“Please explain why we’re spending these ridiculous amounts of time and money to create content rich profiles only to throw them in the bin a few years later,” Carl had demanded when he first heard of Project Population Control.

Isabella had looked at him patiently – as always -, which had made him even more furious. Anna’s life cycle had always been a crucial factor in their company’s business model and one of the many reasons for yet another argument.

“Jesus Carl! May I remind you that we discussed this before? You wanted price differentiation and target group stratification or whatever marketing mumbo jumbo language you used!”

Like any other new registration on whichever social platform, Anna would typically start as an empty profile – an embryo in the lab tech lingo – with no friends and no content. It was only after a few months of activity that a single Anna would have created enough content on her profile and have gathered enough friends to be of commercial value. Of course, the more tenure, the more content and friends an Anna would have accumulated. More mature Anna’s were therefore more valuable, allowing for different pricing schemes.

This maturation had nothing to do with a single Anna’s actual age though. An embryo would start somewhere between 16 and 27 years old. This deliberate age distribution allowed for target group stratification, which was a crucial factor for paying customers, depending on what type of product or service they wanted Anna to advertise for.

Isabella was right. He had asked for these features. He knew he was losing this argument but he was too upset with her contemptuous demeanour to give up just yet.

“’Mumbo jumbo language’? Really? Is that all you’ve got?” Carl sneered back. He almost laughed at her obvious lack of imagination. “And look who’s talking! ‘Critial Mass Threshold’, ‘Magnet Cluster Algorithm’? It surely wasn’t me who came up with that crap! Oh hang on a minute, could that have been you perhaps, miss Thorne?”

She ignored his evenly unimaginative attempt to intimidate by addressing her formally.

“I’m going to repeat myself again Carl,” Isabella had replied and then she started rattling off her little lecture:  “We need to keep the total number of Annas below the CMT, otherwise your beloved Annas will be discovered and then there will be no business at all. With no business at all, there is no point in having this discussion in the first place. At the same time, you want your stratification, so we need a proper age distribution. We’re certainly doing magic here, but we can’t stop time. If you have a better suggestion to keep our population in control, I’m all ears.”

He hated to admit it, but she was right.

They had to keep their population constant and they needed ‘fresh blood’. The only way to fulfil both requirements was to let older Annas die.

 —

 Carl was astonished. The next topic on the agenda was the famous Ballentine vote and Isabella was tinkering with her phone again. Granted, having everyone’s full attention at the end of a full-day meeting might be a little too much to ask, but Isabella – of all people – being more interested in her phone than in the vote enraged and confused him at the same time.

For all he knew, to Isabella, Ballentine represented pure pompous narcissistic evil. She had never said it out loud, but he knew Isabella regarded his attempts to secure a spot in the Board as nothing more than a hostile takeover and he knew she had sabotaged him in every way she could think of. Carl wasn’t sure what her beef with Ballentine really was, but he suspected that her fear of losing her autonomy rendered him a foe of mythical proportions, to be fended off at all costs. She kept these sentiments to herself though; He had never seen her defy him in public and no one else seemed to be aware of her hostility. Although being a lot less fierce, Carl didn’t like the guy either.

But they needed money and Ballentine had it. Their other option was going public, and especially Isabella had gone out of her way preparing and advocating this track for some months now. Her lobbying had proven more than necessary: given the nature of their business, there was no consensus whatsoever among the Board Members and Carl had to admit that he too was sceptical about this move. Sceptical wasn’t the right word; He had invented the language technology augmented data analytics sales pitch, and although he was still pretty pleased with this semantic trick, he wasn’t sure it would be enough to conceal his company’s real technology. And when it came to his company’s real technology, he was beyond certain: it wouldn’t stand a chance being exposed to the volatile moral compass of the world’s ambivalent, self-righteous and hypocritical public opinion.

On the other hand, he sensed there was something off with Ballentine, and Carl had learned to trust his gut.

From a rational angle though, having Ballentine take over the company made the most sense, and therefore he wasn’t surprised that this was also the view of several of the Board Members. The whole situation had put him in a slightly uncomfortable position though. He couldn’t bring himself to support the Ballentine route, as it would surely mean he had to pack his bags; trying to convince the public market their business wasn’t only ridiculously profitable but also morally just at least would give him a fighting chance, but he knew his heart wasn’t fully in it.

For the first time in his life, Carl felt he was going to lose the battle no matter what, so he had put in place a little contingency plan.

Three years ago, Carl had hired the most secretive and territorial system administrator he could find. Alan had proven to be a good chap: when it came to ‘his’ hardware, Alan was more ferocious than a tigress, so when Carl had asked him to discreetly put in place a dedicated storage device that would serve as a ‘burial site’ for the ‘dead’ Annas, Alan had made sure this storage server was indeed dedicated. In fact, it was completely invisible from the network and no one – except Alan and Carl – even knew this server existed.

Burial site wasn’t a good word for it though. Why on earth would one delete a fully functional, highly connected, content rich social media profile if one could also put it on ice for future use? This alternative still fulfilled Isabella’s anal population control requirements, Carl figured, so no harm done.

Carl had created the very first Digital Cryogenics Chamber, and he had Alan wheel it out of the server room about – he looked at his watch – right now.

Whatever Isabella was doing on her phone, it was time to vote.

“So, everyone. We have given you all information of last quarter, as well as a forecast and we have discussed out future strategic and tactical plans. Thank you all for your input, questions and feedback. Let’s now take the final vote on how we intend to fund these plans.” He looked around the table. Isabella was paying attention now.

“As you all know, mr. Ballentine, one of our well-appreciated first time investors, has recently notified us that he is interested in injecting extra capital. Although not strictly an ‘either/or’ situation, this would of course put off our IPO plans. At least for the near future. It would also make him the biggest single shareholder, and he will join the Board.” Carl tried to sound as objective as he could manage. “I will now do a tour de table. Gretchen? Your vote please?”

“In favour,” she replied.

Several ‘in favors’ and ‘not in favors’ later, it was Isabella’s turn. With 3 favours against 2 not in favours, Carl couldn’t help smiling. Isabella would definitely vote against Ballentine, creating a tie, which meant that the ultimate verdict was his to make. He loved that. It would be another dramatic moment which gave him an opportunity to remind everyone who was the actual boss.

“Isabella?”

He saw her put away her phone – why was she playing with her phone again?

She looked at him now and he saw that the anger and contempt of before had disappeared completely. Instead, her eyes were soft. Did she just wink at him?

He suddenly had the impression she was trying to signal something to him, but he couldn’t figure out what.

“I vote in favour,” she finally said.