“What am I looking at?” Carl had asked, enjoying his raspberry milkshake and keeping half an eye on his surroundings.

“Earth” Isabella had replied, rather dry. She noticed his interest in the athletic legs of the female skaters passing by their favorite bench in the park.

He broke into a smile. “I’m sorry. I’m all yours.”

Carl grabbed the tablet and touched the globe displayed on the screen. It started to turn.

“Neat,” he nodded approvingly.

“This is Anna’s dashboard. The exploratory version. Make sure you say something nice about it tomorrow,” Isabella instructed him, while he was testing how fast he could spin Earth around. “Now, pick a country,” she added. He dramatically put his hand over his eyes and tapped the screen. Earth morphed into Sweden.

Carl peeked through his fingers. “Sweden it is, then,” he chanted. He obviously was in a very good mood.

“What are the dots?”

“Anna.” Isabella replied. “Well, more precisely, cities where Anna is located.”

Carl tapped Stockholm.

Stockholm exploded into a huge beehive of female faces.

“Carl, meet the Annas in Stockholm. You can zoom in if you want to see them better.” Carl zoomed in and then started to move from left to right and up and down.

“Why do some have a blue background and others green?” he asked, after sweeping around for a while.

“The blue ones are dormant; the green ones are active,” Isabella explained.

“Dormant?”

“We need to give them a history first. Create their profiles, post some pictures, create content and all. While this is going on, they do not interact with others yet,” Isabella explained. “We have red ones too. Those are assigned to one or more of our customers.”

“I don’t see any red ones,” Carl remarked.

Isabella looked at her own tablet, displaying their current sales breakdown for Europe.

“We’re still testing. None of our pilot customers is currently running a campaign in Sweden at the moment. We have one in France. Try Paris.”

Carl switched to France and opened the Paris control board.

“Ah, look! Des femmes en rouge!” Carl said. “Resistance is useless!”

Isabella rolled her eyes. His good mood was contagious though. She couldn’t help smiling at him. “Pick one,” she encouraged him. He picked one. A menu appeared, showing all social media the Anna of his choice was present on.

“We shall have a look at your Book of Faces, mademoiselle Anna” he announced theatrically, and tapped the corresponding button.

“Julie Beaumont?” Carl inquired, looking at the profile of a 25-year old French brunette.

Isabella smiled. “We have fifteen thousand Annas at the moment. They can’t all actually be named Anna. In fact, none of them is,” Isabella explained. “Except our very first. But she isn’t active; she’s more of a museum piece. Make sure you ask this question again tomorrow,” she added.

“Noted,” Carl replied. “What else must I ask?”

“Just ask about everything you see her do. They’ll love to educate you. They worked hard to get this right, so let them show off a little” Isabella replied, sipping on her own milkshake.

“M’am, yes ma’m,” he saluted, and fiddled a bit more with the controls the Anna dashboard offered him.

“So, what IS she doing right now?”

Isabella smiled. She loved it when Carl put on his n00b act. She knew he knew damn well what social media were about, but he just loved to pretend to be ignorant. She played along.

“Well, this is a status update. Apparently, she is traveling at the moment. She is in Indonesia, having dinner.”

“Oh is she? Well, I hope she doesn’t expect to be reimbursed for her travel expenses,” Carl joked. “What is that?” he pointed to a bunch of photos. “Those aren’t hers, right?”

“No. She reacted on one of her friend’s status update. That’s her being friendly. Trying to make conversation. But scroll down a bit. There is a post I really want to show you.”

Carl scrolled down.

“This one?”

“Yes.”

Carl looked at the screen. It showed a rather clumsy picture of a bunch of screws, and a second picture with the same bunch of screws accompanied by a white orchid.

“She went to the hardware store and bought screws. Is that what you wanted to show me?”

He sounded skeptical.

“Yes,” she replied. “There’s more to it than you think. This is actually a paid post. The hardware chain has used Julie and 999 other Annas in France to distribute this very same message.”

“They paid for such crappy pictures?”

“Yes! That’s the whole point. It looks authentic, right? You didn’t recognize it as an ad. Look at the comments.”

“Point taken,” Carl smiled. “I like this. You have more examples?”

“Oh, sure! This is just a very local, basic conversational broadcast. I’ll show you a much more sophisticated example with targeted conversation. You’ll certainly love that one,” Isabella replied enthusiastically. She started punching her own tablet.

Carl emptied his milkshake and raised his left brow.

“Bella? Just a question,” he said. “She bought screws in France a few hours ago, right?”

“Yes, hang on, I think I found an interesting one.” Isabella was still focused on her tablet.

“How can she be having dinner in Indonesia then?”

Isabella froze.

“Dammit.”

She switched off her tablet and put it in her bag. “I guess I’ll have to leave the really cool stuff for later then.”

Carl winked at her. “And I guess this is why you always do a rehearsal presentation! Don’t worry about it Bella. Your guys will do great tomorrow, I’m sure of it. I won’t bite.”

She stood up, threw her milkshake in the bin and tried to smile. “C’mon, we have to go back to the office. I have some tweaking to do, apparently.”

She hadn’t been very good in hiding her disappointment.

—

With their sharp exchanges having ended inconclusively, Isabella charged back into the boardroom, completely galled at Carl’s counterstrike. The other board members poured in but all that she heard was the low hum of the street traffic below. She was too angered to pay attention to Carl resuming the meeting.

Her black mood prevented her also from recognizing the male voice that questioned Carl, rather than Isabella, about their target group stratification strategy. It proved to be over the CEO’s head. Still on his feet, he chuckled reflexively. “Ah, yes. Stratification. Well, I think our social genius is in a better position to explain this to you!” he concluded and promptly referred the matter to Isabella.

His words snapped her back into the here and now. It wasn’t the first time he used that name for her. But this time, his words seemed to contain a twist of cynicism. She could not quite decipher it.

She stared piercingly into his eyes. Half in disbelief, half enraged, she was about to tell him that Anna wasn’t his project and that he should shut up. She decided against such a depth charge. Instead, she counted to ten and waited for the amygdala hijack to fade.

“Oh, no, Carl, I think everyone has heard enough of me. Why don’t you explain it. And while you’re at it, please explain the Critical Mass Threshold as well, will you?” she countered, her voice as sweet and cheerful as she could master. Her throat felt thick and she could barely swallow her anger.

Carl had put on his poker face and immediately began answering the question.

Her phone vibrated. A text message.

“Sorry to bother you. I wanted to tell you. Someone used my ID to mess with Anna in production. But think you know already…”

Now, this was interesting.

She knew about his virtual click farm. When she had found out, she had been seriously disappointed in him. He ought to know better than assuming his activities would go unnoticed by their statistical tools. But each round of clicks by one single Anna had a ripple effect on this particular Anna’s friends and that had given her very valuable additional behavioural data. For that reason only, she had not reported him.

She didn’t believe he had anything to do with the rigged sales numbers, though. If he had, and if he tried to cover his (or Carl’s) tracks now, she would find out anyway. If he was innocent – and she assumed he was -, he could provide her with more information while she was trapped in this damned meeting.

Even having only half a plan calmed her down immediately.