The Big Disruption

by Jessica Powell

  Bobby liked to think he was equally elusive. In fact, his first thought after capitulating to the board’s suggestion was that the Fixer should have to call him. But even Bobby could be practical and knew that telepathy had yet to be invented (though he had Gregor working on it). So he put his Progressa unit — just back from its operation in the Philippines — onto the task of tracking him down.

  There was a reason Bobby trusted his most confidential and tricky tasks to Progressa, the Anahata team in charge of solving big problems like poverty, famine, drought, and hassle-free distributed computing. He had realized early on that the same skills needed to save the world were also those needed to make pesky executives disappear — or to quietly recruit slippery visionaries like the Fixer.

  They tracked him down at a Hopi reservation near the Arizona border. The Fixer agreed to meet with Bobby, but in a place far away from the watchful eyes of technologists. And so, eighteen hours after the Anahata board meeting, Bobby hopped on his jet to the Santa Fe Holistic Wellness Center to find the Fixer alone in a meditation room containing only two burning candles, a miniature Japanese garden, and a freshly groomed goat.

  The legendary tech healer briefly opened his eyes, acknowledging Bobby’s trespass in his sacred space. At first glance, Bobby found the balding, middle-aged man unexceptional in appearance. But then the Fixer bent over in prayer. His belly pushed in and out of his caftan like a peach-colored pillow, in and out, in and out. Bobby found the rhythm of the breath soothing. He wondered if his own breath could also inspire such calm. He waited.

  The Fixer inhaled and exhaled, inhaled and exhaled. With the persistence of the ocean tide, his caftan slowly inched its way up his lower back, soon revealing what Bobby had long heard to be true. Rising along the right of his spine were a series of hatchet marks, a tally of companies the Fixer had resurrected from the depths of bankruptcy, geopolitical nightmares, oil spills, and murdered mistresses.

  Bobby knew that the Fixer would not speak to him right away — it was standard practice in the technology industry to use meditation as a negotiation tactic. Letting the room sit in silence was an effective way to instill calm as well as establish dominance. Bobby sat back on his heels and began his own meditation, closing his eyes and silently repeating his latest mantra.

  Not my will but Thy will, not my will but Thy will, not my will but Thy will…

  His mind was a blank canvas. It was a still lake. It was a round peach. It was a perfectly shaped breast.

  Focus, Bobby!

  Not my will but Thy will, not my will but Thy will…

  Bobby could feel the goat gnawing at his shirt. It shouldn’t have bothered him — it usually took just a few seconds of meditation to tune out life’s little distractions. But now his mind kept flashing to the Fixer and the warnings from his board, his chant soon morphing to Not my will but the Fixer’s will, then Not me but the Fixer, and finally, Not my money but Thy money. He was glad no one could read his thoughts.

  Fifteen minutes later, the Fixer opened his eyes.

  “Hello, Bobby,” he said.

  “Hello,” said Bobby, meeting his gaze.

  “You have caught me at a good time,” the Fixer said. “Just returned from an ashram in Goa. Real cleansing, intense stuff. I would say it changed me, but then I often feel that I myself am change.”

  “Change is the poem that flows through me,” Bobby responded.

  “And me,” the Fixer said.

  In unison, the men breathed in and out. The goat bleated.

  “Your breath is a gift back to the world,” Bobby said.

  “And yours,” said the Fixer, his nose now touching the floor, then rising to lead his body into poodle pose.

  “I’ve been told of your troubles,” he said after a moment had passed. “I believe I can fix them.”

  “I have no troubles,” said Bobby, hearing his own voice waiver. He stretched his arms out in front of him, also moving into poodle pose.

  “I have seen the future, and it is not Anahata,” the Fixer said.

  Bobby felt his arms quiver, but he did not respond.

  “The future,” the Fixer said, “is something called GaltSpeak.”

  Bobby broke poodle pose, his head whipping in the direction of the Fixer. “What?!”

  “Galt’s universal translator, built by a few ex-Anahata engineers. It translates anyone’s speech — even animals.”

  “Impossible.”

  “I saw it just last week. A demo where they translated a conversation between a cat and his Korean owner in real time. And then, because they’re Galt, they managed to reduce all the communication to just the most important bits.”

  “Wow,” said Bobby, genuinely impressed — and impressed that he was impressed.

  “They plan to launch it next year. They’ve even figured out how to monetize. Every few minutes, the animal or person whose speech is being translated will read a text advertisement, targeted to your conversation.”

  Bobby’s head darted around the room. The goat. The candle. The bonsai tree. What could he build that was better than GaltSpeak?

  “They say it will only take them one more year to extend the functionality to corpses,” continued the Fixer, now turning to lock eyes with Bobby. “That’s not just bleeding-edge innovation, that’s an enormous monetization opportunity. After all, the dead on this planet far outnumber the living.”

  “The dead,” Bobby said. His legs were shaking. He could feel a bead of sweat fall from his forehead.

  “Galt is the next Anahata,” the Fixer said. “In the future, everything will be reduced to almost nothing — our thoughts, emotions, pictures, feelings. That plays to Galt’s strength, not yours. Anahata just expands. It’s all you know how to do. You’re so desperate that you gobble everything up, thinking size alone will secure your future. But listen to me when I tell you that you have no future in the future.”

  “No,” said Bobby, collapsing to the floor and burrowing his head into the yoga mat. “No, no, no, no! I want to build the universal translator — and then shrink everything!”

  The Fixer did not speak for a few minutes.

  “I can help you,” he said finally.

  “Please!” yelped Bobby, his desperation bouncing off the walls, surprising even the goat.

  Baaaaa.

  Bobby coughed.

  “Please tell me,” he said with a level voice.

  “We need to build something on Mars.”

  “Mars?!?”

  In his fifteen years in the technology business, Bobby’s intuition had never led him astray. And now his gut was telling him not to listen to this man — but maybe his gut was wrong. Maybe it had been wrong for a long time, like ever since he had stopped taking his probiotics. How else could Galt have outpaced Anahata? They had monetizable cats — even monetizable dead cats!

  “Hold on,” said Bobby, jumping to his feet.

  He walked to the far corner and opened the door. Gregor’s combat boots shuffle-thudded into the room. The goat bleated. The Fixer’s forehead wrinkled for a split second as he broke his pose to look toward the door. He took in Gregor’s meditation-inappropriate camouflage attire.

  “This is Gregor, our SVP of engineering,” Bobby said.

  The Fixer pushed his hands together and gave a small bow. Gregor nodded and pitched forward only slightly, his eyes never leaving the Fixer’s face.

  Bobby turned toward Gregor. “He says we need to build something on Mars.”

  “Just something small,” said the Fixer, smiling at Gregor. “Obviously, I don’t know all the details about your moon colony — just what I have seen in the press. But then you wouldn’t be here if it was all a lie, right?”

  Gregor did not answer. The Fixer shrugged.

  “I think it’s great. Someone needs to think big like that. But it’s a problem for your stock price — you need air cover. My idea is that we build something on Mars. It can be something meani
ngless but which we make seem significant. For example, what if I told you that I recently found evidence of microbial life on Mars? If you had that research in your pocket — and I can make that happen, you know — you could easily construct a little microbe breeding cave there. We could say it’s a step toward understanding the beginnings of the universe — or that it will help us solve global warming. Something like that. Something so big and audacious that people are embarrassed to ask about the details.

  “The point is it doesn’t really matter what we do — we can blind everyone with data. This project will be public, relatively cheap, and we can confirm it immediately. Then we insinuate to the press that people confused our Mars project for a moon colony, and in the process correct the rumors that are swirling about right now.”

  Gregor grunted. Bobby looked over at him, desperate to read his reaction, but Gregor’s face offered little insight into what he was thinking.

  The Fixer used the small Japanese rock garden to illustrate his plan. Bobby was transfixed by the small rake and the smooth, unhindered path it took across the garden. With each pass of the rake, his Galt fears seemed to attenuate.

  “If only we were all rakes,” he whispered to Gregor.

  The Fixer pointed out the key elements of his plan, using bonsai trees and small rocks to reconstruct his microbe breeding cave. Bobby felt his confidence building. He could already read the success of the Mars plan in the lines snaking across the sand.

  “This seems very elaborate,” said Gregor, breaking Bobby’s train of thought.

  “But this will get us to the moon,” Bobby said. He turned toward the Fixer. “What do you need?”

  “First, my fee. I want $20 million — $10 million in cash, and $10 million payable when the stock rises $200 more than its current value. I am certain it will surpass that, but I’m giving you a deal because I’m genuinely excited by your innovative thinking.”

  “Done,” Bobby nodded.

  “Second, the structure. In order to pull this off, we need to rearrange how all of Anahata works. Everyone must be moving as one fluid unit.”

  “Your vision is radical,” Bobby said. “It should be accompanied by an equally radical new organizational structure.”

  “I will need to have engineering, product, sales, and strategy reporting into me.”

  “But — ” said Gregor, his face suddenly collapsing as he looked to Bobby.

  Engineering was Gregor’s world, and Bobby knew there was nothing more important to him in this world. But Bobby also knew none of that would matter if he couldn’t get the company back on track. He would just have to find a way to make it up to Gregor later.

  “Radical vision requires radical transformation,” Bobby nodded.

  “It’s not simply that he’s power hungry?” Gregor said.

  “If I wanted control of everything,” said the Fixer, “I would have also asked for your other departments. Like finance. Or HR.”

  “Everyone knows those departments don’t do anything,” Gregor said.

  The Fixer shrugged and turned again toward Bobby. “Take it or leave it. And by the way, I also want his office,” he said, pointing at Gregor.

  “I’m sorry, Gregor,” said Bobby, averting the engineer’s gaze. “But I have no choice. Galt is monetizing corpses.”

  Gregor’s mouth opened, but he did not speak. He turned and made a brisk exit, momentarily slowed by the goat, which tried to block the door. Bobby felt a moment of sadness but quickly recovered once the Fixer offered him the miniature rake to play with.

  Dragging the rake through the rock garden, Bobby outlined his plans for the moon colony. He could tell the Fixer was excited by the idea, and the men agreed that speed was of the essence. The Fixer suggested they perform a sequence of sun salutations in lieu of a contract. “The word,” he said, “is more sincere than paper.”

  They decided he would start the following Monday.

  T hat Monday morning, even before rising from bed, Bobby did something he hadn’t done in all of Anahata’s ten-year history: He checked the company’s share price. It was still falling — that was no surprise — but he wanted to peg it to an exact number to know exactly what bottom it had hit before the Fixer’s arrival reversed its downward spiral.

  Things could only go up from here. Within 24 hours, the company’s share price would be on the upswing; then, just a week later, Anahata would release its quarterly earnings report, recording an impressive forty percent growth from the previous quarter. The world would be in order yet again.

  Bobby jumped out of bed and skipped into his yoga room. Outside, the sky was a boundless blue. Somewhere up there was the Fixer, making his way toward Anahata in his golden fleet, the exhaust from his skyship leaving a trail of diamonds in its wake.

  He couldn’t wait to share his moon colony vision with another great thinker. Gregor was great, but he was a doer. Sometimes you wanted to be with a be-er — someone who could just soak in the essence of genius. Once the Fixer was fully on board, maybe he and Barry could meditate together or fund a solar-energy side project. The possibilities were endless when two great minds were united.

  Bobby looked out the window, then inhaled and exhaled deeply. What a great day. Now was a good time to think about cold fusion. He hadn’t thought about it in a while, and someone really needed to be doing that.

  Bobby’s phone buzzed.

  “Damn it!”

  It was the Fixer. Cold fusion would have to wait.

  “Let’s cut the pleasantries, Bobby. There’s a problem. I’m not flying in today.”

  In the privacy of his yoga room, Bobby allowed a smug smile to settle on his face. For all his fanciness, it seemed the Fixer didn’t own a backup jet. Bobby pictured him boarding a commercial flight, his body squirming awkwardly in a business-class seat where thousands of poorer rich people had sat their well-fed bottoms over the previous year.

  “After I saw you, Galt came to me,” the Fixer said. “You speaking to me made them want to speak to me. So my price has gone up since we last spoke.”

  Bobby rolled his eyes. Why was everyone so obsessed with money? Why couldn’t they just follow their passions and go with the flow?

  “So, how much do you want?” Bobby asked.

  “Enough so that I can go back to Galt and get them to give me even more money.”

  “You mean you’ll be working with Galt regardless?”

  “GaltSpeak just seems more feasible than your moon colony thing,” the Fixer said. “And monetizing the thoughts of the dead is a huge opportunity. Anyway, Galt probably thinks you’re giving me a counteroffer right now. As we speak, my value is rising twofold — no wait, threefold!”

  “But we had a deal!” Bobby said. “We did sun salutations together!”

  “Look, I do downward dog with a lot of people. I only count pigeon pose, with both of us facing each other, inhaling and exhaling five times, as a true deal. If your team had done proper due diligence, you would have known that. But no hard feelings, right? Let’s grab a beer at Davos.”

  The Fixer hung up.

  Galt!

  Despite his board’s fears, Bobby himself wasn’t worried about Wall Street. They only had one more week of this to go. Once Anahata posted its stunning quarterly results, no one would even care if Anahata said it was building a colony on the sun.

  But Galt…Galt!

  The Fixer would tell them everything about Anahata’s moon colony, and then they would start to build their own version. They were so fast and scrappy, maybe they could even beat Anahata to the moon.

  His engineers would want to live on Galt’s moon colony, eat Galt’s moon food, and sleep with Galt’s moon girls. Within five years Anahata would be nothing more than a relic of the early twenty-first century, and Bobby would be reduced to little more than a passing caption in a computer science museum.

  “Noooo!” Bobby screamed. He jumped on his five-wheeled dragon bike and pedaled furiously t
o Anahata, his panic carrying him straight to Gregor’s office in Building 1.

  But his trusty engineer wasn’t there. Nor was his stuff.

  “Gregor!” he yelled, running down the hall. The welders, architects, moon horticulturists, and rocket scientists looked up from their Social Me app to see their barefooted founder searching for Gregor inside space capsules and under tables. He circled the building four times, ran up and down its stairs three times (though once was just for fitness), before finally coming to a stop once again outside Gregor’s empty office, throwing his body against the door and pounding his fists.

  “Gregor!!!”

  A familiar crew cut appeared in a doorway a few feet away. Bobby rushed forward, but Gregor took a step back into the room.

  “Oh, Gregor! Where have you been?”

  “You kicked me out of my office, remember?” said Gregor, keeping his distance.

  “The Fixer’s not coming,” said Bobby, throwing his hands up.

  Gregor shrugged and turned toward his desk.

  “Gregor, he’s going to go work for Galt. He’ll tell them everything!”

  Gregor did an about-face, and Bobby saw his eyes widen. And then his face hardened.

  “We can’t let them beat us,” Gregor said.

  “How soon can we launch Project Y? Galt’s probably building a rocket as we speak!”

  “We’re just working on the coupling issue, which is tied to the Social Me expansion,” Gregor said. “We’ve rolled it out to thirty percent of the campus engineering and female population.”

  “Expand to one hundred percent. Expand it to all of my engineers!”

  “We might want to be a bit more cautious. I think we can still beat Galt if we — ”

  “Tomorrow. I want all of my engineers on Social Me by tomorrow. And the moment you see that it’s working, I want to launch Y.”

  Gregor opened his mouth, but Bobby held up his hand. He couldn’t stay any longer. He was worried the Fixer would tell Galt about the new cafeteria menus Bobby was working on. Bobby had mentioned it while they were in eagle pose, and the Fixer had complimented him on his innovative plans for chia and hemp seeds. If Galt knew he was plotting a menu revamp, they might try to beat him to the punch. He had to speak to Anahata’s head chef so they could rework the menus immediately. He had an idea that involved goji berries…