Trade Me (Cyclone 1)

And me? I hold my breath. I know these things are supposed to be true constructions, but I also know that Blake won’t tell the real truth. They aren’t going there. They wouldn’t.

“Which,” Blake says smoothly, “is this: I’m gathering up my dad’s cocaine.”

Holy fuck. They did. There is dead silence from the crowd. I set my hand on the screen, my head spinning.

True construct is one thing. This? This is too real. I’m not sure if I’m looking at the truth or a fake. I’m not sure what I’m looking at, and I’m living it.

“This might be a good time to mention,” Adam says with a growl, “that I have a problem.”

I don’t even know what to think.

“So I put all this in the car, my girlfriend drives me to the hospital, and I am distracted by the fact that my dad had a heart attack, and also happens to have a cocaine problem. So I leave, and um.” Blake shrugs. “Yeah. There’s still cocaine in the car. Which wouldn’t be a problem, but she gets pulled over by the cops, who find it. She spends six hours in handcuffs.” He makes a face. “See? I told you not to blame her for breaking up with me.”

“So it is his fault,” my mother says beside me.

“That is so not how it went down,” I say to the screen. “Blake, you idiot.”

“In any event,” Blake says with apparent good cheer, “this leaves me with two choices. First, I can keep quiet, stick around for the launch, hire lawyers, and let my girlfriend take the fall. Or…” Blake shrugs. “I can strike a bargain with the DA to get her out.”

“Well,” Adam points out, “she did break up with you, so I vote for door number one.” The audience laughs.

“I kind of think that announcing this on a live stream with—what are we at, David?”

“A hundred and six million viewers,” Yu puts in.

“Yeah. I think I’ve kind of shut that door.” Blake smiles. “Jokes aside, there was never any choice about what I was going to do.”

“There is that,” Adam says softly.

I have always been confused by Blake’s relationship with his father. It is, in so many ways, not remotely ideal. They swear at each other. They milk their friendship on stage for corporate good will. Blake’s dad put him in a commercial when he wasn’t even two years old. The first time I met Adam Reynolds, he offered me fifty grand to leave his son.

I told him I’d settle for sixty-six billion. In this moment, I realize that he would take that—that if it came down to it, if the choice was between Blake and his company, between Blake and those sixty-six billion dollars, he’d choose Blake every single time.

It may be fucked up, but it’s love.

“But that’s between me and her, not me, her and one hundred and six million viewers,” Blake says.

“You know,” Adam puts in, “we could make it between you, her, and a hundred and six million viewers.”

Blake shakes his head. “No. Seriously. This we did not talk about.”

But Adam just looks up at the ceiling. “If only,” he says with a smirk, “we had made a video-capable smartwatch that could manage robust five-way video calling over a cellular network.”

“Dad,” Blake says sharply.

But time has seemed to slow for me. There’s no way I should be able to call in. Their tech automatically blocks all unauthorized calls to devices during the launches. But… Adam is looking calmly at his screen. I feel like he’s looking at me.

This is a true construct, truer than anything else. It’s a risk, a huge risk. If I make that call, everything will change. Adam Reynolds has just put in his sixty-six billion dollars.

The only question is if I’m willing to match him.

Without thinking, I pull up Blake’s contact information on my watch and hit call.

On my tablet, on the live stream, I see my name show up.

Incoming call: Tina Chen.

“Oh wait,” Adam Reynolds says. “We did.”

And then I’m on screen. There’s a horrible noise.

“Tina,” Blake says, “turn off the sound on your live stream or there’ll be feedback.”

I flick the mute on my tablet with shaking hands.

“This is not scripted,” I say. “I was in jail literally an hour ago. You people are crazy.”

“That’s not true,” Adam says smoothly. “It was scripted. I just didn’t tell you and Blake about this part. Thanks for playing along. Internet, meet Tina.”

“Hi.” My voice is shaking a little. “I didn’t get my part, and so I’m going to tell you that Blake is a huge liar.”

Now that I’m not looking at my tablet, Blake’s face takes up a mere quarter of my watch face. Tiny Blake raises his eyebrows.

“I broke up with him before I was arrested,” I say. “I broke up with him because I didn’t want to fall in love with him. And before anyone tells me how stupid that is, I want to point out that his family broadcasts everything about them to their hundred and six million viewers. That is really screwed up, if you think about it.”

“Wait just one minute,” Adam says, sounding wounded. “That’s completely unfair. According to internal statistics, we’re up to a hundred and eleven million viewers right now.”

“Oh,” I say on a shaky laugh. “Well. That makes everything better.”

“Tina,” Adam says, “has a little sarcasm problem. She fits in. We’re trying to keep her.”

“Also,” Blake says, “we don’t broadcast everything on the internet. That’s a myth. I think we may have two or three secrets left. We’re holding those for a later launch.”

I can’t help but smile. “Still screwed up.”

Adam smiles. “Welcome to the family, Tina. We may be a little off kilter, but we have the best gadgets.”

“A little premature, Dad,” Blake says. “We’re still broken up.”

I take a deep breath. “Maybe we should talk about that,” I say, “when there’s a hundred and eleven million and three fewer people around, give or take.”

Blake smiles at me. The video is tiny. The sound isn’t great. But that smile…it comes across, even with all those millions of other people watching along. It fills me up.

“This video interface sucks,” I say. “You’re this small. Do not buy the Vortex, people, not unless you want one of the more romantic moments in your life to be compressed to the size of a sugar cube.”

“Hey.” Adam frowns. “That is totally uncalled for. Don’t listen to her. Buy it. Buy three.”

“I’m out.” I hit end, and then unmute the sound on my tablet.

Blake is smiling and shaking his head.

“You know,” Adam says thoughtfully, “possibly we should have gotten her in on the script from the start.”

Blake just smiles. “Ah. That’s one we should talk about later, too.”

24.

TINA

My mother drives me back to the Bay Area. This time, though, we take a proper freeway instead of going through winding mountain roads.

We don’t say much. Her only commentary on the whole matter is this:

“If Blake’s dad is so rich, can I make him pay for the gas money I spent to come up here?”

For months, I worried about precisely this: my mother discovering I have a source who could fund her hobby to an extreme she’s never discovered before. I thought I would be embarrassed. Ha. Adam got me thrown in jail. He owes me.

“Soak him,” I tell her. “Hell, don’t stop with gas money. You don’t know how rich people think. Make him fund a nonprofit center for you. You can quit your job.”

She wrinkles her nose. “What, and let that bossy pain-in-my-butt tell me what to do with my time? Ugh. Gas money, and he can pay for my hours today.”

She doesn’t ask me any other embarrassing questions. She doesn’t make horrible demands. She’s just there for me.

I look up Cyclone’s press release halfway through the drive. It came out concurrently with our conversation. This release lays out the facts of what

happened last night in startling clarity. It mentions Adam’s cocaine habit and his subsequent heart attack. It says that he’ll be going into rehab.

There’s more, too. Sometime this morning, the Board of Directors had an emergency meeting. Cyclone will be undergoing a reorganization. The CEO position will be split into three, going forward: a chief product officer, a chairman, and CEO. They don’t say anything about the deal Blake cut with the DA.

The news is confused. Half of everyone thinks the whole thing is a stunt. The other half doesn’t know what to think. Some law firm is already talking about a derivative shareholder suit, but Cyclone stock is up—way up.

Still, I’m out of jail. And he’s apparently out, too, since he’s done at least one interview since the launch. It just goes to show: you really can’t trade lives. There’s no way I could have managed that, not even with all Blake’s money. But that realization no longer makes me feel bitter. It just…is. There’s nothing I can do about it. No matter what happens, everything he does will always be easier for him in every way.

Except when it isn’t.