by David Yoon
Contents
Cover
Titles by David Yoon
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
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About the Author
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TITLES BY DAVID YOON
Frankly in Love
Super Fake Love Song
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2021 by David Yoon
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Yoon, David, author.
Title: Version zero / David Yoon.
Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2021] |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020057329 (print) | LCCN 2020057330 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593190357 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593190364 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3625.O534 V47 2021 (print) | LCC PS3625.O534 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057329
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057330
Book design by Tiffany Estreicher, adapted for ebook by Maggie Hunt
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design and illustration: Eric Fuentecilla
pid_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0
For Nicki and Penny, my lights in the dark
CONTENTS
Cover
Titles by David Yoon
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
0.0
0.1
0.1
0.2
0.3
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/>
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
Don’t be evil.
—internet proverb
Move fast and break things.
—internet proverb
Say you are writing a new piece of software.
You should give each version of your software a number to keep track of its progress.
Examples: version 1.5, version 3.11, version 7.24.
Version 1.0 means your software is officially ready to be used in a real-world setting.
Version 2.0 means you made significant updates to version 1.0.
Same for version 3.0, version 4.0, and so on.
If your software is still in development and not yet ready for prime time, you should give it a version number less than one, like version 0.2 or version 0.7.
The absolute first version number for any new piece of software is version 0.1.
There is no such thing as version 0.0.
0.0
0.1
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Max was twenty-six.
It was way back in the year 2018. Summer. Remember? Hashtags and don’t-text-and-drive and fear-of-missing-out and virtual reality. Selfies and the Troll President and revenge porn. All that.
Max walked in the white Californian sunlight. He walked into a village made of glass. The village was Wren. Wren was the world’s largest social network. A social network was a computer program where many-many people could share their thoughts/photos/videos and also share other people’s thoughts/photos/videos. Then they would talk about it all. Sometimes fight. Mostly fight.
For some reason, this kind of thing was hugely popular in the year 2018.
Wren’s only product was Wren itself. It had been started by two college kids who worked hard and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and exhibited Yankee ingenuity and blah,
blah,
blah.
Everyone used Wren, everyone loved it, everyone hated it. And as strange as it sounds, Wren was everything. People used it for news. For gossip. Social plans. Dining tips. Political views. Dating. Shopping. Driving directions. Blablabla.
As strange as it sounds, three billion people used Wren every day on their smartphones. The people could not stop themselves. They said they were addicted.
Back then being addicted to tech was considered a good thing.
Tech meant anything involving computer programs, especially the ones used by many-many people. It was different from technology, which meant noncomputer things like building bridges and inventing medicines.
Max wore a hoodie. It gave him entrepreneurial élan. All CEOs in the tech industry wore hoodies as symbols of egalitarianism belying their positions of supreme power. Tech CEOs could probably get everyone on the planet to chew more gum with a simple edit to their news algorithms, if they wished. But they did no such thing. For they were good men.
Wren’s number one rule was this: Don’t be evil.
One day Max wanted to be a CEO of his very own Wren.
Max wanted to put a dent in the universe. But in a good way.
His Benevolence, CEO Maximilian Portillo.
For now, Max was in Product.
He walked across the colossal hexagonal green populated with Wrennies playing volleyball, holding yoga poses, or lying about. Three men—Mexican, maybe—were setting up some kind of epic barbecue. They eyed Max as he walked past.
