Fishbowl

by Matthew Glass

  ‘I’m not saying that isn’t true. And you’ve turned your one million investment into eleven billion. So I think, you know, we can call it evens.’

  Chris shook his head, steaming. ‘You’d never have created a new model of advertising. You’d never have come up with the idea of Farming. That was me, Andrei. Me!’

  Andrei was silent. He took a mouthful of his noodles and chewed it. ‘I hoped you wouldn’t take this the wrong way,’ he said eventually.

  ‘I’m taking it like it is, Andrei.’

  There was silence again. Chris chewed his chicken angrily.

  ‘Obviously, I hope you’ll still be a member of the board.’

  Chris snorted.

  ‘You know,’ said Andrei, ‘I wanted to talk to you about Farming as well. I’m going to stop it.’

  Chris stared at him, then put down his fork. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m going to stop Farming.’

  Chris laughed.

  ‘I’m not joking.’

  ‘You spent half a billion dollars—’

  ‘More, actually. With Los Alamos, we’re over a billion.’

  ‘And you’re going to stop it?’

  ‘And I’m not going to license it, either. Not for advertising, anyway.’

  Chris sat back. ‘And what, if you wouldn’t mind telling me, are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to stop advertising on Fishbowl. Any kind. It’s always been a necessary evil. Well, now, thanks to the IAP, it’s not necessary. Fishbowl’s going back to what it was.’

  ‘What it was when you were a kid in a dorm in Stanford.’

  ‘I’m going to license the IAP for other things – to do all the other things we said it could do. What we’ve developed is amazing. It’s Deep Connectedness in a truly radical and ground-breaking form. Can you imagine bringing education to Africa through a palotl in every classroom?’

  ‘It’s my word, palotl! That’s my word, Andrei! I invented it.’

  ‘Do you want me to call it something else?’

  ‘Call it what you freaking want! Andrei, listen to yourself! What the fuck are you talking about doing?’

  ‘Think of it, Chris. Education … medical care … citizens’ rights … We can bring all of that and more. Isn’t that an awesome vision?’

  ‘Every advertiser on every site across the net using our IAP, that’s my vision,’ said Chris. ‘A trillion-dollar company, that’s my vision.’

  ‘The revenue I get from the IAP I’ll use to run Fishbowl as a site for Deep Connectedness.’

  Chris snorted. ‘What revenue?’

  ‘Governments will pay. Aid donors. I won’t need much.’

  ‘You’re out of your mind! You want to do all that stuff? Great. Do it. But don’t think anyone’s going to pay you for it. Not in this world. Don’t think you can do it if you stop Farming on Fishbowl.’

  ‘Fishbowl’s a sewer, Chris. It’s a stinking mess riddled with selling. It’s a place to sell stuff. That’s all it is. It’s a goddamn place to sell stuff.’

  ‘You are out of your fucking mind.’

  ‘I watched my testimony to the Senate committee. I looked at it and I saw myself and I saw someone I didn’t recognize, someone saying things I could never have imagined saying. You know who I saw? Mike Sweetman, only a hundred times worse. I saw the sum total of every hypocritical, money-grubbing, monopolistic tech CEO I’ve always despised. And I don’t want to be that person. I never wanted to be that person. It’s a betrayal of myself.’

  ‘And I suppose you’re saying I made you that person.’

  ‘No. I’ll take responsibility for that. And it’s because I made myself that person that I can unmake him. Four times I sat on a podium with Didier Broule and listened to him say that Fishbowl isn’t a network, it isn’t about Deep Connectedness, it’s about advertising. It’s a universal advertising application.’

  ‘He’s an idiot.’

  ‘No, he’s right. He’s right on the money, if you’ll excuse the pun. My greatest regret is that I didn’t stand up in London or Shanghai and say right there that there’ll be no advertising. There’ll be no licensing. Well, it’s not too late. I don’t want to be the guy who spends his life running an advertising program. It’s your question, Chris – the one you asked me the very first time we met. What’s the most important thing for me to be doing with my life? Well, you know what? Being the world’s biggest advertising executive, as Senator O’Brien put it, is not it. In fact, it’s the worst thing I can be doing. So I’m not going to be that. I’m going to take this program and put it to use elsewhere and Fishbowl will be Fishbowl – a place were people connect, not some place riddled with sales where you don’t know if what you think is your best friend is going to turn out to be a frigging palotl. And you know what? I’m going back to two ls. Fishbowll, with two ls, like the Dillerman said. I should never have changed it.’

  Chris watched him for a moment, then smiled pitifully. ‘You realize this will do nothing to stop other people developing Farming for themselves? If you leave this space open, all that’s going to happen is some Mike Sweetman is going to walk on in there and take the truckloads and truckloads of money that are waiting.’

  ‘They’re welcome to it.’

  ‘You put this thing into the world.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean I have to continue with it.’

  ‘This gesture of yours will do nothing to stop where the world is going.’

  ‘Maybe it won’t.’

  ‘Oh, it won’t.’ Chris grinned sardonically. ‘Don’t kid yourself, it won’t. The world is getting exactly the internet it deserves.’

  ‘Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean I have to be the one to give it to them.’

  ‘Others will. Everything on the net ends up in the same place. No one wants to pay for anything, so we all take what we know about our users – who they are, what they want, when they want it – package it up, and sell that instead.’ Chris laughed. ‘Don’t you love it? We had this monumental thing that could have been about openness and honesty and we’ve turned it into this monstrous net constructed to trap and manipulate us.’ He laughed again. ‘And we’re the best at it, Andrei.’

  ‘I don’t want to be the best. Not at that.’

  ‘And you think it’ll stop? At least if we’re the ones—’

  ‘Chris, don’t give me that argument again. Maybe when people have Fishbowl, when they can come to a place where they’re not being targeted, they’ll do that instead. Maybe things will change. Maybe other sites will have to follow.’

  ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘And your opinion of people has always been a little too low.’

  ‘My opinion of people has been exactly what people have proven it to be. I gave them FriendTracker. They could have used it to reward friendship. What did they do? They used it to tear each other apart. More fun than the Colosseum.’ Chris shook his head. ‘Jesus Christ. I knew you were naive when I met you but I never thought you were still this wet behind the ears. People don’t care, Andrei. They don’t … give … a … fuck! As long as they don’t have to pay anything, they’re happy. For the last twenty years, every single service they’ve used has raped them for personal data and beamed advertising straight back at them – shitty, untargeted advertising that’s about stuff they couldn’t care less about.

  And what do they do? They keep on using the services that do that to them. At least we’ve found a way of getting to them about stuff they actually might care about it. Honestly, look at our pathetic species! We’ve all sold our souls for a home page and a search engine. And while you raise whatever pitiful sum you can get from your licensing, others will be earning a hundred times as much as you. And they’ll use that to offer better services, quicker services, and all the idealistic people you think are going to hang on to your second-rate site are going to head on over without even waving goodbye. They’ll keep selling their souls like they’ve always sold them, and Fishbowl will wither away. You�
�re taking the greatest wealth machine anyone has ever created and you’re strangling it at birth.’

  ‘I disagree with you,’ said Andrei. ‘But even if you’re right, it’s my choice.’

  ‘No, that’s where you’re wrong.’ Chris stopped, looked around for a moment, and leaned closer. ‘Two days ago, you could have said that. In case you don’t remember, yesterday, you sold twenty per cent of your stock for forty billion dollars. That makes you the CEO of one of the world’s biggest public companies. With that role comes certain responsibilities. Certain legal responsibilities. If you do what you’re saying, the stock you sold is worthless. Nothing, zero, nada. You made promises to people.’

  ‘I made no promises to anyone,’ said Andrei. ‘The prospectus says there’s no certainty of anything.’

  ‘You allowed that prospectus to say that Fishbowl earns revenue from advertising. You allowed that prospectus to say the IAP offers the opportunity for significant licensing revenues. Half the value of the company at least comes from people expecting those licensing revenues and you know it.’

  ‘There will be licensing revenues.’

  ‘From advertising?’

  ‘It doesn’t say that.’

  ‘You allowed people to think so.’

  ‘No, they chose to think so. This is a company in which I have a majority vote on the board, even if I own only ten per cent of the stock. I own forty-five per cent. Anyone investing in a company like that knows I can make a decision on a whim and there’s no way to challenge it. That’s what’s clear in the prospectus. Didier Broule said it explicitly. I heard him. You invest in a company like that, you take your chances.’

  ‘So this is a whim, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s not a whim!’ Andrei stopped, conscious that his voice was raised, conscious that on the other side of the screen people must be able to hear him.

  ‘Everything all right?’ asked Lopez, putting his head around the screen.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ said Andrei. He turned back to his noodles, now going cold, and picked a prawn off the plate.

  Lopez disappeared.

  Chris leaned even closer. ‘This isn’t a whim? You could have stopped this IPO. Even two days ago, you could have stopped it. What’s happened in the past forty-eight hours, Andrei? Have you had some kind of epiphany?’ Chris sneered. ‘Have you seen the light?’

  Andrei closed his eyes. He wished he had stopped the IPO. He wished he had had the courage somehow to leap off the juggernaut and stop it. Everything about it was wrong. And yet he had let it happen.

  Suddenly he looked at Chris. ‘I’ll buy back the shares.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’ll buy back the shares! The money’s sitting in the bank. I’ll offer to buy them back.’

  ‘Andrei, those shares are now worth twenty per cent more than you were paid for them.’

  ‘I’ll pay what we sold them for. If people have speculated since then, then they’ve speculated. I asked forty-eight dollars, that’s what I’ll give for them. If they don’t want to sell back, that’s fine. If not, they can hold on to them and be investors in a true Fishbowl.’

  ‘The only investor you’ll have in a true Fishbowl is you.’

  ‘And that’s fine with me as well.’

  ‘You’ll be tied up in litigation for the next fifty years.’

  ‘I’ll take that chance.’

  ‘Why did you go to IPO? If this is what you were thinking, why did you do it?’ Chris’s lip curled. ‘You wanted the kudos, didn’t you? You wanted to be the guy who had a two hundred billion IPO.’

  ‘You don’t know how little that means to me.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Two hundred billion. It was just serving Andrei Koss’s pride. And now you’ve done that, it’s time to be holier than thou, even though it means ripping people off of the money they’ve put behind you.’

  Andrei sighed. ‘I don’t know why I did it.’. He didn’t know why he had done lots of things. He didn’t know why Fishbowl had ended up where it was. Maybe he really had wanted the kudos, or the money. But at least he knew where he was going now. ‘Someone said to me yesterday that it’s never too late to stand up.’

  ‘Stand up? To what? You should step down. You don’t deserve to lead this company, Andrei. You ought to step aside and give it to someone who does.’

  ‘Like you, I suppose?’

  ‘Give me this company and just see what I could do with it!’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Such as, for a start, not committing the most public suicide the world has ever seen. You talk about betraying yourself. This is betrayal, Andrei. Betrayal of millions of shareholders, betrayal of the greatest business the world has ever seen. And for nothing. It will change nothing. Someone else will simply do what you could have done. You’ll be a footnote to history, when you could have been a whole chapter.’ He glanced away for a moment, shaking his head, as if dazed by disbelief at what Andrei had been saying. ‘You know what? When I first met you, I thought you were the visionary. I thought you were the guy who could see into that place ten or twenty years ahead. But I was wrong. All you’ve ever seen was what you saw sitting in your dorm room. You know, I’ve often asked myself, has Andrei Koss ever changed? Surely he can’t believe all this sophomorish stuff he spouts about Deep Connectedness? Deep Connectedness! Shit, it’s like they’re the only two words you know! I’m so sick of hearing them. But you actually do believe it, don’t you? You haven’t changed one bit. I’m the visionary. I’m the one who saw the window opening up for Farming. I’m the one who proved the concept. I’m the one who saw the power of the model if we were able to program it. I’m the one who can see where that can take us now.’

  ‘No, Chris,’ said Andrei quietly. ‘We can both see that.’

  Chris stared at him. Then he snorted and shook his head again.

  ‘I’m going to announce it tomorrow,’ said Andrei. ‘I’ve asked Alan to organize a press conference.’

  ‘Does he know what it’s about?’

  Andrei shook his head.

  ‘Does anyone?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Don’t you think you ought to tell the board?’

  ‘It’s a formality.’

  ‘Then as a formality.’

  ‘As I recall,’ said Andrei, ‘you never seemed to be too worried about that kind of thing. But you’re right. I should tell the board. I’ll get Jenn to see if she can get a call set up with them tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Watch them sell the shares they were granted. All those captains of industry. As soon as they get wind of this, they’ll be out of here like rats on a ship. And all those people who were applauding you last night, everyone who loves you so much? Watch them on the express right out of Fishbowl once they realise what their options will be worth after this.’

  Andrei shrugged. The decision that he had made, which was bigger than all the others that had caused him so much prevarication in recent times, had come to him with no procrastination at all. It wasn’t until he had been on the roof of the Grey Warehouse with Ben the previous night that he had had the idea of stopping Farming – but as soon as he had, he had sensed it was the right thing to do. Not only the right thing, the only thing he could do. As he was driven home, as he had sat reading the notebooks that he had written in the first, heady year of Fishbowl’s existence, as he had watched himself in front of the Senate committee, that feeling had hardened into certainty. By the time Sandy had come home, he had decided.

  But it was one thing to decide – another to do. Andrei felt as if a huge weight had just lifted off him. Saying what he was going to do, even to Chris, made it real. Now he knew he was really going to do it.

  ‘You’re making the world’s greatest ever business mistake,’ said Chris. ‘I’m selling my shares.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘The world’s moving on, Andrei. You want to hold back the tide.’

  ‘No,’ said Andrei. ‘But I’m not goin
g to be the one who brings it in.’ He got up.

  Lopez put his head around the screen again.

  ‘Lopez, let me pay.’

  ‘No,’ said Lopez. ‘Yao will kill me if I take your money.’

  ‘Let’s see what he’ll be saying in a week’s time,’ muttered Chris.

  Andrei went around the screen and headed for the door.

  Chris followed him. ‘I’d sell your shares if I were you,’ he said to Lopez as he went past him. ‘And tell Yao to sell as well. Today.’

  On the pavement outside, Andrei stopped. He was happy. He hadn’t felt like this for months. Only now – having announced his intention – did he realize how oppressed he had been feeling. Only when the weight had gone did he realize how heavy it had been. For the first time in what seemed like years he was utterly at peace with a decision that he had made.

  He put out his hand. ‘I hope you’ll stay as one of our key investors, Chris. We can do great things. We can make this work. We really can.’

  Chris grabbed his wrist. ‘You still don’t have to do this, Andrei. Look, I said some harsh things. We both did. Do all the other things you want to do. The medical stuff, the education stuff. Absolutely. When we started the Manhattan Project, we both knew there were all kind of good things we could do with it. Just don’t stop Farming. You can do both.’

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘Andrei, we’ve got seven years together. Let’s talk about it some more.’

  ‘I’ve made up my mind. If you want to talk about it, let’s talk about how you can help—’

  ‘Andrei?’

  They both looked around. A big man with a blond goatee had stepped out of a car that was parked by the kerb.

  ‘I knew I’d find you here.’ The man looked at him in anguish, his face was smeared with tears. He put out his arms. ‘I didn’t believe it, Andrei! I didn’t believe it until you did the IPO. You fucking sold us out. You fucking betrayed us.’