WTF
John Mitchell stared at the text from Amelia, his stomach clenching. Three letters. No emoji. No question mark. No clarification. Just pure emotion, glowing on his phone screen. Timestamp: 6:34 AM. Sunday morning, like any other day.
His phone buzzed again. This time, a call. Rajesh Kapoor, chairman of Mysts' board. Of course.
He set it face down on his desk and let it continue to vibrate.
Automatically, he walked to the Nespresso machine, slid in a pod, positioned a bright red cup, and pressed the Lungo button twice. He needed to control something, even if it was just coffee.
Outside, dawn painted the Portland clouds in soft oranges and golds. But all he could see was the Wall Street Journal homepage still glowing on his laptop:
Growing Scrutiny of Mysts VR Sparks Congressional Inquiry
The phone stopped. Then started again.
He picked it up. Amelia's text still glared on the screen. WTF.
After three rings, he answered.
"Hey Rajesh."
"You saw the Journal hit piece?"
"Just finished the main article. Haven't read the op-ed yet."
"Wouldn't bother. Same shit, just with a PhD."
"Right."
Chronolag. A whistleblower. A father in Memphis claiming their tech nearly destroyed his family.
Every word had landed like a slap. He regretted not replying to the reporter's queries. PR said no. Board said no. Didn't want to stir the pot, not with the IPO in the balance.
He hadn't heard the Nespresso rumbling.
"You OK, John? They're taking a pretty big swing at us."
For a moment it almost sounded like Rajesh actually cared about how he felt. Which made it somehow worse.
"I'm OK."
"Well, we've got to defend ourselves. You've been a great visionary, John. Big thinker, but slow mover, you know?" He took a breath, absorbing the backhand.
"Now's the time to step up to the big leagues. A lot is riding on this."
A longer pause, long enough to feel scripted. Was he counting seconds?
One-Mississippi…
A flash of mid '90s playgrounds in SE Portland came and went.
Two-Mississippi…
"Can you do that, John?"
The repeated use of his name made him tighten his grip on the phone like he was making a fist. Rajesh was easily fifteen years his junior but treated him like a rookie. He suppressed his default sarcasm. Decided to pause just a second himself.
Three-Mississippi…
"I can."
"That's good. We've worked too hard to get this far only to have some idiot grandstanding congressman derail us. We're in a revolution, John. Government is incapable of doing what we do, or even understanding it. We need to be the goddamned revolutionaries."
John tried hard not to roll his eyes, which he figured Rajesh would pick up even over the phone. Using "revolution" to describe Mysts, Inc. may have topped the list of Rajesh's sayings that John would be happy to live without.
Rajesh steamrolled forward without waiting for a response. "They're asking 20th-century questions about 22nd-century tools. If we let fear dictate the roadmap, we might as well go back to making search engines. Congress can't even maintain a website."
John cut in. "Let's have a board meeting on Wednesday. I'll put together an agenda and get the meeting scheduled."
"Perfect. Looking forward to it. Let's shut it down, or judo-move it to our advantage."
Another item on the list: stupid martial arts analogies.
"We'll talk more Wednesday."
John ended the call.
* * *
He stared at the phone for a few seconds after ending the call, willing it to ring again with something banal. Anything: a coffee order confirmation, an unexpected call from Michelle, even spam. Anything easier to deal with than this. But nothing. It was early Sunday morning after all.
He walked the three paces to the Nespresso and grabbed the red cup. The coffee was cold. Of course it was. He took a sip anyway.
The home office, usually a sanctuary, felt claustrophobic. Familiar objects pressed in: industry awards that had once thrilled him, prototype screenshots from early builds of Mysts VR, old books from his MBA days he hadn't opened in years. A well worn copy of Asimov's Foundation that had meant a lot to him decades ago.
A photo of him and Amelia from the night the EmeraldCatalyst round closed. The night Amelia gave Mysts, Inc. its name.
He remembered the celebration. The relief, the toasts, the handshake with Rajesh. The feeling that finally, after so many tries and misses, he was finally on track to the type of success he had always imagined and worked hard for.
Kathy's quiet voice as they left the party: "Protect Amelia."
He leaned back in his ancient Aeron and let his eyes wander more. The whiteboard across from the desk was mostly blank, save for one scribbled phrase he'd written sometime in the past week:
Temporal compression ≠ emotional containment.
He couldn't remember what meeting that came from. Or whether it had been a meeting at all. Or whether it was meant for the product or himself personally. Half his notes these days blurred together, fragments of strategy and introspection tangled into the same handwriting. Everything felt accelerated. Too fast, too much.
He stood again and moved toward the window. Morning had fully broken, but the neighborhood was still asleep. A still Sunday morning. Two raccoons sauntered lazily across the backyard.
Inside, everything buzzed.
On the shelf near the window, the framed Costa Rica photo caught the light. The whole family: Kathy, the kids, him. Michelle was still going by Michael back then, her senior year of high school. The picture was the family in a raft just cresting the final rapid. Everyone wet and wild-eyed, suspended between terror and joy. He could almost hear Kathy's laugh in that moment.
When had he last heard that unguarded laugh?
He always told himself that image meant stability. Proof that whatever compromises he'd made, he'd kept the important things intact.
Lately, though, he wasn't so sure. Lately, it felt more like a reminder that time was always moving. That eventually, one of the balls would drop.
He tried to suppress the feeling he had felt so many other times in his entrepreneurial adventures. The feeling that something was about to drop, to finalize the inevitable blow. Inevitable to everyone but him. His biggest fear was feeling like the last guy to know that something was over. But it seemed to be a pattern.
He sat again. Decided to try to calm himself. Closed his eyes, felt the weight of his body, worked to clear his mind. It lasted maybe a minute. Mindfulness meditation seemed like it should help, but he could never quite achieve that promised state of emptiness.
Shaking his head in disgust, he told himself: Get to it. Typed a line at the top of a blank document:
Wednesday Board Meeting: Draft Agenda.
Then stared at the blinking cursor, trying to remember where to begin.
A couple of minutes passed. His mind swirled. Would mindfulness have helped here? The cursor blinked back at him, patient and dumb.
Somewhere in his head, the Memphis man started taking shape. Tony Martinez.
Stories were already multiplying online: threads, hot takes, amateur breakdowns of Martinez's family situation.
But one line from the Journal article had stuck with him.
"After a while, Martinez's wife, Cecilia, started losing track of what was real."
John hadn't been able to shake that. And he couldn't help thinking of Kathy.
He'd told himself Mysts was benign, features like temporal acceleration optional. But he wasn't so sure anymore. He definitely knew what that felt like, the blurring of what is real. He'd felt it. And he knew about chronolag.
Fucking chronolag.
From the hallway, a door clicked. Soft footsteps, then the distant sound of a cabinet closing. Kathy, starting her Sunday. Still structured, still full. His: a blank canvas these days. Which he liked. Mostly.
For a second, he thought about calling out to her, just to say good morning. But the moment passed, and he let it. No reason to weigh her down with this new crisis. He knew she'd come to him for a kiss before leaving.
He reached for the coffee again. Still cold.
The screen had dimmed. He tapped the trackpad, and the glow returned.
Wednesday Board Meeting: Draft Agenda.
Still the only line on the page.
His phone buzzed. A new message from Amelia:
You doing OK?
The compassion in that message steadied him. He breathed. OK? Not really. But maybe, just maybe, not alone.
He shot back a 'thumbs up', set the phone down, grabbed the coffee again, and knowingly took another sip. Then he closed his eyes to think.