The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 7, 2398

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Derina Torres accepted the position, though she took it under false pretenses. She believes that she will be working for Angela, and has no idea that Angela has plans to leave. It’s not going to be an immediate transition. Their best estimate for being able to escape this reality is still months away. That gives them plenty of time to make sure that Derina knows what she’s doing, and feels comfortable taking on more responsibility. She won’t be alone, which is what they’re working on today.

It was very important to Angela that the half of her replacement who will be in charge of the business side of things would be a woman. This was a woman-led company from the beginning, and she doesn’t really want to change that, especially not after all the misogynistic bullshit that she and Marie had to go through at their last company. Leona convinced Winona to convince whoever needed convincing to grant her temporary access to the United States Database of Working Individuals, or USDOWI, for short. No matter which world, in which reality, in which universe you go to, the government loves acronyms. Sorting the table of employed people was more complicated than it sounded when Leona first brought it up, but it still only took a day to create her top ten most wanted, and then pare it down to the best candidate. On paper, the best candidate is a man, but Angela is willing to sacrifice perfection for best fit.

Syntyche Söderberg, Soldier of Sustainability is not named for the reason you may think. Sustainability, in this case, does not refer to her feelings on environmental, or even social, responsibility. What she’s known for is dropping into startups and struggling businesses, and fixing whatever is wrong or lacking in them so well that their success lasts indefinitely beyond her departure. Her main competitors boast the same accomplishments, but the persistence of that success is dubious for most, and non-existence for a few. She knows what a company needs to thrive in the marketplace now, and in the future, and she does not accept the job if she thinks that it can’t be done. She stays on an assignment for as long as it takes, which may mean a week of observation and consultation, or a year of running the organization from the top down. If she can’t teach Derina to lead independently, she’ll find her own permanent successor.

Syntyche isn’t famous for her high ethics, but she’s not evil, and she does not allow the abuse of power, or the mistreatment of employees or consumers. Her focus is on profit and growth, which often leads to utilizing cheap materials, and overcharging for finished products, but according to anecdotal reports, she will forgo these objectives in order to conform to the principles of her clients. Well, at least she’ll meet them halfway. Let’s not go crazy here, she has a 92% success rate that she has to maintain.

They’re lucky to have caught her near the end of her current project. If she agrees to the contract, she will be able to begin in two weeks. She had her lawyer look over the paperwork yesterday, and is now sitting across from Angela, Alyssa, and Derina, silently crossing eyes and dotting teas. She takes off her reading glasses. “Where are you going?”

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m just contracting you to help us grow.”

Syntyche chuckles, and looks back at the contract. “This binds me to seven months, with an extension to a full year, if necessary.”

“Right,” Angela confirms.

“Extend the extension to two years, and you have a deal.” She holds out her hand.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 12, 2398

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Angela is sitting in the welcome room. It has a conference table, multiple screens, a snack bar with refrigeration, couches, and comfortable chairs. This is where she’ll first meet clients. It’s a playground for them to explore what kind of software they might want to create without the limiting factors of a stuffy office. Completing this room was the final flourish. If she wanted to take a meeting today, she would be ready for them. Well, the building would be ready. Psycho-emotionally speaking, she may never be ready. She’s nervous already, and she hasn’t even opened the doors yet. Can she do this? Is she ready? Should she do it?

Kivi peeks her head into the room like a sideways prairie dog. “Hey.” She’s Angela’s researcher. Angela knows how to counsel people, and she knows how to code, which is a lot of work for one person. It will be Kivi’s responsibility to find people who might be interested in their services, but who might not be aware that it’s even a thing. Or they might not be aware that they can do it for free. This is a highly competitive field, but most companies charge for development. Angela isn’t even sure that she wants to call them clients, because once they go into business together—if it goes that far—they will be more like partners. They will work together to build something, and share in the profits, and if it fails, they will share in the loss. The point of this is to take on the financial burden, because her only partners will be people who both can’t do it on their own, and can’t afford to invest monetarily.

Angela takes a deep breath. “You found my secret hiding place.”

“You mean the biggest room on the floor besides the lobby? Yep.”

Angela nods, but doesn’t say anything.

Kivi walks over and sits down next to her. “What are you feeling?”

“Hesitation.”

“Hesitation,” Kivi questions, “or cold feet?”

She shakes her head. Does it matter? The result is the same when this whole project is cancelled. They should never have even tried, and they wasted so much time, money, and effort getting to this point. They don’t need the money. The entire pursuit is all about her, inspired by the simple fact that Leona and Ramses only needed one floor for their lab. The business doesn’t do the team any good, and it doesn’t do the world much good either. It’s selfish. She feels so selfish, spending so much time on this.

It’s like Kivi can see all this detailed angst in Angela’s eyes. “You don’t have to feel bad about doing this, just because Leona is working on fusion, and Ramses, Mateo, and Alyssa are trying to get Trina back. They want this place to succeed. We all do.”

“It’s all so stupid compared to everything else going on.”

“It’s not, and you won’t feel that way when I show you the profile for your first partner.” She casts her tablet to the big screen. A group of teenagers are laughing for the camera. “The boy in the green shirt has been walking two miles to the nearest internet cafe everyday to research ways to help his community. The area is poverty-stricken, and the school’s population is dwindling as a cult promising riches recruits kids for what he realizes is actually a militia. He has some pretty cool ideas to put a stop to it, but not the resources to follow through. Upon your go-ahead, I’m prepared to reach out.”

Angela reads about him on the screen, and thinks. “Okay. Call him.”

Microstory 1871: Soft Peddle

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I’ve never done drugs in my entire life. I drink a little, just to kind of chill out at the end of the day, but I don’t like to party, or anything. Some of my customers have asked me how I can conduct business if I’ve never used the product myself, and I don’t think it’s too crazy that I don’t partake. A lotion salesperson probably hasn’t used every single type of lotion in the store; or perfume, or whatever. And caskets, what about caskets? Not a single casket dealer has ever used one of their own models. Or rather, they haven’t used it for its intended long-term purpose. I suppose there are maybe a few freaks out there who get down like that, and that’s what draws them to the industry. The way I see it, I don’t need to know what it feels like to take a pill of certain properties. I just need to understand my clientele, and what they’re looking for. My business came out of nowhere. I had a lot of emotional problems when I was young, and my parents had the idea to just throw mind-altering drugs at everything. I took this, and I took that, and I tried cocktail after cocktail. Nothing helped until I delved deep into my issues, and focused on getting better through traditional therapeutic techniques. But then I had all these pills left over that nobody—nobody—asked me to dispose of. I guess I was simply expected to take the initiative to drop them off at my local pharmacy. Well, I didn’t, so I just kept everything with me, and when I went off to college, I didn’t bother sorting them out. I grabbed all of my medicine, and threw them in the top drawer of my desk in the dorm. Some of it I still needed, like my allergy meds, generic over-the-counter pain management, and melatonin. But it was all in there, in the back, and one day, when a neighbor asked me if I had something for his headache, a business was born.

He saw what else I had, and told me I was crazy for just sitting on them. I could make some serious money if I started peddling it to other students. It wasn’t the most insane idea. I mean, a few of those things could really help them focus on studying, and taking tests. Still, I was hesitant, so I closed the drawer, and dropped it. The other guy didn’t drop it, though. He started spreading word around, and somehow, without me even making a single sale, people were starting to call me The Pharmacist. They were in such need, and I wasn’t, so who was I to stop them? They were all adults capable of making their own decisions, and if this was what they wanted, fine. I didn’t truly understand street value at the time, so I didn’t charge them very much, but I had so much volume, so I made a huge profit, because I didn’t pay for any of it myself. As time went on, word spread farther beyond the dorm, and across campus. I was the guy to go to if you were looking for a little help, and didn’t technically have some stuffy doctor to agree to it. By the time I ran out of my supply, I was approached by a real life drug dealer who wasn’t happy I was taking business away from him. I apologized, and said I wasn’t in it for the long haul, but he wasn’t hearing it. He said I had to go talk to Fartle. I didn’t ask him where Fartle got his nickname. Or the spider tattoos. Or the gun. Fearing for my life, I agreed to start selling for him, as long as I never had to sell anything that had to be injected or snorted. He was fine with that, so that’s what I did. I didn’t call myself a drug dealer until the first time I went to jail, and the judge made me say those words, or he would double my sentence. When I got out, I found myself free of Fartle, but I still felt compelled to sell. I’m too good at it, so I’ve been doing it for ten years. I regret nothing.