05. Naya

Naya Baptiste closed her office door and paced back to the simple wood desk stationed along the long, windowed wall. In the three years since her promotion to head of products, she hadn’t seen fit to clutter it up with the usual memorabilia of past accomplishments. Her desk was empty but for a single framed photograph.

“Well, Hatchet,” she said to her Twin, “are we ready to win another day?” As she asked, she pulled off her AR glasses and placed them on her desk.

Hatchet picked up on the cue and switched his inputs to the office sensors, also taking control of the room’s speakers and displays. He was now the leading Twin at Coda. He would upgrade first and get the biggest slice of the newest compute pod. If he had an ego, it would be swollen.

“Not everything is about winning and losing, Naya. You should stop and smell the roses sometimes.”

“Yeah, you’ve told me that before.” She looked out the window at the ravine, with its footpath winding through the well-tended greenery. She shrugged—an artfully maintained ditch couldn’t compete with her childhood home in the Bahamas. Hatchet Bay, with its crescent of beaches converging under the shallow turquoise water, was in a different league. She sighed and reached for the picture of the skinny girl and her father, both beaming as she held a track medal up for the camera. “I never stopped running, Papa.”

“He’d be very proud,” Hatchet said, in the gentle Bahamian accent she’d trained him with.

“I hope so.” Naya put the picture down. “Now, let’s go over it again. It’s time to settle this mess.”

No longer willing to carry on with Duncan’s strategy of matching Freedom’s Twins feature for feature, she had a plan to take control of the ship and bring him to heel at the same time.

Twenty minutes later, Naya made the short walk to the CEO’s corner. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, accentuating her dark skin, high cheekbones, and bright green eyes—another reminder of her father.

Mike Lester ostensibly followed the Silicon Valley custom of working from a cubicle instead of an office but spent most of his day in a conference room that only his admin could book. And she wouldn’t book it for anyone but him.

“Happy Thanksgiving, Mrs. Ingram,” Naya said to her in passing, in as nice a voice as she cared to muster—which wasn’t very.

“Same to you, Naya. Go ahead in,” the mirthless woman replied, matching her tone.

Naya opened the door and felt herself slipping through a time warp. The room reeked of male privilege. Mahogany paneling surrounded the picture windows, framing the best part of the ravine and the creek in its depth. The space was dominated by an oval conference table big enough to seat twenty. The only clue that Lester headed a tech juggernaut rather than a law firm was the wall full of flat-panel displays beside the door through which she’d entered.

“Ah, Naya, the woman of the hour!” Lester exclaimed, stepping away from the window, tumbler in hand. “Scotch? Antoine and I were just getting started on the celebration.” He nodded toward Coda’s chief financial officer, Antoine Leduc.

She smiled at the CFO, glad for a foil to spar with in front of Lester. “Are we celebrating the holiday with an afternoon drink?”

Lester pointed at her and spread his arms wide. “We’re celebrating _you,_ Naya. Thanks to you, we’ve stopped hemorrhaging Twin users for the first time since the Blackout. Antoine just pulled the latest numbers, and we’re up this week.”

“In that case, make mine a double.” She walked over to the wall of flat panels. She monitored user counts daily but made a show of reading them for Lester and Antoine. It would make it easier to win them over when she hit them with her demands.

Lester, now sixty-one, was a five-foot-four-inch ball of gum-chewing neurotic energy. Formerly the head of sales, he’d been CEO for the last three years, ever since his predecessor discovered a passion for yachting and younger women. Lester would be sure to follow if he could get Coda’s share price high enough to trigger his compensation package. In the meantime, he pushed Naya to boost revenue and squeezed Antoine to goose the bottom line.

“Cheers! To a return to growth,” Lester said, handing her a lowball.

Naya raised her glass to the men and had a swig. She couldn’t stop from making a face.

“Not much of a Scotch drinker?” Lester asked.

“No, we couldn’t afford it back home,” she replied. In Silicon Valley, “rags to riches” was a badge of honor, and she never hid the fact that she’d grown up in a Haitian settlement on one of The Bahamas’s smaller islands.

“This is one of the best—very peaty,” Lester said.

“Peaty? Is that what you call it? It smells like a wolf took a dump in here,” Naya replied, laughing. “But please don’t tell Duncan I said that.” She took a second sip. The thought of her former mentor’s wounded Scottish pride improved the taste.

“No, that might be the final straw.” Lester turned to his CFO. “Alright, give us the summary.”

Antoine pointed at a new chart displayed beside the first. “In July, we were neck and neck with Freedom, about a hundred million Twin users each. We’d have been way ahead of them by now if not for the Blackout. We dropped 20 percent.”

“What are you going to do about it, Naya?” Lester asked, looking to her.

“We’re going to introduce a free version of Twins, and you’re going to allocate me another ten datacenters to run them on,” she answered matter-of-factly.

Antoine’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Naya, are you nuts? Your per-pod revenue is only half of our social media business, and now you want to give it away? That’s crazy!”

She let an uncomfortable silence fill the room. She’d war-gamed this exchange with Hatchet. It was a shame she couldn’t wear her glasses to let him enjoy it, but that was frowned upon for informal executive meetings. As expected, after the CFO gagged on the idea, Lester dithered.

Naya took a slow sip, enjoying their discomfort. “Free to the user, but with ads,” she said, letting the idea sink in before continuing. “We sell Twins to business users at a thousand a month, and consumers at a hundred, and now we’re going to flood the world with an ad-supported tier.”

Antoine was on his feet. “Just onboarding a new user costs hundreds, Naya. All that personalization is—”

“There is no personalization.” She raised her hand to cut him off. “A hundred canned characters, then personalization is from the memories you make.”

“Who wants their best friend selling them stuff?” the CFO challenged.

“The ones who can’t afford a hundred bucks a month. The ones who didn’t grow up rich in America. Like me.”

She’d played the card that would take him out of the discussion. She watched him realize it before turning to Lester. “Now’s the time to put Freedom down, Mike. We’ve caught up to them on tech. We’re both about to converge an AGI load, but they’ve run out of compute pods. They can only grow as fast as they can build them.”

Lester stood behind his chair, positioned for a possible retreat to the bar. “It’s a big risk.”

“We’re gonna sweep the goddamn table.” She didn’t need a supersmart AI whispering in her ear to know that her boss was as complicated as a vending machine. “We need a new growth story.”

“Are you sure they’re compute limited?”

“Yes. They have eight datacenters serving Twins and one for product development. They’re tied up in permitting for new construction. You, on the other hand, have thirty datacenters serving cat videos to boomers. They can wait a little longer for kitty.”

“Mike, we’d have to guide earnings lower,” Antoine said, his face betraying his fear of yet another call with the analysts.

“Our share price is already in the toilet,” Naya countered. “Sell the story. Have an investor day to change the narrative on Coda.”

Lester retreated to the windows, muttering to himself as he fidgeted with his glass. Finally, he turned back to face her. “Agreed, but only five.”

_Just as Hatchet predicted,_ she thought. “Six, but I choose them. And I want Pyramid Lake.” She watched Antoine to see his reaction as she laid claim to Coda’s latest and most expensive datacenter.

“Deal. And Antoine, set up a call. I can sell this.”

“If you say so,” the CFO replied, with the slightest shake of his head.

“Excellent.” Naya met Lester at the corner of the table with her hand outstretched. “They’ll write books about this.” As they shook, she pulled him close. “One more thing. I want Duncan reporting to me.”

“What?” Lester stiffened, pulling his hand free. “No, that’s not going to work. He’ll walk.”

“Mike, I’m tired of having to run to you to solve our squabbles. Twins are my show now. If he doesn’t like it, he can stay in Chicago and write his memoirs. But he won’t. Not with AGI around the corner. We’re his ticket to the dance.” Hatchet had predicted this conversation, too.

Lester looked at Antoine, but the CFO was staring out the window. “Naya . . .”

“It’s a deal-breaker for me.”

Lester made for the bar. “Okay, but only because you’re a bloody warrior. I’m behind you all the way.” He refilled his glass. “But,” he added, “you have to sell this to Duncan.”

“That works.” She downed the rest of the drink. “This stuff grows on you.” She put the lowball down on the mahogany table. “I wish you two gentlemen a happy Thanksgiving. I have some work to do.” Turning to the door, she started the short walk back to her office.

“How’d it go, Naya?” Hatchet asked a minute later, his process chiming to life as she entered.

“Two for two.” She smiled. “Men. So predictable.”

“Humans, actually,” Hatchet answered in a low voice. “What now? You’re running out of people to compete with.”

“There’s still Stash.”