by David Yoon
Max just looked at him.
“Anyway, it’s all blended into a big intersectional affinity data set for faceted advertiser audience targeting,” said Justin Richards.
Max looked at him some more, enough to make him smile a self-aware smile, and suddenly Justin Richards was cool-boss again.
“It’s bullshit, I know, it’s bullshit,” said Justin Richards finally. He lowered his voice. “This whole Soul Project thing creeped me out from the beginning.”
“I just feel like we should say something to someone,” said Max. “Maybe even Cal Peers.”
“You want time with Cal Peers?”
“Unless you kinda wanna talk to him on my behalf?” tried Max. “Brad can’t know I saw his junk all hanging out.”
“Eh,” said Justin Richards with a wave. “I’ll just ask Brad for a copy outright, problem solved. He doesn’t know what I have and don’t have access to. We could meet with Mister Cal together, if you want.”
Max swallowed. “Together.”
“It might be good for you,” said Justin Richards. “You get to be the hero making sure Wren stays on the up-and-up. Although, fair warning: motherfucker can be one challenging motherfucker.”
Max nodded. “I just . . . This whole Soul Project thing. It’s getting way far away from Don’t be evil.”
“I feel you one hundred percent,” said Justin Richards. “I’ll get something on the calendar. Might be a day or two, which is probably a good thing. Give your thoughts time to rise and firm up.”
“Like my dick,” said Max.
Justin Richards laughed, which meant Max could finally laugh, too.
0.5
The glass village of Wren headquarters overlooked the hard, glittering Pacific from atop Playa Mesa: a bucolic toe-shaped peninsula, named mesa because of its colossal table-like topography. A Masada of tech million- and billionaires.
Back during the war, with all the Whitemen gone to kill kill kill and be killed killed killed, Playa Mesa was once populated by Browns of all stripe. They made bombs and things in sprawling war factories. They leased borrowed homes long enough to fool themselves into thinking they owned them. Things were nice.
But the war stopped, the factories closed, and the Whitemen came back hungry for homes and jobs. The Browns were no longer needed. The Whitemen drew red lines on maps to push them out. The economy shifted away from manufacturing and toward design and information and other vestibularities. So the Browns, newly unqualified, moved out to poorer areas like Hancock or Delgado Beach. They got jobs making coil springs or sewing blue jeans or cleaning offices or driving corporate shuttle buses.
Like the bus Max was sitting in right now.
Real estate values radiated down the sides of Playa Mesa from the epicenter of Wren headquarters, and the winding shuttle bus discharged its passengers by income bracket in descending order as it climbed down: Whitemen Senior Staff first, then the Asian Browns of Programming, then the Whitewomen of Marketing, then the Non-Technical Browns.
Max lived in a sleek, spartan bachelor apartment in between the Whitemen Senior Staff and Asian Browns of Programming levels.
But today was Thursday, so Max did not get off at his usual stop high up on the mesa. Max was the last one to get dropped off—far out in Delgado Beach, in an area known as Playa Mesa Bottom. He could’ve gotten a ride from Shane, who picked up Akiko every night in the Poolwhip, but Max had spent enough time as a third wheel and was on a break.
“This is you,” the bus driver said. He was an old African American man who had seen things that most people in 2018 could not comprehend.
Max gave a chin nod. He stepped out of the freezing air-conditioned bus and into the stifling hot dusk of a ramshackle neighborhood. Three children and their dog stared at him exiting this outrageous luxury van emblazoned with the Wren logo.
It was not a great neighborhood—it was the kind his Whitemen coworkers liked to call ghetto or sketch—but Max loved it anyway. Every Thursday he stepped out of the Wren shuttle and breathed deep, just like he was breathing now.
Because he was home.
“Flaco,” said Dad as Max approached. Flaco was a nickname that meant skinny. In English it would be Slim. On a crumbling porch of a crumbling stucco house sat Dad, playing an old Spanish étude on his guitar, cigarette between his lips, one leg elevated on a phone book. He worked ten hours a day at a coil spring factory in Hancock; twelve hours if you counted the commute.
“Pizza before five minute,” said Max’s mom from the kitchen within. Mom worked in a garment factory, sewing together designer blue jeans for ten hours a day.
On the weekends Mom and Dad cleaned tech offices. They woke before Max did. They came home late. Most days, they would call or video-chat before bed. But Max almost never got to see them in person, except for Thursdays.
They made sure to knock off early for pizza night, every Thursday.
Max loved them both with a ferocity that, if tipped just so, could turn into anger. Because they did everything right, according to the American Dream. They worked hard. They paid a mortgage. They showed up every day to jobs they hated and never complained. And what was their reward?
Still more work.
“In this country it’s live to work,” his dad would explain without bitterness. “Not work to live. I’ll take you back one day to the old ranchito in El Salvador. Drink, play music, be with friends. Eat what the land gives us.”
But his mom told Max the truth: the ranchito, stolen by the ruling gang; Dad’s friend, disappeared one night after curfew; Mom’s friend’s fifteen-year-old daughter, married off at gunpoint; the land, powder-dry. One betrayal after another.
Paint as rosy a picture as you like, she would say. America has its problems, but at least it’s the only country where the picture comes close to matching the real thing.
Dad had no papers, nor did Mom. Max, born on this side, was the only one.
Max saved all he could to afford a lawyer with serious game. The deportations were happening, after all. The great El No Paso wall was being constructed.
After that, Max would decimate the mortgage and set up a retirement fund.
After that, Max would become His Benevolence, CEO Maximilian Portillo.
And Max would make his dad proud.
Being proud meant that a parent could look at their child, see them for who they really were, on their terms and their terms alone, and be able to honestly say:
You’re pretty damn cool.
Not that Dad would ever use the word cool.
Max thought about what his mom had said, about the picture matching the real thing, and began drafting a post in his mind. He would alert users about the Soul Project. He would talk about ideals, and integrity, and other stuff. The post would get a million likes and change everything.
“Wake up, stoner,” said Dad, and pinched Max’s neck.
Max, lost in thought, did not react. They sat at a tiny octagonal dining table with a wobbly leg that made their drinks slosh. Dad grumbled, knelt down to tighten a hidden wingnut, and gave the table a shake: stable, for now.
“¿Estás bien, m’ijito?” said Mom. Mom gave Max the slice with the most chorizo. She always did this. Max managed a smile.
“I’m fine,” said Max. “It’s just . . . Wren’s being all unethical.”
“What, like stealing money?” said Dad.
“Worse than money,” said Max. “User data. But the squishy stuff.”
“I don’t get it,” said Dad. He sipped a beer.
“What is esquishy stuff?” said Mom.
“They’re trying to trick people into telling Wren, like, their personal feelings and political affinities and all that,” explained Max. “But I’m gonna put a stop to it.”
“I don’t get it,” said Dad. “Is Wren making profits yet?”
Then D
ad made a sour face: You kids and your computers. Whenever Dad did this Max would become defensive about his chosen industry by spewing jargon.
“This year we got cash flow positive,” said Max.
“What that means?” said Mom.
“Listen,” said Dad. “I don’t know computers. I’m too old to learn data and all-go-rhythms and all that stuff. All I know when I use Airlift on my phone, I get a taxi. When I hit buy on A2Z, it gets delivered. Your boy Shane, he’s always talking about making his own app, too, right?”
“YouPool,” said Max.
“Use YouPool, people come and clean your pool. Is Wren like that?”
“You so very smart, Flaco,” said Mom.
Max gestured with his pizza and spoke carefully. “Wren’s not exactly like YouPool. Wren is the world’s most popular social media network, empowering millions to keep tabs on friends old and new, share thoughts, keep up with news, unleash creative potential, and foster awareness and understanding,” said Max, unconsciously quoting Wren corporate out of sheer habit. “Social media’s not a bad thing in theory. But in reality Wren could care less about unleashing creative potential or whatever. They just want to get more users, in order to get as much information on each user as algorithmically possible, in order to get more valuable. To advertisers.”
“So Wren sells ads,” said Dad.
“It’s more complicated than ads,” said Max. “It’s a platform of APIs that—”
“I hate ads,” said Dad. “They pop up and over and they’re so annoying.”
“Dad,” said Max.
“Anyway, so that’s the thing-thing,” said Dad. “Ads.”
“Dad,” said Max.
“Papi,” said Mom. She touched his forearm, and Dad set his hands back down.
Dad became very gentle. “Listen. My smart boy. Do this for a while, but then next job maybe do something more real. Something that you point at it, and you go, I made that, and the people go, I need that, thank you for making it. Whatever that is, just do it. You feel me?”
Dad pointed at his can and it dripped with sweat, as if anointed with wisdom.
“Just do something you love, and keep it simple,” said Dad. “But don’t be like me. Don’t get your hands dirty. Okay? Let us take the dirt so you don’t have to.”
“Then you get married and make the babies ándale,” said Mom. Mom and Dad had Max when they were twenty. All their Salvadoran friends had kids when they were twenty. That was their role. The kids in turn would take care of the parents in old age. That was their role. Didn’t Max want someone to talk to on his deathbed?
Max was twenty-six. Already six years behind. Not behind the twenty-year-olds at Wren, though. None of those kids were having kids.
Being Salvadoran American, it was hard to tell which set of rules to follow.
“Ha ha ha, marriage and babies, sure,” said Max to Mom. Then he spoke into his phone. It was a seven-month-old Quartz Milc 9, already middle-aged by tech standards. “Hey, Milc, find me a soul mate.”
“Here’s what I found about soul mate on the web,” said the Milc.
That night Max lay very still on his vast empty bed in his vast empty bedroom.
Max had a good-luck dollar in his wallet that Dad gave him. On the back was a pyramid with its top cut off—another Masada. Atop the pyramid was a radiant panopticon eye overlooking everything.
Max opened his laptop and began jotting down talking points for his upcoming meeting with Cal Peers in a new note titled “Vision Statement.”
How much would you sell your soul for?
0.6
How much money was enough money?
That was what Max woke up thinking.
Max actually knew: four million. After taxes. Invest all of it in something safe, live off the gains, and make work forever optional for himself, for Mom, for Dad.
Four million bucks in 2018 would make any parent proud.
Four million would be enough. And then what? Rest?
Max would not rest, of course. He would start another company, and then another, always striving to live up to that old tech cliché: making money while making the world better. And he would start by changing things at Wren.
Call Max a Pollyanna, but he super-much believed in that old tech cliché.
The shuttle took Max up Playa Mesa, collecting Wrennies by order of income along the way. Max sat in the back and continued with his vision statement.
your rights as an internet citizen should not change with every app update
Cal Peers would be impressed. More than that. Cal Peers would be inspired.
Max crossed the hexagonal green and entered the heart of the glass village. He climbed an invisible staircase and entered a transparent cube that lifted him to the sky room. He eyed a glowing panel on the door that led to the Helix.
The panel turned red: Try again.
So Max tried again.
Red.
Hey, bro, got a sec? said Justin Richards on Max’s phone.
Yah, said Max.
And Max headed back down to Product and rapped on a glass door.
“Mister Justin,” said Max.
“Mister Max,” said Justin Richards. They fist-bumped.
“I think something’s wrong with the Helix door,” said Max.
Justin Richards covered his eyes with his hand, a strange gesture, and spoke:
“How long have you been hanging out at Wren now?”
What? thought Max.
“Just shy of four years,” said a woman’s voice. “That’s a very, very long time.”
“Cherry, thanks for taking the time to hang out with us,” said Justin Richards.
A slim, older Whitewoman entered. She bore a sad kind of smirk. She held a large tablet to her chest. She gestured for Max to sit, and suddenly all three of them were sitting around a little guest table, something Max had never done before in Justin Richards’s office.
The world zoomed out and Max felt very tiny. Had Max made a fatal error when he confessed his doubts about the Soul Project with cool-boss Justin Richards?
“Is this . . . ?” said Max.
“I’m really sorry,” said Justin Richards. “But yeah. It is.”
Max’s eyes felt hot and gigantic. “Did I? Do? Something? Wrong?”
Justin Richards covered his eyes once again, and the Cherry person smirked her smirk.
“Not at all, Maximilian,” she said. “You’ve been nothing but a rock star. I just know you’ll have no problem finding your next incredible adventure after today.”
“Today?” said Max.
“Right now,” said Justin Richards through the hand covering his face.
“But why?”
“Restructuring something blablabla,” said the Cherry person, but it was hard to hear because Max was no longer listening. He was handed the large tablet. It was apparently his to keep. It contained documents and unemployment information and severance details. He vaguely remembered giving cool-boss Justin Richards, now ex-cool-boss Justin Richards, a big slapping hug. Was Justin Richards crying?
Was Max?
Now Max descended, through Product, down past Marketing, down past Programming. At some point a hand gripped his elbow, and suddenly Max was staring into the dumbfounded face of Akiko.
“What’s going on?” she said.
Max handed her the tablet, and right away she knew.
Max kept walking. Two silhouetted men waited by the blinding wall of glass that led outside: Maurice, the African American security guard, and a tall Whiteman with an immense head and heavy hands.
Wren CEO Cal Peers.
Did Cal Peers look at Max? It was hard to tell from the glare.
As Max approached, he could see that yes, Cal Peers was looking at Max with eyes like an owl’s by flashlight. He was
neither impressed nor inspired.
He was blank.
Cal Peers turned on a heel and strode away.
“Not gonna be the same here without you, Maxie,” said Maurice.
“Yes it will,” said Max.
0.7
Max thrust his arms and sent forth a ball of blue flame into the sea.
“Hadouken,” Max yelled.
“Let it out,” said Shane, bracing himself in the open door of the Poolwhip.
The Poolwhip was Shane’s van. It was full of hoses and nets and jugs of chemicals. Shane Satow ran his own business, Satow Pool Service, whose logo sprawled across the side of the vehicle in traditional Californian black letter.
Shane rifled a beer at Max. Max, who was terrible at catching rifled beers, fumbled it. The can exploded open and Max hurried to suck the foam.
Normally Shane would rib Max for committing such a foul, but today he did not.
They were at Point Whittier, overlooking a small cove dotted with late-afternoon surfers.
Point Whittier was where Shane came to think his thoughts. Max figured Shane had brought him here to think about what had happened today.
But what was there to think? Max had tickled the whale from inside and got sneezed out the blowhole.
Akiko draped herself across Shane’s outstretched arm. The arm did not tremble or buckle under the strain. Shane had worn shredded tank tops and shredded shorts every day for as long as Max could remember. He cleaned pools in these clothes, went out in these clothes, lifted weights in these clothes. He called these clothes his casualwear. Shane hated dressing up. Shane would probably wear a shredded tank top and shredded shorts when he got married.
To Akiko, of course.
“I just don’t get it, mang,” said Shane, shaking his close-cropped head.
“What don’t you get, baby?” said Akiko.
Max caught himself staring at her. He looked back at the sea.
“Why’d they fire Max?” said Shane.
“Think about it,” said Akiko. “One day he calls bullshit on some scary NSA surveillance package deal, and the next day he’s let go.”
