Gagged Page 3

  These children, believing in a limitless future.

  These children, handicapped with tools that were being used a century ago.

  When class ends, I thank the teacher and leave. I stop in the office for a conversation with the principal on my way out, asking about the district budget and appropriations, hoping my tone is not casting judgment.

  There are digital textbooks these days, complete with constantly updating text and socially sharable notes. There are games, playable on tablets, that can accelerate the learning of certain skills while making the process fun. There are smart boards that connect in-class, on-board writing to apps on student tablets. Kids — even young kids — spend half their day immersed in technology, so might it make sense to use some of that tech in the classroom?

  I’m trying not to be confrontational, but the principal nods with grim understanding, as if I’ve cast accusations on the whole of education. He says he agrees. The world is digital, but most education is stuck in the Stone Age. Children learn the most trivial things through the technology they’re exposed to outside of school then are expected to learn what matters most using chalk, pencil, and paper. It’s obvious the schools don’t stand a chance.

  He shrugs and says, “All of what you’re saying is true, but there’s just no budget for the things you’re talking about.”

  That could change, of course. And so I leave the school feeling like the poster child for youthful idealism, my head full of Pollyanna plans. Most people older than me would laugh, thinking me sweet and naive — but to me, it all makes such obvious sense. It’s not Pollyanna, pie-in-the-sky, head-in-the-clouds. It’s dollars and sense, if everyone would get their heads out of their asses — some people more than others.

  Take all the money that’s wasted on textbooks and buy every child a tablet. They don’t need pricey iPads; most any tablet would do. Between bulk pricing, exclusive deals, and the endless, repetitive, incestuous cycle of waste on dated paper books, there’d be money for those tablets; I’m sure of it. If there’s a shortfall, it’d be small, and do-gooders are always looking for causes to throw money at. Someone has to be paid for digital textbooks, but they’d be pennies versus the waste inherent in dead-tree books.

  Then you could stuff those tablets with apps. But even in the adult app world, many of the best are free or just a few bucks. Smart developers know there are other ways to make money, and could get grant dollars or state appropriation if education was the game.

  If someone would lead the way — say, by making his research and learning software open source so others could adapt it without dinging his profits — the entire system would follow.

  I get back into my car.

  I still have another school to visit for my photo essay on the education gap before tempting my anger, and visiting the logjam that prevents the miracle from happening.

  On the way out, I drive by the playground. The kids are all playing behind the fence, and wave when they see me.

  I see Lily run to the chain link amid a chorus of waves and shouts. She grips the fence with the tiny fingers of one hand while she raises one foot, using the other to point. By reading her lips, I think she’s saying, Boots like yours.

  She’s going to be a photographer when she grows up, just like me.

  I wave, but I can’t hold my smile for long. They’re all so wide-eyed at that age, believing they can do anything.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AURORA

  THE GAMESTORMING BUILDING IS A twisting structure, not simple or straight up and down. It’s gorgeous if I ignore what it means to me: its surfaces matte so it doesn’t blind passersby, its metal the brilliant white of a bleached smile. I stand near a block from its base and look up, noting how much further the construction has proceeded since last I was here. And all I can think — instead of admiring its beauty — is how much the building’s atypical architecture must have cost.

  I’m not a Robin Hood type. I don’t believe in stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. So as I look up at Caspian White’s budding edifice, it’s not precisely true that I wish he’d diverted some of the cost into something less … ostentatious. His money is his to do with as he pleases. He earned it, and may spend as he pleases.

  But still I look up at the complicated architecture, think of the two underfunded schools I’ve just visited, and think, You’re such an asshole.

  My geek friends agree with my business friends: GameStorming is swimming in cash to the tune of many billions, and going open source would take nothing away. He might even increase his long-term profits, when kids who grew up using GameStorming became paying adults. I’ve spent way too much time trying to figure this out, down to the finest detail my admittedly non-tech, non-business brain can manage: One of the richest men in San Francisco could change the city — maybe even start a small chain reaction that could shift the way education is conceived around the world. If schools knew that their largest educational tool would be provided free in the form of sharable, collaborative software, they’d find a way to get the tablets to run it. Hell, maybe they wouldn’t even need textbooks anymore, paper or digital. Why learn from fixed sources when humanity is learning from a hive where everything is cheap or free?

  I’ve seen Caspian asked this question, back before he instituted his news blackout. I even tried to get Jasmine to promise that she’d ask him today — maybe right now, based on the time — but she refused. He always dodges it.

  Will you ever take GameStorming open source?

  And he says, We’re not considering it at this time.

  Once, I saw someone ask a pointed follow-up:

  Why not? Why won’t you even consider it?

  I still remember watching that interview on an Internet stream, and my mind recalls every detail of his answer. First he half laughs, and it happens on only half of his mouth. It’s condescending — a chuckle that says the interviewer is pitiable and sad. Then he looks toward the camera, and there’s something amused in those cool blue eyes that so captivate Jasmine. He runs a hand through his longish blond hair, picks something invisible off his pants, and adjusts the left cuff in his jet-black blazer. It’s a trivial series of affects and it only takes seconds, but by the time Caspian answers, both the interviewer and the audience are clearly uncomfortable in the silence, as he takes his sweet time to respond.

  And then he says, that amused smile still on his cocky model’s face, Because I don’t want to.

  I raise my camera and take a photo of the tall white building. I take one nearly every week from this same spot. Strictly speaking, I don’t need more than one photo for my essay on the tech gulf in education; GameStorming HQ has been occupied for over a year, and except from certain angles, the ongoing construction rarely changes. But this weekly photo has become an angry compulsion. I’m documenting the lair of a man who holds the key to unlocking countless young minds — yet prefers to polish his crown jewel instead, caring only to amass more and more like a greedy dragon atop his horde of treasure.

  But hell, Jasmine won’t ask him. She didn’t even humor my suggestion. The whole thing is far too strange, and she proved this morning just how nervous she is. Caspian White is suddenly the world’s golden boy at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, but just as his star started to rise and the LiveLyfe buyout happened, the man decided that interviews were beneath him. When Jasmine and I were doing our research, we saw that he’d turned down Time, Entrepreneur, Newsweek, GQ, Fast Company, and a dozen other household names. Magazines keep gracing him with their covers, but the stories are all secondhand, recycling old material and speculating, pumping acquaintances for information. And yet when Jasmine contacted his office on a lark, following her schoolgirl crush more than any measure of common sense, she got the first yes he’s granted in over a year. We don’t know why, or have the guts to ask.

  So if I think she’ll grill him about opening his software to any educational applications at all, I’m kidding myself.

  I take another photog
raph. She’s up there now, asking fluff questions. Spellbound by his power, body, and beauty, probably, failing journalism as a discipline because she’ll be nervous and lost in his deep blue eyes. The big clock outside the bank across the street says it’s 1:41, and Jasmine’s appointment was from 1 until 2. She’ll be finishing up, tossing him softballs, likely weak in the knees.

  Behind me, half a block back, some jerk lays on his horn. It’s a long, incredibly obnoxious honk — the sort that says “look at me” as much as “look out.” I ignore it while framing my shot, but even after I lower the camera the asshole’s still honking.

  I look back and see a shiny black luxury car with winking chrome trim sitting outside the corner Hill of Beans. Its horn has finally stopped blaring.

  Someone emerges. Someone I recognize.

  I fish the phone from my pocket to double check the time, but my lock screen is filled with missed texts from Jasmine. Some are jocular, some are nervous, some are crude, and some are angry — though there’s far less of the last emotion than I’d be feeling in Jasmine’s shoes.

  The time is indeed correct. Jasmine’s appointment with Caspian White began forty-seven minutes ago, and yet here’s this dickhead now, moving from his fancy car and into the coffee shop, a cell phone plastered to his ear.

  I watch him until the outer door closes behind his trademark suit.

  Then I put my camera back in my bag, cross the street, and follow.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CASPIAN

  IF BERNIE WERE HERE, I’D put my fist through the back of his throat.

  “Mr. White? Are you still there?”

  But of course I’m still here. The coffee shop door made noise when I opened it. Same as when it closed behind me. Now inside, there’s plenty of racket. Bernie knows the call wasn’t dropped when I abandoned my car and left him to stew in his own stupid silence. He’s trying to remind me that it’s my turn to speak without pissing me off even more than he already has.

  For fifteen long seconds, I say nothing. Just to see if he’ll ask again.

  Then I make my voice eminently reasonable. “I’m sorry, Bernie. I’m not sure I caught that. Could you repeat it?” I’m doing a fair enough calm voice, but the serenity must not be showing on my face because a fat man with a mustache looks away like he’s been burned when he accidentally meets my eyes. This happens right as I say to Bernie, “Please?”

  “I … what?”

  Now he’s just playing dumb.

  “It’s loud here. Could you please just repeat what you said a moment earlier?”

  Bernie sort of stammers, unsure. Then he says, “I said that I did let Lucy know that the new module was a bit behind schedule, and that maybe it slipped her mind, which is understandable, but it’s not that I didn’t — ”

  “Ah,” I interrupt. “So the disconnect was when it crossed Lucy’s desk.”

  “Y-yes? I guess so.”

  “And maybe it slipped her mind. Because you did let us know. You’re on top of things. Because you’re a responsible guy who knows exactly what a delay means. Well, not that, actually. The Einstein module was expected to run behind. It’s no big deal that it did, so long as you let me know in advance. That way we could plan accordingly.”

  “Well, right.”

  “And you did let me know. Until Lucy dropped the ball.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way,” Bernie says. “She’s just got a lot going on and — ”

  “Oh, of course. It’s understandable.”

  “Y-yes, Mr. White.” He sounds relieved. “But to catch up, we’ll — ”

  “Bernie?”

  “Yes?”

  “As it turns out, this time and this time only, the delay isn’t an issue and the fact that I didn’t know in advance wasn’t a big deal. It was just dumb luck. I have some shuffle room in my schedule and will be able to accommodate the changes necessitated by … Lucy’s … mistake. We didn’t make promises to the shareholders that we’ll have to go back on, based on this delay and the total lack of knowledge that it existed because of Lucy’s irresponsible ineptitude.”

  “Now wait a second; I didn’t say — ”

  “However,” I go on, “we still have a problem. Do you know what it is?”

  “W-what? No, sir, I don’t.”

  Sir. Nobody calls me sir, and I haven’t called anyone sir since my father last demanded it. Bernie’s such a pandering, pathetic asshole.

  “Lies.”

  “Lies?”

  “Excuses.”

  “I’m not sure what you — ”

  “Bernie?”

  “Yes, Mr. White?”

  “Lucy doesn’t drop balls. Lucy has never, in her entire life, dropped a ball as important as updates on the Einstein module. Everyone at GameStorming who knows about development on the module knows how important it is. Not just to me, but to … everything.”

  “I’m sure she was — ”

  “Never,” I say, enunciating. “Details are Lucy’s bread and butter. She may not be able to debug endless lines of code or have three fancy degrees, but she can keep a fucking list of important things and make sure they get done. But it’s not just Lucy I’m trusting. I checked the messages you sent back and forth. You haven’t called her, according to the logs in and out of her desk. So tell me, Bernie — how exactly did you let her know about the delay? Did you write it in the sky?”

  “Mr. White … ”

  “Unlike Lucy, you’re a fuckup, Bernie. I knew it when I brought you on. I fed every bit of data LiveLyfe had on you into a bit of software I wrote myself, then into something my friend Trevor Stone’s company is playing with — not that he knew I’d done so, of course. And all that analysis told me what I already knew: ‘Bernard Lachlan is an adept and talented programmer with — ”

  “How did you get my LiveLyfe data?”

  My temper slips another notch. Nobody interrupts me.

  “With all the right degrees but a personality that, according to Myers-Briggs and everything else, is shit at follow-through. I knew from the start that you’d always promise the moon but deliver its dirt and do it late. I’ve always factored it in. But this? This is new. Now you’re lying to me. You’re making excuses.”

  Across the shop, the fat man with the mustache skirts wide with his coffee, watching me like a sheep eyeing a wolf.

  Bernie stammers meaningless syllables.

  “Bernie?”

  “Y-yes, Mr. White?”

  “I hired you because you’re the best developer I could find.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s a fact, not a compliment. I wouldn’t have hired someone who didn’t know more than me about what you do. For three years, I didn’t need you. At all.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “If you fuck up, fine, as long as you own it. As long as you always tell me the truth. Trust is very important to me, as is truth. So Bernie?”

  “Yes?”

  “If you lie to me again, trust me that you’ll not only be fired from this job but that you’ll never make another cent from the software you’ve already completed and that you have every right to be paid for. And Bernie?”

  He makes a vague noise.

  “If you ever, ever cast aspersions on my best person to save your own scrawny neck again, trust that you will find yourself very, very sorry.”

  Bernie makes the terrible decision to reply, and in exactly the wrong way.

  “I understand, sir. But if I could just point out that she’s not infallible because she’s … ”

  I don’t exactly cut him off. He sort of stops on his own.

  “Finish that sentence, Bernie. Go ahead, and say what’s on your mind.”

  For a moment, I actually think he will. But then he’s saved by the bell when my phone buzzes showing an incoming call from Lucy. I don’t just switch from one to the other. I hang up on Bernie and leave the asshole to choke.

  “Luc?”

  “I hate when you call me that. It makes i
t sound like I’m easy in bed: ‘loose.’”

  My temper is still up, but talking to Lucy is so much easier than talking to Bernie. I feel myself, as if she’s hit a tight acupressure point to release all the badness.

  “I was just on with Bernie.”

  “I figured. What did he say?”

  “That he’s a lying little shit.”

  “You knew that, Caspian.”

  “I don’t like lying.”

  “He’s capable, but he’s a coward. You know the type. You going to fire him?”

  “What do you think?”

  I can imagine her shrugging. “Meh.”

  “He blamed it on you, said he told you there’d be a delay on Einstein but that you must have forgotten.”

  “I thought he might do that.” She laughs. “Let it go, Caspian. You’re horrible with people by yourself. There always has to be a good cop and a bad cop. I’ll handle Bernie. Where are you? In your office?”

  “I’m at Hill of Beans. You want anything?”

  “Like I’m going to drink coffee after that shit gave Dad two heart attacks?”

  “Caffeine isn’t what’s killing our father. Life is what’s killing him.”

  “Don’t even joke about that, Caspian,” she says, her voice warning.

  I’m not joking. Or exaggerating. On a stress level from one to ten, our father always seemed to be at eleven. Lucy doesn’t like when I talk about him so bluntly, especially when he’s still in the hospital, but we didn’t share the same childhood. She entered the family after I’d already attracted all the old man’s expectations and disappointments. He never hit her; that was something reserved for the older son. Lucy was his beloved baby girl, but I was heir to a throne I’d never be worthy of. I guess that’s why I abdicated my father’s business and started my own, then outshone him a hundred to one. But to Lucy, none of what I went through even exists. She knew he was rough on me, but not quite how rough. She gets frustrated with how cold I am on the subject, but his being sick now doesn’t make me want to hold his hand or send him flowers.