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Instead, she just tried to turn the virtual assistant on. She was a certified genius;* she could figure this out. Nadia flipped the golden brick around in her hands a few times before noticing a white light on one side. Had that been on this whole time? Regardless, she must have done something right, at least.
There was no interface, no touch screen, no nothing on the device at all. Nadia peered at it through one eye. She shrank to insect size in her seat and examined the rectangle close up. It was smooth and shiny and Nadia’s reflection made her look like she was bathing in a golden pool, like an Athenian goddess. It was a good look on her. She could get used to it! But more importantly (equally importantly…?), Nadia could find nothing suspicious on the surface of the device. Not on its walls; not when she gracefully landed on top of it after struggling for a few moments to climb the slippery side; not even around the bright red LED set into its seam, still glowing. Just…a normal, metal rectangle.
Nadia popped back to human size and eyed the device on the table. She poked at it.
Nothing.
She flipped it over.
Still nothing.
Certified genius.
Feeling very silly, she decided to try speaking to it. “VERA…” Nadia said, “hello?”
“Hi, Nadia!” the device responded, cheerfully. Nadia jumped in her chair a little.
“Did you say something?” Taina called from outside the room.
“No, Tai, it’s fine!” Nadia called back, scrambling for a way to turn down the volume. Nadia shushed it, hoping that might help, then waited a moment, hoping Taina would return to whatever she’d been doing without questioning further.
“VERA…” Nadia turned back to the device, whispering, “How do you…What do you do?”
“Thanks for asking, Nadia!” The device sounded like the host on an American children’s television show. Light, clear, bubbly. About as far from Romanian Sailor Moon as you could possibly get. “I’m VERA, your Virtual Executive Remote Assistant. I’m here to make your life easier.”
Nadia looked around her room awkwardly. There was something very strange about talking to an inanimate box. Maybe it was the fact that it had no screen. Ever the scientist, Nadia found it difficult to trust what she couldn’t see.
“Would you like a rundown of my features and functions? If yes, you may find it beneficial to enable my virtual display. Would you like me to do that?”
“Yes!” Nadia responded quickly. Just as soon as the word had left her mouth, the gold box sprang to
life. A beam of light shot out from the seam on its surface, straight toward the ceiling with a sound like an ocean wave. A shower of pixels rained back down. They settled into the shape of an animated woman. Her pixelated hair cascaded in soft waves down to her shoulders. She wore what Nadia would have called Janet-on-her-way-to-dress-down-an-unruly-investor business attire. She had a light smile on her blue-tinted face. Nadia thought she looked just like Sailor Neptune.*
“How’s this?” asked VERA.
“Much better!” Nadia smiled back at the hologram in front of her.
“Very good.” VERA nodded. “I modeled myself after your favorite show!”
Nadia swallowed. Right, she thought. AI. That’s what it’s supposed to do: Learn. Adapt. Build affinity.
Was it, though? Hadn’t she just turned it on? It couldn’t have been on already. That would mean that it had been on…for months? Nadia picked up the golden box and examined it from all angles. No matter how she turned it, the VERA hologram stayed upright.
“Oh!” VERA laughed. “Going for a ride!”
“What do you do?” asked Nadia, mostly to herself. “How do you work?”
“I’m so glad you asked,” said VERA. Suddenly, she disappeared. Nadia placed the box down on her desk carefully and sat back in her chair, waiting for what would happen next. The pixels reemerged and rearranged themselves into another image: a girl, close to Nadia’s age, hunched over a desk and scribbling away.
“Don’t you wish you had more hours in your day?” asked VERA’s voice. “There’s more pressure than ever on people today to stay on top of things. Have the perfect home and the perfect family. Keep up with self-care. Work the most impressive job. Graduate with the best grades.” The girl in the image crumpled up the paper in front of her and dropped her head onto her desk in frustration. Nadia related deeply. “Staying on top of the minutiae necessitated by our modern way of life can feel overwhelming and impossible.”
The image shifted again. It was a woman’s headshot. She had dark, shoulder-length hair that was just unkempt enough to give the impression that she was too busy to style it. She looked off to one side, apparently deep in thought. Nadia couldn’t tell if the icy blue of her eyes was real, or just the blue of the hologram.
“That’s how our founder, Margaret Hoff, felt when she started HoffTech.” Nadia’s eyes widened. Women in leadership positions in Silicon Valley were rare; Nadia knew very well (from Alexis’s and Janet’s many presentations about G.I.R.L.) that only about eleven percent of tech execs were women, and in 2019, just 2.8 percent of venture capital invested in startups in the United States went to founding teams that were made up exclusively of women. And when they did get money it was a far smaller sum than what was granted to their male counterparts. It was completely unfair. It was something Nadia hoped to solve with G.I.R.L. one day.
Or, more accurately, it was just one piece of a systemic ill Nadia hoped she’d be able to help remedy.
“So many tech companies want to improve our lives, but so few of us have the time to actually implement their solutions.” VERA replaced Margaret’s face on the hologram. “That’s why Margaret invented me. I’m a self-teaching artificial intelligence designed to take on everything that’s keeping you from exceeding your own expectations and living your dreams. All you have to do is provide me with your schedule, goals, habits, and deadlines, and I’ll help you get things done.”
