Page 65 of Ideal Life

It was Libby.

As Talia answered the video call, she realized with a pang that she didn’t know where on the planet Libby was. She’d been even worse than usual lately with keeping up on Libby and Jacob’s posts; time had gotten tangled up in her head, thanks to the watch.

“Oh god, Talia,” Libby sobbed, her eyes red and face puffy. She was on a bed in a hotel room, no obvious decorations to indicate what country she was in.

“Libby, what’s wrong?” Talia sat straight up in the driver’s seat. “Is the baby okay?” She had expected this to be a regular conversation, besides her own apology for being so unavailable, and that she and Libby would then squeal over the baby.

“Jacob didn’t mean to… I-I don’t… I don’t know what to do!”

“What the fuck? I will kill him. Did he hurt you? The baby?”

“No, I—” Libby devolved into tears again.

Jacob appeared, wrapping his arms around her and stroking her hair.

“Hi, Talia,” he said. “I’m sorry you found out over YouTube. Libby wanted to tell you first, but I slipped—”

“And now the whole world knows!” Libby cried. “Our baby is doomed and she never even got a choice!”

“Hey, hey, shh.” Talia leaned in toward her screen. “It’s going to be okay, whatever’s going on. Just tell me what happened.”

Libby spilled everything the best she could, and when she got caught up in tears, Jacob filled in. They talked about their qualms about including the child in their public life, from documenting the pregnancy to turning their Libby & Jacob accounts into a family affair. In a world of AI models that could easily be edited into any place and any situation, there was a certain cache to still being real humans. But while Libby and Jacob had made the decision to sell parts of their lives as a business, their future child had not, and she wouldn’t be able to consent—or even understand the magnitude of what she was giving up—for more than eighteen years.

On the other hand, there were examples of loving families who had made the transition well, like the Globetrotter Quartet. Jacob and Libby sometimes crossed paths with them and therefore knew that they were genuinely good people. Plus, they were giving their kids a global upbringing and education.

“So what do we do?” Libby asked when they had finished.

It was an echo of when she and Talia were kids, their parents out at another party, having left them without anything to eat for dinner. “What do we do?” Libby had asked all the time back then, looking up at her big sister for help while also knowing that Talia would have an idea, Talia would figure something out, Talia would keep them fed and bathed and cared for.

“Well,” Talia said now, “it sounds to me like if you could do things entirely your way, you would not put your baby online in any of your content. But because of the momentum of ‘Libby & Jacob’ and the pressures of the creator industry, you feel like you have to consider it. Is that an accurate summary?”

Libby nodded. She’d always found it comforting when Talia broke down a big emotional problem into logical chunks. It made things seem more manageable.

“Okay,” Talia said. “Then you have three paths: One, quit the business and do something else—maybe not as profitable, but you’d be able to find work in a marketing agency or something similar, given your background and experience in the field. Two, continue your existing business with the baby, or three, find a way to continue the business without the baby.”

Jacob squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, a sheen of tears covered them. “We’ve worked so hard to build a business and a life that didn’t confine us to an office. If I hadn’t fucked up and accidentally announced to the whole world that Libby was pregnant, maybe we could have salvaged this. We could have found a way to avoid filming her stomach in the next months, and then we could have made sure that contracts we signed for the future were just us, not the baby. But now everyone will want our baby as part of the deals, too.”

Libby’s lip trembled. “So I guess that means we’re out of options. Our fans already know about the pregnancy and want more. So… we have to quit.”

“Unless…” Talia touched the watch on her wrist. According to them, it had only been a couple of hours since Jacob had revealed their secret on their live stream.

“Unless what?” Libby looked at her through the screen with those same hopeful eyes from their childhood.

Talia told them everything about how she could rewind time. She didn’t include all the details, because the most important thing right now was to make Libby feel better and to make things okay for her as soon as possible.

“Do it,” Libby said as soon as Talia was finished.

But Jacob frowned. “This can’t be real, can it?”

“It’s real—I swear,” Talia said. “But you’re going to forget all this, and I’ll explain it to you again after I rewind.”

Libby turned to Jacob. “Please, honey. Who cares how it works? If Talia says she’s going to do something, she will. And she can make all of this go away. She’ll call us and tell us about what happened this time, and then you won’t say anything about the baby during the live stream and it will buy us more runway to figure out how to adapt our business.”

Jacob pulled her into his arms. “Of course. Whatever you want.” He turned to Talia on the screen. “Just help me fix this for Libby, okay?”

Talia turned the crown on her watch back.

She hunched over the trash can in her office. It was early afternoon and several hours before she would meet Sam on the coast and eat at Taco Bell, but she swore the ground beef and nacho cheese were previewing a rebellion in her stomach.