21. Libby
Libby
The Umeda Sky Building was closed at the moment, which was why Libby and Jacob were here shooting the ad for the Japan National Tourism Organization.
Sure, software could edit people out of backgrounds, but it was still easier to ask the creators to come in early when there was no one around to gawk.
Libby had been up since four thirty to ensure her hair and makeup would be up to the task of the shoot.
“We’re going to shoot videos and stills at the same time,” the director, Mark Yamamoto, said.
“The idea is for you two to waltz around this glass tunnel, luxuriating in the view and in each other, while we capture it all in one fluid take.” He gestured at the half dozen cameras on robotic arms with motorized wheels, which would follow Libby and Jacob while recording and taking photos from all different angles. “Ready?” Mark asked, looking at Jacob.
Libby bit the inside of her cheek. Mark was no misogynist; he’d treated both Libby and Jacob with extreme Japanese courtesy since they arrived an hour ago to check lighting and other technical details.
Still, little moments of bias like this still slipped out no matter where they were in the world, where people assumed Jacob was in charge because he was the man.
There had been a lot of progress made in terms of gender equality since Libby and Jacob had begun working as creators when they were just out of college, but there was definitely still a ways to go.
Jacob, though, didn’t confirm their readiness to the director. Instead, Jacob turned to Libby, smiled with his deep dimples, and asked, “Are we ready?”
Libby smiled back at him—god, she loved this man—then turned to Mark and said, “We’re ready.”
Two and a half hours later, they finally wrapped shooting, just as the ticket booths downstairs opened the Umeda Sky Building for the day.
Libby sank into one of the chairs in the café on the fortieth floor and groaned as she kicked off her heels.
She was early in her pregnancy and not at the point yet where her feet would swell, but anyone would ache after waltzing for 150 minutes straight.
“You doing all right?” Jacob asked, as he brought her a cup of green tea and a furutsu sando, a sandwich made of super fluffy white bread stuffed with sliced strawberries, kiwis, bananas, and lots of whipped cream.
Libby had fallen in love with the unique dessert-in-sandwich earlier in the week in Tokyo, and the baby must have, too, because Libby now craved furutsu sando every morning, even though it wasn’t considered by the Japanese to be a breakfast food.
She took a bite and swore the baby moved in her belly, even though there was no way Libby would actually be able to detect such a thing yet. Maybe if she used Talia’s Ideal Life app, it would identify changes in her brain chemistry that were tied to the baby being happy?
But no, it would probably just register the hit of sugar to her bloodstream, which was obvious even just by looking at the whipped cream sandwich.
Libby was lucky that morning sickness hadn’t hit her yet.
It would have made doing their job a lot harder, especially since she wasn’t ready to let people know she was pregnant.
Once the news got out, it might affect the jobs offered to her and Jacob.
That is, unless they decided to include their little bean and document the progress of growing their family.
Brands liked being associated with wholesome families.
She and Jacob had talked about it a lot recently, but they still hadn’t reached a conclusion.
What they knew, though, was that there was no pausing in a creator career.
It had always been true—the internet wanted only relevance, and if you weren’t in front of their eyeballs with fresh content constantly, you were negligible.
But that reality was even harsher now. The proliferation of photo- and video-realistic AI models with perfectly symmetrical faces and flawless bodies had already pushed the mid-level human creators out of business.
Only the top ones who had had massive audiences before the AI revolution (like Libby and Jacob) had managed to survive.
Still, they had to work harder than ever to hold on to that status and to fight off obsolescence, because it was costly for companies to fly real live people around the world and feed and house them, whereas digital models didn’t need any of that.
The main thing Libby and Jacob had going for them was “authenticity,” which basically meant letting the cameras into their private lives so that followers could feel connected to them.
What had started out as two twentysomethings backpacking around the world had grown into a couple in their early thirties inadvertently starring in their own reality show.
Libby took another bite of her sandwich.
The whipped cream squirted out and got all over her face.
Before she had a chance to wipe it off, though, the elevators opened and two groups of tourists spilled onto the fortieth floor, and one woman, eyes wide, shouted in a German accent, “Is that Libby and Jacob?”
They raised their phones and started recording immediately as they rushed over to the table where Libby sat with whipped cream smeared on her cheek, her shoeless feet propped up on a chair.
Jacob put on his camera smile and quickly stood in front of her, giving her a spare second to wipe her face clean.
A moment later, they were surrounded by not only the Germans but also the others who had just arrived on the fortieth floor, giggling and jostling for selfies with the YouTube and Instagram personalities.
Libby was pretty sure half of them didn’t actually know who she and Jacob were but wanted to capture themselves with them just in case.
“Say ‘sushi’!” one of the tourists said as they snapped a photo.
They immediately posted the photo to socials, tagging Umeda Sky Building as their location.
The Japan National Tourism Organization would be happy.
And Libby and Jacob remained relevant for at least one day more.