The Big Disruption

by Jessica Powell

  “Let’s ask women what they think after the beta launch,” Roni said. “It would take too much time to do it now, and anyway, there’s an increasing body of legit scientific research that demonstrates that women don’t ever know what they want. Sound good?”

  Arsyen nodded calmly, but inside he was anything but.

  “Excuse me, bathroom!” he shouted, and leaped up from his seat, dashing into the men’s room across the hall.

  He locked himself in one of the stalls and pulled out his phone.

  Arsyen looked up “product manager” on the internet and, after a few minutes of reading, felt his confidence return.

  There was really no reason to worry. Product managers were apparently in charge of the big picture, deciding why a product was needed, what it would be, and how the company could bring it to life. As one blog post put it:

  As a product manager, you are tasked with leading a team and bringing an idea to life. You are the visionary who must direct not just engineers but also marketers, sales teams, lawyers, and others. You are a mini-CEO, the ruler of your product!

  “Just like king!” Arsyen shouted to the empty stalls.

  Of course, there is one important difference: You have no direct authority over anyone, and you must lead through influence.

  “Hmmph, more like queen,” Arsyen grumbled. But then he reconsidered: Other than the receptionists, he had yet to meet any women at Anahata. He probably didn’t need to worry about being treated like one of them.

  Arsyen skimmed a few more blogs, trying to memorize the P.M.’s language — words like “action items,” “B2B solutions,” and “use cases,” and then something mystic called a “roadmap,” which as far as Arsyen could tell had little to do with either roads or maps. There was an even greater obsession with “alignment,” a concept Arsyen struggled with as his translation app told him that the equivalent word in Pyrrhian was pokaya, meaning to place the chicken hatch parallel to one’s home.

  Suddenly there was a banging on the stall door.

  “Arsyen? You in there?”

  It was Sven.

  “Listen, you’ve been in there long enough. Only senior engineers get to work in the bathroom. Roni has some sort of roadmap question for you, so come on back.”

  Arsyen washed his hands and returned to the cubicle, armed with his new vocabulary.

  When Roni asked Arsyen about prioritization, Arsyen asked, “Is this on the roadmap?”

  When Sven suggested adding images of attractive women to the car dashboard, Arsyen rubbed his chin.

  “Does this align with our strategy?”

  When all three looked to him for an opinion in how best to implement Symmetry Enhancement, Arsyen stood and put his hands on his hips.

  “Does this align with the strategy on our roadmap?”

  No one seemed to notice anything was amiss. If anything, it seemed like product managers just asked questions that other people had to answer.

  “Good brainstorm, everyone. Let’s break for lunch,” Roni said. “Oh, and Arsyen, this is still very confidential, so let’s get this whiteboard cleaned off.”

  Arsyen jumped up and began to wipe the whiteboard clean as Sven and Jonas scooted their chairs back to their desks. Arsyen was pleased that product managers seemed to have some janitorial tasks in their role. Maybe this wouldn’t be such a stretch after all.

  T he food in Fried Fred’s glistened with the shine of oil, and neon signs blinked to a loud techno beat, suggesting an urgent need to consume the dishes on offer. The Mexican stand, the Chinese buffet, even the salad bar — they all smelled of hot lard. Next to the soda dispenser, a robot butler plucked samples from a six-foot-high pyramid of calamari, popping one into Arsyen’s mouth as he walked past.

  “So, Arsyennnn,” drawled Sven as they sat down, “tell us about yourself. Like, what are your favorite languages?”

  “Well, Pyrrhian, of course. But my English not so good.”

  “Ha, ha, very funny. I mean computing languages. You like PHP? What about Ruby?”

  “Ruby? Like diamond?”

  Sven wrinkled his nose. “It is not like Diamond,” he said, turning to Jonas. “I bet this guy likes low-level languages. He likes to do his own garbage collection.”

  “I do not!” Arsyen snapped, and then mumbled, “I mean, I do collect my garbage…here in America.”

  “All right then, which did you learn first, Linux or Windows?”

  Arsyen paused. Windows were clear, transparent, and easy to clean. A Linux was…well, he didn’t know. But in this game of one-upmanship, surely the more unfamiliar thing was the most impressive. Much like operating some types of carpet cleaners, operating a Linux was probably a skill that once mastered was then lorded over everyone else.

  “Linux,” guessed Arsyen.

  “Correct,” Sven said. He elbowed Jonas next to him. “Don’t you want to ask him something?”

  Jonas lifted his head and glanced at Arsyen without speaking. Arsyen began to count the number of pimples scattered across his cheeks. He got to about twenty before Jonas opened his mouth.

  “What about your first video game?” he asked.

  Arsyen grinned. Finally they were speaking his language.

  “League of Legends II,” he said proudly.

  His co-workers leaned forward, studying Arsyen like a rare animal.

  “But Arsyen,” said Jonas, “if I recall correctly — and I always do — League of Legends II was only released a few years ago. That means you did not commence playing video games until relatively recently.”

  “Hmmm…disturbing,” Sven said.

  “Growing up in Embria, we did not have any electricity in our house,” Jonas said. “But from the start, even I knew the importance of Nintendo, Myst, and the various castles and caverns where a princess could be hidden.”

  “But I love video games,” protested Arsyen, feeling his face burn.

  “The point is, you came to gaming very late in life — you never learned the fundamentals,” said Sven, wagging his finger.

  “My father helped me pick the locks of rich people’s houses so that I could play their game systems,” said Jonas, his eyes watering. “We were caught, and they cut off his hand.”

  “You see?!?” Sven said. “People like Jonas’ dad almost died so that their sons could have a better future, all while you were out playing hopscotch or some other primitive offline game. You have no sense of history or sacrifice!”

  “But I love video games,” Arsyen repeated.

  “That’s not enough,” Sven shook his head. “By the time League of Legends came around, the world had completely changed. Video games had ceased being platformers. Techno was birthing thousands of deformed children in Europe. In some parts of the world, people were already learning to text, and their thumbs were growing ganglia. People’s brains had begun to function differently! You clearly came of age in a different world — one that doesn’t know latency or patience.”

  “I am disappointed by this conversation and am done speaking for now,” Jonas said. “Please carry on by yourselves.”

  He stabbed his fork into his pile of noodles, then began twirling them with great concentration.

  Arsyen felt as though he himself were in a video game, his life meter, a flashing red heart, beeping at low levels as he desperately searched for a wizard or magic plant to replenish his strength.

  He silently cursed his mother. As a child, Arsyen repeatedly asked her for a video game console, but she refused, claiming the nobility should focus on croquet, not cartoons dancing across a screen. She was lucky the king hadn’t allowed Arsyen to send her to the dungeon.

  Arsyen breathed deeply and closed his eyes, willing his heartbeat to slow. If he could just keep his P.M. job long enough to become a permanent employee, he could eventually have his army behead Sven and Jonas.

  Arsyen lingered over the image of a guillotine snapping Jonas’ neck until he felt his pulse steady. He opened his eyes. H
is co-workers were staring at him, expecting something. Arsyen needed to redirect the conversation — make them do the talking rather than him. He turned toward Sven, who was clearly an easier target than Jonas.

  “Roni says you have startup project?”

  Sven brightened and reached for a fry on Arsyen’s plate. “Two, actually. The first is called Fingerbell. It’s like a dumbbell, but on your mobile phone. You try to move an animated weight up the screen by using one finger. With each level, the resistance increases and it gets harder to move the weight.”

  “But why — ”

  “Because there’s a real obesity problem in this country these days. Fingerbell is about revolutionizing exercise — starting with your fingers.”

  “How it make money?”

  Sven threw up his hands. “What world do you live in, Arsyen? Jonas, are you listening to this?”

  Jonas ignored them. He now seemed preoccupied with separating his noodles into individual pods on his plate.

  “Here’s how it works,” said Sven, leaning in. “All you have to do is come up with an idea for a startup, build it, and get users. The important thing is that your users are growing — even better if you can tell everyone your growth is exponential.”

  “It is rare that anything is truly exponential,” said Jonas, suddenly looking up. “Most growth is linear, but then most people are stupid.” He lowered his head again.

  “Next,” said Sven, “a venture capitalist sees all this growth and they start doling out cash like it’s candy. You get rich before you’ve even proven your product can make money. Then a big company like Anahata comes along and buys your startup. Sometimes it’s just to acquire your employees — you can make millions of dollars if you just tell people you employ experts in A.I. and machine learning. Computer security, biohacking, and micro-algae are also good areas. Worse comes to worst, you just tell people you’re making robots — there isn’t a single CEO in the Valley who doesn’t get a hard-on over robots.

  “Now, if you’re really lucky, the company isn’t after your employees but your actual product. They want to buy it so they can kill it and keep you from competing with them. That’s where you really get into the big money. And, yeah, it kind of sucks that all your hard work and years of no sleep and sex will be destroyed, but hey, you’re rich now, and you can go and invest money in things you really care about, like food security cameras or currency for sea animals or — ”

  “Bikek,” said Jonas, looking up. “Bikek is the capital of Embria. It has a temperate climate, and in its surrounding mountains one can grow delicious apples in the winter. Embria boasts a modern railway system, as well as three national highways and — ”

  “No one wants to hear about the transportation system in your obscure country,” said Sven, rolling his eyes.

  Jonas scowled, but Arsyen saw an opportunity to score a point with his co-worker.

  “Your English good, Jonas,” said Arsyen, trying out his Magnanimous Leader smile.

  Jonas nodded, his eyes lifting slightly from his tray.

  “His English gets better each day,” Sven said. “It’s like training a machine learning model. Correct him once and he doesn’t repeat the mistake.”

  “That is the goal,” Jonas said.

  “You come to America for school?” Arsyen asked.

  Jonas shook his head, his eyes still fixed on his tray.

  “There is a video about it online,” interjected Sven. “Basically, Jonas was like a mad-scientist teenager genius working out of his parents’ apartment. He built a computer by looking at the stars and calculating from the astrological patterns how he could construct a mainframe.”

  “Sven…,” began Jonas, lifting his head.

  “And then there was a documentary filmmaker from the BBC who happened to be in town filming the plight of some rare yak in Bikek. He was staying at the hotel across the street on the day Jonas hooked his computer up and started a fire that nearly burned down his apartment building. Overnight, Jonas became the most famous boy in Embria, and Anahata, which has its Progressa program — ”

  “Progressa?” asked Arsyen.

  “Progressa brings technology to poor people like Jonas,” said Sven. “They are begging for food and water, and Progressa shows up with a computer and — ”

  “That is incorrect,” Jonas said. He turned toward Arsyen. “Progressa is the philanthropic branch of Anahata, designed to tackle the world’s biggest humanitarian problems.”

  “And so young Jonas got on a boat — ” began Sven.

  “An airplane, actually.”

  “An airplane, and came to the United States of America. Where loving Anahata taught him to program.”

  “We will not discuss my situation further,” Jonas said. “Arsyen, I suggest you ask about Sven’s other startup idea if your hope is to have a conversation.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Sven said. “This one’s almost as good as Fingerbell. It’s gonna make me rich.”

  He pulled out his mobile phone.

  “I wanted to solve a problem that all of us have: getting rid of things we don’t want to do. Like, what’s one thing you wish someone else could do for you?”

  “Kill evil ruler of my country.”

  “Riiiight,” Sven said. “Maybe something a bit more day-to-day?”

  “My laundry?” Arsyen offered.

  “Great,” Sven said. “Now what if I told you I could make that problem disappear with one simple app?”

  With an abracadabra flourish of the hand, Sven tapped a button on his phone. The word “Dogtown” emerged, written in light blue across a black background. Underneath, a cartoon dog with a bone in its mouth looked out lovingly from the screen, its tail wagging back and forth.

  “We all have problems we don’t want to deal with ourselves — like laundry. So what I’ve done is create an app that helps you outsource everything. You list your problem and then send it out into the Dogtown community. Whatever dog — that’s what I call our members — wants to do the task, he responds to ‘fetch’ it for you, and you work out the details. Then you pay him in dog food.”

  “Dog food?”

  “Well, money. On the app, money is called ‘dog food.’”

  Arsyen liked the idea of outsourcing his battle to reclaim Pyrrhia. Someone else could just go off and do it for him, leaving Arsyen to play video games and hang out in California until Pyrrhia was ready for him. The laundry scenario, however, seemed complicated.

  “So, someone come to my apartment, wash my clothes, wait while clothes dry…seem easier for me to do.”

  “You just need to embrace the concept of outsourcing your life,” Sven said. “There may be a few people in your house, but once you accept that they are there to perform a function that ultimately benefits you, they are just there — like moving furniture. I mean, I just used Dogtown a few hours ago, right Jonas?”

  Sven waved a fry below Jonas’ nose, and the teenager looked up.

  “This morning, Jonas was slurping his Red Bull so loudly I could hear it through my headphones. So I sent out a call on Dogtown to ask someone to take care of it for me. A guy in San Francisco saw my request, I gave him Jonas’ email address, and the guy emailed him telling him to shut up. Worked like a charm.”

  “But he sit next to you. You can just tell him or send him email,” Arsyen said.

  “I consider myself a pacifist. I don’t like conflict.”

  Arsyen nodded but didn’t really understand. Conflict in the janitor community was always solved through direct conversation. And sometimes mop fights. But never through an app. What kind of person would think it was better to argue over the internet rather than speak directly?

  “By receiving an email, I was able to process the information quickly and stop slurping,” Jonas said. “If Sven had stopped my work to speak with me, I would have found it quite disrupted.”

  “Disruptive,” Sven corrected.

  “Disr
uptive,” Jonas repeated. “Technology is disruptive, but I, Jonas, do not like to be disrupted.”

  “Very good,” Sven said. “Now if we can just tell that brainiac processing center of yours to incorporate some contractions into your English, it will be flawless.”

  “We have discussed this previously,” Jonas sighed. “Contractions are not elegant. Moreover, many times they are grammatically incorrect. I will not have my speech sullied by — ” Jonas’ eyes caught sight of something in the distance.

  “He is here,” Jonas whispered.

  Sven turned and gasped. “What do you think he will eat?”

  “Who?” Arsyen asked.

  “Bobby Bonilo,” they answered in unison.

  Arsyen scanned the entrance and quickly pinpointed the object of their attention, not because the figure was remarkable or distinguished in any way, but rather because the effect of the man’s presence was universal. The cafeteria fell silent. Those waiting at the stands of Fried Fred’s pushed themselves against the buffet rails to allow ample room for the man to pass. Mouths froze in mid-sentence. Hamburgers were forgotten on their plates.

  It was the second time that day Arsyen found himself in the presence of Anahata’s elusive founder.

  Bobby stopped at the Mexican food stand and surveyed its offerings. He dipped a finger into the guacamole bowl, and the chefs held their breath, waiting for his verdict. Showing no reaction, he then continued on to the sushi bar, then the Asian fusion stand, at one point looking as though he was set to take a dumpling. Then he abruptly turned on his heel and walked three steps to the salad bar. Arsyen could hear Jonas’ legs shaking under the table.

  Bobby circled the salad bar once clockwise, then stopped and changed direction. Finally, he picked up a bagel, nodded as though in communication with the tub of cream cheese in the buffet, and glided out of Fried Fred’s.

  As soon as the door closed behind him, the cafeteria exploded in sound.

  “Wow, do you know who that was?” Sven asked Arsyen.

  Arsyen nodded.

  Frankly, he didn’t get the fuss. Sure, Bobby Bonilo’s story was impressive — he had started Anahata from his college dorm, convinced a rich guy to invest in his idea, and, a few years later, became a trillionaire. But Bobby’s physical appearance was utterly ordinary, with a pale, slightly puffy face falling into a neck that connected to the gently disintegrating body of a man approaching middle age. He looked nothing like the pictures Arsyen had seen in magazines. There, Bobby’s chiseled face seemed straight out of a cologne ad. He was always dressed in white T-shirts that showed off massive biceps, and in more than one article, a small glow circling the top of his brown, curly hair gave the impression of a celestial aura.