Page 59 of Ideal Life

For a moment, Talia’s breath hitched as she thought Sara had figured out that Talia had gone into the back-end system and deactivated the account of Rebecca Lawrence—the would-be Tinder murderer. Talia wouldn’t be able to explain that she was preventing a death, so how would she explain what she’d done? In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t a big deal, but it was still a breach of privacy protocols and something that should have been logged…

“I wanted to go over some of the due diligence requests from Omni,” Sara said.

Oh. That’s a lot easier. Thank goodness.

“Of course,” Talia said, gesturing at the chair across from her to invite Sara to sit. “What’s up?”

“Well, I’m not sure if this is concerning, but I wanted to flag it for you. Omni is asking for detailed information about the medical and behavioral health histories that our customers have provided and how they granted those permissions.”

“Okay, that should be fine,” Talia said. “We only collect information our users self-reported voluntarily. They’re not official medical records, so our lawyers said there shouldn’t be any HIPAA issues.”

“Agreed,” Sara said. “But the curious thing is that Omni’s legal team is doing an analysis of the assignability of that user data. Put another way, it seems like they’re poking around to see if they’ll be able to use Ideal Life’s customer information for something broader than what we use it for, which is only to let the app make suggestions to the user themself.”

Talia shook her head. “They didn’t say anything about that when I was on their campus the other day. It’s not in any of the road maps. And our privacy policy is clear; the information our customers volunteer can only be used to help them.”

Sara chewed on the inside of her cheek. “Okay, well… I just wanted to bring it up.”

“I’m glad you did. Ideal Life’s integrity is important to me. Our customers trust us, and that’s not negotiable.”

As Sara returned back downstairs, though, Talia’s stomach turned, and this time it wasn’t because of the watch.

Because what if Sara was onto something? What if this was one of those acquisitions where a Big Tech company buys a startup, guts it for code or data, and then tosses the rest aside?

Or something even less scrupulous?

Talia stood and walked to the edge of the roof. From here, she could see over the top of Palo Alto. Out of view but to the south was Omni’s campus. She replayed in her mind that last version of the meeting she’d had there, and what everyone, including their CEO, Jack Zimmer, had said. Nothing jumped out at her.

“Innocent till proven guilty,” Talia said in Omni headquarters’ direction.

She lived and worked in Silicon Valley, so she knew Big Tech were not the pure villains that some media liked to portray them as. That was too reductive. Some companies certainly wielded too much power. But others did good things, like investing in research that had no guarantee of profits but that might change the world, like when a Google team won the Nobel Prize for their work in genetics. A smaller company never could have spent that much money on research unrelated to their core business.

But being in Silicon Valley also meant Talia was not naive. Idealistic, yes, in that she wanted to improve lives. But not naive.

She’d been keeping one eye on Omni before, but now she’d watch them with both.

Libby

Libby sat in front of one of those vanity mirrors with all the bulbs around it like you saw in old films when movie stars were putting on makeup, but instead of being in Hollywood, she was in Seoul, Korea, doing a live stream to promote personal color-analysis services for Myeongdong Color Experts. Jacob sat in a chair to her left, not caught by the mirror’s reflection. He would get his own color-matching session later, but Libby was going first since the portion of their audience who would care most about this was women.

The idea of color analysis itself wasn’t new—back in the ’80s, color wheels had been all the rage—but new technology and interest on social media had revived the art and “science” of using your skin tone and eye and hair color to find the best—most flattering—colors for you to wear. And Korea was an international hot spot for the consultations, which could cost close to $1,000 in New York but only $150 in Seoul.

The room they were in was bland and floor-to-ceiling white on purpose. Myeongdong Color Experts had chosen the precise shade of paint to ensure it would not interfere with their work with their clients—cream walls would have imbued the room with subtle hints of yellow and pink; a colder white would have cast undertones of blue. Libby and Jacob had been impressed when they explained this at the start of their session. It was hard to imagine being able to perceive such slight differences in whites, let alone how it might impact people and other things around them.

Eunice Park, the aesthetician and color expert, approached Libby with a gray handheld device that looked like a giant high-tech inhaler turned upside down.

“This spectrophotometer will analyze how your skin reflects or absorbs light, okay? You won’t feel anything.”

Libby smiled as she looked at her reflection in the mirror, aware that her webcam was also capturing everything on their live stream. She had purposely come in without makeup so that the color matching could be accurate, and she felt a little washed-out, all blond hair and light skin that never really tanned, just freckled. And yet, there were little emojis of clapping hands popping up on her laptop screen, along with message bubbles like You’re so authentic! and I’m so excited to watch this!, her and Jacob’s followers living vicariously through them and already invested in the color-makeover outcome.

The spectrophotometer pressed against the right apple of Libby’s cheek, then beeped. Eunice noted the data into her own computer.

“I am going to take several more measurements because the sun hits your face at different angles, so some places will be lighter, and others, more pigmented by melanin,” she explained, as much for Libby’s and Jacob’s benefit as for their live audience’s. After all, this was a sponsored event by Myeongdong Color Experts. “However, do not worry. We will make sure to find colors for you that match, whether it is winter and you are more pale, or summer and you are more golden.” She lined up the spectrophotometer to Libby’s forehead, the bridge of her nose, her jawline, neck, and décolletage, inputting each reading into her computer.

“Ah, good, as I suspected,” Eunice said as she put the spectrophotometer away. “Our advanced, personalized program has a prediction for your color palette. Nevertheless, we will try several so that you can see for yourself and we can decide together. Technology is not always right, you know, and we need to include a human touch. That is why we recommend in-person consultations at Myeongdong Color Experts, instead of trying to do this at home by yourself with an app.”

Off camera, Jacob tried to hide an amused smile, but Libby knew what the sudden appearance of his dimples and the covering of his mouth with his hand meant. Eunice’s sales pitch had actually been well timed, but Libby and Jacob did these kinds of things for a living, and it was always obvious to them when companies were trying to use small psychological tricks on their target clients’ subconscious. The You wouldn’t want to use an inferior product, would you? technique was a classic. Because who wanted to feel like they deserved less?

Eunice brought over a stack of fabric swatches that were connected by a metal ring in the corner. She placed them across Libby’s left shoulder and the left half of her décolletage; the color on top was a pale yellow. “What do you think about this one? We are looking for colors that make you glow, as if you have inner light radiating out from you.”