Page 24 of Gifted & Talented

“Your product does work,” Jamie pointed out, and Meredith had to physically stop herself from adding “to an extent,” realizing that despite Jamie’s careful return to the subject of his article, this was not a casual chat. She ought to have been counting those words as a win.

“Oh, sonowyou admit I’m not actually a fraud? Maybeyou’rea fraud,” Meredith huffed at him. “You’re the one threatening my livelihood over something you freely admit is a lie.”

“Your product works—as a tool for Tyche,” Jamie corrected, seemingly gleeful over his semantic trap. “It does something very effectively, for sure. But it doesn’t do what you said it would do.” They both heard the words like the unmistakable bleat of a tiny passenger in the back seat:THIS APP WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY!:)

Jamie paused, then added, “Aren’t you going to ask me what I was doing for the last six months?”

“No,” snapped Meredith.

“I was tracking down as many Chirp users as I could find, including the trial patients. Do you remember Colette Bothe?” he asked in a tone that loomed with disaster. “Because she remembers someone who looked an awful lot like you.”

Colette’s dead eyes bore into Meredith’s skull from the inside. Patient 76A. “Everyone looks like me, Jamie. I’m generic.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“I’m biracial Asian, it happens!” she said, overzealously.

“Colette’s doing well,” Jamie commented. “Very well. Much better than anyone else I’ve spoken to who bought Chirp on the market. Far better than any Chirp customer who hasn’t spent time with an abrasive biracial Asian woman who couldn’tpossiblybe you—”

“Happiness is a high bar, Jamie,” snapped Meredith. “It takes longer than six months.”

To that, Jamie scoffed. “Please. You wouldn’t know happiness if it tapped you on the shoulder and asked you to dance.”

“You didn’t ask me to dance. You asked me to talk.” She could see him there briefly in his crimson prelaw association T-shirt, his hair in long,wild curls as he disrupted her Tuesday and nearly every Tuesday she’d lived through since.

From the corner of her eye, Meredith saw the edges of Jamie’s mouth flicker threateningly with a smile. “I wasn’t talking about me, Meredith.”

“Chirp works.” Meredith realized her knuckles were tight around the steering wheel and made a concerted effort to relax them. “It does exactly what I said it would do. It monitors brain chemistry. It delivers the appropriate SSRI subcutaneously in response to whatever your brain chemistry is doing. It takes the guesswork out of treating mental illness.” If she sounded robotic, that was just a natural byproduct of her voice.

“And what happens when a person wearing a product funded by Tyche walks into a store funded by Tyche?” asked Jamie, with a tone of innocence that did nothing to mask the journalistic expression on his face.

Meredith again became aware of the presence of eggshells. “Advanced third-party research shows that—”

“Oh come on, Meredith, don’t.” Jamie gave her a withering look. “You and I both know what really happens. When someone wearing Chirp walks into Demeter and the GPS location of their device shows them at the register, Chirp pushes serotonin regardless of their actual mood.”

Meredith said nothing.

“Chirp is nothing more than a glorified version of the bell Pavlov rang for his dogs. It’s not solving mental health. It’s just—” Jamie looked disgusted. “It’s just another tool of late-stage capitalism. It’s making peoplebuy things. How long before other companies like Tyche do the same thing? How long before a market disruption becomes just another high-capital valuation with no actual contribution to wellness, or goodness, or anything of meaningful humanitarian change? How long before this thing you made renders every human being incapable of separating real, actual joy from retail therapy, until ‘happiness’ means nothing at all?”

Meredith’s mouth felt dry, her lips chapped.THIS APP,exclaimed their imaginary passenger,WILLMAKE YOU HAPPY!, only this time with the undertone of a threat. :)

“You sold your soul to Tyche,” Jamie concluded, this time sounding sad or angry or—no, just disappointed. “And you’re profiting off that choice. You’re profiting off the vulnerability and desperation of others despite the fact that you are aWren.” Ah, and there it was, the repulsion was back. “Meredith,”Jamie gritted out, “you couldn’t die in poverty even if you never worked another day in your life, so what is the point of any of this?”

He was silent then, and Meredith realized he was waiting for an answer. She cleared her throat, considering her response.

“Well,” she eventually began. “These allegations are obviously—”

Instantly, Jamie groaned. “Seriously? Forget it.” He practically spat the words at her before letting his head fall back against the seat. He closed his eyes, shaking his head, like she was a bad dream he could wake from if he simply tried hard enough.

She drove in silence, wondering if she could get away with putting the audiobook back on.

Then, some minutes later, Jamie leaned over and hit play, filling the car once again with the soothing sound of performatively British narration.

Meredith shut it off.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were living in Venice?” she asked without looking at him. “You could have called. Or sent me a message.”

“Would you have answered?” asked Jamie in a tired voice.

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