Skye is the Limit by Phenomenal Pen (best time to read books txt) 📕

Omni Systems would never admit it but the measures that their supercomputer Athena had adopted bordered on the illegal. After accessing a great volume of social media content, IMs, texts, emails, phone calls, vlogs, browser and purchase history, Athena formed hundreds of millions of personality profiles. The final algorithm by which she decided to narrow down the selection to only five lucky individuals was a mystery, however, even to her creators.

“So, how did she do it?” asked James Spaulding while looking down at the five virtual folders on his touch-screen desk. Unlike most of the executives, the current CEO of Omni Systems was not a computer scientist. He was the former CFO of a hotel chain. He was also a Gen-Xer.      

“Why don’t you ask her yourself, Jay?” Mr. Chase teased. “You know she can hear us.” 

“I’m not asking her. I’m asking you.”

“Well, you know, five individuals. I’d wager she picked one for each continent.”

“There are seven continents last I checked.” 

“I was referring to the classical geography of the Renaissance. You can say goodbye to Terra Australis, both Australia and Antarctica, because the Europeans didn’t look that far down south. No, it was just Europe in the north, Africa in the south, the Americas in the west and Asia in the east.”

“Then how did she come up with the fifth player?” 

Mr. Chase shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe because the UK left the EU. Or Athena just has a soft spot for the Brits because of the accent we gave her.”

“You do know we can veto anything Athena gives us, right? That’s our job.”

“I know. I just didn’t want to argue with someone who has memorized the entire Wikipedia and could beat me in Jeopardy. Heck, she could prolly beat me in a fist fight if it came down to it.”

“Don’t be a smart ass. I know SKYE’s your baby but a lot’s riding on this thing. It wouldn’t kill us if it failed but it would be extremely painful, not to mention embarrassing. So if you’re gonna lock yourself in a Chinese water cell, you better make sure somebody’s got an ax.” 

“What are you proposing?”    

“Put a shill among the participants.”

Mr. Chase was taken aback. “I don’t understand where this lack of faith is coming from. SKYE has performed flawlessly in all the trial runs, including the Sofa launch.”

“Don’t get me started on that Sofa interview. You have any idea how much stress and overtime you gave our PR Department? You ought to learn to deliver a stage pitch like everybody else.” 

“Come on, you can’t be serious. Inserting a shill would defeat the purpose of the product test.”

“You did that when you externalized it.”

“Whatever. Look, Athena knows all your concerns and crunches several terabytes of data in real time. Your average Joes won’t be just your average Joes. They’d be the best, most relevant average Joes we can find. Just think of it as another use case. Besides, you were the one who always said two heads are better than one. Well, Athena’s the hydra of extra heads.”

“You think?” Mr. Spaulding asked sarcastically. “This is exactly what I’m worried about.”

“At least take a look at the personality profiles I sent you. You got a pro gamer there.”

“We got lucky with that one. But the rest of this selection is the perfect mixture for disaster. I mean, take this guy for instance…”

Mr. Spaulding manipulated the icons on his desktop and, with a wave of his hand, created five miniature holograms of the lottery winners. He highlighted the one he was referring to and the upright holographic projection started moving; a tiny hiker up a mountain trail.

“A backpacker. How prepared is this hippie for cutting-edge dream travel? He’s gonna be climbing Mt. Doom for all we know, not Kilimanjaro. And have you seen his academic credentials?”   

“What have you got against dropouts?”

“If he’s from the Valley, I can forgive him and chalk it up to peer pressure. But Monmartre? He’s an epitome all right. The epitome of the starving artist complete with facial hair.”

“No doubt,” Mr. Chase said, downplaying the CEO’s distrust, “one of the legions of hardcore Omni fans discovered in an artisanal coffee shop.”

“Nuh-uh. That’s just it. Did you take a look at this guy’s profile? He despises technology. He has no Omni Capsule and keeps a vintage Sony Walkman. Who the heck uses cassette tapes in this day and age?”

“Huh. I guess I missed that part.”

“It gets better. This guy has no fixed cell number and purchases disposable, sometimes even cloned, SIM cards. On his Omni Phone, his one and only Omni product – jailbroken at that – he regularly uses a VPN to hide his IP.”

“Well, you probably get that feeling yourself every once in a while. You just wanna get disconnected from it all, to be off-grid.”

“For a weekend getaway, yes. To become a hermit, no.”

“I’ll have to make a wild guess but maybe Athena’s curious about those who fall through the cracks and disappear from her watchful eye. But if you think about it, it’s actually inevitable that there be a growing number of that type. They’re like the antithesis in our digital-native dialectics. Athena probably picked him to represent the emergent minority.”