Page 60 of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
I’ll stop here to say that I, too, have taken the MASH survey. For me, like for so many others, it worked: I’ll be a reporter, I’ll live in New York, I’ll be childless with a man who, yes, I met and felt connected to straightaway. Some of MASH’s newer categories—pets, illness, age when married—remain untested for me. But the Core Four, as MASH calls them, have been spot-on. And if that weren’t true for so many of us, MASH wouldn’t be what it is now. But what about the Laras?
My team at theTimeshas spent the last twomonths researching the true effects of Ro Devereux’s all-seeing app. “The future’s written inside your mind,” MASH tells us. But what dangers lurk there alongside it? What price do we pay for this window into an untested vision of our future lives? This app is months, not years, old. There is so much data we don’t have yet. Here’s what we do know.
In the ten weeks since MASH’s massive scale-up (thanks to Palo Alto–based app accelerator XLR8), rates of depression are on the rise among fourteen-to-eighteen-year-old Americans. We saw a significant spike in early November, as MASH hit its stride and “Mo,” the faces of MASH matching, gained public favor. Interest in exploratory programs like the arts, sports—even volunteering opportunities—are down.
This is happening, primarily, among children. Among our most vulnerable populations. MASH is telling them they’re on a path, and they’re losing sight of the value in straying from it. If you’re on a predetermined course, why try anything else at all?
Building an entire generation of apathetic, demoralized teenagers is not, I’m sure, what Ro Devereux had in mind when she created an app that predicts the future. But that’s where we are, and XLR8 representatives for MASH have declined our repeated requests for comment.
Extrapolating ahead, what does this look like forAmerican society on the whole? Will we lose our entrepreneurs? Will we create ghost towns, moving like lemmings to the few cities MASH recommends to its users?
Is what MASH has done here morally irresponsible? This reporter says yes.
That’s where they leave it, three letters to seal my undoing.Yes.
Below the text is a collection of graphs, all the data to back up what they’ve written. Clear on the page, no mistaking any of it, proven as gravity.
Vera, I think, right before I start to cry.I’m sorry.
34
“They knew.”
It’s the first thing Miller says—notLook what you’ve doneorI’m outorHow could you?He repeats it, still staring at my phone. “They already knew.”
I open my mouth, but no words come out. There are tears on my lips. My thoughts are onlyLook what you’ve doneandI need to get outandHow could you?
Miller finally looks up at me, the change registering in my peripheral vision. I’m focused on my phone screen, like maybe if I never tear my eyes from the article it won’t leave its little square in my palm, won’t enter this room with us. It’s almost one in the morning.
“Hey,” Miller says softly. “Did they tell you about this?”
I shake my head, blinking hard to clear my eyes. I open Twitter and, sure enough, we’re right there at the top—#MASH is a trending topic. The article is everywhere. I scroll through the feedwith tears leaking onto my cheeks. When I open the third hateful message—Ro Devereux and everyone at MASH should be ashamed—Miller takes the phone from me.
“Okay, stop.” He sets it on the bed behind us and reaches for my hands. He gathers both of them in his only free one, squeezing until I look at him. “One thing at a time. XLR8 has been covering this up.”
“But I made it,” I whisper. “That girl who wants to be a vet, I—” I break off, words dissolving into the black hole of myself. I stole her dream. All those kids, quitting everything that makes them happy because it doesn’t lead to a MASH-predicted future. All those people on the internet, hating me. And the fact that, of course, they’re right to. “I did this.”
“Ro, you made a beta of an app for a senior project.” Miller ducks his head, makes sure I’m looking at him. “You did not make this happen.”
“Miller, Idid—”
“No.” He lets go of my hands, pushes back the hair that’s fallen into my face. “This is XLR8. That hack doctor they’re consulting in LA. This is—this—” His hand drops to my shoulder, fingertips biting in. “No. You didn’t do this.”
“I did.” He opens his mouth to protest, and I cut him off. “No, Miller, I should feel bad. It’s my fault.”
“You didn’t mean for this to happen.” The corners of his eyes are creased with worry, defeat. It occurs to me, distantly, that my pain is painful for him—that we’re as connected now as we’ve always been. But this is a mess I’ve made. A pain I need to feel.
“No,” I tell him. I reach for my phone, so I can learn the rest. “But it happened anyway.”
Miller falls asleep sometime around three, the two of us leaned against my headboard with my computer in my lap. The comments section under the article is seventy notes long and growing. From it, we find links to buried Reddit threads and private Facebook groups where people have been talking about this for months. Kids, devastated by their MASH results, begging the internet to tell them MASH doesn’t really work—and their parents, desperate to help them.
This is the worst thing that could’ve happened to her, one mother says about her daughter, Ana, who’s sixteen. The lead in every school play, every summer at acting camp, trips to Los Angeles four years running.Now she knows she’ll never be an actress, which is the only thing she wants in the world. What am I supposed to tell her? She isn’t even speaking.
“It’s not the worst thing that could’ve happened to her,” Miller mumbles drowsily. I can think of a few worse things, too, but I don’t say that. Instead, I imagine how it would feel to be told, in black and white, that I’ll never make it out to California. Or that I’ll never do exactly what I’ve gotten to do these last few months: build something from code and watch it burn a track across the country all on its own.Neveris so long.Neveris devastating.
I only know Miller’s fallen asleep because his fingers, threaded through mine for the last two hours, go slack. He twitches as he descends into dreamland, and I watch sleep take him: the slowingof his breaths, his neck rolled toward me against the pillows, the way his whole face relaxes. He looks seven again like this. He looks like the kid I’ve loved since forever.
I hate myself for what I’ve done, and for what I’m going to have to do to him.
