Page 82 of Ideal Life

But in level 14, Louise Enger sat down across from her at table 2.

The hand started out okay. Talia was dealt the king of clubs and the king of hearts, and she raised her bet.

Then Louise, clearly feeling confident, tripled the stakes.

Talia went all in.

Louise revealed a pair of aces.

Just like how Sam had lost to her in the previous versions of this tournament.

“Seat open at table two.”

Talia was done. She finished the tournament at 199th place with a prize of $9,000.

She was $991,000 short of what Ideal Life needed.

Talia sat in the hotel hallway, stunned. It had all happened so fast, from the high of killing it to the sudden crash down to earth a few minutes later. She had her fingers on the watch’s crown, but her hand shook, and she needed a minute to calm her nerves before she went back to play again. Besides, rewinding reliably made her nauseated and migraine-y now, so she had to be in top mental shape prior to undoing the last round. Otherwise, she would just lose right away again.

But now that the adrenaline of the tournament had died down, the compartment she’d stuffed Sam into reopened, and their conversation in this very hallway yesterday spilled back into her thoughts.

Who are you anymore, Talia?

She slumped farther down against the wall, onto the well-worn carpet.

They say you don’t know a person’s true character until they are standing at a crossroads. Talia remembered Sam telling her a story in college, about Hercules before he was famous and had done any grand deeds. He’d been at a fork in the road, and two goddesses were tempting him in different directions. One offered him an easy life where everything went his way. Another offered him a noble life, where he would have to make hard decisions, but he would be given the opportunity to do the right things.

Talia looked at the watch on her wrist. Was it the goddess offering her the easy way out?

But life wasn’t as simple as a Greek parable. The crossroads Talia stood at wasn’t about only herself. Her choice was not about whether she took home a million dollars to keep or whether she let someone else have it. Her choice would steer the direction of her company and, in turn, potentially the fate of billions of people.

God, that sounded self-important and melodramatic. But in a world where a handful of big technology companies like Omni really could put their thumbs on the scale and affect the opinions and decisions of entire populations, didn’t Talia have a duty to do her part to make sure that her contribution, her technology, was used responsibly?

And yet, if she believed in fairness, if she believed in being an upright person, how could she continue to rewind and cheat to win this tournament? Her past stock investments had already teetered on that moral line. Now it seemed Talia had moved the line so that she could conveniently stay on the “right” side of it.

If she hadn’t had the watch, would she ever have condoned cheating?

Absolutely not.

So then why was it acceptable now?

I didn’t ask for this watch to be given to me, Talia argued with herself.

But even as she thought it, she knew it was just a deflection from the hard truth that she had bent the rules of morality to suit herself.

She could rewind time over and over until she won the tournament, and no one would remember any different.

Except her.

Talia would remember. And she would have to live with the truth of the kind of person she’d become.

Who are you anymore, Talia?

She got up and walked to the payout area, where she was supposed to fill out paperwork to claim her prize. But when she arrived at the table, Talia handed over her tournament entry receipt and said, “I’m forfeiting my winnings. Please give them to the next-ranked player who actually deserves it.”

Talia

Omni’s product development engineers descended on Ideal Life’s offices on Monday, taking over all the free space on the third floor. Due diligence for the acquisition had reached the phase where Omni now wanted to talk to their counterparts here. Talia had thought that Ideal Life had plenty of room, but with ten Omni engineers here, it was a bit tight.