At first, after being fired, I'd embraced unemployment with a sardonic touch. The humor helped, as it usually does, but it only worked only for a while. Things changed very quickly. Suddenly, staying in bed every day past eleven wasn't indulgent; my new freedom began to feel pathetic, even embarrassing. I avoided my roommates and my friends, as the success of those around me felt like a personal insult. Of course I knew I wasn't alone, but knowing that there's a national layoff happening isn't much consolation. Misery doesn't love company, especially when said company is competing with you for the last few scraps of employment.

People told me not to worry. "You're not even thirty yet," they'd say, as though that justified failure. "You'll have so much time to figure it out."

But does anyone emerge from their mother's womb and dream of being a copywriter? Do they yearn for the lexicon of corporations to flow through their veins? To pump forth in soliloquies; hymns in service of retail marketing and public relations?

The company I had worked for was called Snacken' Shack, and it was the third-largest chain of convenience stores in New England. My job had been to write up press releases, add copy to product showcases, and write commercial scripts. It was a pale shadow of what I'd set out to do - but hey, it paid the bills.

And it was money that eventually prompted me to sell my soul once again - things were looking bad; I needed to get off my ass and figure something out. I did what any rational person would do: I started begging.

It was my mother who had suggested I speak to Uncle Donny. "Give him a call," she said, after I'd called her after a long day of doing nothing. "He'll get you straightened out."

"Really, Ma? You think so?" I allowed myself to grimace.

"You know what - I'll call him for you, honey!" She said, "he would just love to help you out." Then she ended the call before giving me a chance to protest. Her tone had left me with the nagging sense that she knew how desperate I really was, despite me trying to hide it.

...

Two weeks later, I met Uncle Donny at a local cafe. I had arrived twenty minutes early, and yet I still found him waiting for me, armed with a shiny bald head and a wicked grin. He had taken a table by the window, its wooden surface already littered with the carcasses of empty coffee cups.

"Hey kid," Donny said once I sat down. "Your mother told me you've been having some trouble. How is that psychopath doing, by the way?"

I plaster a smile on my face. "She's doing pretty good, actually."

"Good. That's good." He nods slowly, his attention not on me, but on the view beyond the window. "I should really get out there, sometime - I haven't seen my sister in forever."

"I'm sure she'd like that," I say. Then, "I just want to thank you for taking the time to meet me like this-"

He waves a hand, cutting me off. "We're family, kid. That's what we do."

"Thanks anyway, Donny."

"Yeah, yeah." He pauses to slurp noisily from his latest victim, then sets the cup back down. "So, what - you're a writer? That's what Suzie told me."

"That's right," I say. "My dream was entertainment, but I've been working in corporate for the past few years."

"Entertainment?" He suddenly eyes me with an unexpected intensity, "like, movies and shit?" When I nod, he purses his lips, thoughtful. "Cool, that's real cool."

A pause, then: "hey, have you heard of this new tech they're working on - LeafLink?"

Yeah, I know - imagine how I felt. And they say coincidences don't mean nothin'.

Instead of flipping the table over and hurling it at the window, I nod, all nonchalant and shit. "Yeah, I have. It's been making life a little bit tough for some of us."

Donny laughs, leaning back. "Yeah, well if it does everything they've been promising, we all might be in trouble."

At this point, I had no idea who they were, beyond it being a government project, so I asked Donny which company had actually been contracted to build it.

"The company's called BioLink," he tells me, "they used to be an agricultural firm with a different name - designed crops that could survive droughts, insects, whatever. You get the idea. Why that matters, is because it meant they had a lot of knowledge when it came to genetics and engineering."

"How'd they get into the technology stuff, then?" I asked. There was a nagging little voice in my head, however, that had already started putting the pieces together.

"When the bid went out for the project, I kept tabs on the situation - there was a lot of money to be made there, if you were smart."

I nodded, following along so far. The 'project' had been big news; it was rare for the feds to get involved in the digital space. To learn that there were plans to restructure the internet itself, to enact a development plan for new online infrastructure... Well, people were engaged, to say the least.

"Anyway," Donny continued, grinning a little. "I'd heard about this tech start-up with an interesting bid. No money or resources, of course, but their idea wasn't just good - it was fuckin' wild. All they needed was the expertise, and the-"

"-money," I finished it for him, sighing. "Let me guess. You helped connect the two companies, and then you became an investor."

He slapped the table, startling me and sloshing coffee everywhere. "Damn right I did! Best deal I've made in a decade."

That's what Uncle Donny did these days. Back when I was growing up, he'd been the owner of a construction company (screw you, Bridget). He'd made millions through renovations and rentals, he'd been part of the movement that had turned places like Willaimsburg into yuppie heaven. Now, he was a broker and investor, and it was that tangled network of connections he'd built up over the years that I was banking on (heh, get it?) to help me.

"So, you work for them now?" I asked.

"Nah, kid - they work for me," he chuckled to himself, finally draining the poor, battered coffee cup.

They work for the government, you schmuck. You just get the dividends.

I pursed my lips into what I hoped conveyed jealousy/awe/amazement, and drummed my fingers against the table. "So," I said. "Why'd you bring up LeafLink?"

"Well, here's the deal," Donny answered, his voice going low and conspiratorial. "You know how it works, right?"

"Not well."

"Alright. Remember a few years ago, during that fuckin' crypto craze? People had a name for all those new NFT things, and online currencies, and systems and stuff - they called it 'Web 2.0.' But LeafLink's like, ah..." He trailed off, thinking. "It's like VR-3000. It's like if someone took the internet and jammed it into your head. No screens, no device, no nothin'. All you gotta do is close your eyes, and there's this whole other world spread out for you, right in here." He tapped his forehead knowingly.

I took a moment to digest this. It was one thing to hear leaks and rumors online, but to have down-to-earth Donny talk about what, exactly? Telepathy? It was eerie.

"How do you use it?" I finally asked. The news had nothing in the way of an explanation, and those interviews I watched were, at best, straw-thin propaganda. It meant there was an information-vacuum which conspiracies promptly filled as they battled for supremacy: nanotech, drugs, meditation rituals, take your pick.

But Donny shook his head, the bastard. "I've signed a N.D.A. on steroids, kid. Think S.W.A.T.-level shit. Become an employee though, and those secrets might just be all yours."

"That easy, huh?" I can't help but raise an eyebrow. He narrowed his eyes and smirked, like a fat-ass cat who'd just been given a fishy dinner.

"Hey, relax. I told you - family gots each other's backs." His grin widened. "Lucky for you, they've got a little creativity issue down in the lab, and they're looking for people with your sensibilities."

"Man, you gotta explain yourself a little better than that." I was getting a little testy, I admit - but I'd forgotten how theatrical the big lug could be. He was reeling me in like a fish, and had clearly enjoyed it.

"When the internet first launched, which you wouldn't know shit about, you baby, it wasn't all that useful. There were no apps, websites - the foundation was there, but it needed people to give it purpose. LeafLink's apparently in that stage of life - the world's out there to explore, but it's a desert, so to speak."

"Isn't that a job for, like, software developers?" I asked.
"No," Donny's gotten all serious, and I'm convinced it's taking all his brainpower to explain this. "There's no code - no 0's and 1's and hacking the mainframe. We're not trying to build online shopping sites here, we're trying to build a city you can walk down the streets of, and maybe you look over and - oh, there's a hat display in one of the shop windows, and it's just the thing you've been thinking about, so you walk into the store and buy it, and then you open your eyes and go on with your life and it shows up in a box at your doorstep the very next day." He pauses, takes a breath. "But what will the store look like? How will it be organized? What's gonna keep that nice, orderly city from falling apart in someone's mind? Those are the questions they're asking, right this minute."
"But there's a problem." I said, playing along.

"Right. Apparently, it's... difficult for most people to build that kind of stuff and actually make it last in LeafLink. Or, they do, but it's not consistent for everyone. They just don't have the capacity to imagine on that scale, or something like that. I don't really get it myself. But what I do know is that the brainiacs are looking for people with creative inclinations, people with vision. They think they've got the skills needed to turn LeafLink into the real deal."

"Gotcha," I said.

Donny gave me a look. "Take it or leave it, but that's what I got for ya. Or go try your luck in Hollywood," he shrugs. "It's all the same to me."

I didn't completely understand everything Donny was proposing, but I'd gotten the gist of it. And to be honest, I'd gotten a little excited. As a writer, I've always wanted to create worlds, to immerse people in my work. And the chance to literally do that, to be a part of something so staggering was the chance of a lifetime, regardless of the circumstances.

It wasn't a long deliberation. "Sign me up."

"Glad to hear it, kid."

"Hey Donny?" I had been thinking about this for a while. "Have you tried it yet? LeafLink, I mean."

Donny laughed. "No way. Trips to the Valley these days are a one-way ticket. Once you're in-" he raised his brows, "-you're in for a while. You're good with that?"

"Yes," I said.

There were other questions I should have asked him too, obvious things I didn't pick up on. He'd described LeafLink as the internet but better, and I had taken that at full value. But LeafLink is more than that. The executives who fired me, the scientists and engineers of BioLink, and probably the federal government, too, knew that from the beginning. But I don't think anyone could have predicted what it would become.