There’s also a less exciting though somewhat credible explanation: There have been whispers that the company is interested in finding new places to put its data centers.
If that’s the case, well, you’d think there’d be cheaper options than the moon, but this is Anahata. And with privacy freak Gregor Guntlag leading engineering, he may just want to get Anahata’s precious user data as far away as possible from any U.S. government agencies.
Have any information? Let us know!
The woman sighed and rang her boss.
“What’s your plan?” Fischer snapped.
“I need to know if it’s true,” she said. “The moon colony. If it’s not true, we’ll just say it’s not true. It’s actually quite straightforward — if it’s not true.”
“The truth is not relevant in this case,” Fischer said. “Just fix it. Deny nothing. Confirm nothing. Hold on.”
Fischer’s voice was muffled then, as though he had placed the phone against his shirt. She could hear another male voice in the background. A few seconds later, Fischer was back.
“I have Bobby on speakerphone. Do you need him to do an interview?”
“An interview where he denies and confirms nothing? I don’t think that will help with — ”
“He says he will do it provided you can get approval on the article before it’s printed. The stock is going to take a dive today if this story stays up.”
“I can’t control the media, and I can’t rewrite a Tech Geek article — or any article. Not in this country.”
“Hold on.”
She imagined Bobby and Fischer speaking in a magical, foreign tongue, with only Fischer able to translate the founder’s words into speech a mortal like herself could understand. In the five years since she had taken over Anahata’s PR team, she had not once spoken to Bobby directly. And this, she recalled with no small amount of resentment, despite having spun a massive copyright case against the company into a populist revolt against the music industry and pushed the U.S. government, which was investigating Anahata, to christen a new phrase in competition law: “dynamic dominance.” Just last week she had managed to keep photos of Bobby in a high-end Latvian brothel from making it to print.
Fischer returned to the phone with a bark.
“Bobby wants to know in which country you can control what gets printed.”
The PR director wracked her brain. “Russia, Poland, some Southeast Asian countries — “
“Those won’t work!” Fischer snapped. “We are not moving the company to Russia. The tax structures there aren’t favorable at all. Jesus — think practically! What about Bermuda? Cyprus? Malta?”
“I — I — I have to admit I don’t know much about the press there. They are smaller countries, so you might be able to — ”
“Dammit!” Fischer shrieked. “I need a plan. Bobby and I are very upset.”
“Understood. I will fix it.”
Fischer hung up on her.
The PR director slumped in her chair as she reread the Tech Geek story, the only consolation to the inevitably long week ahead being the fact that she wasn’t going to have to relocate to Moscow.
Responsible Uses of Social Media
May 13, 11:03 a.m. PST
By Greg Fischer, Chief Financial and Corporate Affairs Officer (CFCAO)
If you’ve been reading about Anahata in the press this morning, you’ve probably read something about a moon colony we’re supposedly building. We’d like to take this opportunity to set the record straight.
First, please look at this picture of the moon.
Do you see a colony on it? Neither do we.
So here’s what happened.
After being asked to leave Anahata a few days ago, Niels Smeardon, our former SVP of sales, posted some messages on Flitter that ended up making it into the media. Niels is a big fan of social media and was interested in utilizing some of the marketing techniques he had learned during his career. The messages he sent were designed to increase engagement with his followers and were not meant to be construed as fact. It is well known that there is little relationship between reality and what people post on social networks.
We hope this clears up any confusion.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Important Reminder About Social Media Use
Fellow Anahatis,
You’ve no doubt seen things in the press today about Anahata and a moon colony. While the story was funny, what has happened in the market — a more than ten percent drop in our share price — is not. Rest assured that we are working to correct the rumors that are floating about. In the meantime, we ask that you remain focused on your work — and all the Anahata fun we provide (btw have you tried out the new organic juicers?!?).
In addition, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you of our company’s policy on social media and blogs. We think these platforms are wonderful things, and we want you all to use them as you wish. The internet, after all, was built on free speech!
But we do have a few guidelines we’d ask that you respect.
There is NO blogging or posting about Anahata projects or policies, market strategies, or competitors.
Here’s an example of things that are okay to post — you’ll see that it’s much longer than what you can’t post!
1. All the fun things you do at Anahata.
2. Pictures of our delicious cafeteria food or of the cute animals and pets you are allowed to bring to work.
3. Thoughts about your hobbies (provided those hobbies do not cast a negative light on Anahata — for example, furry petting circles).
4. Relationship musings and advice (provided those relationships do not involve other Anahata employees).
Thanks for your cooperation!!!
- Paul Barlow, your friendly HR SVP!
F rom the Building 4 window, Jennie watched the cute HM trainer out on the soccer field as he moved closer to his client, the engineer’s face straining as he attempted to lift a car tire toward his chest. The HMer got in the engineer’s face and yelled some sort of insult; the engineer stumbled backwards a few steps before regaining his footing. He brought the tire to the ground and looked to his trainer for praise. Instead, the HMer sent him off down the field to run sprints.
Just a week following the reorganization, the tanned, sporty sales guys already seemed like naturals in their new jobs. It was like they had been destined to be personal trainers and massage therapists; no one had to train them or teach them anything.
It couldn’t have been a greater contrast to Jennie, who felt she wore her new engineering role like a little girl dressed up in her father’s suit.
But she knew it had to work out. If Bobby Bonilo had a master plan for the sales team, surely he had a master plan for her.
Jennie had been studying Bobby ever since joining Anahata. She had read his autobiography, Becoming the Me, four times and kept a collection of all his internal strategy memos, taping the most inspirational and visionary quotes to her wall. Every time it looked like Bobby was making a highly questionable decision, it would later turn out he was solving three or four problems at once. Bobby Bonilo was always a few steps ahead of everyone. His book had said as much.
In this case, Bobby wasn’t simply helping the sales team discover their natural talents. He was also achieving greater company unity. Engineers and HM staff were now coexisting peacefully. The sales employees had stopped tripping the engineers in the cafeteria, and the engineers had stopped programming their robots to chase the sales guys down the hallways. The internal email wars between the two groups had ended nearly overnight. In fact, the engineering staff seemed to have backed down entirely since the announcement of the HM program, no longer viewing their sales cum HM counterparts as enemies, but rather officially acknowledged subordinates, children who should be encouraged and supported in their new roles.
Jennie’s gaze moved across the field, paus
ing here and there on a bare chest or a chiseled set of cheekbones. It wasn’t just HMers that caught her eye. Even some of the engineers were getting cuter. Many of them still walked with an odd, ape-like gait, but they somehow looked more…vigorous, healthy. Even Sven, horrible Sven, seemed to be sporting a new set of biceps.
“Get up, losers!” screamed a voice at the other end of the field, where a pile of arms and legs twisted about like a frantic octopus above the tire course.
She just couldn’t understand why she wasn’t succeeding in her new job. Of course it had seemed odd that Gregor would ask a nontechnical person to be the technical lead of Social Car. And that when he had asked her, he knew nothing about Jennie other than that she was a campus guide and receptionist.
But Gregor must have known (maybe it was in her HR file?) that Jennie was a born leader, and that leaders don’t need skills — they just need to be leaders.
Jennie certainly had that. She was convinced she was destined for something world-changing, like reversing climate change or melting the polar ice caps to give clean water to people in Africa.
So, while being assigned to Social Car wasn’t quite the same thing as building an endangered elephant preserve, Jennie knew not to pass on such an opportunity. This was the cosmos shaking an enormous neon sign right at her, telling her it was time for her to do great things.
But something had gone wrong in the universe; Jennie had somehow killed her own job.
Despite her lack of technical skills, Jennie didn’t second-guess her decision to kill Social Car — or Stalker Car, as she now called it. She was confident it would have been a disaster for Anahata and driven women away with its creepy features.
But she also knew she had acted too hastily. After dramatically declaring halt to the project, Jennie found herself with no backup plan. Gregor was inaccessible, and Roni was completely MIA — probably on the moon colony the press kept talking about.
She tried to patch things up by returning to the cubicle the following week to brainstorm ideas but had been forced to retreat. Swivel chairs blocked the cubicle entrance. Sven refused to speak to her, and Jonas kept his eyes glued to the wizards on his screen. And Arsyen, the weird guy who tried to give her that foul-smelling perfume, seemed to have disappeared. He had left a message scrawled across the whiteboard — KING ARSYEN!!! — but no other clue as to his whereabouts.
To make matters worse, her friends were all thriving. Gregor had replaced all the lobby receptionists with sign-in kiosks and assigned the women to new technical projects, telling them it was a part of an HR program to “bring in more diverse perspectives.”
Her closest friend, Karla, was now running a team that was building an internet hat — or, more precisely, an internet sombrero. Glasses popped down from the brim’s front to help you see webpages; headphones could pop in from the sides if you wanted to listen to music or audio files. Best of all, just by nodding your sombrero in the direction of something, the hat would help identify the object before you.
Karla confessed to Jennie that she didn’t really get why anyone would want an internet sombrero. “I mean, I’ve got my computer at home. I’ve got my mobile in my pocket. Why do I need a sombrero?”
“Did you ask them that?” Jennie asked.
“Of course not. They would have thought I was an idiot. You just have to trust the engineers. They’re so smart, you know?”
“But did they ever think that maybe they would wear an internet sombrero but normal people probably wouldn’t? I mean, it is…weird…right? Plus, what if it’s too hot to wear a sombrero?”
Karla wrinkled her nose and giggled. “That’s what I thought! But they pointed out that’s why they made it a sombrero — better sun protection! Genius, right? In any case, the sombrero won’t be around forever. Even if the first iteration is a sombrero, V2 will be a wig, and V3 will be reduced to a toupee or beret. The guys say that we just have to get the hat closer and closer to being part of the human head. Cuz like, eventually, it’s just a brain chip, you know? Like an extension of your head. Though it’s too bad they just can’t skip right to that. I don’t really want to have to go around wearing an ugly hat for two years just to show I’m a team player, you know?”
Jennie nodded.
“The guys on the team are really nice,” Karla continued. “They say I take really good notes. You know, I always thought engineers were such dorks, but…”
Sven wasn’t nice. Sven, with his messy blond hair and blue eyes and Johnny Rotten sneer. Sven who hated her and who never wanted to see her again. Sven who was an engineer. Sven who…who was like an architect, really, like an artist who painted in numbers.
Sven, who had destroyed her chance at greatness.
T he daily attention lavished on Jennie in Fried Fred’s amounted to a short lunchtime victory followed by a long dismal afternoon. That day, she spent the afternoon tending to her plot in the company’s organic garden and then curled up in a sleep capsule to reread Bobby’s autobiography — in particular the chapters on failure (very short) and success (very long).
The sun was in its last pulses of light as Jennie made her way toward the exit. She stopped for a moment by the gigantic squid, the tank now lit for nighttime with gently pulsing pink lights from below. The squid looked so happy and peaceful bobbing in that turquoise water. Why couldn’t she be like a squid?
The squid spotted Jennie and unfurled two of its arms, extending them across opposite ends of the tank, as though to give her a hug. Jennie took a step forward and put her hand to the glass. A tentacle mirrored her move. She felt a tear on her cheek. Oh, squid. Her friend the squid.
Jennie put her face to the glass, and in a swish, the squid rotated backwards, exposing its mouth. It pressed its body against the glass as it chomped its jaws at her.
Even the squid didn’t understand her; Jennie was nothing more to it than a potential dinner.
As Jennie shuffled to the exit, her phone pinged with the sound of a new message. It was Arsyen, the Social Car engineer who had disappeared.
Hi Jenni, want chat?
She shook her head. She’d rather hang out with the mute squid than talk to that creepy Arsyen. She ignored his message and put her phone back in her pocket.
The campus had already cleared out, its lawn now empty of the voices and beeps and robots that roamed across it each day. Anahata’s small green hills and winding streams now seemed like a scene from another part of America, a place where people took walks and made long-winded observations about the weather.
In her previous life, Jennie had loved to catch the campus in this state, to breathe in Anahata’s freshly cut grass and optimism, but now she merely stared at her feet as she crossed the lawn.
As she passed by Building 2, a small rock suddenly flew through the air and connected with her wrist.
“Ow!”
Jennie jumped back and looked across the empty lawn, readying herself in the karate pose she had learned at her feminist book club. She looked to the left, then right, scanning for sudden movement or suspicious figures. There was nothing to be seen. Her shoulders settled back into their slump, and she began to make her way to her car.
“Psst! Over here!”
Jennie turned in the direction of the voice and saw a bush waving at her. She did a double take and confirmed that, yes, it was indeed a bush waving at her.
“It’s me — Roni!”
“Roni?” She squinted at the bush. It was no longer moving.
“Sssh! Come here,” he hissed, “before someone sees you!”
The bush began moving again, frantically this time, growing arms and legs, and suddenly Jennie realized it was no bush at all, but rather Roni dressed as a bush, his head popping out of an enormous fat suit, like a big green apple covered in brown leaves. When Jennie was close enough to make eye contact, Roni beckoned again with his green chin and then dropped below the shrubbery.
She pushed the brush back and found Roni crouched
low on the ground. He was wearing camouflage on his lower half and had painted streaks of green and brown under his eyes to match his leafy suit. Jennie suppressed a laugh and reminded herself that this was the guy in charge of Anahata hackathons, the guy who used to run Social Car and could help her win credibility among the engineers. She needed his help.
“What’s up with the outfit?” Jennie asked.
“It’s just an extra precaution,” whispered Roni, peering out through the bushes. “I am working on something confidential. Very confidential!”
So that’s why Roni had disappeared, leaving no clue as to his whereabouts.
“I could use your advice, too,” she said. “Social Car — ”
“You must be quiet!” Roni hissed. “I will tell you what I can tell you. And then I need your advice. And then we can discuss your problem. In that order.”
Roni cleared his throat, jumped up for a moment to stretch his legs, then hopped back down into a crouching, frog-like pose, the fat suit bobbing over his legs, threatening to swallow them. He motioned her down to his level.
“Tell me, how can I get women to like engineers?”
“Sorry? Not sure I understand.”
“That’s probably because I have not told you enough,” Roni said. “To be clear, that was intentional.”
Jennie rolled her eyes.
“Okay, okay, I will tell you more. But you must not say anything to anyone!” Roni held a finger to his lips. “We have a project that holds the future of Anahata. I can’t tell you all the details yet, but what I will say is that a key component is getting women to like engineers.”
“What?”
“As a first step,” Roni continued, “we brought the Anahata women closer to the engineers and forced mixing of the sexes. You were an example of this — making a woman the technical lead of a project.”
The Big Disruption Page 17