So V.T. ordered them to “put somebody on it,” which they had. Meanwhile, the marketing people, in anticipation of algorithmic success, had started penciling out a campaign, beginning with a killer slogan: “It’s one thing to save you money; it takes a special company to save your life.”
They’d been focus-grouping possible branding and licensing schemes and other ways of monetizing their suicidal ideation detection app, the idea being that saving someone’s life was a good way to get a lifetime customer.
“Just spitballing here,” a marketing guy said, worrying a Nerf basketball.
The names being tested included: NewDay, BullyProof, SunnyUp, YouStrong, BetterDays, NoH8ters, and Jack. The spitballing guy especially liked Jack—thought it was edgy, but at the same time, kid friendly.
“‘Yeah, I talked to Jack today, and boy, am I glad I did,’” he said, so they could get a feel of how “the kids” might use it, you know, when talking.
“Or,” another marketing guy wanting in on it said, “if you’re thinking about killing yourself, you don’t know Jack.”
Good work, they’d been told.
Two days and four million hits later, they were all fired.
And then the CDC came out with a report that showed suicide was at an all-time high across the US, a rise not directly correlated to the proliferation of social-media users but trending uncomfortably close to it. That coupled with the graphic viral video of a kid with everything to live for who didn’t, well, time to start the scapegoating.
That’s how V.T. saw it. That he articulated it out loud—and some boardroom Brutus recorded it—was unfortunate. The MP3 followed the same viral path as the original video, and was linked to it forever via “you may also like” or “related” or “you might also be interested in.” And even though what V.T. said wasn’t untrue, per se—just badly timed and tone deaf—that didn’t stop the trolls from using it in meme after meme. For a while, you couldn’t go anywhere online without hearing V.T.’s voice saying: “Christ, it’s not like we invented suicide,” accompanied by a video of Rupert Gunn Jr. losing his head, followed by an especially emotive Face Girl reacticon displaying her horror.
8
George could flash back to it anytime he needed to—any time he needed fuel to stoke his anger. All it took was that first little rip that then tore straight down his psyche. Fingers—those were the triggers—specifically outstretched fingers, desperate to connect but restrained from doing so, being pulled apart by the laws of property, ownership, territoriality, the laws of lines in the sand, and the terrible penalty for being caught on the wrong side of one.
It happened in ninth grade without his willing it, while George was looking at the panel from the Sistine Chapel of God and Adam, a spark gap apart, their fingers reaching forever but not quite touching. Suddenly, he was five years old again and in immigration court—right in the middle of an art appreciation class (or some other course the teacher was trying to smuggle culture into, despite slashed funding and a policy of teaching to the test). While in the flashback’s throes, George saw everyone in class turning around to stare at him, at the tears running down his face. And as embarrassed as he was, he still welcomed the misdirection because it meant they weren’t looking lower, where he crossed his legs, hoping his pants would dry before the bell rang, watching the clock’s hands, blurry through tears.
“Mr. Jedson,” his teacher asked, “do you need to be excused? Do you need me to call someone?”
No. No, he didn’t. George shook his head, furiously, found his voice, and said, “No, Ms. Kozlowski. I’m . . . it’s . . .”—think—“allergies, I think.”
He mashed a hand over one eye, then the other, smearing with the same fury with which he’d shaken his head. He sucked in a loud sniffle, dragged a sleeve underneath his nose, sniffle-sucked again.
“You’re sure?” his teacher asked.
George nodded, noting what he wasn’t hearing: his fellow classmates laughing. Instead, they’d all gone quiet and were busying themselves looking everywhere but at him. George could read their minds. Thank God, they were thinking, it’s not me making a scene.
George stopped going to school after that. Instead, he started taking BART out of Oakland to downtown SF, hung out at City Lights Bookstore, and considered himself “a homeless person in training,” while he worked up the nerve to run away for good. In the meantime, he went undercover, test-driving his ability to survive on his own.
He’d picked up that MBA “dress for success” BS from one of his fosters. To George, it sounded like some corporate version of drag, wearing the clothes of the job you wished you had. But not being in school anymore left him with plenty of time. So he pinched some techno dweeb wardrobe from a dry cleaner. It seemed that—contrary to myth—techno dweebs who’ve gotten the personal hygiene talk at work will use dry cleaners, going straight from their moms doing their laundry to somebody else doing their laundry. George finished off the costume by getting a playing card laminated before attaching it to a lanyard and tucking it into his breast pocket. After that, he hopped on company shuttles, complaining about how his smart chip must have brain damage, so someone else would swipe him on. It helped that he was tall for his age and generally ethnic enough to discourage confrontation and/or direct eye contact.
Using his disguise, George toured the Bay Area, going from one corporate campus to another, living off geek droppings: half-finished Starbucks, breakfast sandwiches and bagels left where they’d been placed down, only a bite or two missing, so the guy (it was always a guy) wouldn’t have to argue about the algorithm he was arguing about with his mouth or hands full.
George listened for buzzwords he googled later, discovering to his delight that he actually had a knack for programming, including some of the shadier varieties he found after surfing to some of the shadier sides of the web, the part where anonymity was the whole idea and the front door wasn’t Google, but had to be picked open using tools like Tor.
In retrospect, George figured he did owe the foster system an acknowledgment after all. It was because of them he’d been moved from Los Angeles, where he’d been born, to the heart of the action in Northern California, where he proceeded to circle the map around the San Francisco Bay, from San Jose to Oakland to Alameda and back to Oakland. And it was because of the foster system he had learned to be sneaky. That was a trait they shared—hacking and surviving foster care—because they both depended on learning the rules even as they changed on the fly, and then figuring out the loopholes and how hard you could push against this or that pressure point without having the whole thing backfire.
The first things he ever hacked outright were the various parental controls set by one of his foster families. It wasn’t that he was especially interested in violence or pornographic content—well, at thirteen he was—but their being kept from him was what made them so tempting. Plus, figuring out loopholes, work-arounds, weakest links, and exploitable exploits made his brain smile like almost nothing else did. And these same skills came in handy when George decided to remove himself from the foster system once and for all, two years sooner than the system would have kicked him out.