Page 52 of Ideal Life

Jacob, though, didn’t confirm their readiness to the director. Instead, Jacob turned to Libby, smiled with his deep dimples, and asked, “Are we ready?”

Libby smiled back at him—god, she loved this man—then turned to Mark and said, “We’re ready.”

Two and a half hours later, they finally wrapped shooting, just as the ticket booths downstairs opened the Umeda Sky Building for the day. Libby sank into one of the chairs in the café on the fortieth floor and groaned as she kicked off her heels. She was early in her pregnancy and not at the point yet where her feet would swell, but anyone would ache after waltzing for 150 minutes straight.

“You doing all right?” Jacob asked, as he brought her a cup of green tea and a furutsu sando, a sandwich made of super fluffy white bread stuffed with sliced strawberries, kiwis, bananas, and lots of whipped cream. Libby had fallen in love with the unique dessert-in-sandwich earlier in the week in Tokyo, and the baby must have, too, because Libby now craved furutsu sando every morning, even though it wasn’t considered by the Japanese to be a breakfast food.

She took a bite and swore the baby moved in her belly, even though there was no way Libby would actually be able to detect such a thing yet. Maybe if she used Talia’s Ideal Life app, it would identify changes in her brain chemistry that were tied to the baby being happy?

But no, it would probably just register the hit of sugar to her bloodstream, which was obvious even just by looking at the whipped cream sandwich.

Libby was lucky that morning sickness hadn’t hit her yet. It would have made doing their job a lot harder, especially since she wasn’t ready to let people know she was pregnant. Once the news got out, it might affect the jobs offered to her and Jacob. That is, unless they decided to include their little bean and document the progress of growing their family. Brands liked being associated with wholesome families.

She and Jacob had talked about it a lot recently, but they still hadn’t reached a conclusion. What they knew, though, was that there was no pausing in a creator career. It had always been true—the internet wanted only relevance, and if you weren’t in front of their eyeballs with fresh content constantly, you were negligible.

But that reality was even harsher now. The proliferation of photo- and video-realistic AI models with perfectly symmetrical faces and flawless bodies had already pushed the mid-level human creators out of business. Only the top ones who had had massive audiences before the AI revolution (like Libby and Jacob) had managed to survive. Still, they had to work harder than ever to hold on to that status and to fight off obsolescence, because it was costly for companies to fly real live people around the world and feed and house them, whereas digital models didn’t need any of that.

The main thing Libby and Jacob had going for them was “authenticity,” which basically meant letting the cameras into their private lives so that followers could feel connected to them. What had started out as two twentysomethings backpacking around the world had grown into a couple in their early thirties inadvertently starring in their own reality show.

Libby took another bite of her sandwich. The whipped cream squirted out and got all over her face. Before she had a chance to wipe it off, though, the elevators opened and two groups of tourists spilled onto the fortieth floor, and one woman, eyes wide, shouted in a German accent, “Is that Libby and Jacob?”

They raised their phones and started recording immediately as they rushed over to the table where Libby sat with whipped cream smeared on her cheek, her shoeless feet propped up on a chair. Jacob put on his camera smile and quickly stood in front of her, giving her a spare second to wipe her face clean.

A moment later, they were surrounded by not only the Germans but also the others who had just arrived on the fortieth floor, giggling and jostling for selfies with the YouTube and Instagram personalities. Libby was pretty sure half of them didn’t actually know who she and Jacob were but wanted to capture themselves with them just in case.

“Say ‘sushi’!” one of the tourists said as they snapped a photo.

They immediately posted the photo to socials, tagging Umeda Sky Building as their location.

The Japan National Tourism Organization would be happy.

And Libby and Jacob remained relevant for at least one day more.

Talia

Talia needed to talk to someone about the kiss, but then she’d have to explain the watch. She also realized again that there was no one she was close enough to these days anyway. Whenever her old friends from grad school had wanted to grab drinks after work, she hadn’t been able to, because the end of the workday for them was only two-thirds through a regular workday for her. If they wanted to get together on the weekends for a hike or a day trip to Napa for wine tasting, that was out, too. Talia’s weekends were spent at Ideal Life, other than Sunday Lunch with Sam.

She knew she owed Libby a call back, but it was morning here in California, which meant the middle of the night in Japan. So Talia reached out to the only other person she could talk to about this—her mom.

This was suboptimal because (a) Vera was going to be over the moon about the kiss, and her hopes and dreams would probably run off in the complete opposite direction of where Talia needed things to go, and (b) Vera had an aqua aerobics class at the senior center this morning.

Which is how Talia found herself in the shallow end of an indoor pool with a bunch of sixty-to-eighty-year-olds.

“Ladies! So great to see you bright and early!” the perky blond coach, Didi, said from the pool deck. “And it looks like Vera has brought a special guest to Aquarobics today.”

Vera beamed. “This is my oldest, Talia. She’s the CEO of a very successful startup that’s about to be bought by Omni.”

“Ooh!”

“My goodness!”

“What is an Omni?” the oldest of the women asked.

“It’s a very big technology company, dear,” Vera said. “Ask your grandkids. I’m sure they know all about it. Talia is going to be famous soon.”

“Oh god, Mom.” Talia considered sinking down into the bottom of the pool and not coming back up until Aquarobics was over.

“What?” Vera said. “You’re such a smart and accomplished person—you should be proud. Men brag all the time and think nothing of it. Women should shout their achievements, too. Right, everyone?”