He puts up a slide of a white telephone booth in a meadow overlooking the sea. “This is Otsuchi, in northern Japan. When the tsunami hit this town in 2011, ten percent of its population was killed. One of the local residents set up this phone booth to talk to his cousin, who had disappeared in the tsunami and was never found.”
Inside the phone booth sits an old rotary phone.
“The phone booth has become a place of pilgrimage. It doesn’t connect to anything, yet thousands of people come here every day. It’s called the Phone of the Wind, because people’s voices, their messages to the dead, are carried through the air.”
Now he brings up a slide of the death messaging app.
“AfterLight uses Asha’s algorithm, the same one that powers WAI, to allow users to continue their conversations with their loved ones who have passed away. With AI and data gathered from the platform, it creates an authentic simulation of their online voices.”
He doesn’t present a sample of the tech. He doesn’t need to. Everyone is sitting silently, imagining what would happen if they could suddenly bring a dead person to life.
Craig looks tearful, but I can’t tell if it’s because of what Cyrus is saying or because he’s coming to an understanding of how much money this thing is going to make him. He gets up, walks over to Cyrus, and puts out his hand. Cyrus shakes it. They gaze at each other solemnly.
Then Gaby says, “With all due respect, Cyrus, this is not a good idea.”
Cyrus looks genuinely confused. “Why not?”
“Because the tech can easily get out of control,” I say.
“And because it seems wrong,” Gaby says. “Asha warned us months ago about Marco, and this is the evidence.”
“We have rigorous principles of consent around this thing,” Cyrus says. “First of all, the person has to agree to it while they’re still alive. This means, in the case of accidental death, the Obit.ly tech can’t be used.
“Then each person in their network has a choice. Do they want to hear from their departed loved one? If so, under what circumstances? How frequently? And of course, they can cancel their subscription at any time.”
I say I don’t think that’s enough. “If something goes wrong, the stakes are too high.”
“What we do can go wrong at any time,” Cyrus insists. “People have agreed to allow us into the most intimate parts of their lives.”
“Yes, and we cannot abuse that trust.”
“No one is abusing anyone’s trust,” Craig groans, waving his hand as if I’m turning something super-casual into something boringly complicated.
I’m not sure when I decide to dig in, but I find myself saying, “You can’t release this. I will vote against it.”
Craig leans back in his chair. “Then you will be removed from the board of this company.”
“Hold on,” Cyrus says. “You can’t do that.”
“Read the articles of association, man. I can call it to a vote. Majority wins.”
Everyone stops moving. We’re a canvas, captured in time by an artist, titled The Fun Is Over.
“I don’t think Asha’s a value add anymore,” Craig says.
Cyrus takes a deep breath. “If she goes, I go.”
“Cyrus, you’re not going to quit. First of all, your contract says you have to give us twelve months’ notice. And anyway, this is your flock. You’re not getting out.”
My head is spinning. I start talking without really hearing myself. “I don’t want to—break us apart. If it comes to that, I’ll quit.”
“Oh, hell no,” Gaby says. “The entire management team will leave. Jules and I will be out of here in five minutes, and you’ll be left with an empty office and a CEO with a broken heart.”
I throw Gaby a grateful look, but through all the noise in my head, I know he’s bluffing. Jules wouldn’t leave Cyrus, and Gaby won’t leave Jules. There are murmurs around the table, people trying to step in to see if they can broker a truce. Rupert is talking to Jules, who is whispering something to Gaby. I stare and stare at Cyrus to check if he’s trying to tell me something, to see if his hand is reaching out across the table to hold mine. Last night, after we played cribbage and he won for the thousandth time, I felt the weight of his arm across my shoulders and realized we hadn’t argued about anything in weeks. We had both imagined that I had capitulated. That I had agreed to let him be the boss, to make the rules, and that I would be a good solider who follows orders and shuts up when she needs to.