STRATEGIC BEHAVIOR (REVISING)

CHAPTER 1: HARSH ASSESSMENTS

Novelty-seeking was supposed to be a trait of above average intellectuals, but Norma Reyes considered herself an outlier, especially concerning the characteristics of smart people. Whenever she found a sensible routine, she stuck with it. In example, for lunch each day, she left her corner office in the C-suites of Wang & Reyes Lifestyle Tech at her usual hour. She took her usual route, and she ordered her usual: eggplant adobo. Rarely did she deviate.

But that Friday evening as she took the crowded glass causeway overlooking New Silicon Valley, neon words flashed her retinal insert: Hey! What's the cure for a quarter-life crisis? It was a text from her best friend, Skylar Carter, with a definite deviation from the usual.

Smiling, Norma almost replied: ¿Una dosis de realidad? A dose of reality?

She made a beeline for one of the glimmering sky cables connecting upper city to ground level. Then, she donned tinted specs against the dizzying rapid descent. Norma was unsure whether there was a real crisis. Sky could be melodramatic. Other times, the woman's distress signals heralded serious trouble of the self-made variety.

It was a mystery how the business-minded CEO and the avant-garde artist made a friendship work. They clicked, though. As the lift hit the surface, she fired off a request for Skylar to call her.

The cable doors hissed open and let in the steamy city. New Silicon, the tech entrepreneur's favorite hangout, was like a well-programmed algorithm. Waist-length black hair swished around her sun-browned face as she stepped into the fray. Her scotch-colored eyes caught the busy street reflected in boutique windows along with targeted digital promotions. Self-driving cars were bumper to bumper. Hovercrafts crisscrossed above-ground on augmented reality highways.

People flowed past her—colleagues meeting for lunch or friends carousing the shops—moving in what seemed like chaos. Norma loved it. Her enhanced brain teased out patterns as quickly as the strike of her heels on the pavement. And as easily as she could see how things worked, she also saw the problems in the code. It was what gave her an edge as an engineer.

Summer heat triggered the built-in aeration of her designer Wang & Reyes suit. It didn't take a genius to recognize the current biggest issue was climate change. A burst of jasmine-scented air cooled Norma's svelte figure as she hailed an automated Lyft—worth the extra carbon tax. It was so hot, a haze rippled above the asphalt.

Within minutes, her ride zipped down from the AR-highway. She relaxed into synthetic leather seats and gazed at fleeting palm trees and skyscrapers. Influencer-screens on every other building displayed the world's famous. Her bow-shaped lips curved wryly. She never understood the need for that kind of attention.

One angry face stood out from the preening self-promoters. Using the App Center embedded in her wrist and the magnetic earbud implant in her tragus, Norma synced with the stream. However, to her ire, it was a rant against the schools producing Enhanced Intels. She promptly disconnected.

There were three kinds of people in the world: Those who needed technology to get ahead, those who eschewed technology altogether, and people with specialized tech-free enhancements—people like her. Some took issue with that level of diversity, but it wasn't keeping the burgeoning millionaire tech entrepreneur up at night. Norma pushed the bigotry from her mind as her car landed.

From eateries lining the street came the delicious aroma of exotic cuisines. She crinkled her nose in bliss but headed straight for her tried-and-true mid-century café. Inside, décor from the twenty-fifties gave a minimalist feel. Industrial tables, modular chairs. It was old-techy. She only came out of habit (an ex-boyfriend had introduced her to the place years prior), but the quality was consistent.