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And then I hear the voice.
“Hi, everybody, and welcome to another installment of The Sexpert.”
There’s this momentary jolt of déjà vu that hits me at hearing the sound coming from the speakers. Which isn’t all that weird. It happens a lot these days, since the little app I invented that has started this avalanche of tech success currently chasing me down the mountain is a thing that alters and masks your voice virtually into one of a couple dozen or so pre-programmed vocal IDs and has—for reasons passing understanding—caught the public’s imagination and gone global.
There’s the husky setting. Tweety Bird, which actually drives me insane. Darth Vader is a super-popular one (better be for what we had to pay George Lucas to get the rights), and so forth.
It’s just kind of a silly thing I stumbled on in my bedroom while I was frustrated with the progress I was making on an art project that I have since abandoned. And then wham, bam, thank you, augmented voice reality… Next thing you know, I’m a friggin’ tech billionaire and titan of industry.
Life’s weird that way.
The fabulous breasts on Pierce’s monitor are using the Sultry Siren setting.
“Are you listening?” Pierce’s voice is now the one doing to my thoughts exactly what his first name implies.
“No. I wasn’t, actually. What?”
“How do we figure out who this is?”
“What do you mean?”
“Can’t we use your app to ID this fucking harlot?”
“Harlot? Dude… No. That’s not what the app does.”
“Jesus Christ!” He thrusts his hands into his suit pants’ pockets and kicks at the ground. It almost looks like a Gene Kelly imitation.
“I don’t get it. Can’t you just send a cease-and-desist order to the website? I presume you have Sexpert trademarked.”
I have only once in my life seen Pierce Chevalier appear shamed or embarrassed. Junior year of college, I slept with a girl he had a crush on. Not my fault. It was at a party, I was drunk, and I didn’t know it was the girl he had been crushing on. She and I wound up dating for almost a year. A year in which I stayed drunk most of the time. Because she was the first in a series of relationships I had with fairly unpleasant and kind of—what’s the word? Oh—mean women over the next several years.
Pierce never said anything though until it was all over. And then, finally, after we broke up, he admitted to me that he was jealous and had been since that first night we got together.
I said, “Why? She’s awful.”
And he said, “I know. For you. But I think she and I were made for each other.”
I have to give him credit. Guy knows what kind of an asshole he is.
Anyway, the sheepish, lost-little-boy expression he had when he admitted that to me is one I’ll never forget. It really got to me. It exposed a side of Pierce that he doesn’t show many people. Or maybe any people. And it’s the one that caused me to say, “Hey, I’m sorry. I will never let something like that happen again. For both our sakes.” And I quit drinking and after that started making all my bad relationship decisions stone-cold sober.
But the point is, that it was the only time I ever saw that fragile, almost weirdly untethered look on his face. Until now, when I make the relatively simple assumption that he put a protection in place for his idea that he thinks will save his magazine.
“Dude,” I say, slowly.
“Just don’t. OK? I was going to get to it!”
Jesus.
“OK,” I offer up. “So. What’s your plan?”
“I’ve got Derek, et. al. looking into fast-tracking this trademark thing. I assume that whoever this chick is, she hasn’t yet. I’m hoping.”
“And?”
“And we’re going to roll out our own content. Our reach is broader. Our microphone is bigger. And we’re going to drown her out.”
“But she…”
“And that’s why I need to know who she is. I need to know who the hell we’re dealing with here. She has to be someone with access to what we’re doing.”
“You mean… like a spy?”
“Exactement, mon frère! A spy!” He spins around in a circle as he says it. It’s odd. Pierce is sober too. But to see him now, you wouldn’t know it. “Isn’t there anything you can do to help? You make voice software, for fuck’s sake!”
I sigh. Long. Hard. And then allow words I know I’ll regret to start slipping out of my mouth. “We are…”
“What?” he asks. “What? You are what?”
“We are working on this voice tracker ID thing that…”
“That what? That you can find out who this is?”
“Yeah? I mean the reason we’re developing it is…” I take a long pause because Pierce is my brother and always will be, but it may be best if…
“Is what? What’s it for?”
“Nothing. Just… I’m happy to help, but again, man, it feels like maybe you’re just having a bad morning.”
