The Human Operator
Episode 2
Hale drags numbly through the honeycomb of work stations that lie beyond her team’s glass pavilion.
She passes a guy asleep by his desk, his limbs held aloft by two ergonomic bean bags, his torso weighted by a third bag.
A guy perches on a chair beside the sleeping guy, swinging between a laptop on his lap and the desktop in front of him, which is pulled beside the desktop of the next guy hunched on his other side.
They barely look up as they say “hey Hale.”
“Come on guys,” she says. “All hands.”
She has the privilege to not have to package her body, fashion herself, because she has brain. She creates brain. She creates intelligence.
Hale makes a sharp left through double doors. She marches down a long glass corridor. Shifting light from blue conference rooms and filtered skylights play across her face. She’s having a long silent conversation with herself.
Like walking toward her own execution.
A stream of nerdy information architects, creative data scientists, superior engineers push her toward the heart of the building, bumping past her as she gets slower and slower.
She pauses as worker drones surge around her toward the grand two story lobby.
A parade of chattering nerds assemble in the building’s corporate heart, the modern glass atrium full of information scientists. All hands.
Fisch, a mad Scientist-haired Cambridge-educated PH.d in physics and CEO of Prescience, stands to the side of the crowd with arms crossed and a satisfied mug on his face.
“Hi everyone. We’ve got a big announcement to make,” says Fisch. “We’re taking Augur to Washington.” He smiles, expecting cheers.
Instead there’s just an awkward silence.
“Haven’t we been in Washington for years?” asks a systems architect.
“We have,” says Fisch cautiously, “but we’re not exactly on the books out there. We’re basically an administrative line item.”
“Known only to those with clearance and admined by those with clearance,” adds Hale. “So far.” She finds Zakaria and Gould in the crowd and looks at them but doesn’t point them out in any way. Clearance.
“Creating Augur was a team effort -” says Fisch.
“This wasn’t a team effort,” says Hale. You could cut the tension with a knife.
Fisch is uncomfortable. “A team of one maybe.”
“I’m just saying ... this wasn’t a team effort. I created it.”
Uncomfortable coughs. Engineers make side eye contact at each other. This fucking broad.
“You’ve all worked very hard. Which is why we feel it’s time to go official -” Fisch is determined to keep this meeting on the rails.
“You mean I’ve worked very hard.”
“You and your team.”
Gould and Zakaria maintain stone faces from their positions in the crowd.
“I created it. The only reason you think you own it is because of a predatory intellectual property contract you made me sign without a lawyer when I started here.” Hale just cannot let this go. To her detriment.
A churlish solutions architect calls “How smart are you if you didn’t even hire a lawyer to look at your contract?”
The majority male crowd snicker a bit. Some just shift uncomfortably.
Hale’s neurotype makes it impossible for her to not demand the credit she thinks she deserves. No matter the consequences.
Another troll in the crowd says “she gonna enjoy telling everyone she made it at home.”
Fisch locks eyes with Hale and jerks his head to the side. A silent command.
