to say that ShelfLife lets our customers be who they really want to be.’

  The three interviewers on the other side of the table stared at Trent.

  ‘It’s just a tagline. We’re market testing it at the moment,’ said Trent. ‘We’re also testing “Rent the life you never dreamed you could own”. That one’s mine.’

  ‘Well, whatever the final slogan, our citizens want a service like that,’ said Mr Shaw.

  ‘Our citizens need a service like that,’ said Ms Lim, wresting the conversation back from her junior. ‘We’ve spent the last fifty years improving every possible standard of living metric. We’ve raised health standards, literacy rates, life expectancy, home ownership, private vehicle ownership, mobile phone usage and access to Starbucks.’

  ‘We’ve also reduced crime, disease, unemployment, working hours, commute times, traffic jams, distance to shopping malls and queue-times at amusement parks.’ Mr Shaw stabbed the table repeatedly, as if he were playing a tiny game of statistical whack-a-mole.

  ‘What my colleague is trying to say,’ again she admonished him with her manicured eyebrows, ‘is that we are running out of aspects of our citizens’ lives that we can visibly improve. Well, not us specifically, the government is. You see in Singapore everything is amazing but no-one appears to be happy.’ She sat back in her chair and removed her glasses.

  Mr Shaw started to speak, then caught himself. He looked to his colleague for permission. Ms Lim rubbed her eyes and waved for
him to continue.

  ‘Pending Professor Jensen’s assessment, of course, we’d like to suggest you base your company here in Singapore as part of our innovation program.’

  The Professor then launched himself into the conversation like a child chasing a ball onto the road. ‘And I welcome the opportunity to make that assessment, but before I do I need to make one thing clear.’

  ‘I think we’ll park your discussion of fiscal modelling and import duties for the moment, Professor,’ Ms Lim slammed on the brakes.

  The Professor sank back into his chair and removed his glasses.

  ‘We want ShelfLife to help our citizens experience…shall we say, change and excitement,’ Mr Shaw smiled. ‘Do you think you can help them scratch that itch?’

  ‘Yes, I think we probably could,’ answered Trent with a broad smile. ‘Provided the terms are equitable.’

  Mr Shaw moved to slide a crisp manila folder across the table. Ms Lim brought an index finger down to halt the document’s journey.

  ‘Before we open the kimono, so to speak, we need to know a little more about the inventory of your site.’

  ‘Of course.’ Trent could barely take his eyes off the folder.

  ‘Do you currently have any listings for, say, a physical therapist for a professional rugby union team?’

  The land of

  First World problems

  Shanti paced as the aircrew joked and fussed over their computers in preparation for the onslaught of human freight leaving Denpasar airport. She licked her dry lips and cursed the security guards who had insisted she dump her water bottle at the gate lounge x-ray check. With one eye on her carry-on bag, she performed a quick circuit of the lounge but found no taps. Her head started to hum. It had been an exhausting few days.

  All seats were occupied so she hovered by a large concrete planter box where her phone and laptop were charging, nestled within a forest of others. An insistent buzz emerged from the stack, prompting several lurking passengers to take half-steps towards the digital crèche to see if it was their device braying for attention. When no-one rushed to claim the vibrating phone Shanti figured it must be hers.