Diya and Michael spent an hour or so arguing over their recollections of the split in their business partnership. Despite talking about it ad nauseam, neither of them came down from their respective positions.
“You totally screwed me over” Michael insisted indignantly. “You left me high and dry at a very vulnerable moment in my life. You left me unemployed and without an income at a time when my father was in the hospital and Freddy was still in law school. To make matters worse, when this company soared in the way that it did, I was fucked out of billions of dollars. Do you know how much different my life would have been if I had gotten 50% of the profits this company makes every year? I would have been loaded and I could have had such a comfortable life.”
“If you wanted to be with me during the highs” Diya replied sternly “then you should have stuck it out with me during the lows. You were hardly ever there during our critical development stage. To get 50% of the revenue, as was stipulated in the contract we signed, was outrageous, especially considering you didn’t put anywhere close to 50% of the work in to making iThink possible.”
“My contributions made iThink's success possible, Diya. Look around at the design of this building. It has my aesthetic finger prints all over it. The lobby is designed almost exactly the way I would have envisioned it. The tall, blue sky scraper is an idea that I would have had. My sense of taste rubbed off on you. Let's not forget the coding changes and development tweaks I made in the early beta stages to make the website popular with users. My influence is all over this company and yet no one else even knows about it. You get credit for work I did. It seems you still don't understand this. And it’s not that I didn’t want to help out more earlier on. It’s just that I had family obligations overriding my ability to be fully present the way I would have liked to.”
“Excuses, excuses. I have very little sympathy for you on that point, Michael.”
“Doesn’t family count for anything to you, Diya?”
“Of course it does, Michael, but sometimes in life, you have to make sacrifices in order for your dreams come true. I wanted this success really, really badly and it came at a great personal cost. I barely get to spend any time with my family. The only ones I see on a regular basis are the ones that I employ at my company. That makes for a very uncomfortable dynamic between us, knowing the only real relationship we have is a professional one.”
“Is that really the kind of relationship you want to have with your family, Diya?”
“My family totally supports me and was 100% behind me throughout this entire process. They supported me when I dropped out of Harvard—“
“Easy enough for them to do, when they weren’t the ones footing the bill for your education.”
“But regardless, they could have told me to stay enrolled at Harvard, but they knew what an opportunity this was. So instead, they encouraged me to go out to Silicon Valley to try to make iThink work. They made sacrifices for me too, having to work double shifts at their jobs so that we had enough money to survive in those critical development years. My family worked potentially harder than you did and they were rightly rewarded for it.”
“They didn’t work at the company at all.”
“They worked to make sure I could work at this company. For their support, they were handsomely rewarded. When I finally struck it big, the first thing I did was buy them a new house and gave them enough money so that they’d never have to work a day in their lives ever again.
“It wasn’t just my mom and dad that I helped out, either. That brother of mine from India, the one everyone thought I was going to have to marry in order to give him a green card? Well, I got him a job here and helped him gain US citizenship. If I hadn’t been in such a powerful position like I am today, that never would have been possible. Visas are so tough to snag these days, so the fact that I knew the right people to help make it possible for him to come here helped my family out immensely.
“And that’s not including the otherwise unemployable distant relatives I helped get jobs, the scholarship fund to help my cousins and extended family go to school, the doors I am able to open to all of them help them fulfill their own dreams and the impact I’ve made for the Indian American community as a whole. I care about my family very much, Michael. I just showed it in a way that was different than what you would expect.”
“But don’t you miss being able to spend time with them? They aren’t getting any younger, Diya. Don’t you worry that when they die, you will have spent so much time working here, that you didn’t get to spend any time with your parents in their final years of life? What good is having a nice house if they can’t spend it with the daughter they love?”
“My parents have no regrets about how things turned out in my life or theirs. Indians are used to personal sacrifice to better the lives of our family and our community. My parents have absolutely no regrets about how things ended up. They’re just happy that this all worked out for me in the end and that it wasn’t a total financial disaster. I got what I needed for my family out of iThink. You don’t have to cry me a river over the lack of time I got to spend with them over the years. Besides, Michael, why do you care? From your perspective, you got you wanted out of this partnership we had, too.”
“What are you talking about, Diya?”
“Your priority in life was always your family. It’s why you wouldn’t go out with me to Silicon Valley when you should have. It’s why you bailed on me when your father was sick. It's why you made me base this company out of Sacramento. At the end of the day, this company was not nearly as important to you as it was to me. I gave you a fair amount of money to go spend your life the way you wanted to.”
“I didn’t want to be screwed out of so much money, though. You left me in a difficult financial situation when I was forced out. I had to be smart and make some difficult financial choices and sacrifices to insure that things worked out for me in the end. We had no income coming in, as I was the sole bread winner at the time. I had to scramble to invest the money properly so that we had something stable to support us until Freddy could graduate and get a job.”
“I’m sure it ended up working out for you just fine.”
“It did in the end, Diya, as I’m a smart investor, but there was no guarantee of that working out at all.”
“Just as there was no guarantee of success at this company either, Michael. Hence, why the payout I gave you made perfect sense at the time.”
“Not if you factor in what iThink is worth now.”
“iThink wasn’t worth then what it’s worth now. The payout was from what it was worth at the time I paid you.”
“Paying me to be erased from history, Diya. I can’t speak about my time here and as a result, I couldn’t get another job in the tech industry. Since I couldn’t disclose what I had been doing during my first years out of Harvard, I was basically unemployable. I’m lucky things worked out for me in the end, but you really left me high and dry. Plus, you erased all my accomplishments to this company, contributions that made your success possible. That hurt me on a personal level.”
“You know why I had to make you sign the non disclosure agreement, Michael. You weren’t getting that kind of money without an agreement to your silence.”
“That was the final blow, Diya. After leaving me out on a lurch like that, hurting me financially and emotionally at a vulnerable time and basically pretending I never even existed, that was when I decided I could never be friends with you ever again.”
“Wait, hold up. I thought the point of you reaching out to me and asking for this meeting today was to try to patch things up and extend a hand in friendship.”
“It wasn’t, Diya.”
“Well, then why are you here?!”
“Diya—“
“I was under the impression that you had moved on from all of that and wanted to try to make things work out between us again. If you had absolutely no intention of trying to repair our friendship, after so many years of being apart from one another, then why are you here in my office today? I pushed back very important meetings this afternoon to give you extra time to talk. If you aren’t here to try to work things out with me as friends, then why are you here? Why are you wasting my extremely precious and valuable time?”
“Because Freddy needs your help.”
Diya sat silently in her chair, staring at Michael with a look of worry in her face. After a long pause, she spoke up.
“Uh oh. Did Freddy turn into a dog again?”
“Yes, but we already have someone helping us out with that.”
“Wow, really? I thought for sure that the ring was safely stashed away in the National Museum in Rome.”
“It was, but then someone stole it. We haven’t been able to determine who it was yet.”
“You sure you don’t need help figuring out who may have taken it?”
“Positive, Diya. We have someone helping us out on the case.”
Michael was impressed with how well he was able to convincingly lie to Diya’s face. He admired his ability to get her to fall for his bluff. He figured some of Freddy’s skills must have rubbed off on him in that moment.
“So then what does Freddy need help with, then?”
“Well, Freddy is running this really stupid campaign for mayor of our hometown.”
“Wait, you live in our hometown now? I thought you lived in Sacramento.”
“We did, but then we moved back ten years ago to raise our son in a normal community. Anyways, Freddy is on this Robin Hood like mission to take on the political establishment in our town. He’s determined to end the racism in our town and says that no one else is going to do it but him.”
“He’s right though, Michael. Our hometown is extremely racist. You may not have seen it when we were growing up, but it was always really bad. When I left was when it really started going downhill. That’s part of the reason why I was determined to get my parents out of there as soon as possible. The minute I could afford to buy them a new house, I insisted that they move out and get away from that God forsaken place. It really needs to change, Michael. If Freddy is really fighting to expose this shit, as you say he is, then I want to help him.”
Diya pushed a button on her desk and called to her secretary.
“Misha, do a search for Freddy Benson and tell me what comes up.”
“Yes Ms. Ramesh” Misha responded from the speaker.
“Oh God” Michael responded nervously.
“What’s the matter?” Diya asked. “You aren’t lying to me, are you?”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t have—“
“Ms. Ramesh” Misha could be heard through the speaker “reports on Freddy Benson suggest he’s running for mayor in a small town. He was recently spotted nude in public, but most people suggest that the photos were doctored. He’s currently polling at—“
“I’ve heard enough, thank you” Diya said abruptly, as she shut off the intercom.
“Oh God” Michael groaned.
“Public nudity, Michael? Does that have something to do with the dog transformation?”
“It does, but fortunately the public didn’t buy the story.”
“He needs to be more careful, Michael, especially if he’s to have any real chance of winning this race.”
Diya paused for a moment, before she spoke up again.
“I already figured out how this all came about today. You had absolutely no intention of ever reaching out to me again. However, Freddy figured that, with my immense wealth and notoriety, that my donation to his underdog campaign could help give him the ability to take on the mayor in our hometown and win the race in an upset. You only agreed to do it because you love him and wanted to make sure you did everything you could to help him. No stone left unturned, as they say.
“You figured that you’d come into my office today, ask about the donation and that I’d say no. You could then go home to Freddy and tell him I rejected your offer and that it would be the end of it. I’d never hear from you ever again and Freddy couldn’t hold it over your head anymore that you didn’t at least try to ask me for money to help him. In fact, when you couldn’t land in the parking lot today, I bet you thought about just turning the flying car around and going home. You’d probably have just flat out lied to him and told him that I said no, even if we never actually met. I’m totally right on the money about this, aren't I Michael?
“Basically, that’s the gist of it, yes.”
“How come you didn’t just start with this right off the bat?”
“Freddy told me I should have done that before I left today.”
“Wow, Freddy is getting wiser as he gets older.”
“But I also know how you are and there was no way you would have let me just get straight to the point like that. You would have considered it rude and totally shut me down.”
Diya paused for a moment, before she sighed, knowing he had a legitimate point.
“You’re probably right, Michael. I would have shushed you and insisted you wait to talk about it until later on so we could catch up. Regardless, I’ve already made a decision on this. I’ve decided that I’m going to help Freddy out in his campaign for mayor.”
“Wait, what? Are you serious?”
“I’m very serious. For all of the years I’ve been the public face of this company, I had a very public vow to remain apolitical. That way, our company could successfully appeal to all sides of the political spectrum. It was important for our growth, as politics ruined other social media platforms in the past. We wanted to rise above it. It has been challenging, to say the least, but we have been very successful at keeping our political opinions to ourselves.”
“If that’s the case, then why would you agree to donate to Freddy’s campaign?”
“For two reasons, Michael. One, as a sort of olive branch to you. It’s my way of trying to extend my hand in friendship and show you that I still care about you on a personal level.”
Michael let out a weak smile, which Diya noted, before she continued.
“And two, I agree with what Freddy is doing and what he’s fighting for. I know it’s very risky for me to put myself out there in such a public way. I’m willing to do it anyway because I’m sick of the racism in our society and it needs to be called out. Even if he doesn’t win, by my donating and breaking my apolitical spending vow, which is sure to get a lot of attention, I can bring awareness to this problem and urge people to erase it from our society once and for all. It has to start somewhere, Michael, and I hope Freddy is successful.
“Plus, I know you love Freddy very much. You’ve sacrificed so much for him over the years and vice versa. You made me move to this city because of your insistence on staying close to him. In hindsight, it was a great investment decision, because of how much the value of real estate in this area has skyrocketed. Since I own this building through a unique corporate arrangement, I can rake in the profits when we sell it and get to keep all the money without having to pay any taxes on the sale.”
“How would you pull that off?”
“It’s long and complicated, but basically I’d get the money as part of a retirement package. Since retirement benefits are non taxable, it would basically mean using company money to pay for this land and the construction of the building and then raking in profits personally tax free.”
“Good for you, Diya. I wish I had the privilege of being able to skimp on my taxes like that.”
“Well, if you sold your apartment in Sacramento, you probably made a nice return on it.”
“I did. When we sold it ten years ago, we did make an ok return on it. We paid about $450,000 for it and then sold it for over a million. We bought our house in our hometown for half of that price and then invested the rest of the money.”
“Not too bad. Sacramento also did become the new tech spot, even if I was just trying to say that at the time to make myself feel better about planting our roots here. Anyways, I’m totally getting off track. The point I was trying to make was that I figured if you were willing to do something I know you really did not feel comfortable doing for him, by coming down here today to meet with me, then it would be wrong of me to turn down your request.”
Diya paged Misha again from the intercom.
“Misha, get me communication device A please.”
“Yes Ms. Ramesh” Misha responded.
“Watch this, Michael. You’re not going to believe your eyes when you see this.”
“Watch what, Diya?” Michael asked curiously.
Before she could answer, the desk appeared to see specks of light appear. The specks of light began to materialize and form together into a communication device. When it appeared, Diya held it and began typing into the device.
“Holy shit!” Michael exclaimed. “What the hell was that?”
“A prototype of a teleportation device” Diya responded. "Kind of like something you'd see on Star Trek."
“How the hell did you get your hands on something like that? I didn’t even think such technology was physically possible right now.”
“The benefits of being the biggest company in the world and having access to top government and military contractors. This is what I’m putting some of our development money into financing. If we can break into this market first, we’re going to be even richer and more powerful than ever before.”
“That’s not necessarily fair completion, though.”
“Those are the breaks in life. Here.”
Diya showed Michael her communication device. It displayed Freddy’s campaign finance website.
“This is where I go to donate, correct?” she asked.
“Yes” Michael responded.
“Ok. Here.”
Diya typed in the donation box on the campaign website and showed it to Michael.
“$250,000. The maximum donation I can make as an individual.”
Diya submitted payment, before the communication device made a pinging noise.
“All done.”
“And the super pac could use a donation as well.”
“Ugh, where is it?”
Michael gave Diya the super pac website details and she typed up another donation.
“The maximum for this one is $2.5 million” Michael mentioned.
Diya stared at Michael with an annoyed expression on her face. Sighing, she typed up the amount on her communication device and submitted the payment. A ping could be heard when she was done.
“$2.75 million for a small town mayoral race. Just chump change for me, but most people I know would think I’m absolutely nuts to be doing this. I just hope this is enough money to hold Freddy over until election day.”
“Thank you, Diya. Freddy will really appreciate it.”
“Don’t mention it. I’m sure he will. I’m glad I was able to help. If anything, I hope this roots out that God awful mayor and ends his political career once and for all. I briefly glanced at Freddy’s description of him on his campaign website and he sounds like an absolute monster.”
“He is.”
“So anything to take on such a ghoul is worth the hit to my reputation at this point.”
Diya put her communication device on the desk and teleported it back to her secretary.
“Misha” Diya called out on the intercom. “Next time, make sure you remember to call the parking lot attendants for any private guests I meet with in my office.”
“I’m so sorry about that, Ms. Ramesh” Misha responded through the speaker, with a strong presence of nerves in her voice. “It won’t happen again.”
“It better not” Diya replied, as she shut off the intercom.
Diya looked at Michael and let out a brief smile.
“Hopefully, your experience with the parking lot attendant today doesn't happen ever again. It was good to see you, my old friend.”
Diya stood up and extended her hand to Michael. This reminded Michael of the scene fourteen years before. During that time, he refused to extend his hand out to shake hers. However, now that Diya had helped Freddy out with a potentially game changing series of donations to his mayoral campaign, Michael felt he needed to reciprocate her gesture. It was the least he could do, considering how much she had helped him out just then.
Smiling, Michael shook Diya’s hand, before he walked to the moving sidewalk.
“Tell Freddy I wish him luck in his campaign” Diya called out, before programming the moving sidewalk from her desk.
“I will” Michael replied back with a wave. “Thank you, Diya.”
Diya smiled and nodded, as she set the moving sidewalk to take Michael out of her office. Michael felt momentarily numb, at least in an emotional way, as he was taken back to the front lobby. He was so lost in his thoughts, that he didn’t remember the ride back downstairs. Not paying attention to his surroundings, the moving sidewalk stopped by the security desk, this time without a sudden jerk.
“How did the meeting go?” the security clerk called out, as Michael snapped out of his thoughts and walked off the moving sidewalk. “You were in there an awfully long time.”
Michael nodded to the security clerk.
“Eh” Michael replied out, as he exited the lobby and stepped outside of the iThink building.
Michael wasn’t in the mood to share what his feelings were with a complete stranger. If the security clerk had been able to get inside his head, he’d see that Michael was feeling particularly bittersweet in that very moment.
On the one hand, Michael was happy, if extremely surprised, that Diya agreed to finance Freddy’s mayoral campaign. He had no expectations that she would even agree to do it, so it was surprising that she made such a large financial commitment. It may have been an olive branch to Michael in some ways, but it would help Freddy out immensely and make it so that he couldn’t say Michael didn’t do all he could to help his husband out in pursuing his campaign.
On the other hand, Michael knew where his relationship with Diya really stood. Michael played a good poker face in her office, hoping to leave her with a sense that they could still work things out. He found in their meeting that day that the bridge between them was not salvageable. The lives they led were so vastly different now, to the point where they had absolutely nothing in common with each other. They both rigidly stood in their respective corners on how they perceived their split apart, unable to see things from the other person’s perspective. The truth of the matter was that the bridge between them was far too wide. It would be impossible for them to close such an enormous gap. Even if Diya hadn’t realized it yet, Michael knew that this was the reality of where things stood between them. Getting into his car, with no ticket in his windshield, fortunately for him, Michael knew it in the back of his mind. They were never going to be friends again.
After Diya donated to Freddy's campaign....