“The Great Reformer,” Arsyen repeated. “I like that.”
“You should start with this, the palace. Rid yourself of all its trappings.”
“I completely agree.”
He snapped his fingers, and an adviser materialized. “Where are we on the palace revamp?”
“We have cleaned it top to bottom, Your Highness.”
“Then why do I not smell my cotton-candy air freshener? It should waft through these hallowed halls.” Arsyen paused and felt genius descend upon him yet again. “In fact, I want the Aimo Air Freshener distributed throughout the country. Everywhere the people go, they will smell cotton candy. A populace that is thinking of sugar is a happy and complacent populace.”
He turned toward Natia and gripped her hand.
“Imagine, when our youth walk into their schools each morning, they will smell cotton candy. When we hunt bison or peasants in the countryside, we will smell cotton candy.”
The adviser coughed. “Apologies, Your Highness, but it may be difficult to make the whole countryside smell like cotton candy.”
“Enough with your small thinking!” shouted Arsyen, rising to stand. Being a king was like being the father of many, many stupid children.
“Let me tell you something I learned in Silicon Valley,” he said. “It is only by dreaming the impossible that you can make significant progress. And it is only by failure that we learn about ourselves.”
Arsyen paused.
“But, of course, only losers fail. So don’t do that.”
“Your Highness may recall that the royal coffers are empty.”
“The monetization of our nation will figure itself out,” said Arsyen, waving the adviser away and motioning another one forward. He returned to his bison-toothed throne.
“Your Highness. I am here about Project Stain.”
Arsyen felt Natia tap his hand. He wondered whether he could limit the number of questions she could ask each day. He turned to explain the project to her.
“We are improving everyone’s quality of life by moving some peasants to a nice new neighborhood in the swamplands and installing a modern industrial park and supermarket atop what used to be their land.”
Natia frowned, but Arsyen waved at his adviser to continue.
“They don’t want to move,” the adviser said. “They ask that the king consider a different plan — one that would preserve their land and their livelihood.”
“Did you explain to them that such a move is good for them? That we are disrupting the real estate market?”
“They do not seem to want to have their lives disrupted.”
Natia gripped Arsyen’s arm.
“Please,” she said, “we should put our people first.”
“Yes, and they will love it by the swamplands. There’s so much water there!”
He turned back to the adviser.
“Install a whiteboard in the center of the swamplands so the people can brainstorm new livelihoods. And one dry-erase pen for each household — if they want more, they will have to pay for it. I don’t want to create an entitled populace.”
The adviser nodded and made a note.
“Now, about that palace revamp. I don’t like the carpet color Korpeko chose. Such a funny shade of lavender. I want a red shade — a masculine one, but one that also inspires hope. It must be a beautiful and delightful experience for anyone who walks upon it, meaning me, mainly, and occasionally her.” He pointed at Natia.
“Arsyen, what are you saying?” Natia cried. “This palace, the throne — this is your father’s legacy, not yours!”
“That’s why I’ve been spending so much time thinking about the decorative doorknob on the east gate,” Arsyen said. “It’s a lion — that was my father’s symbol. Which do you think is more me: a panther or a shark?”
“What has happened to you?!?”
Arsyen leaned toward Natia. “You know I find these antics of yours very sexy,” he whispered, “but this is not really the time or place.”
“You pig!” she hissed, rising to her feet and stomping out of the room.
Arsyen chuckled.
“Don’t mind her,” he said, turning to his group of advisers. “If she was actually serious about influencing my policies, she would have already slept with me.”
B obby pinched the fat around his midriff and moved it a bit to the left before letting it jiggle its way back into place. Then he jiggled the bit over his love handles — same thing.
Fat always knew where to go. It needed no instruction.
Why couldn’t people be more like fat?
Bobby tossed the thought around in his head for a few seconds before deciding he was quite pleased with it. Maybe he could include it in his next book, Becoming the Me, Again. A whole chapter on what people could learn from fat — about being more autonomous, more stubborn, having growth ambitions. Perhaps his editor would be more amenable to that idea than she had been about his proposed chapter on what people could learn from breasts (plentiful, variable, flexible, responsive — like agile coding).
Bobby exited the bathroom into the management meeting room on the adjoining side.
Everyone else was already there. Old Al had taken a seat opposite the door, and Fischer, as usual, had strategically placed himself near HR Paul, braving his colleague’s flatulence just to ensure that his updates looked good in comparison to Paul’s whiny complaints and touchy-feely reports on employee well-being. Across from Fischer was the chair Gregor usually claimed. Although the seat was empty, Bobby quickly averted his gaze. He never should have set Gregor up with Kerstin — Gregor hated pop-up advertisements. He was probably furious with Bobby.
Bobby caught Fischer fiddling with something on his phone and made a hissing sound. His CFCAO looked up and quickly placed his phone facedown on the table. “Sorry,” he mouthed, knowing Bobby’s dislike of the use of devices during management meetings.
Bobby took a seat.
“Okay, who’s up first?”
“I am,” said HR Paul. He bent over his computer to project some slides, and his oversized glasses fell toward his nose, forcing him to push them up every few seconds with his pudgy index finger. Bobby tapped his fingers on the table. If HR Paul was involved, a task always took double the time. There were so many people to consider, issues to debate, laws to follow, and, in this case, a button to find and then press.
Paul mumbled something about the presentation not loading properly — as if it was the engineers’ fault and not his own error. Bobby felt his lip curl. He wondered whether a punch to Paul’s face would alter his ever-placid, cow-like expression.
Bobby touched the meditation beads on his wrist, trying to pull his thoughts back from the Dark Place. He closed his eyes, just as his yogi had taught him, and took a deep breath. When he emerged, he found himself gazing at his grumpy but lovable engineer, Old Al, Bobby’s living piece of history. Bobby felt peace settle within him and leaned back in his chair.
“Well, let me start with the good news,” HR Paul said. “We haven’t had a single defection to Galt in two weeks. That’s the first time that’s happened in a really long time. I think it’s because I told our HR staff to give free hugs to anyone who wants them. With their consent, of course, and only when observed by an employment lawyer.”
Old Al snorted. “In my day, no one hugged anyone and we all got a lot more work done.”
“Well, that’s the bad news,” said Paul, clicking on to his first slide. “These are the latest productivity figures. The bottom line is that there’s been a sixty percent drop in productivity over the past two weeks.”
“Sixty percent?” Fischer stood and approached the screen.
“Right, it’s not good,” answered Paul, taking off his glasses and rubbing his face. “Ever since we stopped the sales team from doing sales, productivity has just tanked. You can see the decline begin around that time, and then it’s accelerated week on week. But here’s the weird
thing — the less productive the sales team is, the happier they become. We’re now seeing very high sales team satisfaction.”
“That’s not surprising,” Old Al said. “We’re paying them to do pushups.”
Bobby stared at the numbers on the screen and thought of his own productivity over the previous week. Between Social Me and yoga class, he really hadn’t gotten much done.
“What do you think, Al?” Bobby asked. Old Al was all-knowing — when he was awake.
“I don’t think it’s just the HM program,” Old Al said. “Everything’s moving slower here. The work, the food…people’s brains.” His hand was shaking in HR Paul’s direction. Paul frowned, but Bobby merely laughed. Al probably just had early onset Parkinson’s.
The group stared at the slide until finally Bobby spoke up.
“You are what observes, not what you observe,” he said, his gaze moving slowly from one team member to the next. He had spent an hour working on that thought the previous day and was eager to see their reaction.
But Fischer seemed to be smelling his armpit, and Old Al was just tinkering with his hearing aid. HR Paul was listening, but Bobby didn’t really care what he thought.
“You are what observes, not what you observe,” Bobby tried again. His eyes took another pass around the room. No response.
Where was Gregor? He would’ve understood.
“Ignore sales and look at the rest of the company,” said Bobby, pointing at the right side of the graph. “Notice that productivity for operations, online support, legal, and other support staff is only slightly down. The big drop — and it’s a huge drop — is in engineering, PR, marketing, and HR.”
Bobby looked at HR Paul, who looked back at him dumbly. His eyes moved to Old Al, who was cleaning wax from his ears, and then on to Fischer, who was fiddling again with his phone.
“SOCIAL ME!” screamed Bobby. “How many of you have been messing around with it — like you, Fisher, put your phone down!”
Fisher’s phone flew out of his hands, landing face-up next to Bobby. Susie, 23, an Aquarius from HR, flashed him a rosy smile.
“But why would the productivity rates of HR, marketing, and PR fall if it’s a tool designed for engineers?” HR Paul said.
“They’re all women in those departments,” Bobby said. “They are the Yokos sleeping with our Johns, the ones pulling them away from their work.”
“Ohhh. It all makes sense now,” said Paul, hitting his forehead with his palm. “On Monday, Roni Herman’s hackathon turned into an orgy. I saw it myself. One minute they were all coding. Next minute there were all these women from the PR department. There was,” he winced, “flesh…everywhere.”
Bobby grinned, remembering what a wonderful night that had been.
“But…why would we launch an app that would turn our engineers into lovesick idiots?” HR Paul asked.
“Think about it,” Bobby said. “Think about the juicers and the massages and the volleyball courts.”
“But we do that because Anahata is more a lifestyle than a job,” Paul said. “You come here in the morning, and you stay till late at night, and all throughout the day we are here to nurture you — ”
“Cut the crap,” Old Al said. “We feed you, and in turn you work more.”
“And as a byproduct of all that, you spend time with other employees,” Bobby said. “But historically our female employees spent more time with the sales team than our engineering team.”
“Well, sure,” HR Paul said. “The sales team are, sorry, no offense, but, you know, socially better adjusted, generally more attractive, have better hygiene, and — ”
“Now you understand why we had to get rid of sales,” Bobby said.
“What? B-b-but you didn’t tell us,” said HR Paul, his voice rising.
Bobby’s eyes locked onto his HR head, the sole member of the management team who had been kept in the dark. He smiled and rose a bit in his seat. Next time he’d exclude Fischer from his plans. He had to keep people guessing!
Paul wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. “Well,” he said, avoiding Bobby’s gaze, “I for one never bought the line you fed us about greater profits through more automated sales.”
“Automation is generally only good for the person doing the automating,” Bobby shrugged. “Beside, if you had known the truth, you would have raised all sorts of HR problems that would have slowed us down. The point is, we got rid of the competition and then gave the engineers an app to help act as the social lubrication.”
“Lubrication is right,” Fischer smirked.
“So the answer seems to be that we should kill Social Me,” HR Paul said.
“Easy for you to say,” Fischer said. “You don’t need Social Me. You live with a bunch of cats.”
“We can’t kill Social Me,” Bobby said. “The engineers aren’t productive, but they are very happy, and that’s crucial to the success of Project Y. You yourself told us the other day that the latest happiness survey indicates ninety-eight percent satisfaction among the engineers. That’s why no one’s going to Galt.”
“So we need to keep Social Me, but temper it somehow,” Fischer said.
“We should just lock all these kids in their rooms until they get their work done,” Old Al said. “Back when I was at CERN, we used to make any physicist who was under thirty clean the floors with a toothbrush. It taught discipline.”
Bobby held up his hand. “If our engineers are happy, they will stay at Anahata and we will continue to have the best people and the greatest innovation. Therefore, engineers’ happiness is just as important as technological advancement. We need technological advancement to make money, and we need money to survive as a company. So…,” Bobby closed his eyes.
My will not Thy will. Thy will not my will. Thy will not my money. My money not thy will. What do I do with my will? What do I do with my money? Where is thy will? Where is thy money?
“Bobby…?” said Fischer, thirty seconds later.
Bobby opened his eyes.
“Where’s Gregor?”
“I haven’t seen him since Monday,” Old Al said. “He seemed to be in a bad mood.”
“He hasn’t responded to my messages for two days,” Bobby said.
Everyone around the table shook their heads.
“Gregor has no life outside Anahata,” said Bobby, his brow furrowing. “Therefore Gregor must be missing.”
G regor poked at the clump of brown mushrooms in his hand, examining their caps and gills. If the forest just had a decent internet connection, he would know in a second whether these would satisfy his grumbling stomach…or kill him on the spot.
Gregor sighed. He had spent years preparing for nuclear fallout or a foreign invasion, building a bomb shelter in his backyard, arming himself to the teeth, and securing power and food supplies to last for at least two years. And yet at no point had he ever contemplated an event in which he would find himself relying on the natural environment for his survival.
What did it matter if the mushrooms were toxic, anyway? It would serve Bobby right. He imagined the founder confronted with his corpse, his face flooding with tears, body raging at the unjust universe that took his right-hand man away from him.
Gregor shut his eyes and threw the mushrooms into his mouth, downing them with the remaining dregs of his wine.
“My death is on your hands, Bobby Bonilo!” he shouted, shaking his fists at the sky.
Gregor lay back against a log and waited to die.
Though, really, he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. Gregor had seen a squirrel picking at those mushrooms earlier, with no ill effect.
Well, fine, he might be too cowardly to kill himself, but no matter what, he would not talk to Bobby ever again. He was done with Bobby, done with the internet, done with innovation and disruption and iteration and…everything.
He knew Bobby would try to win him back; they had been through this before. Bobby would call Gregor and apologize in his roundabout
way, never actually saying he had done anything wrong, but instead talking about a Great Historical Wrong — how horrible it was that Nikolai Tesla had died in obscurity, or that people were still using answering machines in the twenty-first century. The subtext somehow being that it would be a much, much worse fate if Gregor were to stop helping Bobby bring magic to the world. And then Gregor always gave in.
But not this time.
A deer and her fawn appeared in the clearing, not more than ten feet away. The fawn rubbed up against its mother, and she turned to brush her head against the fawn’s neck. Gregor felt a tear on his cheek.
“It’s just rain,” he said to no one in particular, quickly brushing away the tear with the sleeve of his windbreaker.
He looked up at the sky, so blue and full of possibility. As the minutes passed, Gregor filled its canvas with people flying in self-powered vehicles, pedestrians strolling in a tube-like bridge above the ocean. He imagined drones spiriting medicine to rural medical clinics and delivering fast food to city dwellers. Slowly, the figures began to grow into giants. They wore Victorian costumes and all looked like his mother. They lectured him about physics in German.
Something was licking his hand. Gregor looked down and saw Bobby perched on his leg, his red, bushy tail brushing over Gregor’s knee, his small hands wrapped around an acorn.
“Don’t you think you’re blowing this out of proportion?” the squirrel asked.
“You make me do everything,” Gregor said. “I clean up all your messes, and you never even say thank you.”
“Is that what you want?” the squirrel asked. “For me to say thank you?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Thank you. Now do you feel better?”
“Not really.”
“What do you really want then?”
“You were too nice to Niels!” blurted Gregor, the sharpness of his voice surprising even him. “You were going to let the Fixer run the company. And you gave away my office. I was in that office for almost ten years.”
“Let us observe your anger together,” the squirrel said, “and then let us let it pass through us.”
The Big Disruption Page 27