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with
     Adverks sales, personnel ops/recruitment, policy/advocacy, media relations. Divisions
     requiring minimal intelligence. Minimal skill. Not techs but recs. Rectards. Lusers.
     Loser users. Ad people. All staff will be hired locally.”
    “You realize this is for
     publication—you’re sure you want to go on the record?”
    “We want the scalp of the head of the team responsible for this
     wallpaper.”
    I had a scoop, then, as Principal kept scooping himself deeper—and
     deeper—digging into his users, his backers, anyone who happened to get on the
     wrong side of his pronoun: that firstperson plural deployed without contraction (not
     “all that bullshit we got for having Dutch auctioned the offering, we
     could’ve thrown it in their faces but didn’t,” rather
     “
we could have
thrown it in their faces
but did
     not
”).
    “The investors lacked confidence in Tetration or in the
     market?”
    “Confidence is liability packaged as like asset, and asset packaged
     as like liability. Only we were sure how it would play, going public.”
    “I missed out on it totally—what was your stake,
     again?”
    “Nobody noticed that the 14,142,135 shares we equitized ourselves
     was a reference to √2.”
    “What?”
    “The square root of 2: 1.414213562373—stop us when you have
     had enough.”
    “I will.”
    “095048801688724209698078569671875376—stop us
     whenever—where were we?”
    “5376?”
    “7187537694?”
    “If I dial that, I’m calling your aunt in the
     Bronx?”
    “We do not have an aunt in the Bronx.”
    “What about the name?”
    “The name of what?”
    “Joshua Cohen.”
    “We invented that too?”
    “Not at all, too unoriginal. That’s why they have me writing
     this, you realize? I’m trying to work in something about the future of identity,
     something about names linking, or mislinking. Two Joshua Cohens becoming one, or
     becoming you, how it makes us feel?”
    “We have the same name?”
    “That wasn’t mentioned?”
    “No.”
    “No?”
    Pause for a blush: “Dumb—it makes us feel dumb.”
    “Dumb because you have me beat in the rankings? Or dumb because you
     hadn’t been privy to what we’ve been sharing?”
    But he’d gone dumb like mute. Dumb like no comment.
    “I mean, we even resemble each other? The nose?”
    Principal pinched his nose. Rigidified.
    I leaned against a wall, between magicmarker scribbles labeling imminent
     workstation emplacement: “A unit,” “B unit.” The dictaphone
     clicked, time to flip.
    Remember that? the dictaphone?
    I went back to Ridgewood and typed it all up, doubled my 2000 word limit
     but figured with this material they’d have to accommodate: how he hadn’t
     wanted to meet, but had been compelled, how I hadn’t wanted to meet, but had been
     compelled. I demarcated our respective pressures: his partners and shareholders, my rent
     and ConEd.
    I delineated the effect of Principal’s affect, the texture of his
     flatness, how he’d left a better impression on the chair, how the chair had left
     a better impression on the carpet, and concluded like the session had concluded with an
     account and analysis of the one thing that’d converted his format, from .autism
     to .rage—his ignorance.
    Anything he missed didn’t exist for him, and whoever pointed it out
     to him was destroyed. The reader was supposed to be that person—standing around,
     like I’d stood around, gaping at the chutzpah.
    I emailed it in—[email protected], back then. The site was pleased.
     But then Tetration got in touch and requested quote approval. The site, without
     consultation, agreed. Then Tetration requested nonpublication. They were expecting
     doublefisted puffycheeked blowjob hagiography. I was expecting to be protected. But
     no.
    The writeup was killed, it was murderized. The only commission of mine
     ever dead, stopped at .doc.
    The site paid me half fee, and then another envelope arrived in the mail
     containing a copy of