31. Talia #2
“A CEO knows what it looks like when another one is having a meltdown.” Eleanor tapped out a cigarette for herself.
“Sorry, I know this is a nasty habit, but it’s my one vice I can’t shake.
” She lit it and took a long drag. Then she looked around the roof as if making sure there was no one else near them.
Only a couple of BiomeLabs employees sat on the other side of the garden, working together on their computers.
“So,” she said, “you want to tell me what’s going on?”
Talia hesitated. She hadn’t had enough time to decide whether her worst-case Omni-CerebraLink scenario was plausible. Even though, in her gut, she was pretty sure she knew.
“Can I ask you a question instead?” Talia said.
Eleanor waved her cigarette in the air, its smoke leaving a zigzagging trail behind. “Sure.”
“Why did you hold out for an IPO? BiomeLabs didn’t go public until last year, and there were multiple offers from bigger companies to buy you before that.
From what I’ve heard, your company nearly went bankrupt three times in the last decade.
So how come you didn’t accept any of those earlier offers to save you? ”
Eleanor took another long drag from her cigarette, then let out a long plume of smoke over the view of downtown Palo Alto.
“For better or for worse, I have an enormous ego. Women generally aren’t allowed to say things like that, let alone act on it.
But I wanted to run BiomeLabs my way, or no way.
If I had let someone else acquire us—especially when we were financially on our knees—I would have had to accept whatever terms they offered.
“It wasn’t about money; they offered plenty of that.
It was about vision. This is my company.
My dream. I couldn’t stomach the idea that someone else would scoop it up and digest all my hard work into something different from what I wanted, or worse, dismantle BiomeLabs for parts and then junk the rest.
“Which meant I had only one option each time my company came to the cliff’s edge—I had to be the one to save it.”
Talia leaned against the railing. “And you did. All three times.”
“I did. Not without cost. I mean, look at me—I’m a chain-smoking forty-year-old who looks like she’s in her sixties, but I’m still here.
At the helm of the company I started with five hundred dollars in a garage off Page Mill Road, now worth bloody well more than if I’d sold it years ago.
” She smirked. “Like I said, enormous ego.”
She turned to look at Talia. “But there isn’t only one path, you know. What was right for BiomeLabs might not be what’s right for Ideal Life. Are you getting cold feet about Omni?”
Talia looked down at her shoes, as if they’d actually tell her the temperature of how she was feeling. “I don’t know.”
“Your Gossipy Tech BFF?” Eleanor asked.
“You read it, too?” Talia forgot her feet and looked at Eleanor now.
“They somehow scoop the other outlets fifty percent of the time,” Eleanor said.
“I have a notification set to alert me whenever a new piece is published. Anyway, yes, I saw the article that Omni is in serious talks to acquire CerebraLink. And yes, if I were you, I would also be rethinking what they meant to do with Ideal Life’s technology, in light of this new information. ”
“Then I’m not crazy.”
“Not in my opinion. But then again, some wouldn’t say that the way I run things is entirely sane, either, so perhaps you shouldn’t listen to me.
Whatever you decide, though, I don’t envy you, because I know how difficult it is.
” Eleanor took one last puff of her cigarette before stubbing it out. “Good luck, Talia.”
“Thanks, Eleanor.”
Talia wasn’t sure she felt any better than when she came out here.
Later, she consulted Ideal Life Queen Elizabeth, but the bumblebee didn’t have any solutions to her very specific problem, only suggestions to help her alleviate her “heightened levels of cortisol, indicating stress.”
She thought about asking Sam but then remembered that he was out with his parents today in Monterey, visiting the aquarium and taking them out in kayaks to see the otters.
Nevertheless, Talia somehow got through the workday, probably because she’d learned during childhood how to compartmentalize huge, looming problems. But that didn’t make the potential Omni-CerebraLink–Ideal Life issue disappear. It just lay in wait until she could think about it again.
At 10:30 p.m., she finally left the office and went home.
Ideal Life Queen Elizabeth: I continue to detect elevated readings of cortisol. Perhaps a bath, soothing music, and hot cup of tea?
“Not a terrible idea,” Talia said. “But maybe not tea.”
She ran a bath with lavender salts, put on a slow jazz album, and sank into the tub with a mug of hot milk, sugar, and vanilla.
But it didn’t help. In fact, it made things worse because as Talia soaked, she thought about how, in the future, Omni would be able to tell that someone was stressed and then pipe advertisements for lavender bath salts and a recipe for warm vanilla milk straight into their brain.
Or if it noticed that she was feeling impulsive, it could push offers for expensive handbags or luxury vacations.
From there, she began to think about more nightmare scenarios.
Ads were only the start of a slippery slope.
What if Omni used Ideal Life and CerebraLink’s technology to artificially shape user moods, tweaking content on social media to spark amusement, anger, or anxiety, since studies had shown that those emotions kept people on social media longer?
They could also associate certain neural activity with rewards, and condition users to spend more money or watch more content. Or develop addictive algorithms that would make it neurologically repulsive or painful to sign off.
Omni could sell the brain data not only to advertisers, but also to political campaigns, corporations, governments.
Or they could build products that allowed companies to monitor their employees—to check their focus, to measure their loyalty, to monitor any dissent.
Same with governments, which could also tailor certain kinds of beliefs to trigger positive associations, thereby reshaping society without anyone realizing they had lost their free will.
Ideal Life Queen Elizabeth: Multiple regions of your brain are showing signs of fight-or-flight, and your heart rate is very high. Are you in danger? Please indicate if I should dial 911. If you do not respond, I will immediately summon emergency services.
“No, do not call emergency services,” Talia said, even though she could feel her pulse pounding against her chest. “I’m just thinking; I’m not in danger.”
Ideal Life Queen Elizabeth: Confirmed. Would you like suggestions to calm your mind? How about exercise?
She dismissed the app.
“Stop it,” Talia told herself. “You’re spiraling. This is not a dystopian sci-fi novel.”
And yet, even if only 10 percent of her imaginary scenarios came true—like using or selling brain data for the benefit of advertisers—it would still be a nightmare.
Talia couldn’t be a part of that happening to humanity.
She’d invented Ideal Life to give people more awareness and agency, not the other way around.
But how could she prevent the acquisition from going through?
It was close to midnight now, but she was too jittery to go to bed. Ideal Life Queen Elizabeth had suggested exercise, and it might actually help burn off some of this excess energy. Talia changed into workout clothes and put on her sneakers.
She wasn’t much of a runner. But she didn’t feel like being cooped up inside the gym, so Talia decided to go for a jog. She could run up toward Stanford and then around campus for a bit before looping back home.
Talia started down Alma Street at a decent pace and soon veered onto a bike path parallel to the train tracks.
The air was cool and refreshing at this time of night, and there were hardly any cars downtown.
Palo Alto was a tame kind of city; if anyone was out late, they were more likely working than not.
If she hadn’t had her earbuds in, she probably could have heard crickets chirping.
At Embarcadero Road, Talia turned left.
Suddenly, a wave of vertigo hit her, and she wobbled on the sidewalk.
“Whoa whoa whoa,” she said, bracing herself on a tree trunk. It was the same feeling that accompanied her rewinds, except she hadn’t touched her watch. A familiar ebb of exhaustion lapped against the edges of the vertigo.
You’ve got to be kidding me, Talia thought. She knew she was out of shape from spending too many hours sitting at her desk, but she’d barely even run half a mile.
Or was this the result of too many rewinds catching up to her? There did seem to be a cumulative effect building up.
A moment later, the spinning sensation passed. Talia stood upright slowly, so as not to tempt its return.
Should I turn back home?
But pride kicked in. She wasn’t a quitter in any aspect of her life, and she certainly wasn’t going to give up after a pathetic half-mile jog.
Talia wasn’t stupid, though, so she took it easy for a bit, passing Town & Country Village, the shopping center where her Trader Joe’s was located. The parking lot was usually packed, but of course it was empty now.
She jogged slowly until she felt solid again. Then she increased her pace and crossed El Camino onto Stanford’s campus.