Sister Section

(I'm turning this in for my class, which meets for the last time tomorrow. I'll probably back off the short stories for a while after this.)


Dad took Jenny and me to Granny’s house last night. He said it might snow while he and Mom were at the hospital, so he made us take our snow pants and boots even though there wasn’t any snow on the ground yet. That made me excited because it was almost Christmas and I didn’t get to go sledding yet and Granny’s house had a big hill that was fun to sled on. We took the white car that had barbecue stains on the ceiling from when Mom almost crashed the car and my chicken nuggets box flew out of my lap, but Mom couldn’t go with us to Granny’s because Dad said she had to save up her energy for having my baby sister tomorrow.

Before we left, Mom asked Jenny and me to bring Brown Bear and White Bear to her in her bed. Mom says she made me Brown Bear to give to me when I was born. She made White Bear for Jenny when she was born, but now I called him Gray Bear because he was so dirty and it made Jenny get mad.

Mom held up a teddy bear that was just like mine and Jenny's, only it was black. She waved its arm at our bears and said "Hello Greg and Jenny, my name is Black Bear and I am going to live with your baby sister," in her silly voice.

I held out Brown Bear's arm to his and said "Hello, Black Bear. It's nice to meet you. My name is Brown Bear."

I know that our teddy bears aren't real, but Mom likes it when we pretend.

Jenny didn't say anything so I had Brown Bear say "And that there is Gray Bear." Mom gave me a look so I said "Well his real name is White Bear, he's just a little dirty," and Jenny smiled again.

Mom said "It's very nice to meet you both. I will take good care of your new sister in the hospital and I will see you again soon." Mom had all our bears hug each other and then she said changed back to her normal voice and said "and now I want a hug from my baby bears."  Me and Jenny kissed Mama goodbye and we kissed her tummy too and told our new baby sister we couldn’t wait to meet her.

I mean, we kissed Mom goodbye. Sister Ruth told me that first grade boys can say “Mama”, but second grade boys should say “Mom” and “Dad”. Jenny was in kindergarten and she called mom and dad “Mommy” and “Daddy”. Dad was a grown-up and he always called Mom “Your Mother”.

Jenny had to sit in the back seat because she was the littlest and she asked Dad, “Why does Mommy have to go to the hospital to have the baby? Is she sick?”

I said "Because sometimes ladies get hurt when they have a baby, right Dad?”

Dad said “And sometimes instead of a regular baby, a mommy will have a baby tiger!  And sometimes the baby tiger will scratch and bite everyone and they need to be in the hospital to fix all the people.” 

I knew Dad was joking because he always talked funny when he told jokes. Sometimes Jenny didn’t know when he was joking but this time she did and she giggled and said, “That’s not what happens, Daddy!”

I told Dad to make a left on Highway Q. Dad knew how to get to Granny’s, but sometimes when Dad driving, he would have me tell him directions because he wanted to see if I knew them. Granny’s house was easy to get to because it was just past Dad’s work and sometimes he would have to go back to work at night and he would take Jenny and me and we would play hide and seek in the big empty factory while Dad looked at papers on his desk.

Granny’s house always smelled like ham, but I always liked going to there because the house was so big and they had a swimming pool in the back. My cousin Mike and me used to play football in the living, but I bumped my head once on the stones on the wall by the fireplace and needed five stitches, so Granny said we couldn't play football inside any more. When we talked to Granny on the phone, we said we wanted macaroni for dinner and when I smelled the house I was afraid that Granny made ham again but then I saw the macaroni on the stove. Grandpa was putting up some Christmas lights in the trees outside but he came in right after us and Jenny and me gave both of them big hugs. Even though it smelled like ham, We took our bags to our room that smelled really dusty like our attic. When we came back Dad was talking to Granny and Grandpa about the sister section that Mom was getting tomorrow.

On Monday, Dad told me that is when they cut a lady’s belly open and take the baby out. Granny said to Dad she didn’t know why Mary had to get a sister section. Mary is Mom’s real name.

I looked at my belly and wondered if a baby could crawl out of my belly like the baby chickens crawled out of their eggs at Uncle Jack’s farm. But babies are squishy and they don’t have beaks and tummies are squishy too so I don’t know how they could make a hole. A sister section sounded like a good idea because Mom couldn’t move around too good any more with my baby sister in her belly. Granny actually called it a "scissoring section" I think, but I didn’t say anything about this because Dad was talking in his grown-up voice. Granny looked sad and she sniffled but she said it was because she was she just had a cold and not to worry.

Dad gave us hugs and told us to be good and went home. We ate macaroni and Grandpa ate roast beef and corn and Granny made pineapple upside down cake for dessert. I had two pieces because it’s my favorite. Then Granny and I played Yahtzee and Jenny watched Little Mermaid again. Grandpa smoked his pipe and read his tractor magazines in his big brown squishy rocking chair that no one was allowed to sit in.

In the morning Dad called at 7:03 and said that the doctor thought Mom was ready for the baby to come out, so they were going to start the sister section.

“I’ll call you at school as soon she’s done, okay buddy?”

“When is that?”

“I don’t know, Gregger, maybe three or four hours or so?” That was during recess and Penmanship class.

Granny took us to school after that. Saint Rosemary is my school but it didn’t have a kindergarten, so Jenny went to Maple Lawn, which was a little bit further down the street. Jenny will go to Saint Rosemary next year. Sometimes Granny teaches a ceramics class at Saint Rosemary, but that’s only on Wednesdays and only the 5^th and 6^th graders can go to that class. Today was Friday so Granny wasn’t supposed to come in to the school.

We had to go to church first thing in the morning. All the other grades go to church on Mondays and Wednesdays, but second graders have to go on Fridays too until they have First Communion, and that is in April. Sister Ruth said I had to read the petitions in the front of church today because there was a petition to pray for my family. I like to have readings in church because I get bored sometimes and then I can practice my readings in my head. I saw Grandma in church and tried to wave at her, but she had her eyes closed and she was praying and saying quiet words to Jesus, so she didn’t see me. Sister Ruth smacked my head and told me to turn around. Grandma goes to her church every day but I never see her in my church. She didn’t tell me she was coming or I would have asked Sister Ruth if I could sit by her today.

After church I had to go to the third grade room for math class because I did second grade math last year. Mrs. Dionne teaches third grade and I like her more than Sister Ruth. Sister Ruth always told me to sit still and be quiet but the boys in Mrs. Dionne’s class are naughtier, so I can hum or walk around a little bit and she won’t yell at me.

I like math the best and I was having fun so I didn’t think about my baby sister until I saw the clock was 9:56 and I remembered what Dad said. Recess was in four minutes but I hoped Dad would call after recess ended at 10:20 because I liked playing kickball at recess and I didn't like penmanship class because Sister Ruth always tells me to slow down because I write sloppy when I write fast.

Dad didn't call during recess, so I got to play kickball with my friends and I kicked a single. I was excited that Dad was going to call me during penmanship but I waited and he didn't call while I practiced writing twenty lower-case p's and twenty lower-case q's. And he didn't call while I was writing ten words that started with "p" and five words that started with "q". And then he didn't call during art class either. I started to think Dad forgot to call me.

After art class we had lunch and I asked Sister Ruth if I could go to the office to see if my Dad called. Ms. Monroe answers the phones for the school and I thought maybe Dad left a message with her. But Sister Ruth told me I should stop worrying and go to lunch.

Lunch is in the basement and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders eat together at 12:00. I always sit with Tom and Jason at lunch and talk about Nintendo, so they saved me a seat while I talked to Sister Ruth. Granny made me peanut butter and jelly like I asked, but she didn't cut off the crusts like Mom did and she used the wrong kind of jelly, so I just ate my Cheetos instead. Right after I ate my Cheetos, the first grade teacher, Mr. Schmidt, came down and told me to go upstairs to Sister Ruth's classroom. I knew it was my Dad and I was so excited that I ran up the stairs and all the way to my classroom even though Mr. Schmidt yelled at me not to run. I didn't care because I wanted to hear about my baby sister and find out what took so long.

Sister Ruth was talking on the phone when I got to the room and she was wearing the special glasses she sometimes wore at her desk but not when she was teaching. I thought Sister Ruth always talked with the same voice, but she was talking real slow and quietly on the phone. "... Of course, of course, Frank," she said. "He'll be in the office." Frank is my Dad's real name so I knew she was talking to him.

She looked like she was crying, but I remembered that her glasses sometimes make her look like she is crying even when she isn't so I didn't know. She held her hand out and waved at me to come by her and she petted my hair while she listened to the phone. Sister Ruth never petted my hair before. "He just walked in. I will let you two talk," she said. "We will be praying for you."

She handed me the phone and leaned against the chalkboard. "It's your father."

I put the phone to my ear. "Dad?"

"Dad?"

"Hey Gregger." He had a new voice too and he was talking slow and quiet like Sister Ruth.

I turned away from Sister Ruth and took a step toward the wall with the coats. "Are you okay, Dad?" I was talking slow and quiet too, but I wasn't doing it on purpose. "Did Mommy have her baby?"

He was quiet for a little bit and then he said, "Grandma is coming to pick you and your sister up and bring you down to the hospital."

"Do we get to see the baby?"

"Your can see the baby, but your Mother is very sick and you need to come see her."

"Is she okay?" I asked. "Is she going to die?"

Dad didn't say anything.

"Daddy?"

"I don't know, Gregger. Hurry down here."

I told Daddy I loved him and turned around and gave the phone back to Sister Ruth. She knelt down and gave me a long hug but she didn't say anything. My forehead was touching her face and I could tell corner of her eye was wet. Then she grabbed my shoulders and looked at me and asked "Your dad told you your grandmother is coming?" I shook my head yes. She stood up and said, "I will walk down you to the office."

Sister Ruth walked me down to Ms. Monroe's office and she petted my hair the whole way. I was glad that Mom was already in the hospital when she got sick because she was right by all the doctors, so I didn't think she was going to die. When we got to the office Sister Ruth gave me another hug and told me, "Do not forget to pray, Gregory. God will be there for you."

Granny didn't get out of the car when she parked her black car outside the school, so Ms. Monroe walked me out. Jenny was already in the front seat so I sat in the back. Usually I would tell Jenny to sit in the back, but I was thinking about lots of things already so I forgot to say anything. Granny gave me the red and white rosary from off her mirror and told me we had to pray the rosary together for my Mom. Granny used her heavy black rosary but he didn't give Jenny one because she didn't know how to say the rosary yet. We said one whole rosary and some of another rosary when we got to the hospital.

It was snowing by the time we got to the hospital but not enough to need boots. I left my rosary in the car but Granny kept hers wrapped around her arm like bracelets. Granny held our hands and I could feel that some of the beads were warm but the metal cross at the end was very cold. Granny walked us inside the hospital through the big turning glass doors. When we got inside the hospital was bright and it smelled like the kitchen at home right after Mommy cleans it. I thought Dad would be waiting for us when we came in, but he wasn't there. Granny asked the lady at the desk where my Mom was and she said they had just moved her to the fourth floor.

I was only on an elevator two other times in my life, and it was the first time I rode an elevator made out of glass so I could look at other parts of the hospital when we went up. I decided maybe I would ask if I could ride it to all the other floors later with Dad. Granny didn't seem like talking much though so I didn't ask her. She just kept touching her rosary and holding Jenny's hand.

The elevator opened up and Granny took our hands and looked at the sign in the hallway. We turned to the right and walked to the end of the hallway and I felt very cold even with my jacket on. We turned to the left and there was another long hallway. Granny stopped and I looked at her and then I looked where she was looking and I saw Dad at the other end of the hallway. He was sitting on a red plastic chair and he had his elbows on knees. I couldn't see what, but he was looking down at something that he was holding in his hands. I let go of Granny's hand and walked a little bit forward and I saw that he was holding Black Bear.

I screamed out as loud as I could. "Daddy!"

But he didn't look up.

I started running toward Daddy faster than I ever ran before. I decided that I hated Black Bear more than anything else in the world. I wanted to knock him out of Daddy's hands and throw him out the window and never see him again.

And even though I was running so fast, Daddy seemed like he kept getting further away. And I turned around and Granny and Jenny were just as far away. I just kept running and running but my legs felt real heavy and I couldn't breathe and finally I tripped and fell. My face felt hot against the scratchy brown carpet and I pressed harder and I tried to bury my head like an ostrich but I couldn't do it. I was so tired I never wanted to stand up again, so I just pushed my face harder and harder and I cried and I cried until it was dark.

Feedback on Danny Slowe

The Pros:


- Each reader intrigued by the premise. Everyone wanted to read more.

- Good use of language matching the scene. A bit business-y and technical, but appropriate for the story and the relationships

- Good quotable lines and vivid imagery

- The Danny character is intriguing and mysterious, and the BFF relationship between him and Carlos feels authentic, with elements of comfort and openness but also tension. There is a compelling contrast between his desire to play God via technology and his need to be in nature and "off the grid" (this was actually an accident on my part... I didn't realize this about him until I was half-way through writing the chapter)

- Good instincts in choosing to tell this story from Carlos' point of view. Multiple allusions to Great Gatsby, telling the story of a "legend" from another's point of view.

 

The Cons:

- Danny doesn't do anything in this first chapter. He has two lines of dialogue, he stares at a fire, and he pours a cup of coffee for his friend. I was trying to make him mysterious, but I need to have at least a few more subtle gestures/actions/lines to let people in to his world.

- Along the same lines, a couple readers want to know why Danny "wants" this, or what's driving him to take such a big business risk with this idea. We don't know his values or character. I tried to make it clear that even Carlos can't make sense of the situation, and that Danny doesn't need reasons/logic to have a strike of creative insight. Evidently either I didn't do a good job at this or I did a fine job and it's unrewarding to present a character without a glimpse of motive.

- The dialogue and the action was too on-point. Four guys in the woods for a weekend aren't just going to talk about work. They need to discuss other stuff, and I need to describe in better detail the things that they are doing in the woods.

- My grammar sucks balls. I knew this already. The biggest problem is I bounced back and forth between past and past perfect at random. That's a no-no when I'm bouncing back and forth between two different periods of time.

- Also I let my point of view drift between Carlos and omniscient/objective.

- Not enough dialogue and too much summary/exposition. I agree completely. I used summary in places I would naturally use dialogue in order to move the piece along. I didn't want to subject the workshop to a 15-20 page piece that needed that needed to be marked up in a week. It was good to hear my instincts were correct.

- No action took place in the woods, just talking. A couple requests to spice it up by having something happen out there. I really don't know if I want to take this advice.

- I clearly underestimated how frightening Radical Transparency is as a completely fresh idea to drop on the reader. The tone I used while laying out the details was really dry. Now that I got to see a room of people react to my premise, I want to really spice up the language in that section to drive home the fear.

- The opener is a strong line, but it's not appropriate as an opener.

 

Overall, the workshop made me feel like the gap between where I'm at and where I need to be as a writer is a bit wider than I thought. It's a little disheartening, but it's not emotionally crippling or anything. I was really wrapped up in the philosophy of radical transparency, and I figured the power of the idea would carry the novel without much extra emphasis on writing. I thought the big hurdles for me would be organizing the novel, building my world in more detail in my head and then on paper, and choosing the most compelling characters and story lines. I now realize I need work on technical skills like character development and plot pacing. I guess that's the difference between writing personal stories and writing a novel out of thin air. I lean heavily on my eye for detail when I'm writing from experience, and I don't have that available to me for the book.

I really got a lot from having my stuff workshopped. I like having my weak spots defined. I'm sure I'll be joining one or more workshops off Meetup or something like that.

 

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A Dating Story

This isn't for class or anything. This just happened to me this past week.

 

Say hello to girl on okcupid. Tall. Fit. Wears glasses. Writes complete sentences. Smitten.


We're having coffee three hours later. God bless you internet.

I sweat profusely at coffee. Confused. Don't usually sweat. She calls me out on sweating. This makes me sweat more.

She is calm. Eerily calm. That's the problem. She is not pulling her nervousness weight. I have to carry the load for two.

We talk about things we aren't supposed to talk about on a first date. This calms me down. No more sweat.

We hold hands and we hug at the end of the night. Adorable. Like Tiananmen Square, only if it were a kitten instead of a guy.

That was Sunday. We make plans for Friday. Giddy? Giddy.

Wednesday I email her my story about Danny Slowe. This is because I do not know how to buy flowers for girls I like.

Friday afternoon I google her gmail handle.

Oh fuck.

Date happens anyways. She would later describe it as the single weirdest date she has ever been on, but that she still really wanted to see me again. I sent her this on Sunday morning.

 

C_____,

I wasn't totally honest on Friday night, and I think you deserve to hear the truth. Even if it makes you hate me or think less of me, I'd rather it be that than to carry on a bunch of stumbled upon half-truths. This isn't an easy email for me to write, but it's easier than trying to carry on in some less than honest way.

Here it goes...

I googled c_____ (her gmail handle) on Friday afternoon. I actually don't like that I did that, but I did it... googling you certainly wasn't my intention when I asked for your email address. I didn't think much of it at the time... My blog and a few other things pop up with my gmail handle, and I guess I was hoping it would lead me to something about you.

It led to a twitter account @c_____. That account belongs to a Cole [same last name], and it only has two tweets associated with it, both directed @RuPaul.

Long story short, between that and the insistence on wearing heels and knowing you identify as queer, it dawned on me right before our date that you might identify as transgender or some other non-mainstream gender identity. I don't know if that's necessarily true about you or not, and in a way it doesn't matter whether it is or not... I was kinda thrown for a loop by the idea regardless. As someone who has always identified as straight, I never really considered what I thought about the idea of dating someone outside of the binary gender classifications (I don't know if I'm using these terms properly... I'm trying to be sensitive, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a little ignorant about this stuff).

I don't know if it's insulting or not to hear that you inadvertently triggered me questioning how I want deal with people with non-traditional gender identities in my dating life... If it is insulting, I apologize.

So I was trying to figure this all out on the fly, in real time on our date. Did gender identity matter to me? Am I okay with leading this girl on without knowing if it mattered to me? Is it acceptable to ask about her gender identity? Should I be hurt or insulted if she is gender variant and didn't tell me? Those were the real questions I was trying to figure out.

I feel awful for having that conversation on the pier and not really telling you what was racing around in my mind, but I just couldn't find the words. The stuff I did say about closeness and love and emotions and loneliness... that was all true, and it felt good to share with you. I would say I presented the darkest version of myself that night, but I didn't lie to you about anything. However, every minute was a battle to keep myself from blurting out "I think you might have been a dude or something and I don't know how I feel about that!" On some level, I'm sure I was trying to sabotage things so I wouldn't have to write this email, but I don't know how big of a role that played in determining my actions.

During those ten minutes of silence before we kissed, I was finally able to find enough space to realize I needed to put this philosophical stuff aside and think about C____, and figure out whether I wanted to kiss C____. One person, one moment in time... it's not fair to put her at the epicenter of some internal crisis about what I can and can't handle in terms of dating gender variant people.

I realized that's what I needed to do, but I just couldn't get myself to that place where I could think about C____ specifically. That's why I kept giving you the "I'm sorry" face. I wanted to see you for you and not as some symbol for something bigger, but I couldn't get myself to that place.

Finally I just said fuck it and went for it. I though maybe getting out of my head is what I needed.

When you said "that was intense," I thought "wow, what a perfect description." Kissing you overloaded everything for me and I just shut down. I gave up both thinking and feeling for the night. All I wanted to do was get you home safe and not raise the stakes any higher until I figured out how to be forthright and emotionally honest with you.

So that's what happened, in full disclosure.

I want you to know I think you're an amazing person, and I would love to keep you in my life. If nothing else, it's clear to me we share a spiritual connection.

I tried to put myself in your shoes and figure out what I would want to hear from Doug, and let that dictate the content of this email. Like I said before, I don't know if you're actually gender variant or not, and I'm not sure it matters... I think you deserve to hear everything that was in my head on Friday night, and I think you're the type to want full disclosure.

I would absolutely love to talk more in person if you'd like. If you decide I'm not the type of person you'd like to have in your life, I understand that too. But I'm going to stop typing now and let you lead the way.

Be well,

Doug

 

The date was on Friday. No contact Saturday. I rallied friends to figure out what to do. I sent email Sunday morning.

She sends cryptic text at noon. "The changes that deep intimacy evokes can look very dangerous"

I reply "So do you hate me?"

"That is a juvenile question, Doug"

"Ok, do you want to talk?"

"Yes, how do you feel about talking again?"

"Now that I've got everything off my chest I'd love to talk more"

"Ok great. How about tonight?"

"I have no clue what effect my email had. Are you sure you don't need some time to process?"

"Oh, I didn't see your email. Let me get back to you."

......

"Yeah, you should do that."

 

Phone rings five minutes later. She is laughing. This explains so much of the weirdness.

No I am not trans. Yes I think this is very funny. No I am not insulted. Yes I have already forwarded this to all of my trans friends. Yes they will think this is sweet.

Let's start over? Let's start over.

We meet for dinner. Her hands and feet have shrunk considerably since Friday. We giggle about Friday. She admires that I was so forthright. I admire that she is so unflappable and understanding. We must be awesome.

We talk about things we shouldn't talk about on a second date. Then we go for a walk. Then we talk about things we're supposed to talk about on a second date.

Then we kiss.

She's not feeling it. Where's the intensity from Friday, buddy?

Hard to match the intensity of a uncovering an unfamiliar part of your own identity in real time in the presence of a near-stranger

Sorry :(

She says things you're not supposed to say during the "let's just be friends" thing.

I am eternally grateful for this.

We will be friends.

 

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Danny Slowe

I've been writing like a madman, I just haven't done much I'm ready to post on here. It's weird, because my I don't think I'm learning a ton in my writing class, but I'm struggling to generate output. Each week the writing assignment is to write a 1000-2500 word story based on some prompt (for reference' sake, Officer's Discretion is 2250 words). I didn't finish either of my last assignments, though I did have to turn in a similar-length workshop piece last Wednesday along with an assignment, and I finished that (more on that later). That's pretty absurd, because I'm putting in 20-30 hours writing each week (it was actually 45 last week). There are 8 others in my class, and I would doubt any of them have more than 10 free hours laying around each week, but they seem to get the work done.

Best I can tell, my process is hindered by my unwillingness to embrace "write what you know." Whenever I start a piece, I want to create characters and setting from scratch and figure out what happens as I go along. That requires a lot of prep work. The 25-year-old actress in my class wrote a workshop story about a 23-year-old dancer. The 26-year-old comic workshopped a piece about a... 26-year-old comic. I'm writing about forty-something police officers, Elvis Presley (of which I knew nothing about), and tech CEOs. I don't know what the lives of these people look like. I don't spend much time thinking about what they value, what they fear, or what they want. I have to write up long character sketches about them before I'm comfortable starting a story.

I could say a lot more about what makes me such a slow fiction writer, but it's unnecessary. Bottom line is it takes me 20000 words of output to write a 2000 word story. I don't mind that, since I enjoy the process, but it doesn't make me feel great to come up short on deadlines. That part is discouraging. It's also taken away from writing my blog, which I had been enjoying until writing started taking up more time than poker. I do think I produce better output with an external deadline bearing down on me

My workshop piece is the genesis chapter of my Radical Transparency book. I'm actually proud of this piece, although it doesn't accomplish everything I want to accomplish. I got out a lot of good info in 2300 words, and I think the chapter should naturally be about 4000 (If I keep this storyline for the book, I'll lengthen it, but 4000 words is too much for a workshop). It will get workshopped next Wednesday, and I'll try to write up something on the feedback.

 

The Legend of Danny Slowe

No one ever really understands the true purpose of a new technology when it launches, not even its own creator. The difference between Danny Slowe and everyone else is he never resisted this truth. For him, reasons were perfectly nice things to have, but they were superfluous to the creation process.

 

“I don’t think I’m proposing anything earth-shattering. I’m simply following the arc of reality TV to its logical conclusion.”

“Jesus Christ, Danny. That’s not the point. This project might be feasible. We could probably free up enough capital to get the lights turned on for this thing. It’s obviously really interesting and something worth thinking about, and it might turn a profit in the right hands, but this is not us. It’s not you.”

Danny went silent in thought and Carlos looked on as Chin blearily stumbled out of his tent. Austin was still sleeping as the Sunday morning sun climbed up over the Tetons and went to work burning off the fog hanging over the lake. The breakfast campfire was starting to die down and the pontoon plane would be at the island in a couple hours to take everyone back to civilization. Carlos had been searching for those words for a day and a half now, and he was surprised at how discreetly they crept up from of his subconscious and slipped out through his mouth. Win or lose, at least now he said what he needed to say.

 

When they wrote the profile for 24 year-old tech mogul and Kwyjibo CEO Danny Slowe in Forbes in May of 2018, all anyone could talk about was the cover. In person, he was rail-thin with disheveled short brown hair and a perpetual ghost-white programmer’s tan. He didn’t look like much until you got him talking. Once he started talking about something he was passionate about, his gray eyes would widen and start shooting green sparks, and the flat affect in his voice would give way to a deeper, more frantic cadence as he desperately tried to help his mouth catch up with his mind. Photographs rarely captured this magnetic energy that turned on and off like a switch, but the photographer managed to catch Danny in an action shot during the profile interview. Leaned forward in his chair with a plain white flat-brimmed baseball hat and thin, scraggly two-week old beard, Danny’s arms were fully extended in front of him, mimicking someone white-knuckling a steering wheel. His eyes were wide open and his mouth was in the middle of forming an “o”. If you squinted, it looked like he was about to choke someone.

They didn’t even bother with the photo shoot.

At the moment the picture was snapped, he was talking about how these camping trips were essential to reconnect with who he was and critical to the health of Kwyjibo as a whole. The trips returned him to his roots, exploring the woods of Bend, Oregon as a kid along with his best friend and future right hand man, Carlos Castillo, and solving coding problems in the dirt. Later on, these camping trips would also be the crucibles Danny used to initiate people into his inner circle (the first eight Kwyjibo employees all had to interview around the campfire). Going into the woods and electronically off the grid, he said, was the only time he felt safe to let his mind wander. He would often (only half-jokingly) say that if the world knew all the goofy unrealistic ideas he came up with in the woods, he’d be locked up. The legend of Danny Slowe began as soon as the world found out that that picture came when he was relating that story.

 

Danny pulled the pot of coffee out of the campfire and poured a mug for Chin. “I’m not actually saying we should get in to the entertainment business. We’re not creating anything except a framework. It’s not our job to figure out what content is going to come out of this.”

Now that Carlos finally figured out what he wanted to say, he could barely let Danny finish. “That’s not what I was getting at either. Look, doesn’t it seem odd to you that you’re dreamed up this completely invasive environment while you’re out here in the middle of nowhere? It isn’t strange that you had to escape from the real world to imagine a world with no escape valve?”

Carlos was on a roll so he kept going. “When you first started Kwyjibo, you were trying to fix an education system that let you down. When we built Circles of Influence algorithm, it was driven by your passion for understanding how you yourself made decisions. When we were kids, we wrote apps for games that we wanted to play. But that’s not what’s going on here. You don’t want this for yourself. You already said you could never actually live in this world you want to create. It’s not who you are and it’s not what you value.”

Chin had sat down and joined them around the fire. “Maybe this isn’t as much about who he is as much as it’s about who he wants to be.”

“Well maybe he ought to do that his own time and not use a Fortune 500 company as his own personal art therapy.”

 

That’s why Carlos has always been Danny’s right hand man. Danny was a creator, but he created indiscriminately and he didn’t dream small. Carlos was the hatchet man. Carlos reined in Danny’s energy. He challenged him, buying Danny time to let his dreams battle each other in the dense unforgiving jungle of his mind. No one acted on any idea of Danny’s, not even Danny himself, until it spent 3 months at the top of Danny’s cerebral food chain. Together, he and Carlos built Kwyjibo on the backs of a handful of ideas that thrived in the jungle, which in turn stood on the corpses of thousands of dreams slain by Carlos. It’s been this way since they were little kids. Danny provided endless lightning bolts of creative insight and Carlos was the jar that picked which ones to catch.

Carlos had a suspicion that, unlike most of these expeditions, Danny planned this trip with an agenda in mind. Usually Danny would include at least one “grown-up” – a top-level guy from the Finance, Operations, or Legal departments - to help keep Danny’s energy focused. On this trip he brought two other creatives and zero people over the age of 30. Chin Yu, like Carlos, was a childhood friend of Danny’s, though unlike Carlos he didn’t actually work at Kwyjibo. He did freelance work as an industrial artist, however, and was commissioned by Kwyjibo whenever a new building was added to the campus. Austin Behar rounded out the group. Danny hired him a year earlier after striking up a conversation about Sartre with him after a Flaming Lips concert. Danny’s impulse hires typically subscribed to the philosophy of “accumulate talent and figure out what to do with it later”. With no apparent holes to fill, Austin made $150k in his first year to play philosopher and ask questions about projects, organizational structure, or whatever else came to mind. A quintessential misfit outsider with no real-world experience in the tech industry, Austin’s knack for asking egoless, naïve questions about new features and products led to several performance-enhancing tweaks, and earned him the unofficial title of VP of Antagonism.

Carlos was the only one in the group who could wear a collared shirt without squirming like a three-year-old in church. And even he only did so under duress.

They landed on Jackson Lake in Western Wyoming early Friday afternoon, and the pontoon plane hadn’t even disappeared into the sky before Carlos’s suspicions were confirmed… Danny just thought of something big, and he needed creative inspiration to flesh things out. Just that week, Kwyjibo had completed the acquisition of a company that had developed “rubbing”, a digital motion-analysis process that can identify and tag specific actions and differentiate different people in video, paving the way for sophisticated in-video searching. Danny didn’t waste any time, as he laid out his vision for implementing this new technology as they set up camp.

He called his thought experiment Radical Transparency.

A world with no privacy.

A fully functioning American town of 10,000 people and 100,000 ultra-res cameras plus reflective spatial re-imaging implants for every citizen, all with feeds to Kwyjibo servers to be “rubbed” and uploaded to Kwyjibo’s Mulch search engine to be accessed by the rest of the online world. Literally everything said and done and electronically sent into and out of this town would be captured and documented and shared with the world.

Ad revenue from the search engine and live feeds would be the first piece of the revenue pie, but Danny anticipated the largest piece coming from production rights. Professional and amateur producers alike could pay for higher-tier access to the Mulch engine and play Build-Your-Own-Reality-Show. The higher-tier material could also be a treasure trove of information for academic research and software developers would have opportunities to develop apps to mine, manipulate and report data and to enhance Mulch.

Chin and Austin immediately ran with the idea. Before they could get down to discussing the practical merits of the concept, Austin dragged the group into a moralistic debate about privacy more befitting of a college beatnik coffee shop than a high-powered meeting at a Fortune 500 company. Privacy had been a hot button topic since the rise of Facebook, and Austin had friends in ivory towers who were trying to persuade private citizens to shift the privacy battleground away from the losing battle of limiting government and corporate access to and sharing of personal data and shift it toward demanding increased transparency of the hows and the whys of institutional use of private data. He fell in love with Danny’s idea and spent much of the evening on his soapbox, predicting the positive developments in politics and business that could come from Radical Transparency.

To be fair, Carlos was transfixed with Radical Transparency as well, but he knew enough to hold back. It was Carlos’s job to play devil’s advocate and think of reasons why this experiment might not work. He’s supposed to provide a dry run for the gauntlet of protests sure to come from the grown-ups back at HQ in Silicon Valley.

The practical ideas didn’t start flowing until the Saturday morning hike, but they made headway.

They could lay out and build the town from scratch to minimize technical snafus and ensure complete control over the “set”, and the Radical Transparency division of Kwyjibo would be run from inside the town as a show of Kwyjibo’s commitment to being, well, Radically Transparent.

Aside from Kwyjibo employees, Kwyjibo should have minimal say about the makeup of the remainder of the citizenship. If demand outstripped supply, citizens should be chosen by lottery or online vote, not by an application process.

No minors and no convicted felons.

Honoring a five-year commitment to the project would be necessary from the citizens for them to earn royalties on the content beyond the yearly stipends.

To avoid incentivizing outlandish camera-hogging behavior, royalties would be distributed evenly to all citizens (not that they thought anyone could mug for the camera for five straight years without having a break down).

There were still plenty of details to work out, but it was a starting point.

Everyone split off on Saturday afternoon and Danny and Carlos spoke on their own as they wandered around the island. At this point, Carlos hadn’t found his own words yet, so he discussed the astronomical liability involved with exposing 10,000 people to the mindfuck of a life with no privacy. It was clearly both chilling and financially risky to potentially play a role in the damaging of the psyches of so many people, but it was debatably criminal behavior as well. Because Danny didn’t allow phones or computers on these trips, it was impossible to talk to one of the grown-ups and figure out exactly how big of a hurdle this was, but Carlos thought there was no way it was just a bump in the road.

Aside from the legal exposure, they were looking at several billions in startup costs and at least a few years of lead time before they could earn dollar one. Other projects would have to be delayed or scrapped entirely to free up capital. It would change the face of Kwyjibo completely.

That said, by Saturday night, Carlos had to admit Radical Transparency intellectually made sense from an implementation standpoint. It was a bold move, of course, but Kwyjibo shareholders were of a different breed and they were desensitized to bold moves. The cult of personality surrounding their Dear Leader Danny Slowe insulated them from shareholder revolt. No one was willing to stand in the way of the guy on the Forbes cover.

 

As the fire died down and the camp was packed up, Carlos wondered if he got through to Danny. This Radical Transparency didn’t fit in to the jungle of Danny’s mind. It wasn’t an animal at all, it was an alien that was eating everything in sight and growing stronger by the minute. It was something that Danny wanted, and Carlos could never remember Danny ever truly wanting anything. But with the soft whine of the pontoon plane in the distance, he knew his time was up.

 

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