by Yvonne Woon
To say that I did poorly would be an understatement. After fifteen minutes of trying to insert myself into conversations but being edged out, I finally worked up the gumption to introduce myself to an older male executive who was eating an olive off a drink skewer.
I gave him my pitch and was ready to demonstrate how Wiser worked when he interrupted me.
“So how exactly will you monetize it?”
I faltered.
“Will it be sold as a piece of hardware? Will it be subscription based? Will you accept advertisements? Will the data that you collect be for sale?”
No. Maybe. I’m not sure. I hadn’t considered it.
“How will you compete with other, larger virtual assistants?” another executive asked. “What about privacy? How do you plan on convincing users to surrender access to all of their data? Don’t you think it’s a big ask?” another one continued.
I supposed it was, and I thought it already was different from other AIs.
Another executive requested a demonstration, but when I asked Wiser the question I had prepared, “What should I wear tomorrow?” and Wiser answered satisfactorily, the executive didn’t look impressed.
“Ask it a harder question,” she said. “Ask it how to respond to an employee who isn’t pulling his weight.”
I did as she said and held my breath while Wiser rattled off a list of possible actions to take, including talking to HR, conducting an employee review, and bolstering the employee with positive feedback, but the executive only frowned.
“This isn’t new content. All this information can be found online. What makes this tool different from a spoken search engine?”
My mouth felt parched. I answered quickly and retreated to the drinks table, where I stood awkwardly, wanting to crawl under the tablecloth and wait there until the hour was over. Across the room, Mast was shaking the hand of a young executive who looked like he’d walked out of an advertisement for designer eyeglasses. I watched him laugh lightly, then smile, and wondered what he was saying. He made it look so easy, like he and the executive were old friends. His confidence made me feel even more miserable. If only he’d known that I was considering hiding by the drinks for the rest of the hour when he’d said I had grit. His eyes met mine briefly, and not wanting him to see me retreating, I took a breath and squeezed back into the crowd to try again.
Eleven
SENT MESSAGE FROM U/ARRAYOFLIGHT:
Have you ever felt like your online life is more real than your real life? I used to love coding, but now I don’t feel good at it. Maybe I was never good at it, I honestly don’t know anymore. I thought I knew myself, but now I’m not so sure. The only part of my life that feels real is talking with you, but I don’t actually know anything about you, either.
I’m thinking about going home. I’m the lowest in my class. I can barely keep up with the homework and I constantly embarrass myself. I’m out of my league. I don’t even know why I’m writing this to you. I guess because I don’t have anyone else to tell. In a way, it’s easier to talk to you because we don’t know each other. How ironic is that? That the realest person in my life can stay that way only if we never meet?
I was sitting in my room after the Vilbo visit, trying to figure out exactly how everything had gone so wrong. Kate had received three business cards from the networking session. Amina had received two. Mast had gotten a hand-written email address on a cocktail napkin. And I had left empty-handed.
I should have prepared more. I should have done research like Kate. I should have honed my pitch with Amina and come up with better questions for Wiser.
I shut my laptop and pulled the suitcase from under my bed when I heard a knock on my door.
“You’re going to the party tonight, right?” Amina asked when I answered.
“What party?”
“The start-up party for Arun’s friend? Have you not checked your email yet?”
“Sorry, I’ve been busy doing a postmortem on my academic and social life.”
Amina cringed. “Right. Are you sure you don’t want to try and revive it? Everyone’s going.”
“It’s definitely dead. I’m going to cremate it and sprinkle its remains over my computer chair, which is where it spent most of its life anyway. So I guess you could say I have plans.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t you want to see what the house is like at least? I’ve always wanted to go into one of those Silicon Valley compounds.”
“Hmm, locked in a compound with a bunch of rich Joshes and Mikes who are celebrating getting even richer? No thanks.”
Amina pushed up her glasses. “It might not be Joshes and Mikes.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Okay, it probably is. But if you don’t come then I’ll have to go with Kate and Seema, and you don’t want to make me go alone with them, do you?”
“I have to pack.”
“Pack?”
I opened my drawers and started unpacking clothes so that I wouldn’t have to make eye contact. “I’m leaving. This place isn’t for me.”
“What? You can’t leave. We just got here.”
“I don’t belong here. I thought I did, but it was a mistake.”
“It wasn’t a mistake. You still have plenty of time to recover.”
“You don’t know that.”
Amina stood there in silence, watching me pack. “Fine, but you’re not leaving tonight. It’s too late now. You can at least come out with me before you go.”
“And be humiliated again? I don’t think so.”
“Oh, come on. What do you have to lose? We’ll go for an hour so you can see the house. Then we’ll leave and get pizza.”
Amina gave me her best puppy face, letting her glasses magnify her eyes, and though I wanted to say no, it was hard not to be swayed.
“One hour,” Amina pleaded. “Then pizza.”
“Forty-five minutes. And you’re buying.”
Amina grinned. “Deal.”
The problem with parties is that they’re terrifying. I’d only been to one real party with Gina, where I’d spent most of the time milling around the snacks, feeling hyperaware of my hands. Were they really just hanging there by my sides? Was that how a fun, normal person looked at a party? Was I spending too much time looking at my phone to avoid talking to real people? Should I walk around and try to make friends?
There was also the problem of sitting versus standing. There always seemed to be couches at parties but people rarely sat on them and if they did, they seemed to be knowingly entering a new social plane, because sitters only conversed with other sitters, and standers only conversed with other standers and it seemed important to decide which you were going to be: a stander, which was less comfortable but gave you more social options; or a sitter, which was more comfortable but seemed to attract the more awkward type whom you would be stuck sitting next to for the rest of the party, and whom you could then be associated with, potentially forever. Technically you could switch between the two, but being a person who had once excelled at science and math, I was familiar with the rule of inertia: an object at rest prefers to stay at rest and an object in motion prefers to stay in motion, and who was I to defy science?
All of this is to explain why I sat so quietly in the back seat of the SUV with Amina while Kate and Seema talked excitedly about who was going to be there and if there were going to be Jell-O shots and whether or not the pool was heated and if there was going to be an ice luge.
The Jell-O shots alone made me want to spring open the car door and take my chances rolling through traffic, let alone the ice luge, but before I could give Amina a death glare, I felt my phone vibrate.
Amina had sent me a text.
>Is it too late to go straight to pizza?
I caught her eye and smiled. She hadn’t dressed up and instead opted for a pair of jeans and black shirt that said No Thank You.
We pulled up to a gated estate. It was shielded from view by a wall of hedges, through which I could see a p
ulsing blue light. Kate rolled down her window.
“We’re here for the DrinkMaiden party,” she said into the intercom. “Arun invited us.”
The gate buzzed open.
“DrinkMaiden?” Amina said, incredulous. “That’s really what it’s called?”
“Yeah,” Kate said from the seat in front of us. She was checking her makeup and eyed me through her compact mirror. “It’s not the best name,” she conceded.
“Sounds like something a bunch of Mikes would make up,” I murmured.
“I think the founders are Nick and Pete,” Kate said, not getting the joke.
Amina and I exchanged an amused look.
“What does it do?” I asked.
Kate fluffed her hair. “I don’t know. Some kind of alcohol app. There was an article in TechTank about how it was going to change the way people drink.”
“Probably a delivery service,” Amina said.
“That only hires hot girls,” I added.
“Not just girls,” Amina said. “Maidens.”
“It can’t be that dumb,” Kate said. “Who would fund that?”
“Other Mikes,” I said.
Amina cracked a smile.
“You’re too pessimistic,” Kate said. “You know, there are some people here who see good ideas regardless of who they come from.”
“Realistic,” Amina corrected.
The car dropped us outside of a glass mansion that pulsed blue against the night sky. It looked more like a modern art museum, with angular glass walls through which I could see a large light installation hanging over a floating staircase crowded with people. Music throbbed against the windows like the house was under pressure.
We followed Kate up the front walkway, where a silhouette of a naked woman was projected onto the pavement. It didn’t feel right to step on her, so I inched around her as though she were a real person.
Inside, it was crowded with college guys who looked like they had just come from a country club in polo shirts and khakis. In the back of the room, a DJ blasted trance music.
At the center of the room stood an ice luge, as promised, in the shape of a woman’s legs. Guys lined up at her feet, where they crouched and waited with their mouths open for a splash of blue to trickle down her shins.
“Why are we here again?” I asked Amina.
“It’s an anthropological experience,” Amina said with a grimace.
We pushed through the crowd until we saw Arun. He was taking shots with AJ, Mike, Andy, and few other boys from the Foundry by a three-tiered champagne fountain that glittered with fizz.
“Foundry!” he shouted when he saw us. He was already drunk and was wearing sunglasses and a collared shirt unbuttoned down to his mid-chest. I scanned the other boys, finding myself looking for Mast, but only saw Arthur and Marcus laughing at something on Arthur’s phone, while Micah and one of the Joshes chatted up two girls. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t there to see Mast.
“You made it,” Arun shouted over the music. His gaze wandered to Kate’s chest. “How awesome is this house?”
“It’s pretty great,” Kate said.
“Map girl!” Arun said before turning to me. “And Seven.” He looked me up and down, making me wish I could disappear. “Nice skirt,” he said. “Coming in strong, trying to make that good impression.”
A few of the boys chuckled.
“Let’s hope the stock algorithm is male and appreciates your legs,” AJ sneered.
I glared at AJ. “I can boost my stock without wearing a skirt.”
AJ snorted. “You’re just waiting for the right moment then?”
“Can you just leave it alone for a night,” Mike said, to my surprise.
“Since when are you getting all defensive?” AJ said to him.
“We’re at a party. Just chill.”
“I am chill,” AJ said.
It wasn’t exactly a soliloquy, but I still appreciated Mike standing up for me and gave him a grateful nod. Kate must have liked it, too, because she gravitated toward him, slipping the drink from his hand and taking a sip.
“It sounds like we need shots,” Arun said.
Tall women wearing blue body paint and impossibly tight tank tops with MAIDEN written on the front walked around with trays of shot glasses. Arun waved one of them over.
She wore heavy makeup and smelled like strawberries. All the drinks on her tray were blue.
Amina grimaced. “I’m not drinking that.”
“Oh, come on,” Arun said. “It’s a party.”
Amina pointed to the No Thank You on her shirt.
“What is it?” I asked while Arun passed them around.
He handed me one. “Who cares?”
I’d never enjoyed drinking. Alcohol always tasted like something you’d keep under the bathroom sink, and it made my face feel hot and puffy, like I’d been injected with air.
I glanced at Kate and Seema, who’d already accepted the shots. Behind them, the boys were staring at me and chuckling, like I was a freak. What did I have to lose? I tipped my head back and swallowed.
It tasted awful—simultaneously too sweet and too bitter. It burned my throat going down, and I winced, unable to control my face.
Behind us, an older guy holding a beer can and Ping-Pong paddle approached Amina. “Hey, aren’t you the girl who made Squirrel?”
She pushed her glasses up. “Yeah,” she said with a smile.
They started talking and I turned back to the group. Arun was telling everyone how he’d run into the founder of BitBop in the bathroom. I tried to pay attention but could feel my face getting hot. All the boys were trying to impress Kate. Of course they were. And Kate was only trying to impress Mike, tracing her fingers around his hand while he stared at his cup, glancing up at her occasionally with a sheepish smile.
Nobody seemed to notice when I slipped out of the group and pushed through the crowd toward the bar.
“Do you have any water?” I said to the bartender, my voice low so as not to draw attention to my drink of choice.
“What?” the bartender shouted over the music.
“Water,” I repeated.
“I can’t hear you,” the bartender said.
“Water!” I shouted, making everyone at the bar turn to me.
Great. As if my face needed to be even more red.
A boy standing next to me looked me up and down, then smiled. “Are you sure you don’t want something a little stronger?”
I hated the way he was staring at me, like I was put there for his amusement.
“I’m sure,” I said.
He leaned toward me. His breath reeked of beer. “I’d buy you a drink if it wasn’t all free.”
“Thanks, but I buy my own drinks,” I said, and grabbing my water, I ducked back toward the other fellows, but when I got there, they were gone.
I tried not to panic. Look cool, I told myself. Stop searching the room like you’re a child lost at the mall. Pretend you know what you’re doing.
Instead of giving me my water in a discreet glass with a wedge of lime, the bartender had served it in a big plastic cup with a straw that looked like an adult sippy cup. It was fine, I told myself. Nobody would notice. What was wrong with drinking water at a party anyway? Serious people of all ages and backgrounds understood the importance of adequate hydration.
I searched the crowd for Amina or Kate or even Arun but saw only unfamiliar faces. The music was so loud I could feel it reverberate in my chest.
“You’re doing it wrong,” a voice said.
I turned to see Arthur holding a drink and a small sculpture of a headless naked woman. His face was flushed and cheerful. I’d never felt more relieved to see anyone in my life.
“I’m doing what wrong?”
“The trick is to order seltzer with lemon and specify a small glass. That way everyone thinks you’re drinking a vodka tonic.”
He grinned and raised his cup. Was he drinking water, too?
“Thanks,” I s
aid, and gestured to the sculpture he was cradling in his other arm. “What’s that?”
“A bunch of drunk guys took her from the study and were about to desecrate her and throw her in the pool, so I rescued her. Now we’re friends. I’m naming her Marta.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. I was about to respond when I spotted Mast.
He was standing by a beer pong table, talking to a girl. She was pretty, disturbingly pretty, with doe eyes and shampoo commercial hair and a little red dress that made her look like a vixen from a comic book. She was laughing at something he was saying and touching his arm, and I felt suddenly miserable. Someone that beautiful had to be boring, I told myself, though I knew it was mean and probably not true. Knowing my luck she was probably a freshman at Stanford majoring in biomedical engineering.
He must have felt me watching him, because he turned, surprised to see me. His eyes lingered on me for a moment until I turned to Arthur and started laughing, as though he had told me something incredibly funny.
Arthur looked confused. “Did I miss something?”
Instead of explaining, I grabbed a shot from the hand of a guy nearby. Feeling Mast watching me, I threw it down, letting the alcohol burn my throat. “I’ll be right back,” I said to Arthur, and pushed through the party.
I found myself in an empty room, where a little table was set up with company swag bags. I took out my phone.
“Wiser, what are you supposed to do at parties?”
“Talk with friends.”
“I don’t know where they are.”
“Mingle.”
Across the room, a group of guys had popped open a bottle of champagne and were shouting, “We are legends!”
“It’s not really that kind of party,” I said to her.
“Play games,” she offered.
Through the window, I could see out to the pool, where a group of guys had stripped out of their work clothes and were standing in the water in their boxers, playing a floating version of beer pong while girls drifted by in their underwear on inflatable flamingos. I guess that counted as a game. “It’s not really the right setting for that.”
“Dance to music.”
I rolled my eyes. A group of drunk guys in collared shirts were pumping their arms to the trance music and trying to grope one of the shots girls. Beyond them, I could just make out Arthur and his statue goofily dancing next to a group of girls, trying to make them laugh. “Not possible.”