by Jim Geraghty
“This is a breathtaking garden,” she said.
His eyes opened, and he focused his gaze on her.
“What do you want out of life, Ava?” Silver asked.
It was the strangest interview question she had ever heard, but a pretty good one, she realized. She went with her gut answer.
“To change the world,” she answered, a bit ashamed at how far she remained from achieving that lofty goal.
“That’s good,” he said, his visage breaking into a smile as he rose to his bare feet. “That’s my goal, too.”
He put on his glasses, strode toward her, extended a hand, and as she took it he kissed her on both cheeks—nothing sexual or aggressive, just a bit more forward than she expected.
“Money doesn’t motivate me,” he said, unprompted.
“Few rich men are motivated by it,” Ava said. “Because they’ve already got it.”
Her answer seemed to surprise him, and for a moment he just looked at her, assessing her.
“Walk with me.” He strode down the path, and Ava saw the garden was much larger than she thought, curling around the building’s corner, vine-covered walls artfully hidden by trees and sculptures.
“We don’t build computers anymore. We figure out new things that computers can do,” he explained. “I hear you’re working small miracles over in the Beltway, using a Commodore 64 and some string.”
“Small miracles are all I can make with what I’ve got back there,” she shrugged, relieved that somebody seemed to know her work, as everyone else at the company seemed to regard her background, education, and experience with blithe indifference. “Walking through your offices, this place looks like Starfleet. Or maybe I’m Alice in Wonderland.”
“Clarke’s third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Silver said with some pride.24 “I like to think that what we do here, utilizing computers and the Internet in new ways, is really … a revolution. I need revolutionaries.”
She nodded, smelling some nectarine trees, and realizing that the only things she smelled on the way to the Department of Agriculture most days were car exhaust and the Beltway region’s insufferable pollen. “I’ve been on the establishment side of things for a little too long, I think,” she said. “I’m ready to kick-start some revolutions.”
“So, you’re familiar with Veblen and Romer?”
Ava shook her head. “Was I supposed to meet them before this?”
“Thorstein Veblen was an economist in the late 1800s who predicted engineers would someday run the economy, because the economy moved on technology, and they were the only ones who understood it,” Silver said, not looking at her. “He was right, as we all know. The other key visionary economist who shaped me—he’s still around—is Paul Romer. He says the economy is like a kitchen. Lots of people can cook, but only a few can take familiar ingredients and create something really new and incredible. Those dishes are wealth. Any society that wants to grow richer will encourage this, and these people are almost entirely nonconformists. Like me and everyone else here.”
God, no wonder I can’t stand working for the government! thought Ava.
Silver’s thoughts seemed to jump around in a way that amused Ava. “They call me founder, they call me CEO, but I really prefer the term ‘chief vision officer.’ I’m really a force of change—and that’s what I’m looking for in the staff around me—not beneath me, but around me. We’re a team. A network. Interconnected, not hierarchical.”
In her gut, Ava knew she was sold.
The next day, Ava received an e-mail from GlobeScape’s HR department, an offer that struck her as ludicrously generous, with an extraordinarily heavy dollop of stock options as part of the package. Ava responded that she felt very good about the offer, but wanted to take a day or two to think about it. Mostly she wanted to assess the logistics of moving and how quickly she could start. They responded to that message with a second offer that added another five thousand shares in stock options in the third year.
Everything about GlobeScape seemed a little too perfect so far. She kept waiting for the catch. Her father the engineer would have looked at all this and concluded that something wasn’t adding up, that there was some hidden factor that explained how the place could seem so ideal …
That evening, she dined with Raj.
“So what do you not like about where you work?”
Raj suddenly stopped making eye contact.
“I can’t think of anything in particular right now,” he said.
“Take your time,” she said, not wanting to let him off the hook that easily. She rested her face in her hands. She knew, instantly, that there was something about the place that Raj was hesitant to discuss. The whole place is a front for the mob, she guessed to herself. I’m in a dot-com version of a John Grisham novel.
“It can be a high-pressure environment,” he finally said, looking out the window, past her, at his plate, anywhere but at Ava. “We face very tough competition, a rapidly changing market, the IPO is coming up, and the stakes are very high. There is …” He looked for the right word. “Stress.” Finally his eyes refocused. “It would be insane to not take this job because of that, though.”
“I’m very tempted,” Ava said. “I’m probably going to do it, I love the place, it’s just … it’s a big change. Kinda scary.”
“Ava, this job could very well be your ticket to spending your life doing whatever you want to do,” Raj said.
She couldn’t suppress the roll of her eyes.
“That’s your Washington cynicism showing,” Raj continued. “An engineer who joined Netscape in July 1995 was worth ten million dollars by November. Eighteen months after founding, employees were millionaires.”
Ava had never worried that much about money; her parents had made good livings, NYU had been generous with scholarships, and at the Agency of Invasive Species, the pay was okay, nothing special, but the benefits were good. The offer from GlobeScape was huge. But Raj was talking about becoming independently wealthy in a very short period—and he had a particularly excited wide-eyed expression when he talked about this.
“In Silicon Valley, where you work is an enormous gamble. If you work for the right dot-com, within, like, three years you’ll have made enough money through stock options to do whatever you want in life for the rest of your life. If you pick the wrong one … the venture capitalists might pull the plug one day and you get two weeks’ severance. So there’s risk. But if you win … well, Ava, GlobeScape isn’t talking about ideas that will make millions. We think about ideas that will generate billions. To start.”
Ava nodded, more to herself than to Raj. “The benefit I’m looking forward to the most is going to work each day with enthusiasm.”
Ava couldn’t wait to tell her friends about her abrupt career change. She asked Lisa and Jamie to get together after work, at Café Citron, a Latin-fusion place near her apartment.
But the pair reacted with … less than full enthusiasm, and after the second “Are you sure?” Ava unleashed a long-repressed torrent of frustration.
“Look, I realized that if I don’t get out of that place soon, I’m going to die there, and I don’t want you two to die there, either!” Ava said to the recoiling faces of Jamie and Lisa.
“Look, Ava, good for you that you’ve got this great offer, but just because you hate your job doesn’t mean you have to trash ours!” Lisa glared.
“Don’t you think that’s a little harsh? Nobody dies because they’re working at the agency,” added Jamie.
“I don’t mean you’ll physically die there, just your souls,” Ava said insistently.
“Oh, just that!” shot Jamie.
“Jamie, every week we get together and you say that you feel like you’re Humphrey’s travel agent! Do you realize that it hurts us to see you so frustrated with your work? You were supposed to be halfway to becoming an international diplomat by now. Are you any closer to putting on the next Yalta Summit?”
“Malta,” said Jamie, sighing.
“And you,” Ava turned to Lisa. “You feel like you’re any closer to becoming White House press secretary?”
Lisa was indignant. “I’ve had two promotions, and my boss is a few years away from retirement—”
“Oooh, and then you can have his job! Are you really going to be happy writing press releases nobody reads?”
“I can manage my own career, thank you,” Lisa fumed.
“Look, if I didn’t care about you guys, I wouldn’t want you to leave. I woke up! I realized I was wasting my time here, and I think you guys are, too!” Ava said with an anger that surprised her. “We’ve all been conned. Nobody here wants new blood or new ideas or fresh perspectives. Everyone here wants to do the same damn thing they did the day before, and the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, until they retire. They’re just punching a clock. People like us don’t belong here, and we never did!”
Jamie looked down at her plate. She knew she had feelings similar to Ava’s, but Jamie wondered why Ava felt the need to punctuate a celebratory after-work get-together with ugly truths and deep frustrations.
But Lisa would have none of it. “Oh, there goes poor Ava, she’s just so special,” she sneered. “She’s got this million-dollar gee-whiz idea that everybody in the whole agency should listen to, and if they won’t let her have her way, then her special little mind and special little idea will go out to California where all the geniuses out there will listen to her …”
The mockery cut Ava to the bone.
“You bitter bitch,” she whispered in outrage.
Jamie tried to be the bridge-builder.
“You know, Ava, it’s easy for you to say we should just find another job,” she began. “You just had this great opportunity fall in your lap. We don’t have that.”
Ava reached into her purse, grabbed some bills, and threw them on the table, storming out.
From middle school to the Agency of Invasive Species Office of Communications, Lisa Bloom had always taken pride in her work. It was almost a given in Washington; the standard greeting when meeting someone at a party was “So, what do you do?” They didn’t mean hobbies or interests or what you found most fulfilling; your job title and organization were your identity. Lisa believed Ava hadn’t merely contended her job was meaningless but implied she was meaningless.
Of course, over the years Lisa shared many job frustrations with Ava, and in fact would, under the influence of sodium pentothal, admit that Ava’s warnings of a stagnant, unfulfilling career resonated. That made Ava’s rant across the bar table seem like a betrayal; her own doubts and fears, expressed in confidence and often after at least one glass of wine, were thrown back at her to suggest she had made a serious error early in her career, an error compounded each passing day.
Ava departed upon her long cross-country drive without a real goodbye to Lisa; the departure was marked with terse e-mails of “Good luck” and “Thanks.”
MARCH 1999
Once settled into the EasyFed team at GlobeScape, Ava worked with two other Web designers and debuggers, the cheery but soft-spoken Willow and the sarcastic Drew, who dressed in black every day except St. Patrick’s Day.
“Inspired by Johnny Cash or Richard Lewis?” guessed Ava.
“Richard Belzer,” Drew grumbled, not looking up from his screen.
Drew stood out only by the color of his plain T-shirts; much of the GlobeScape staff wore T-shirts, cargo shorts, and flip-flops in the office. Enacting a “casual Friday” policy would have required nudity.
The rare exceptions were when Raj appeared in an impeccable suit.
“The only time most people here dress up is when the Wall Street guys come to town,” Raj explained when he stopped by Ava’s cubicle. “Three years ago, we had to go to Wall Street for the investors. Now they come to us. Now we decide if we’ll let them give us money,” he laughed. “The last year has just been crazy. The VCs are just throwing money at us these days.”
Behind them, a Vietnamese immigrant paused, then resumed typing.
Ava had been perusing the company pamphlets and wondered who had the kind of money to put into something so vague. “If this business report were any more abstract, it wouldn’t have any nouns.”
Raj shook his head. “You just don’t get it. This could be as big as Microsoft, and bigger, too.”
“Pitch me,” she dared. “Pretend I’m a potential investor.”
He shook his head. “Potential investors aren’t as skeptical as you.”
“Somehow that’s not reassuring,” she teased, waving the investor packet. “There’s almost nothing in here that gives any indication of how GlobeScape will make those billions you keep talking about.”
“Our future earnings will look nothing like our present. Thus, you cannot determine our future value by looking at our present condition,”25 Raj said, with a bit of indignation.
“We will generate earnings by willing them into spontaneous existence,” cracked Drew from his adjacent cubicle.
Raj rolled his eyes. “The old way was generate profits, then attract investors. In the new era, we bring in the investors and that’s what fuels the profits.”
“Well, I can’t wait,” Ava chuckled. Finding housing had been harder than she expected, and finding rent at an acceptable apartment took a big bite out of her seemingly massive paycheck.
Still, she found the culture of GlobeScape and the EasyFed team welcoming: Wear what you want, set your own hours, just keep up with your workload. The workload—designing and building the site, testing it. debugging it, testing it again, and so on—was considerable, but Ava felt much more a part of a team than she ever felt at the agency.
“Considering how little time any of us spend at home, our landlords really ought to give us a break,” she quipped.
“Why go home? What’s there?” chuckled Willow from the next cubicle.
Ava sent a quick “HOW ARE YOU DOING?” e-mail to Jamie and Lisa.
Jamie offered a lengthy e-mail about her wedding planning; Lisa responded merely, “Fine. Busy.”
JUNE 1999
“Marketing just unveiled our logo,” Drew announced.
All of their Netscape browsers visited the same site simultaneously. A bizarre, beaked, pinkish-purple one-eyed squid stared back at them.
“What the hell is that thing?” exclaimed Ava in horror.
“Squiggy the Squicken?!” Willow read aloud.
“It’s like H. P. Lovecraft’s Happy Meal toy,” Drew said.
The Birth of Squiggy
Focus group data indicated that when consumers think of the “federal government” or “federal bureaucracy,” the animal that most often comes to mind is “octopus.” This is a choice with heavy historical symbolism, as the image of the animal reaching out and squeezing things with long tentacles has been used in cartoons, posters, and other political art, referring to Big Oil or Big Business, Nazis, Jews, Communists, etc. The image is always alien, unfamiliar, menacing, sinister, powerful; its actions are often hidden or hard to see.
When asked for the animal with the opposite qualities—nonthreatening, amusing, common, harmless—the animal that was mentioned most often was “chicken.”
As EasyFed is designed to make dealing with the federal government easier, we decided to take the image associated with negative perceptions of the federal government and give it the appealing, funny, harmless qualities associated with the opposite: Thus, the Squicken. Friendly, fun, and cuddly.
“It’s like the sushi from hell,” Ava lamented to Raj.
Ava and Raj weren’t a couple, per se. They hadn’t been dating, nor had their increasingly close friendship ever been interrupted by negotiations on the terms of exclusivity. But on a regular basis, she and he would get together at one of their places, order delivery food, and watch movies or just drink bottles of wine and talk into the night. Sometimes they had sex, sometimes they didn’t; sometimes they slept over, sometimes t
hey didn’t. Periodically Ava found herself wanting something more solid with him, but her nagging doubts persisted. Raj periodically would comment that his parents were urging him to get married, and that his having rejected an arranged marriage, they expected him to bring home a nice Indian girl.
And in perhaps the clearest warning sign of his flaws as a serious mate, Raj was an enthusiastic fan of Squiggy, the one-eyed mutant corporate logo that started to appear in Ava’s dreams.
“Squiggy is going to be huge,” Raj promised. “Pets.com was going to make money off pet supply stuff, but one of their biggest sellers is the sock puppet!”
Worse, Raj bailed at the last second as Ava’s date to Jamie’s wedding.
JULY 1999
Ava flew cross-country to Florida, where Jamie was marrying her Marine boyfriend; soon she would be Jamie Caro-Marcus; Ava joked that said quickly, her name sounded Greek.
Ava and Lisa ended up sitting at the same table. Ava wondered if Jamie’s wedding seating chart secretly intended to force some détente or reconciliation between the two women, but it merely reflected that her parents had obliviously lumped the brides’ “Washington friends” together at one table.
Lisa and Ava finally did find each other in a hallway off the hotel ballroom … after several glasses of wine and two champagne toasts.
“I’m really sorry the way we left things,” Ava began.
Lisa relaxed a bit. “I’m really glad you said that,” she said, “because I wanted to be happy for you going out to California, and after what you said, I couldn’t. I felt like you were laughing at us.”
“I would never do that!” Ava said. “I love you guys! We’ve been through so much crap together!”
“Ladies, use your inside voices!” said one of the older guests.
“I know!” Lisa said, ignoring the complaint. “And I want you to find your dream job!”
“Thank you! I think this is my dream job—I mean, if the launch goes right. Otherwise, it’s my nightmare job.”