My vibrating forearm woke me from a dream where I was at a seafood restaurant being served by a human-sized Lucie. I slapped at my bio-screen blindly until I managed to turn it off. There had to be a snooze setting, right? Or a scheduled do not disturb? Because it waking me at—I rolled over to grab my phone, squinting as my eyes tried to adjust—six thirteen in the morning was simply blasphemy. Work didn’t start until eight, meaning I could get up at seven and make it on time. Especially because if I was really running late, I could just teleport myself there in an instant.
I rubbed my face as I contemplated either trying to get another forty-five minutes of sleep or just accepting defeat and getting up.
When my phone lit up in my hand with a text from my father, I admitted the universe needed me to wake up right now. Even though I really didn’t want to.
I sat up and let the warm fur-covered comforter pool around my waist. Never before had I fallen asleep while vertical, so it was my go-to way to make sure I didn’t fall back asleep on accident. I turned on a light, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, and opened the text from my father to try to start my day.
Have a great day at work!
Was he kidding me? This man raised me and knew better than to think I would be awake before the sun. Texting me had woken me before, back when I still lived with him. Granted, I’d always kept my phone on loud in case he needed to get in touch with me while I was sleeping and he was at work, but he’d quickly learned to hold off on any non-essential messages until later in the morning.
Tempted to send him a picture of me flipping him off while still in bed, I instead tossed my phone away so I didn’t do something rash. It wasn’t his fault, and he’d done nothing wrong. I was just being a cranky asshole this morning.
I pulled my arm in front of me and flicked the screen, pulling up the new stats to see what had awoken me.
Current
Maximum
Ability Pool
0
33
Statistic
Gamma Level
Physical Condition
Strength
1
0%
Constitution
1
0%
Intelligence
2
0%
Back to baseline, which was breaking news to absolutely no one. If I’d been able to get just a tad more sleep, I wondered if any of my conditional modifiers in the Physical Condition category would have ended up positive instead of neutral. Maybe I’d make Leo show me how to temporarily turn this damn thing off so I could sleep in a bit more. For science, obviously.
I got myself ready in record time, not caring how I looked or what I got dressed in. If I was up this early, I was stopping to treat myself to coffee and breakfast before heading in, and was wasting no time in putting in effort. It wasn’t like I’d be doing anything other than more tests, seeing how the stats adapted, the same thing day after day.
Famous last words.
Instead of the security guard nodding towards the elevators like she did every day, I was instructed to meet on the seventeenth floor instead.
I checked my appearance in the mirrored elevator, frowning at the haphazard ballet bun and casual clothes. I looked like a college student who’d stayed up too late last night partying.
Awesome.
With some quick thinking and a prayer to the universe, I shook out my hair and tucked the front of my shirt into my pants. At least I had showered last night and remembered antiperspirant this morning.
Leo was waiting for me when I stepped off the elevator. He gave me a once-over that I didn’t appreciate and handed me a tablet that I took on reflex.
“You need to show me how to mute these notifications while I’m asleep,” I snapped at him before he could say anything. “They woke me up early this morning.”
Leo frowned. “They shouldn’t have. They automatically turn off when it detects you’re asleep, and turns them back on when you’re awake.”
“That’s not what happened. Fix it.”
I held out my arm, ready for him to do it right here.
“We have a meeting.”
“Fabulous. Screen first, meeting second.”
Leo shook his head, grabbed my outstretched arm and began pulling me along. To my credit, I didn’t immediately flinch away from his touch.
“We don’t have the time for me to figure out what went wrong with it. I’ll do it later. But I promise that you won’t want to miss this meeting.”
I yanked my arm out of his grip, falling into step slightly behind him. “What’s it about?”
“Your little app idea.”
I jabbed him in the shoulder with my pointer finger. “It’s not some little idea,” I protested. “It’s a great idea that could help people.”
“Apologies,” he deadpanned. I poked him again, harder. “Quit it.”
I relented, needing to address the worst issue. “Next time we have a meeting, a warning would have been nice so I wouldn’t come in looking like I haven’t done laundry in a month.”
It was actually getting close to two weeks. Lucie was loving her new nesting pile of dirty clothes she could get her fur all over. When I ran out of underwear I’d be forced to do it, which was in a few days, probably. Although…I should probably double-check that.
“It’ll be fine. There’s only a few of us.”
Leo led me around a sharp turn, coming face to face with a large conference room with two walls made entirely of windows; one facing the office, the other facing the city. Which was just great, so everyone who walked by could witness my embarrassing fashion choices.
The two women and one man looked up as we entered, their conversation stopping.
“Good morning,” Leo greeted them while standing. “This is Callie. The app was her idea, so she’ll be a part of the development team. This is Gloria, Kennedy, and Malcolm.”
Gloria nodded at her name, Kennedy gave me a little wave, and Malcolm ignored me. I offered a smile before taking a seat.
“Game plan for today is to get the general idea out in the open,” Leo continued confidently. He walked over to one of the two opaque walls and hit something on a control panel. The windows connected to the rest of the office space turned misty, granting us some privacy.
“This isn’t technically under-wraps, but we don’t need to encourage it getting out there yet.” He took his seat at the head of the table and clapped his hands together, once. “Alright! Let’s get started.”
Immediately, the room became a living argument. Ideas started flying across the table faster than I could follow, overlapping questions and answers that no four people should be able to do. I watched in fascination as Gloria began taking notes on her tablet, which then appeared on the far wall.
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“Are we looking just to start here, or do we want to make it global?”
“What type of interface do we want? Something medical, because of the target audience?”
“Here, to start. With the ability to expand.”
I tried to chime in to answer Malcolm’s question. “Not a medical one, that’ll only—”
“We should have a summary on the home screen, give an overview of everything all at once.”
“Should the settings and account tabs be top or bottom? Or maybe even a swipe from the side?”
“How many main categories are we looking at?”
“Main targets are to check stats from some wearable device. We’ll also want to include a section for people to input their own symptoms.”
“Won’t that defeat the purpose of encouraging them to get a device?”
I tried again. “This should be accessible to anyone, so both would—”
Leo interrupted as if I wasn’t there, standing up and walking over to the wall of brainstorming. “We want them to see how useful the app is. Of course, it will be limited to what they input as their own symptoms. It’ll be significantly better if they have a device, and that’s what we want them to realize.”
The conversation continued, if it could even be called that. It felt more like a free for all, yet progress was being made.
Except they weren’t doing it right.
None of them were focusing on the average user. They wanted to develop it so people would feel the need to buy more from them. With the bio-screens still in clinical trials, it was going to be a long road for many of them, taking time they already didn’t have. And while people tried this app and waited for screens, they would die.
This was…so wrong.
I couldn’t be here, be a part of that.
Grabbing my tablet and bag, I left the room without being noticed. For several minutes I wandered aimlessly until I found what looked like a quiet windowed corner by a potted plant. I sat down on the carpeted floor, leaning my back against the wall.
I rested the tablet Leo gave me on my propped thighs and started sketching a very rough and mostly disorganized graphic organizer. How would I get a word in edgewise with these people? They didn’t seem to even pause to breathe.
If I didn’t speak up somehow, would I ultimately be okay with the app being less than what I hoped? Was having something better than nothing? Because if it were completely up to me to get it off the ground and running, it wouldn’t happen.
What the app should be was something people could use in a number of ways. Logging and tracking symptoms was a good idea, as Leo suggested. But it needed to include a daily log of activities, so trends could be determined. If someone logged shortness of breath without also being able to add running on a treadmill, the data was useless. And beyond logging symptoms, there needed to be a community where people could share ideas, ask questions, get support during the hard times. That was what prompted my idea in the first place; everything else was just extra.
At the bare minimum, it needed to be able to reach out to people of the user’s choice in the event of an emergency. Instead of calling or messaging people manually, holding down a button on a home screen widget could do it for them with a predetermined message and current location. It was one of the few things I’d thought about extensively and believed I had a decent game plan for.
All that and more I organized onto my tablet, working through what I viewed as most important to least. And I let those ideas absorb me completely.
When my pocket vibrated at an incoming call, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I dropped the stylus and barely managed to hold onto the tablet. I took a few greedy gulps of air and reached around to grab my phone, yanking out of the pocket as I leaned to one side. My forearm buzzed.
“Hey,” I answered in a breathy voice. I sounded like I’d been running.
“Hey,” Amelia’s chipper voice came from the line. “You okay? They working you too hard over there? Quit. You’ll have more time to spend with me.”
“Oh, no I’m fine. Your call just startled me is all.” I shifted the phone to prop it up with my shoulder as I pulled up my bio-screen to see why it was yelling at me this time.
Current
Maximum
Ability Pool
0
33
Statistic
Gamma Level
Physical Condition
Strength
1
+1%
Constitution
1
+3%
Intelligence
2
-1%
Well, that was actually interesting. Something triggered the modifiers to change. Was it the near heart-attack inducing reaction I had and the resulting surge of adrenaline? It should probably be investigated, again for science, but one thing at a time. It would just have to wait until I finished seeing how sleeping in affected things.
Amelia continued, unaware of my distraction.
“I was actually wondering if you were free later? Maybe for lunch, or dinner?
“Dinner could work. I’m not sure what my lunch is going to look like. I’m technically in a meeting right now.”
“Oh, I’m sorry! We’ll talk later,” she apologized.
I waved a dismissive hand, not that she could see it. “No, no, it’s fine. I left the meeting a while ago.”
“Really? What happened?”
I sighed into the phone, expressing my frustration without having to say anything.
“That bad, huh?”
I rubbed my forehead and said, “You have no idea.”
“I might have some idea,” she countered. That was fair.
“We’re working on my app, and no one would stop talking for two seconds to listen to me. So I got up and left to work on it on my own.”
“That’s annoying, and I’m sorry they’re not listening,” she lamented. “What’s your game plan?”
“It needs to be simple and easy to understand, and they’re trying to make it—”
“No, I mean about the interrupting thing,” she interjected. “Which I just did, too. Oops, sorry.”
I chuckled. “Oh, no, you’re good. I don’t know. I just…It’s hard because I’m not qualified to offer input and they know it.”
“Why aren’t you qualified? Isn’t it your idea? I’d say that makes you the most qualified.”
“You’d think that,” I muttered. “But I don’t know how to develop an app.”
“And? Isn’t that what they’re for? Sorry if I’m pushing, I’m just thinking about what you’ve told me about it. You’re the one with the vision. If I were in your shoes, I’d make sure that they saw that vision.”
“Yeah, I know I need to make them hear me, but it’s not easy.”
“My mom always told me that most worthwhile things in life are never easy.”
I groaned, letting my head fall back to bash against the wall. “Can’t some things at least be easy?” I whined.
“Callie, I say this with all my love. Get up off your ass and go tell those idiots what they’re missing. It’s your idea. Make them listen.”
“Could I just come up with a kick-ass idea and wow them at a later time?”
“No. They’ll have their own ideas by then and it’ll be harder to get them to change them.”
She had a point. They could absolutely come up with an idea that was the complete opposite of my goal with the app. Yes, I had told Andrew that there were ways the app could benefit him and his company, but the primary focus needed to be on people who needed it.
And…a thought occurred to me, a way to maybe perhaps hopefully give them what they wanted while giving me what I wanted.
“You’re right. Gotta go. Dinner later,” I said in a rush before hanging up on a probably confused Amelia.
I quickly retraced my steps as best I could and entered the conference room to find chaos.
Kennedy was gesturing wildly at the information on the board, Malcolm was leaning dangerously far back in his chair and arguing with her, Gloria was furiously scribbling on her tablet, and Leo was staring out the window at the city below.
Quickly, I glanced at the information on the wall.
I stepped up to Leo, touching his arm to get his attention.
“Can you clear that screen for me and show mine?” I asked, holding out my tablet.
He took it without a word, navigated through it, and suddenly my brainstorming session appeared on the board, everything else wiped away.
Kennedy turned to face me, fire in her eyes for interrupting her monologue. Gloria’s stylus paused over her tablet. Malcolm nearly lost his balance and flew forward in his chair with a huffed gasp.
“I understand you all have ideas, great ideas,” I clarified while everyone’s eyes were on me. “What’s the goal here, though?”
No one answered. Instead of caving and continuing, I put on my big girl pants, raised my eyebrows, and stared all four of them down.
“Well?” I prompted.
“There’s multiple goals,” Leo answered.
“Right.” I zoomed to a clear section of the whiteboard feature on the tablet and wrote Goals. “What are the main goals we want here?”
“Money,” Malcolm chimed. “If it doesn’t make money, what’s the point?”
“Fair,” I answered, writing it down. “What features of this app will make us the money? What’s going to bring them in?”
Leo spoke up this time. “Well, we’re looking at other forms of tech, specifically smaller versions of the bio-screens for anyone to get.”
“How does that relate to my question?”
“The screens will be compatible with the app and bring in revenue of its own. Also, in making them half the size, we can manufacture them in half the time, meaning more people can get one sooner. Not to mention all the other tech already out there for removable health trackers.”
Completely sidetracked, I asked, “Why go in that direction, though? Of the mini-screens, I mean.”
“The screens are great, no one’s arguing that. But for the average person, they don’t need all the extra tech right now. There’s so much unused space on them, and they’re not cheap to make. Having a smaller version, maybe a two-inch by two-inch square, would work for most people until we get the other programs for more features up and running.”
“Other features?” Gloria prompted.
“Right now, they’re focused on just reading the human body, and we’ve all but finished the clinical trials. We’ll be approved. But they could, in theory, replace phones with how much power they have. We just aren’t there yet.”
“So,” I deduced, “you’re creating a smaller, focused device that will be usable by everyone based on the programs you already have available.”
Leo turned to me, blinking.
“Don’t look so surprised. Because that’s exactly what I’m getting at with this app. What we should be focusing on is how to make this app useful to everyone. Not just people with LaShoul’s. If anyone can get a mini-screen even without LaShoul’s, everyone should be able to use the app.”
It wasn’t exactly the way I’d planned to convince them, but whatever worked.
The room was so silent that I could hear someone flushing a toilet in the nearby bathrooms.
Leo continued my train of thought and added, “Still keep it useful for people with LaShoul’s, but also make it useable to everyone.”
“Exactly.” Finally, we were getting somewhere. I zoomed back out on my tablet to show my brainstorming. “The interface should be so user-friendly that a child could understand it. Because, let’s be honest, some of the population has about as much common sense as one. Main categories for logging food, water, weight, activities. Another for symptoms; people can either have a device sync to it automatically, like the mini-screens, or they can log manually. A third for communities. And a customizable fourth option, so people with LaShoul’s can easily contact loved ones when they need help, which can be a major problem for them.”
“Maybe even get some board-certified doctors to do Q and A’s, or write articles about hot topics. We make it the health app to have, and with the new tech, we’ll make all the money we need.”
It was probably Leo’s last statement about money, but Malcolm drawled out a slow yes while nodding.
“We could even have a section for women to track their cycles,” Kennedy added.
“Ooh, yes. I wonder if we could get doctor’s offices to sync their records with it,” Gloria mused. “So for people without a bio-screen or mini version, they could still have somewhat updated information, or at least an easier way of tracking changes.”
“If we’re doing all that,” Leo said, “we need to include an export function so people can send their logs to their providers ahead of appointments.”
Chaos reigned again as more suggestions were made.
But this time around, I wasn’t afraid to raise my voice to make sure I was heard.