Rob Reid - After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

After On is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. With the exception of the tertiary character Harley, who is a brazen derivative of the authors housemate, Ashby the Dog (only, Ashby the Dog isnt at all skittish around human strangers).

Copyright 2017 by Rob Reid

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

D EL R EY and the H OUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Hardback ISBN9781524798055

Ebook ISBN9781524798062

randomhousebooks.com

Cover design and illustration: David G. Stevenson

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S OME PEOPLE THINK all great books should start with a dare. And those folks cant be big readersbecause really, when was the last time you read a book that began with a dare? Well, this one does. And thats not some ham-fisted gambit to position it as great because we just established that only half literates conflate opening dares with greatness. So its, truly, just a simple dare. And its this: I dare you to finish the fucker.

And lets be realyou probably wont. Its 547 pages printed, after all. Which is to say, any number of locations, sections, or litnodes on your eReader. And its obnoxious length is nothing compared to the disquieting truths it reveals about a popular social/messaging/hookup platform that humanity already spends 11.2 percent of its online time engaged with. About who really built all that, and why. About whos listening, and what theyre recording. And (heres the part that may smart a bit) how terribly uninteresting they almost certainly find you. Theres also some truly scary stuff you just dont need to know. About the February bombing in San Francisco. About how it actually saved lives (lots of themand quite possibly, your own). And about how moronically close we came to nuclear war with China on a recent winters day (spoiler alert: NOT MY FAULT ).

You dont have to know any of this. And ignoring the hidden ugliness we cant do much about makes life easier. So if you tend to avoid facts like the age of the kid who stitched your favorite blazer just outside of Phnom Penh; or how athletically a certain ex once cheated on you; or how painful and scary the last few days of most human lives are; then for Gods sake: Put. The book. Down. Then do yourself a big favor and catch a movie. A numbered sequel, say starring cartoon-men invented to distract tots during the Roosevelt era. Youll find that plenty challenging, and much more fun. Itll also be over sooner, leaving you free for more numbered sequels, or maybe some lite sci fi written for the bright teens and dim grown-ups we euphemistically call Young Adults.

Are you still there?

If so, sorry if that sounded a bit mean. But were better off without whoever just stomped off. Those people offend easily and are always whining about how they feel unsafe, or undercherished if their every clumsy kick, catch, and volley isnt commemorated with trophies. I cant stand those people. Ill bet you cant stand them either. So getting rid of them was worth feigning contempt for some of my own favorite things (pssst: two of the best movies, ever, in my view are Iron Man 1 and 2. Also: I read Y.A. stuff constantly. Ill bet you didnt know that).

Now that its just us, I applaud you for at least attempting to see this thing through. Even you probably wont get there (those 547 pages, again). But if you do, I can make you three promises. One: I will never talk down to you. Yes, certain facts herein are hard to confront and accept. Certain others are plenty hard to understand. But I think youre man enough, woman enough, or young adult enough to handle it all. So. No sugarcoating, and no dumbing down. Two: Ill never lie to you. Everything that followshowever fantastical and hard to believeis entirely true and precisely depicts the underpinnings of the world you inhabit. And finally: at the very, very end of all this, you will find a glittering prize. Books that end with glittering prizes are even rarer than those that start with dares, so lucky you. But please. No peeksies.

With that, Im almost done with you. And that may be welcome news! My tone can grate a bit, I know. Its probably just a phase Im going through. But Ill give you your space now. That said, I will check in every so often. Sometimes when you least expect it, as the hit men say. And, of course, Ill be back at the end, with that glittering prize of yours (and you thought Id already forgotten).

But for now, lets begin our story with some quick opening praise for the women and men of Silicon Valley. Yes, yes; I knowbut those fuckers gave us FarmVille! Its true. And everyones awfully sorry about that. But at its best, the Valley remains an inspiring land, almost bewitchingly so. I mean, where else can a handful of misfits meet up in a garage, share mad bolts of inspiration, then mainline Red Bull, sleep under desks, and code on bleeding fingers until they hack together an agenda-setting product that will rock the world? And then register their millionth user in just weeks? Their ten millionth in mere months? And forge friendships and talents that will last a lifetimeall while getting vastly, shamelessly, pornographically rich?

The answer, of course, is Austin, Seattle, Beijing, London, Oslo, Bangalore, Seoul, Nairobi, Dubai, Buenos Aires, and quite possibly Perth, Australia, among countless other places. But this sort of thing happens on a grander scale in Silicon Valley than anywhere else. And the clich is dead accurate: were designing the future here. We also designed the present, and youre much better off for that. Snort at this if you must. But do you really want to go back to six broadcast channels, CB radios, typewriters, dominoes and checkers, rotary phones, and thermostats that dont even speak a single word of English? Didnt think so.

So, yes. Silicon Valley did give us FarmVille. But across the decades, its countless startups have also rebuilt our worlds foundations. Some relentlessly advanced the microprocessor, enabling the digital wonders of our era. Others honed DNA sequencing, which cracked the human genome and will one day help to cure cancer. Still others pioneered wireless technologies that are finally patching the worlds poorest sectors into a global superplex of information. Literally thousands of Silicon Valley startups in these and countless fields have advanced humanity in palpable ways. And no matter how you cut ithowever imaginatively, generously, even schizophrenically you look at thingsGiftish.ly was never, ever one of them. Nope! Not even close.