Page 3 of Of Literature and Lattes
Now there was nothing left.
Like many Vita XGC employees, Meera made the call to the special agent in charge of her division months ago and moved back to New Jersey as fast as she could load the U-Haul. She had taken most of her furniture with her—including their bulletin board with Alyssa’s spare car keys hanging from a peg.
For six months Alyssa had been left with only her bedroom furniture, a few plates, an armchair, and the unrealistic hope that the scandal would soon blow over. The furniture she’d sold that morning. The plates she packed into the last box that rested on her counter. And her hope, along with the last of her savings, had fizzled out at new job interview number seventeen.
Sliding the box onto her hip, she grabbed her keys and headed down the tiled stairs. The building felt empty. Itwasempty. Everyone else was at work.
She scrawled her manager a short thank-you note. He had let her out of the lease four months early. It was a gift she hadn’t expected and one she desperately needed.
The parking lot was empty too. There was no one to see her off or say good-bye—of her friends from Vita XGC, there was no one left. Period.
Three years in California, and the end of the dream came with a seven-second message from an FBI agent and her key plinking to the bottom of a metal drop box.
When federal agents had escorted every Vita XGC employee from the six-story, state-of-the-art, glass glory of an office building six months ago, just days before Christmas, most thought it was a joke. There was even some jostling in the parking lot that led to handcuffs and stern words. But as the sun set that afternoon, the mood changed. The manic chase for fun that had dominated company events outside the office twisted into the competitive paranoia that had reigned within. Sunset started with whispers, speculation, and glares. Darkness descended in silence with the FBI releasing anxious employees by department late into the night.
Though unstated, Alyssa assumed a “Don’t leave town” was implied that night. After all, they’d shut the doors, taken away the CEO, and set up interviews for the executives, who lawyered up right on the spot. And the rest of them followed suit, hiring lawyers within the next two days. Yet to Alyssa’s surprise, her lawyer, a young gunner at Perkins and Coie costing $250 an hour, told her that within those two days a lot of XGC employees fled town.
“As long as the FBI knows where to find you, it shouldn’t be a problem. You need work, and in a post-Theranos Silicon Valley, no company will want the liability of an XGC hire.”
Alyssa dismissed his counsel that day, certain he was wrong. Sheneededhim to be wrong—going home wasn’t an option. But after sending forty resumes across the country with no reply, and sitting through seventeen failed interviews locally, home was now her only option.
As she shoved the box into her car, her mind cast back to her last-ditch effort, only days before, to remain in Palo Alto.
Interview seventeen began like all the others...
“You have an impressive resume. Other than the hiccup at Vita XGC.” The older woman’s voice arced as she peered over her bright red readers.
Alyssa knew it was a question. She knew what the woman was after. It was the story everyone wanted and, Alyssa suspected, the only reason she’d been granted her seventeen interviews in the first place. She sat silent. She had quit trying to profess ignorance to XGC’s perfidy at interview six and her innocence halfway through interview nine.
The woman tried a fresh tack. She offered a smile that only curled up on one edge as she leaned forward, inviting Alyssa into her confidence. “What do the letters stand for, anyway? XGC. I’ve always wondered.”
That was a question Alyssa could answer. “The X was for next gen and GC are Tag’s initials. His real name is Gabriel. Vita, vital good health, next gen Gabriel Connelly.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” The woman guffawed. “The great Tag, the great humanitarian, Architect of Predictive Medicine, Preserver of the People, named his company after himself. Called himself next gen and vital. That should have told us all something.”
Alyssa clamped her mouth shut, embarrassed she hadn’t peeled back more of the subtext on that one herself. Three years ago, when she had been flown out to Palo Alto and housed at the Four Seasons Hotel by that very Tag, she’d bought his whole story.
My mom died early of Korsakoff syndrome, a form of dementia, and that shouldn’t happen. We can know what’s in our genes, and that means what might be in our futures. But now we can and will make our futures better. I will never stop loving my mom or feeling fury at her loss, and I will give everything I have to stop this epidemic of chronic disease and illness from engulfing generations.
He had spun heartwarming stories of reading, fishing, building forts, and hiking with this gorgeous, almost mythical-sounding mother. By the end Alyssa had wanted to trade her mom for his, despite her early death.
And that’s what bothered Alyssa the most. She hadn’t done her due diligence—fleeing Chicago and joining Vita XGC had been a hasty and emotional decision.
Homes and moms were very emotional topics.
The woman finally stopped chortling and scrolled across her tablet to resume the interview. “Let’s track back through your experience. You left ‘XGC’”—she made air quotes with her free hand—“in December last year.”
“Yes.” Alyssa didn’t add that everyone left XGC that day, under federal escort.
“Describe your responsibilities there.”
“I worked on a team of eight that built the company’s predictive algorithms.”
“You managed the data?”
“No. We worked with scrubbed data. All departments worked that way because the amount of information made the data incredibly powerful. They were very protective about that.”
“Sure they were,” the woman scoffed. “So basically, you were responsible for all those people thinking they were headed to Alzheimer’s, lupus, MS, diabetes, or whatever else was going to kill them. Tomorrow. How convenient—can’t get sued for something thatmighthappen.”
