Landing at SFO in a private jet was a cliché of the worst kind, and Zee Chakramurthy knew it. He peered into the foggy San Franciscan morning as the engines of his Gulfstream V powered down. He slid into his leather brogues, bent over lithely to tie his laces, and straightened the lapels of his blue suit jacket. The wake-up yoga he’d done before they started their descent was a life-saver for these overnight flights, where, despite the comfort of a full recline, he could never sleep. Eyes itchy from staring at a screen for better part of the last twenty four hours, he rubbed his face, grabbed his leather duffel bag and headed for the exit. The pilot, an affable middle-aged mid-western man, emerged out of the cockpit to see him off. Jim was “part of the furniture”, as he liked to quip, having been so far the only person to fly Zee’s new jet — a point of occasional contention between them: Zee had landed an identical plane at SFO multiple times in Microsoft Flight Simulator, but he had yet managed to convince Jim this would translate to a safe landing on real gravel and bitumen. He didn’t begrudge Jim per se, but the infantilising aviation laws that forced his hand. Zee had grown accustomed to getting what he wanted.
The plane’s purser, a freckled young frenchwoman opened the door for him. Zee never quite felt comfortable around her, but he enjoyed her presence too much to get rid of her. A customs official greeted Zee at the top of the stairway, quickly inspected his passport, and welcomed him back home. At least in America they understood user experience — even if they couldn’t get around the security theatre of having to formally identify him by inspecting a piece of plastic he could have trivially forged, they could at least make it reasonably pleasant by coming to him. This was in stark contrast to the UK Border Control, who, insofar as Zee could detect, did not give a single flying fuck. He could swear the exact words the gruff and expressionless border agent had used on his most recent arrival were: “Papers please.”
A black town car waited for him on the tarmac. Sleek, elegant, bulletproof. He clambered into the back seat and the car took off. They made good time precisely until the moment they merged into traffic on the Bayshore freeway, at which point, their progress ground to a virtual standstill. Zee sighed.
All these modes of transport. You drove a car to the airport, flew a plane to your destination, drove another car home. This was exactly the kind of bullcrap he couldn’t wait to disrupt.
Henry Ford had once supposedly said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” This was oft quoted by low-level innovators and wannabe visionaries who couldn’t see outside the box. The Lincoln Town Car, manufactured by the Ford corporation, was just a faster horse. A nicer, faster horse, with a private fully-stocked bar Zee never touched, but a horse nevertheless. It needed fuel to run, maintenance to continue running, and all it could do was to take you from place A to place B. Similarly, his private jet was just a faster horse. This one could fly, so he supposed it was more like a pegasus, but all it did was get you to place B. A true outside the box thinker would have asked: Why do we need to get to B? Why can’t we just always be at B, or achieve B-ness without ever leaving the comfort of A? Telegrams had been the first iteration of this idea, followed by Telephony and Telecommuting. What was next? Teleportation? That equation would take a lot of money and smart people to solve, but Zee believed it could be done, if it hadn’t already.
It was this idea of universal communication that had made Zee first fall in love with the Internet. Born as the seventh son of a family of modest means in a village few hours’ drive outside of Bangalore, India, a statistical surveyor passing through wouldn’t have given him the odds for ever leaving the state he was born in. There was no B for him to go to. He was born at A, he was expected to live in A, and eventually he was to be buried in A. With the advent of the Internet, he didn’t need to leave. When he was plugged in, he could be everywhere at once.
Right now, however, there was one place Zee wanted to be, and that was at home. He looked at his watch. It was 10:05am on Sunday morning, and he had a busy day ahead. Busy day of calling up his buddies, getting stoned and playing video games. He missed that from the early days of his company — work hard, light up, goof off, repeat. In particular, he was looking forward to the new strain of premium SoCal kush he had ordered before boarding his flight, and according to the push notification he’d received on his smart watch immediately after landing had been delivered to his house in Mission district already. He wasn’t picky about his smoke: he was still nostalgic of the first seedy, rough cough-inducing spliffs he’d shared with his older brothers growing up in India, but one thing he couldn’t stand was London skunk. It was all anybody smoked there. It was either that or coke. Both made him equally paranoid, so he abstained entirely. Now, he was so close to home and his first bowl of the week, and the fucking traffic stood still. He dug out his phone and browsed instagram restlessly.
The town car took an exit onto the 280. It took Zee a moment to grok what had happened. “Hey, dude, you took the wrong exit!”, he snapped at the driver. What an idiot.
The brown driver looked at him in the rear view mirror. “Sorry, Mr. Chakramurthy, I’ve got orders. Mr. Chernov wants to see you.”
Zee took in this bit of news. He would have objected, but the westward traffic on the 280 running smoothly for a change, there was no exit out of the hurtling vehicle. Besides, when Churn wanted to see you, he’d see you, one way or another. He would not get from A to B after all.
Mike Chernov, “Churn” among his subordinates, but never to his face, had a stupidly massive house. Zee could hardly complain about displays of wealth having just flown in with his private jets, but this house never ceased to make him shake his head in dismay when he approached up the driveway. The mansion must have had a room for every single one of the Valley CEOs he had in his pockets: hundreds of them. Inviting them over all at once would make hell of a slumber party.
Churn was easily the most powerful man you’ve never heard of. However, if you were a startup founder, the name of his venture capital firm was most likely on top of your call sheet when you were seeking for funding. The Polymer Fund held large chunks of almost every Silicon Valley unicorn, a company valued at $1 billion or more. Polymer only went for long plays. The fund never seemed to be in need of liquidation, and once they got their claws into your company, usually at early stage and high stakes, they never let go. One of those companies was Zee Chakramurthy’s Artificial Intelligence empire, Chakra. As the name indicated, he was the high priest and chief executive of his company, and in ninety-nine rooms out of hundred, he was the boss. Churn’s office was the one room out.
“Chuck!” Chernov’s voice booming from behind his back startled Zee. He wasn’t a big fan of the name, but had no choice but to let it slide. Folksy nicknames were a part of Chernov’s faux-americana shtick. The old man was as Russian as the Tsar.
Chernov circled around Zee and sat across the table from him, inhaling from a black and gold vaporiser. Formerly a notorious chain smoker, he never parted with his pipe, and exhaled sweet clove-smelling vapour into Zee’s face as he spoke.
“How’s Old Blighty?”, Chernov asked.
“Same”, Zee responded. “Cold.”
“I need you to do me a favour.” Pleasantries with Churn were always as long as his “favours” were voluntary. Churn’s nickname was in reference to the speed at which he rotated his CEO’s, and the best way to find yourself ousted from the company you had started and built from the ground up was to fail to do him a favour when asked.
“Sure… of course, Mike.”
“One of your employees has become very interesting to us”, Chernov said.
What was this now? “All right.”
“His name is William Webster. Ring a bell?”
“Bill. Yes, he’s the editor of one of the smaller papers we’re platforming.”
“We’ve been hearing a lot of chatter about him on the wire. Seems like a few different parties are after him.”
“Bill Webster? Really? He’s a real bummer of a dude.”
“I’m not asking him out on a date”, Churn said, irked. “He knows something we don’t know. Something that could be very valuable to us.”
What’s up with this plural we?
“I assume you’re not going to tell me what it is?”, Zee asked. His tone had been more sullen than he had intended.
“No”, Chernov said, impishly. “But I trust you’ll do it anyway.”
Zee sighed, not too reluctantly, he hoped. “Glad to help. I’ll make some calls first thing tomorrow.”
“I’ll need you to treat this as priority one. Hassan will drive you straight to the airport.”
Zee opened his mouth to respond. He didn’t. That kush would have to wait.