“Along those lines, but more heart-centered. This would be a haven where our customer can heal and replenish herself. It’s more than a retreat center—it’s a space for transformation, transcendence. You check in feeling like yourself, but you come out changed. You come out feeling… actualized.”
“Wow,” I say. “Sounds expensive.”
Gemma laughs. “Yes. But that’s beside the point. This place is going to be a destination; it’s going to change the face of Locust. And we’re well on our way—we’ve got the location, the programming. We’re just missing one key ingredient.”
“What’s that?”
Gemma leans in. “The oracle.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You and your father have already laid the groundwork. You have a brand, a following, an aura. We just want to take it to the next level.”
“You mean… you would charge people to meet with my dad?”
“In a sense,” says Gemma. “We’d create an authentic—and scalable—experience that draws on your father’s rare gift and his deep Adirondack heritage.”
I still don’t know what she’s getting at, but I already object. “Charging people money isn’t really in the spirit of our work.”
“But it could be,” says Gemma, her energy rising as she begins her hustle. “And look, we understand your father’s limitations, so we wouldn’t expect him to be available to us more than is reasonable. We see him as more of a… figurehead.”
She locks eyes with Anthony, and he takes the lead: “We’ll get right down to it, Cricket. You’ve built something really special with your dad. We’re prepared to offer you $100,000 for the IP, clean and simple. And we’ll take it from here.”
For a moment, I am blinded by the amount. It’s more money than I had hoped to make anytime soon, and I have to work to contain my astonishment. It would certainly relieve my financial strain and give me more time to find a job. It could even fund my return to school. But beneath my excitement is a muddier feeling of deep unease.
“The IP?” I know what the term means: intellectual property. Ironically, it’s exactly what my father once sold in the form of his patents. But I don’t see what kind of IP they’re looking to extract from a man with advanced dementia.
“Yes,” says Gemma. “We want the IP, the access. We want to be able to launch with the oracle as our main offering. And then we would scale from there.”
“Scale… how?”
“We’d leverage our proprietary AI,” says Anthony.
My jaw must drop, because Gemma says, “I know, I know. AI.” She rolls her eyes as if she and I are equally offended by the idea. “But Anthony’s product issosophisticated, and when in conversation withyour father’s genius, we could carry on his work long after…” She stops herself.
“Am I understanding this correctly…” I say. “You want to create some kind of digital dupe of my father, and then charge people to talk to it?”
“Something like that,” says Gemma, looking relieved that I am the one to articulate it. “And there would be other offerings, too. We would bring in all kinds of mediums, seers, other oracles. Eventually, we would offer a variety of formats: in-person, virtual, text.”
“But there aren’t other oracles,” I say.
“Not yet,” says Gemma. “But there could be. That’s the beauty of AI…”
I’m dumbstruck, and she changes her tack: “I mean, we’re just spitballing at this point. But listen, there’s no need to make any kind of decision yet. What I would really like to do is show you around the location we’re thinking of.”
Gemma seems to be waiting for something.
“Oh, you mean right now?” I ask.
She nods. “It’s not far from here. That’s why I’m in Locust—to check out the site. And to get your thoughts, of course. You know how much I value your opinion.”
Before I have a chance to respond, I notice my father peering through the screen door with a question on his face.
“Here comes the oracle himself,” I say, getting up to help my dad out onto the porch. I’m glad to see that he is fully dressed.
“Quite a crowd!” says my father. Gemma and Anthony stand to greet him.
I make the introductions as my mind bounces between the absurdity of their vision and the enormity of their offer. After a moment, my curiosity mounts.
