CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
REBECCA
MY ATTENTION IS DISTRACTED, LIKE always. I’m trying to focus on my various websites and LiveLyfe pages, wondering if I left my webcam on from the earlier show for my fans. It’s hard to get excited about anything. Steve’s Tiny Dick isn’t doing it for me; working on the Make Guys Do Shit For You site isn’t doing it for me; tweaking the LiveLyfe ads that were so successful before I started ignoring them is vastly uninteresting.
I can’t do a single damn thing. Why am I like this? I have no center. No idea how I’ve survived this long, how I’ve paid my bills and supported myself when I swear sometimes I can’t figure out how to tie my shoes.
An ad pops up. I swat it away. Stupid intrusive things.
I browse for no reason. I do some research on education, both on the web and on LiveLyfe. There are lots of LiveLyfe pages about different paradigms in education, but I browse with scorn. None of these people’s ideas are half as brilliant as what Evan had in mind.
I don’t even know if I’m supposed to be excited about this stuff. Evan and I broke up, but I don’t know if he officially fired me. Or if I can be fired, since I’m a consultant and only took a job inside LiveLyfe because I didn’t want to sit there while Evan pondered his Big Idea.
Am I supposed to give that million back?
I probably should. I’m not earning it now. I haven’t heard from Evan, and I won’t after I’ve blocked all his calls and set all those email filters. I have no idea if he’s tried to get in touch. And I can’t bear to think about him. Not right now.
I ponder this while browsing education research, thinking about Evan, anyway.
My eyes water a little.
But then the pop-up ad returns.
I turn melancholy into hate.
I hate those ads!
This is a great way to reset my attention. It’s a new kind of LiveLyfe ad, and I can’t stand it. I kill it.
Stupid LiveLyfe.
Stupid Evan, for letting it happen.
Stupid Evan, trying to change the world through education.
My mind goes out, surfing the pages and mulling all the different approaches people have considered to change modern education. I feel pieces of me defocus and settle into the ideas on a visceral, gut-deep level. I find myself reading more and more — and then at some point, I’m reading about artificial intelligence. I have no clue how Evan wanted to marry AI and educational changes or if he was even serious, but I see the logic.
I’m digging this project.
I wish I could still participate. Build it side-by-side with Evan. I imagine us—
No. I shake my head to clear it.
The pop-up returns. Now it’s trying to piss me off. I looked into these things before, and one of the coolest if most obnoxious features of the new LiveLyfe ads — other than a refined ability to hyper-target the audience — is an aggressive kind of retargeting. It lets you pester the hell out of people with a ladder of offers. Your first ad to a group of people might offer your product for $50. Then if people don’t respond, you can send them another: “Okay, how about $40?”
This time I look at the ad closer before swatting it: Learn how AI will change education forever, and why people who ride in the front of limousines are smarter than everyone else.
It can’t possibly say that.
But it does.
I close the ad. Another one pops up immediately.
This one just says, No, seriously.
I’m intrigued. I don’t know how the ad is so perfectly targeted to what I’m newly interested in and my preferred chauffeuring style, but I’m fascinated by its persistence. I remember the cost of ads going way up for behavior like this. LiveLyfe knows that bothering its users too much will just piss people off, so the most aggressive ads are priced accordingly. Discourages the fly-by-night shysters.
Hating myself a bit for falling for shenanigans, I click the link.
But I’m not taken to a course or blog post about AI and education, let alone one meant specifically for front-seat limo riders. The link takes me to a live stream. Someone is sitting in front of a camera, looking ready for a lecture. The same thing I do for my fans on my page, only this page seems to be much more popular. My eye always goes to the viewer count, because I want to compare it to my own.
The count on this page is in the hundreds of thousands. Almost half a million people are watching this live broadcast, eagerly waiting.
I’m so shocked by the link’s direction and the large number that at first, I don’t see what the camera is showing.
It’s Evan. I recognize the art hanging behind him. That doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. It isn’t his office or his apartment high atop the USB tower. It’s a co-working space a block away. We went there together a few times to hash some stuff out. He knows that I love it there.
Evan shuffles onscreen. He seems to notice something on a different part of his screen. He gives a tiny nod as if to say, Okay, now that whatever-I’m-looking-at has happened, we can finally get down to business.
My heart is pounding. I don’t particularly want to look at Evan right now. My soul is in agony whenever I do. I left a piece of myself behind with him. It’s still out there, calling to me. I didn’t know how I’d changed until the new part was gone. I was a different person with him. A better person.
Turn it off. This isn’t good for you. Nothing has changed.
But as Evan begins to speak to his half-million viewers, I can’t turn away or even flinch.
I hear my heartbeat in my ears. I feel it like a hammer in my chest.
What is this? A new feature announcement? A press conference? Onscreen, Evan looks so dire. You’d think for an announcement he’d be more ebullient.
“My name is Evan Reese Cohen. You know me as the founder of LiveLyfe. With luck, someday, that won’t be the only way you know me. I’m 27 years old. And I have a secret.”