The Sensory Deception (6 page)

C
hopper’s favorite time was dawn. He liked to see civilization wake up, liked the way it disrupted the peace with loud, smelly diesel engines. He scoffed at himself, at the irony—civilization was the enemy, and those diesel engines were its weapons. Still, laid carefully over the rhythm of the waves crashing on the beach, it wasn’t a bad tune.

Sitting on a bluff with the sky still dark over the ocean in front of him, he waited for the first rays of sunlight to warm the back of his neck and signify the day’s start. He considered himself one of the lucky insomniacs. He liked to be awake. He liked it best when he was the only one who was.

Except for Farley Rutherford, Chopper had no use for
Homo sapiens
. And at this instant, he particularly didn’t like people who wanted to talk when the world ought to be asleep. He didn’t have to turn around to recognize the shuffle of Gloria working her way down the bluff. For a second, he hoped she’d continue along the path down to the beach. When she was a few steps behind him, he motioned with his hand for her to be quiet, or to stay where she was, or to go away.

“Good morning, Chopper! What an incredible view. Do you come out here every morning? Should I go get some coffee? Ringo has a pot on.”

She stood between him and where the sun was trying to rise behind them. He sucked down the last hit of his first Marlboro of the day, suffocated the butt in some dirt, and put the remains in his pocket. He scanned the horizon looking for scattered sunlight, auras, chromatic aberrations—the first hints of a migraine. There were none, so this was his horoscope: today wouldn’t hurt too much.

“Come on,” Gloria said, so damn bright and cheerful he wanted to choke her. “Show me how to get down to the beach.”

He turned slowly, taking his time so that he could scan his consciousness. He found two sets of thoughts. His own confused him, crowded with worries about things big and small: a planet in peril and his place on it; how to get through the day without feeling too much pain or making too many mistakes. The second set of thoughts was clear with purpose; these were Farley’s thoughts, Farley’s needs. As a neurologist, Chopper understood how it worked. The model of Farley that lived in Chopper’s brain provided calm that Chopper could never find on his own. Farley’s unspoken commands gave him a role, a place safe from his own errors.

Farley needed Gloria, so Farley needed Chopper to get Gloria on their side. So Chopper needed Gloria.

He shifted over a foot or so and motioned for her to sit next to him. He looked up and smiled. He forced the smile up to his eyes so that it would look sincere. He looked her over and tried to generate warmth the only way he knew how. The smooth line of her cheek, the hint of flesh below her chin, the gentle upward slope of her breasts, and the subtle curve of her belly above the waistline of her fancy white pants—she was soft in all the spots a woman ought to be soft. Not one of those women on the far side of twenty-five fighting to stay lean at any cost. He could work with that; it almost resembled respect.

“Shhh,” he said.

She sat down beside him, crossing her legs in front of her the way his were. He gave her points for sitting in the dirt with those pants on.

“Thanks for putting out towels,” she said. “I feel silly for falling asleep. I guess I just—”

“Shhh,” he repeated, louder this time. If she kept babbling, he’d say the wrong thing, it would upset Farley, and the day would be ruined.

She was quiet, but he could still hear thoughts churning in her head, disrupting the peace almost as much as if she were speaking them.

“Can I have a cigarette?” she asked.

He felt a genuine smile crawl across his face. He tried to stop it. This smile, the asymmetric one that he could feel lighting up his eyes with as close to delight as he ever felt, could cause trouble. He opened the red box, took out two barches, put them both in his mouth, and struck a safety match with his thumbnail. He lit them, took a long draw, and handed her one.

She coughed and looked back at him.

He exhaled toward the sea. Her knee touched his. He wanted her to leave.

“Why don’t you like me?” she asked.

She knew. This horrified him. Trained reaction took over and his body relaxed as his senses caught fire. Chopper radiated cool when he was most upset. He’d learned it the hard way. Having grown up in the Vittori household the youngest of four boys with five younger sisters, he’d understood that showing fear brought nothing but humiliation. Solitude became safety. Book learning concealed his weaknesses as it made him strong.

He took a hit off the barch and let the smoke out as he spoke. His heart might betray him, but not his voice. He spoke with
clarity and a thick illusion of confidence. “Oh, rest assured, I like you. I like you just fine.” He looked at her, starting with her thick, wavy black hair and pausing at her eyes, two dark pools of either innocence or naive stupidity. Or maybe simple sincerity? No, he tossed that thought aside. Chopper knew one person on earth who was sincere, and he knew for damn certain that there was only one person on earth like Farley.

His gaze moved on, down Gloria’s face. Her lips were thick and soft. He continued down her neck. Her arms were fleshy, too—the price of admission, he supposed. The price for those breasts that moved just so when she laughed. Down her belly, a pillow he could sink into. He laughed at himself, at his defensive audacity, and looked up at her. As he expected, her eyebrows were raised in a “How dare you?” look.

“Gloria, you are the solution.” She started to speak, and he altered his expression into just enough of a sneer to shut her up. “I think you understand greed. Maybe even appreciate it, but I don’t. I don’t understand quarterly profits, or profit at any expense. I don’t understand shortsighted rationalization or the incarnate evil of so-called business decisions. Why do people worship money above all else? You are a venture capitalist. You chose a career designed to transform the wealth of Earth into money. I don’t understand why anyone would do that.”

“That’s not true,” she said, her eyes narrowing and her back stiffening as she spoke. “Venture capital is a problem-solving tool.”

He exhaled a stream of smoky disgust from the side of his mouth.

She got it, too. One uncontrolled breath and she saw through his shield. He’d have to be careful with her. Anyone who understood him too well was a threat.

“Prosperity is the biggest booster of global responsibility.” She sounded indignant, and that released some of the pressure he felt, so he let her ramble some more. She argued that wealth can be created, that there is sufficient wealth for everyone on earth if it’s well shepherded. “Isn’t that your goal? To be a good shepherd?”

He took the cigarette from her, snuffed it out, and put the butt in his pocket. She was staring at him.

“No,” he said. “Not even close.”

“What?” she said, but it was an expression of anger, not a question.

“Just a minute,” he said. “The sun’s just cresting the hills behind us—no, don’t turn around! Stare out to sea. Trust me.” She obeyed, and he appreciated her tiny dose of trust.

A few seconds later, he felt the day’s first direct sun rays warm the back of his neck. He reached over to her. She started to turn toward him and he corrected her with the set of his jaw.
More credit to her
, he thought; she accepted his trivial offering. He wouldn’t like her, but he would work with her. Of course, he’d work with whoever Farley brought on the team.

He gathered her hair in his hand and lifted it so that she could feel the sun on her neck, too.

He said, “Let the day start.”

She sighed and a few seconds later said, “You are a strange man.”

They sat motionless for a few minutes as the sky lit. Then Chopper said, “No, we’re not their shepherds. The assumption of human superiority over every other species needs to be corrected.”

Gloria glared at him. “You’re wrong. Our problems can only be addressed by directing capital to solutions, and the fact is—whether it appeals to you or not—the fact is that solving problems
like global warming, hunger, and disease creates wealth, and
that
is what will save humanity. Assuming it needs saving.” She stood up, casting her shadow over him, and added, “This is why you don’t like me?”

He couldn’t help it. Even as the defense mechanisms piled up, he couldn’t retreat. He should have known better. He put on his most winning, most troublesome smile. It made her eyelashes flutter. Then he let his eyes drift up to her chest level and said, “Oh, I like you just fine.”

“Chopper,” she said. “Up here.” She motioned to her eye level with two fingers.

Cowed, nearly panicked inside, he obeyed. Then he yawned.

“Don’t you get it?” she asked, motioning behind them to Farley’s house. “Sensory saturation. It’s your idea, right? Farley discovered the power of acquiring data from animals and Ringo knows the technology, but what I experienced yesterday was more than clever video and hot tech. Sensory saturation is yours, and you deserve to benefit from it and do whatever you want with the wealth you create.”

Chopper started to hum “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“You don’t need to like me, but understand this: without people like me, either sensory saturation goes nowhere or some huge company steals it.”

F
arley understood that his dream couldn’t come to life without labor pains. The first contractions were waves of doubt propagating from partner to partner across a long table in a Sand Hill Ventures conference room.

Gloria presented a barrage of PowerPoint slides, starting with the original Silicon Valley darlings: Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard and the Palo Alto garage that most venture capitalists deem the birthplace of Silicon Valley. She followed with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and rounded the field with Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Then she added an image of Farley, Chopper, and Ringo standing under the huge redwood tree in front of Farley’s garage.

“This is the organizational chart,” Gloria said, bringing up a slide with a three-box tree diagram. She pointed to each box and described the team’s UC Berkeley roots, advanced degrees, and research careers. Farley, the zoologist, was president of the company; Chopper, the neurologist, was director of research and development; and Ringo would resign his “distinguished staff engineer” position at Intel to become chief technology officer.

One of the VCs, a bald man wearing an immaculate coal suit, said, “A president, a director, and a chief. I love small companies—titles in lieu of pay.” His colleagues laughed, except for a man named Joel McKay.

McKay, who was dressed for the golf course, interrupted the levity in a disparaging tone: “
Academic
credentials are not what made Dave and Bill or any of the Silicon Valley stars successful.”

Gloria advanced to the next slide, Farley’s curriculum vitae. “Dr. Rutherford has led men into battle.” She paused to give McKay a chance to respond. McKay nodded for her to continue. “Commanding a dozen men in four rubber boats, he routed an industrial whaling fleet that had harpoons locked, loaded, and aimed at them. You realize that harpoons are rocket-propelled grenades? Armed with nothing but banners, cameras, a guitar, and courage, Farley Rutherford won.”

Farley wasn’t comfortable with Gloria’s manipulation of his environmentalist credentials. He’d have preferred that everyone air their doubts and find consensus now, so there would be fewer misunderstandings later, but while preparing for the meeting Gloria had insisted that steamrolling the partners would be more effective.

Farley and his team sat on one side of the table, their backs to a window. The table was made of glass and stainless steel with a line of mahogany swirling about the surface. Just out the window, young redwood trees filtered the sunlight, yielding a calming effect—exactly what Farley had expected from Sand Hill Ventures.

Gloria stood at the end of the table, to Farley’s left. Chopper sat to his right, and then Ringo. It had taken two weeks to prepare the business plan for this meeting, including the hours required to devise a company name. Farley had tried to defend VRts, pronounced
vee-arts
, and Gloria laughed at him. They’d spent ten days side by side in her office in this building, in the office of his house, in his lab at the Santa Cruz Institute of Oceanography, at the café down the street, and at the dolphin-themed restaurant at the end of the Santa Cruz Pier. It was at the Dolphin, halfway
through their second bottle of wine, that Gloria thought of VirtExArts—Virtual Experience Arts. All told, they had spent more than 120 hours arguing, compromising, drafting, and redrafting the business plan. Gloria had lost her temper several times when they got stuck on points where he wouldn’t compromise. She’d yelled at him, but Farley had made his goals clear that first night, and her yelling didn’t bother him. The louder she got, the more certain he was that she would fight for him.

Copies of the 314-page VirtExArts business plan now sat in front of each person at the table. The board consisted of three men and one woman. The woman looked sharp in every way—not just her features, but even her short hair with every strand in place. In addition to the golfer, Joel McKay, whom Gloria had described as both the most powerful and the most conservative member of the board, there were two other men. The bald man in the nice suit took notes but, other than the occasional wisecrack, spoke little.