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FEATURES WIRED 29.10

P.58 LOOKS P.36 THE PAIN

ALGORITHM
P.64 SPICE WORLD
As the latest take on

THAT The latest weapon in

the war on drugs is a
Dune hits theaters,
we trace the legacy
predictive AI on your of Frank Herbert’s
QUILL doctor’s computer. It prescient masterpiece.
can determine who by Jonathan Bratten,
receives treatment for Andy Greenberg,
The African pygmy hedge- pain—and who doesn’t. Jason Kehe, and
hog may be the most by Maia Szalavitz Angela Watercutter
Instagrammable pet ever.
P.48 THE NATURE P.78 TO THE PIXEL
But behind the tiny top
hats and miniature spa OF TIDES AND BEYOND
weekends, I discovered a Last year in a bayside Alvy Ray Smith is the
sad tale of internet virality. town in Nova Scotia, little-known thinker
by Noelle Mateer 3-year-old Dylan Ehler who made Pixar (and
vanished. Online sleuths all computer animation)
descended on Facebook possible. Now he’s got a
groups to help with the vision for where digital
search. Then they turned. light will take us next.
by Katherine Laidlaw by Steven Levy

0 0 3
CONTENTS WIRED 29.10

ON THE MIND
COVER GRENADES

P.07 Living in the Immaterial World

by Virginia Heffernan

P.10 The Web 1.0 of Climate Change

For artist Sam Cannon, the by Paul Ford
inspiration for this issue’s
P.16 China Reins in Its Own Tech
cover image came—as pain
Titans
often does—quickly and with-
by Jennifer Conrad
out warning. “The morning
I received the commission, P.18 Can This Startup Be Saved?
I threw my back out,” she says. by Arielle Pardes
“Laying on a heating pad, try-
P.20 Gear: The Best New Headphones
ing not to move, I imagined
by Parker Hall
my body pressed into a bed of
needles. The pinscreen toys P.22 Cloud Support: Is It OK to
we played with as children Listen to Butt-Dial Messages?
felt like a visceral metaphor by Meghan O’Gieblyn
to communicate the themes
of Maia Szalavitz’s piece.”

POST

P.24 ONBOARDING
An excerpt from The Every.
by Dave Eggers

SIX-WORD
SCI-FI

P.88 Very Short Stories

by WIRED readers

0 0 4
 MISTY COPELAND
Principal Dancer
American Ballet Theatre

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BY VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN MIND GRENADES 0 0 7

I LIKE A get-rich-quick scheme—what

American doesn’t?—and not too long ago I
alighted on drop-shipping. The idea came
up like this: Plastic straws were in the moral
firing line, and if they were banned, I figured
Americans would soon need another way to
slurp our iced coffees.
Under turbo-capitalism, Twenty metal straws could be found on
everyone’s a symbolic analyst. Amazon for $10, and I calculated I could
sell them to cafés for $1.50 each, and they
could charge $2 each, and we’d all do well by
doing good. But then, as all who chase accel-
erated prosperity do, I got greedy. Surely I
could find a cheaper wholesaler, an

ILLUSTRATION / JAMES DAW

IDEAS

obscure Chinese clearinghouse where metal There’s some real economics to this.
straws went for pennies. Realizing, too, that Most Americans stopped learning farm-
my modest floor space couldn’t hold much ing or trades a century ago, and then a vast
inventory, I was delighted to learn that man- swath also stopped learning factory work,
ufacturers in China ship, then drop—drop- blue- or white-collar. The manipulation of
ship—straight to customers. undigitized, offline objects, stuff with mass
I was in. If I offshored not just the man- like wheat or stainless steel, was no longer
ufacturing but the warehousing and pack- a promising field of endeavor.
aging and shipping of the straws, I’d just The traditional professions like law and
need to design some kind of advertising medicine hung steady, but as everything
come-on; set up an online shop where offered less security, even professors, doc-
every purchase would trigger the wholesaler tors, lawyers, and accountants found they
to release straws to the paying customer; had to market themselves. Meanwhile, peo-
allow the wholesaler to dock my merchant’s ple in retail, advertising, and every kind of
account for the low price; and the markup customer service did sales, sales, and noth-
would go to me me me. I’d never even have ing but sales, and most of us in journalism
to see the straws, let alone store them or also ended up shilling for ourselves online.
(God forbid) make them, like some hard- This is precisely what a cluster of gloomy
hearted, tireless American industrialist of polymaths predicted in the 1990s. Figures
the 1890s or 1920s. I said get rich quick. like the eccentric Edward Luttwak, the
Finding a wholesaler was easy. You can conservative booster of coups, described
use Oberlo for that. I chose something called a future where capitalism was vertigi-
Dunhuangwang (or DHgate) in Beijing for nously unfettered by government, where
its 30-cent metal straws, and I ordered 100 corporations would no longer take care of
myself to prime the pump. I had goods! employees from start date to gold-watch
I had a shipper! Setting up my site for “The retirement. What he called turbo-capitalism
Last Straw” on Shopify was also a breeze. would, he wrote, leave many, many Amer-
Ablaze with ambition, I engineered the site icans in the economic dust. The survivors
to take bitcoin, eyes on the horizon, high on would work in pixie dust, pixelated dust, the
my private prosperity gospel. Then I headed new galaxy of online symbols.
over to Instagram to make ads … These economists foresaw an all-scab
And there was the catch-22. Of course labor force—or “freelancers,” since trade
I can design a picturesque hero shot of a unions too would be all but obsolete. Like
stainless-steel straw aimed at seducing cli- scabs, freelancers would assume social and
ents inspired by fine design and an organic- economic risk—not by crossing picket lines
modern lifestyle, if not by the taste of metal but by forgoing the security, benefits, fel-
in their mouth. But how to get the posts lowship, and regularity of salaried work.
seen? Even when I paid to promote them, What’s more, our labor would be a form of
they attracted few likes, and I couldn’t make make-work that economist Robert Reich
a sale to save my life. To win customers I’d once called “analyzing symbols”—writ-
need to become an influencer, it seemed. ing copy, organizing information, making
And if I had a formula for becoming an spreadsheets, and otherwise avoiding the
influencer, I’d already be rich—and being world in favor of representations of it. For-
rich already is as quick as getting rich gets. get about working in three dimensions. On
The lesson was demoralizing. Not only the internet, are we even working in two?
is building influence via clever posts what In 1994, just as economists were fret-
must be done to make a fortune in the US, ting, my first cousins Bert and John Jacobs
it’s one of the only things we Americans launched a blockbuster T-shirt company
can do, whether well (like Kylie Jenner) or called Life is Good. The original shirts fea-
poorly (like me). Drop-shipping leaves the tured an irresistible stick figure in a beret
college grad with Andrew Carnegie dreams called Jake, one of the thousands of doo-
only one task, the kind formerly assigned to dles they used to toss off when we were
unpaid youths with trust funds: Turn some kids, when they were known as athletes
darling digital pictures viral. and artists facing what one uncle archly
29.10 MIND GRENADES 0 0 9

called “limited prospects.” LPs. out of the back of a van, and entered the Stay Home”) but the traditional retail cycle
I was in graduate school for English at rag trade when it was mostly unchanged requires at least a year from design to dis-
the time, anxious about my own LPs: life from the 19th century. tribution. To adjust, they invested in tech-
as an adjunct, always on probation and for- I began to tell John about my failed ven- nology that allows them to respond quickly
ever angling for tenure or at least a living ture in metal straws but couldn’t bring to demand—and shortens the time between
wage. I knew that the cousins were finding myself to describe the folly. Later, Bert told design and distribution. They hold limited
fun and profit drawing, while also doing the me that at the start of the pandemic Life inventory, and the company is more life-
elbow-grease work that was mysterious to is Good had nearly gone bankrupt. Retail style brand than rag trade. So maybe they
me: cotton, dyes, factories, workers, trucks stores closed. Half their business van- are symbolic analysts too.
and ships. It seemed very … material. ished. What’s more, he and John wanted If Bert and John experience the same
I had my own path. And at the start of this to join the effort to mitigate the spread of something-more-than-alienation I feel
century, there was also room in the tradi- the virus. They blueprinted topical shirts when analyzing symbols, they don’t show
tional economy for an immaterialist like (“Wash Your Paws,” “Stay Calm, Stay Cool, it. They take life as it comes. John always
myself. In 2003 I joined a union that put my says the brand’s optimism is less for “easy
labor as a journalist on par with the skilled street” types and more for people in hard
drivers of trucks that deliver newspapers
by the ton. But that was the last time I felt
There’s a Major times, or pandemics, who are grateful for
things like Frisbee and sandwiches. They
secure at work. When I left the union in 2011 Tom factor to give 10 percent of profits (“no matter what,”
for a higher-paying job, I actually felt cold
at first, newly vulnerable to some undefin-
being a freelance says Bert) to help kids coping with trauma.
It’s pretty clear I should have ignored the
able elements the union seemed to have symbolic analyst, life-is-dismal economists and followed Bert
been protecting me from. There’s a Major
Tom factor to being a freelance symbolic
floating in a most and John into T-shirts in the ’90s. I’m going
to follow their lead this time and try for
analyst, floating in a most peculiar way. But peculiar way. more equanimity, and even sincerity that
I tell myself I’m used to it.
My cousins and I caught up over the
But I tell myself risks sentimentality, in the ’20s. The Jacobs
brothers are never wrong. And I’m telling
summer at a family reunion. They’re my I’m used to it. you, they are actually happy people.
teachers in so many arenas, including hope
and love. I adore them. They faced turbu- VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN (@page88) is a
lence in childhood, started selling shirts regular contributor to WIRED .

CHARTGEIST by Jon J. Eilenberg

Facebook Metaverse Partnerships Muskian Future

Humanoid
VR Meetings TikTok Shopify Tesla robot

Still should have been an email The Max Out Your No Ludicrous mode, please
Credit Card Challenge
 BY PAUL FORD IDEAS 0 1 0

As I go all in on my climate change

obsession, things are starting to
look like Web 1.0. Let’s hope the
potential for real progress doesn’t
go the way of Pets.com.

I HAD WONDERED what shape my midlife cri- PhDs. The inevitability of aging doesn’t sting And humanity can’t fight off something this
sis would take. I don’t drive, so a convert- so much when you can project a netCDF file huge with a framework. Where’s the action?
ible was out. I don’t want to learn the guitar onto a 3D-rendered globe so that it shows I started to attend webinars, join Slack
or collect vintage tube amps. When I asked how many days per year a given location groups. People generally mentioned Pata-
my wife whether I should have an affair, she will be above 32 degrees Celsius (hot). Mak- gonia as a good climate actor, then sort
just looked at the ceiling and then went back ing the globe, I felt a sense of control. And of trailed off. I looked where investors
to helping me get my prescriptions refilled. isn’t that a kind of fun? were funneling their money. The big dol-
That left the obsessive-nerd option: getting Going deeper into Climateworld, I read lars went straight to established players in
really, really into climate change. The Great Derangement and The Collapse clean energy—Tesla for its batteries, Plug
It started with climate modeling. What of Western Civilization. I read Drawdown: Power for its hydrogen fuel cells. What
the climate modelers do is use software The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Pro- about newer arrivals? I made a list of all the
to divide the atmosphere and oceans into posed to Reverse Global Warming. I clicked interesting climate startups, around 2,000
imaginary cubes, then define what happens through different organizations’ climate of them, and turned it into an ebook so I
inside each of the cubes over time. Then websites, from the United Nations to Ches- could read it on my phone at night.
they make the cubes talk to each other. ter County, Pennsylvania. What I kept find- Sometimes, as I scrolled down the list, a
It’s like a less enjoyable Minecraft. I don’t ing were frameworks—and countless PDFs. big investment would catch my eye—$60
understand most of it. So many nicely formatted, map-laden, million for a company that promises to take
But much of the data is free to down- chart-packed, grant-funded artifacts of carbon dioxide out of the air, $68 million
load, and I love a bargain. I had a good time bureaucratic love. My computer was burst- for one that will turn it into fuel and mate-
messing with the opaque sets of latitudes, ing with them. rials. But the funding thins out quickly. It’s
longitudes, and scientific measurements, Well, all right, I thought. You can’t spend easy for investors to get distracted; there
each variable representing at least a dozen your midlife crisis reading books and PDFs. are just so many butter knives we

ILLUSTRATIONS / ELENA LACEY

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29.10 MIND GRENADES 0 1 2

could wield against the dragon of global I ASSUME THAT the money will come. There
collapse. We have new strategies for recy- are too many hot days for it not to. And
cling, new ways of keeping the sun out of obviously I want things to go differently
the house, electricity from kites, analytics this time. But I don’t know how you boot-
firms that use machine learning to fix insur- strap a globe-spanning bureaucracy yester-
ance, companies that want to connect mil- day. I can’t even tell you what infrastructure
lennials with ecological brands. And every we need, just that in general infrastructure
one seems sure that they are the solution, evolves, slowly, in response to tragedy.
that they will help us cross the threshold Worse, if my déjà vu is accurate and his-
into degrowth. They know the answer. tory repeats itself—if the internet was the last
I began to feel a strong sense of déjà vu. big thing, and climate is the next big thing
I couldn’t place it until, one night, in the (or the last big thing)—then we aren’t at the
glow of the e-reader, I realized: It’s Web precipice of a new era. We’re at the begin-
1.0 all over again. We are in the Pets.com- ning of a bubble. The trillions in investment
puppet-mascot era of climate. The comedy have to go somewhere. By the time all the
of the technology industry is playing again money is spent, the companies in my ebook
as a kind of Ibsenian tragedy: Scientists and will probably be gone, save for a few dozen.
academics told everyone about this thing Rolled up, evaporated. And then what? It’s
for decades, and almost everyone ignored not like we can just wait for the market to
them. But then enough people got inter- recover and see what happens.
ested, and now there’s a market. And as a Which all makes for a perfect midlife cri-
result there are a million business mod- sis. I’ve never felt so young, even when I was
els, a million solutions, huge promises of young. Two months ago, I stepped down
the change to come: We’ll pour everything as CEO of the company I cofounded. Now
we have into green-energy infrastructure. I’m writing an open source tool to make
We’ll transact in carbon marketplaces. netCDFs more accessible to nerds. I have
We’ll pull a trillion tons of CO2 out of the no great hope, no clear plans, but I’m oddly
air every year. Never mind that today we upbeat. I’m downloading geoTIFFs of global
can do about 0.0005 percent of that, which coffee yields and riding my bike again. It
rounds to nothing. brings me back to an un-wild youth spent
If history There are good VCs being venturesome sneaking into conferences where people
repeats with their capital. There are funds that are
investing in green things. But—and God
in cool shoes with the sides of their heads
shaved talked about changing the world
itself, then help me for wishing it—there’s no Google, with XML.
we aren’t at no Apple or Microsoft, no monster in the
middle taking its cut. There isn’t one car-
We felt technology deeply then, read stan-
dards, tried to predict the future. I thought I
the precipice bon market; there isn’t one set of stan- would never feel that again, that sense of
of a new era. dards to follow; there are dozens of options,
which means there isn’t really anything at
empty territory. The intoxication of knowing
absolutely nothing but jumping in nonethe-
We’re at the all. Whole careers are dedicated, wonder- less. I am optimistic that we can skip the
beginning of ful people, great science, online carbon
calculators, but for right now it rounds to
bubble. I have to be. The world is going to
change again. This time we know how.
a bubble. nothing. Amazon Web Services hosts open
climate data, but I wish there were an AWS PAUL FORD (@ftrain) is a programmer,
for climate. I wish I could tell you what it essayist, and cofounder of Postlight, a
should do. digital product studio.
 MORE THAN 1,000
companies and executives —
representing businesses from
Main Street to Wall Street –
have signed on in support
of a public paid family and
medical leave program.
Investments in the care economy are key
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Working people, businesses of all sizes,

and our nation’s economy all do better
when we each have time to care
for ourselves and our families.

BusinessForPaidLeave.Org • SmallBusinessForPaidLeave.Org/Take-Action
 BY JENNIFER CONRAD BUSINESS

Once regarded with national pride, companies like Alibaba,

Didi, and Tencent are being slapped with fines and leashed with
new regulations. The party is over—for the good of the Party.

THE UNITED STATES is not the only super- it from registering new users. Soon after, lenge to Xi Jinping or even party rule.”
power that has recently become wary of its the government levied antimonopoly fines Consider the reach of just one internet
homegrown tech industry. In late July, Chi- against Didi and other tech companies, giant that has come in for fines and scrutiny
na’s Ministry of Industry and Information including Tencent, for a decade’s worth of in recent months: Tencent’s data ecosystem
Technology announced that it was embark- mergers and acquisitions. spans social media, gaming, maps, mobile
ing on a six-month campaign to regulate Didi had reportedly been warned by reg- payments, and investing—with many other
the country’s internet companies, to rein in ulators to delay its IPO but chose to move companies and even government agencies
practices that “disrupt market order, damage ahead. Other Chinese giants seemed to hosting their services within its WeChat app.
consumer rights, or threaten data security.” get the memo: ByteDance put its overseas The government eyes that kind of empire
But in contrast to Washington’s circular IPO on hold after meetings with regula- jealously. “Personal data, corporate data,
debates over how, exactly, platforms should tors, sources told The Wall Street Jour- government data—they want access to
be tamed, the Chinese Communist Party nal. The day after the ministry announced everything,” says Jeremy Mark, a senior
is moving with breathtaking decisiveness. its campaign, Tencent told Reuters it was fellow at the Geoeconomics Center of the
“Every element of the bureaucracy is now suspending new China registrations on the Atlantic Council. Beijing would love noth-
aligned toward bringing private high-tech ubiquitous WeChat app “to align with all ing more than to plow all that data into its
Chinese companies to heel to serve the par- relevant laws and regulations.” own list of strategically important emerging
ty’s broader mission,” says Scott Kennedy, a The clampdown comes amid moves technologies: everything from blockchain-
China expert at the US Center for Strategic by President Xi to assert more authority based financial services to medical research
and International Studies. over virtually every aspect of Chinese life. to the surveillance state.
Friction between Chinese president Xi Observers say the government, empow- The government’s proxies in the media
Jinping’s government and the Chinese tech ered by a raft of new legislation, wants are also not above painting these compa-
industry broke into public view last Octo- to regain control of largely unregulated nies, somewhat ironically, as Big Brotherish
ber, when Alibaba founder Jack Ma gave a tech companies that have become too big, snoops. A July 5 editorial in the state-run
speech in which he warned that overregula- too powerful, and all too willing to abuse Global Times described how Didi, with 80
tion could stifle innovation. “Xi saw this as a their market share by engaging in pred- percent of the ride-hail market in China,
sign that these companies forgot who’s boss,” atory practices. Meanwhile, Xi seems to holds sensitive information about people’s
Kennedy says. Soon after Ma’s speech, Aliba- be realigning the country’s tech sector to personal travel habits. “No wonder the pub-
ba’s financial arm, Ant Group, suspended a favor state-led development in the areas lic is so concerned about how Didi uses the
planned IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong to he cares about, such as artificial intel- personal information it has collected over the
first ensure it could comply with new rules ligence. And there’s growing fear that years,” the editorial said. “No internet giant
for fintech companies. In December, reg- exposure to foreign markets—and foreign is allowed to become a super database that
ulators opened an antitrust investigation regulators—is too risky in an increasingly has more personal data about the Chinese
into Alibaba, resulting in a $2.8 billion fine. hostile international environment. people than the country does.” Rumors also
Hints of a wider crackdown started “Xi Jinping is always worried about polit- spread on Chinese social media that Didi had
brewing earlier this year. On June 30 the ical loyalty: to him, to the Communist Party, turned over its user data to US regulators.
ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing raised to the party’s ideology,” says Susan Shirk, And a 2015 report by Didi’s research arm has
$4.4 billion in an IPO on the New York Stock chair of the 21st Century China Center at started recirculating on the internet, showing
Exchange—the largest for a Chinese com- UC San Diego. She says Xi can’t be sure of how the company tracked the comings and
pany since Alibaba in 2014—only to have the loyalty of China’s tech titans, who have goings of government employees, including
Chinese authorities launch an investigation become rich and famous—and sit on large which agencies worked the longest hours.
two days later. Citing “serious violations of stores of data. “It makes him very nervous Until recently, it would have seemed
laws and regulations in collecting and using because he doesn’t know what they’ll do unthinkable for Beijing to intervene in
personal information,” regulators had Didi with all these resources. At some point they the private sector so heavily. When China
pulled from domestic app stores and barred could perhaps use them to organize a chal- joined the World Trade Organization

ILLUSTRATION / ARD SU
29.10 MIND GRENADES 0 1 7

has been ramping up its control of cyber-

space. In 2016 and then again in 2018, Xi
gave speeches that prioritized aligning the
tech sector with his goals for national devel-
opment. Then a 2018 government reorgani-
zation empowered the country’s regulators
and gave them new resources. Regulations
released in 2020 called for cybersecurity
reviews of Chinese companies in the name
of national security. And two laws coming
into effect this fall target how tech compa-
nies collect and store data.
Beijing’s tightening of the leash on its
tech industry also comes amid rising ten-
sions between China and the US, includ-
ing moves by American officials to fence
Chinese companies out of stateside mar-
kets. A US law enacted last year requires
foreign companies to delist from American
exchanges if they don’t allow their audits to
be reviewed by US regulators, which is pro-
hibited under Chinese law. Other US reg-
ulations have taken aim at investment in
Chinese surveillance companies and the
export of microchip technology to China.
China’s move to a state-directed model
has risks. “The most vibrant part of its econ-
omy is the private sector,” Kennedy says.
Government bureaucrats could never have
envisioned tech companies’ innovations in
ecommerce and services, he says, and the
drive to closely manage the industry could
slow economic growth.

Xi Jinping in 2001, the prevailing view was that it

would become more like Western capital-
It’s a gamble the government seems
willing to take. Mark says China’s leaders
can’t be sure ist countries—and to a certain extent, that appear ready to “make sacrifices in order

of the loyalty happened. The government encouraged

Chinese tech companies to list their stock
to mold or shape a future structure of gov-
ernance, a future financial system, that is
of China’s tech on foreign exchanges to get access to cap- much more controllable and controlled.”

titans, who ital, new investors, and new technology.

“Chinese authorities have basically given
“What is driving that is Xi pushing his
own government and ruling party to assert
have become up on that project,” Kennedy says, adding unprecedented control over the Chinese

rich and that they now see mostly risks and vul-
nerabilities in foreign engagement. As vig-
people,” he adds. “It has existed in the past,
but never with the means of technology,
famous—and orous as the country’s private sector has surveillance, and data crunching that now

sit on large become, China’s leadership is still nomi-

nally Marxist and more than willing to put
exists in China.” To get an idea of the most
extreme version of that endgame, just ask
stores of data. the needs of the state over the dictates of the Uyghurs.
a free market—especially under Xi, who
has in many ways been setting the stage Staff writer JENNIFER CONRAD
for this moment for years. (@jenniferconrad) is based in Brooklyn,
Since the passage of the National Secu- New York. She produces WIRED’s twice-
rity Law in 2015, the Chinese government weekly Fast Forward newsletter.
 BY ARIELLE PARDES BUSINESS

Can this startup be saved? The stresses

of the pandemic are driving Silicon Valley
cofounders to couples therapy.

B E F O R E T H E Y W E R E cofounders, Kris Cofounder therapy belongs to a long underestimate the challenge of working
Chaisanguanthum and Ryan Damm were tradition of self-betterment in Silicon Val- alongside another person, day in and day
friends. Then, in 2016, they started Visby, ley, alongside mindfulness meditation out. Noam Wasserman, who spoke to thou-
a holographic imaging company. “You talk and intermittent fasting. But it has rapidly sands of founders when writing his 2012
about getting into business with somebody become more mainstream after a stressful book The Founder’s Dilemma, estimated
that you get along with, but there’s nothing pandemic year. at the time that 65 percent of startups fail
you do with friends that’s as intense as start- Laura Kasper, a psychologist in San because of cofounder conflict.
ing a company,” Chaisanguanthum says. “It’s Francisco, noticed a significant uptick in Much like the rash of pandemic break-
like having a child.” cofounder clients during the pandemic, ups, says Matthew Jones, a psychologist and
Chaisanguanthum already had a child but when external stressors made startup life creator of the Cofounder Clarity Coaching
was not prepared for the cofounder com- even more intense. “The majority were in Method, the pandemic didn’t cause conflicts
mitment. He and Damm had trouble navi- crisis,” she says. Communication issues between cofounders so much as bring exist-
gating disagreements. After a difficult day, magnified when conversations were lim- ing ones to the surface. “If there was anger
Damm liked to commiserate; Chaisanguan- ited to email and Zoom. Power struggles, and resentment that wasn’t being addressed,
thum preferred to be left alone. Eventually one of the most common problems among that really started to show up more intensely,”
the hurt feelings compounded to make their founding teams, were exacerbated by an he says. “I saw several partnerships that, in
working relationship untenable. Chaisan- onslaught of new business decisions, like different circumstances, may have been able
guanthum recalled an article he’d read whether to pivot. to last a bit longer.” Since colleagues are gen-
about cofounders going to therapy, like Reid Hoffman has likened running a erally less likely to talk about their feelings
troubled couples. “I remember thinking, startup to “throwing yourself off a cliff than couples, tensions drove a number of
that’s the most Silicon Valley thing ever,” and assembling an airplane on the way exasperated clients into his virtual office.
he says. But what did they have to lose? The down.” Elon Musk has compared it to Jones charges a $2,000 monthly retainer
two booked an appointment. “eating glass.” But many founders still to help his cofounder clients “leverage
29.10 MIND GRENADES 0 1 9

self-awareness” in their decisionmaking. to me with one question,” she says. “Should

While the work is distinct from execu- I stay or should I go?” Jones says it’s nor-
tive coaching or couples therapy, he puts mal for founders to “regret choosing their READOUT
a similar emphasis on trust-building and cofounder in moments of distress,” but he The world, quantified.
communication. “Most business-related says coaching can help redirect some of the
disagreements are actually due to unad- anguish away from each other.
dressed emotional difficulties,” he says. Other services seek to meet founders
“I teach cofounders the art of navigating before they’re at each other’s throats. Eric
conflict by slowing down and really listen-
ing to each other in a way that helps one
another feel heard and understood.”
It can sound a little woo-woo, but some
Friedman, a former founder and investor,
developed a tool last year called Tapestry
to help cofounders nurture their relation-
ship. For $200, cofounders can access his
200
swear by it. One startup founder told me template to explore their startup “super- →
that simple exercises, like repeating back powers,” strategies for managing conflict, Number of high-end laptops’
computing power required to
what his cofounder had said to him before and expectations for the future—includ- run the systems in a typical
responding, had likely saved his business ing the likely scenario that their venture autonomous vehicle, according
relationship. “If you think about startup cul- will fail. “People have said, ‘I don’t want to to chipmaker Nvidia.

ture, there’s a premium on speed,” he said. do trust falls in the forest. I want to grind
“This is getting us to slow down deliber- away and build something,’” he says. “But
ately.” As helpful as his sessions were, he you spend all day, every day, with your

2.3%
and his cofounder spoke to me on the con- cofounder. Wouldn’t you like to know how
dition of anonymity, because they are rais- they like to process a problem?”
ing their Series B and don’t want to alienate Of course, trust falls and therapy can-
investors. “Going to therapy,” he said, “sug- not solve many of the existential problems
gests there is a problem.” startups face. One cofounder, who asked →
Indeed, Kasper says her clients are almost to remain anonymous, told me that coun- Portion of active Twitter
always on the precipice by the time they seling failed to address what he saw as the users who have enabled
seek her out. “Cofounders typically come real problems in his startup. He believed two-factor authentication.
The security feature has
the company’s bank account—not his com- been available since 2013.
munication style—was in need of immedi-
ate attention. Kasper says her role is not to
solve business problems. “I can help them

200K
deescalate, listen to each other, and make
a good decision about whether they should
move forward as partners or not,” she says.
“I’m their relationship adviser, not their
business adviser.” →
For Chaisanguanthum and Damm, Dollars that gaming celebrity
nearly a year of cofounder therapy Richard “FaZe Banks” Bengston
says he made per day running
revealed that they had different expecta- a gambling site where players
tions for their startup—and their relation- use in-game virtual goods as
ship. Chaisanguanthum felt that the currency for making wagers.

sessions provided a space “where we could

believe we were being heard by each other,

46
in good faith.” Damm, on the other hand,
didn’t feel that he accomplished much. “In
hindsight, I don’t feel cofounder coaching
was a good use of my time and money,” he
says, “and I would not do it again.” In the
→
end, they split up. Max speed in mph of a
hypothetical 220-pound
Staff writer ARIELLE PARDES house cat, according to
the Journal of Theoretical
(@pardesoteric) chronicles our relation- Biology. A spider of the same
ships with technology. weight would reach 35 mph.

ILLUSTRATION / SIMONE NORONHA

 BY PARKER HALL GEAR

Ear Supply
The best headphones of 2021 (so far).

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AUDIOPHILES LISTENING
Apple AirPods Max Samsung Galaxy
The two leaders of the Buds2
premium over-ear head- Samsung’s newest buds
phone market, Sony and pack much of the same
Bose, have tussled over tech you’ll find inside
the active noise canceling Apple’s high-end AirPods
crown for a decade. But Pro, for a price that’s
Apple has now claimed nearly the same as the
the throne: Its elite over- lower-cost standard
ears are far and away the AirPods. You get wire-
best high-end wireless less charging, active

Courtesy of Master & Dynamic; Apple; Monoprice; Samsung; Focal; Nothing; LG; Secretlab; Netflix
headphones you can buy. noise canceling, a nearly
You’ll pay a Benjamin or swimmable IPX7 water-
two more than you would resistance rating, and
for competitors’ cans, five hours of play time
↓ BEST FOR BUDGET AUDIOPHILES but that earns you truly between trips into the
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If your wallet isn’t ready to handle an audiophile-league pur- dual-driver array inside
Apple devices, and build each bud is among the
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Monoprice. (Yes, the cheapo cable e-tailer.) The drivers use best-sounding in the
none. If you care about wirefree world, but the
thin strips of magnetized metal to create sound instead of the your music and prefer
typical piston-like dynamic speakers. You get better bass and real reason we prefer
the outside world to stay these to Apple’s earbuds
less distortion overall, and the open wooden ear cups give the dead quiet, they’re well
headphones a massively wide soundstage. The M570s frankly is the fit: They feel amaz-
worth a listen. $549 ing and play nicely with
have no business sounding so good at this price. $249
smaller ears. $150
29.10 MIND GRENADES 0 2 1

WIRED RECOMMENDS
The latest picks from our reviews team.

LG C1 OLED TV (65-inch)

→ RATING: 8/1O $2,100

WIRED TIRED
OLED display delivers Smart TV interface a bit
perfect blacks and clunky. No easy way to
infinite contrast. Almost cast from Windows, and
zero input lag and 4K no HBO Max app. Speak-
playback at 120 fps make ers sound flat and tinny.
↑ BEST FOR DEEP it the first TV to offer a (As with most TVs, you
LISTENING better gaming experience need to grab a sound-
↓ BEST WIREFREE ON
Focal Celestee than a PC monitor. bar.) Static images can
A BUDGET
These French-made over- Includes Nvidia G-Sync leave burn-in marks on
ears are among the best- Nothing Ear 1 and AMD Freesync tech the screen, but only after
sounding wired head- These buds from new- for smooth PC gaming. thousands of hours.
phones this side of a comer Nothing—a startup Nice Wiimote-like remote. —Parker Hall
thousand dollars. Focal headed by OnePlus
is beloved for its even cofounder Carl Pei—have
more expensive (if you busted into the wirefree
can believe it) head- headphone market with Secretlab Titan Evo 2022
phones, but many of the a smart design and great Series Gaming Chair
appointments that make features at a price that’s
those rarified models so causing a stir. The clear,
sought after have trickled water-resistant earphones → RATING: 7/1O $429
down to the Celestee: get four hours of battery
ultrasoft leather ear- life per charge with active
noise canceling on and WIRED TIRED
pads, gobs of gorgeously Good range of adjust- Recline mechanism can
machined copper and 5.7 hours with it off. WIRED
reviewer Chris Haslam ability. Four-way lumbar be jerky. Foam is very
aluminum, and, of course, support allows for hours firm, which might not be
truly astonishing sound. found the sound to be a bit
shy of audiophile quality, of continuous sitting. for everyone. Not made
Match them with your Excellent armrests, with of breathable material.
favorite headphone amp, but he says it’s impressive
given their sub-$100 cost. swappable magnetic gel No depth adjustment,
or just plug them into your pillows. Wide range of so picking the right size
stereo, smartphone, or Our favorite detail: The
charging case is also clear, color schemes. Not as is crucial. Doesn’t help
computer. $995 garish as other gaming you play better, as manu-
so you can always see if
your buds are inside. $99 chairs, but more striking facturers would have
than your average office you believe.
roller. Easy to assemble. —Simon Hill

Samsung Galaxy A32 5G

→ RATING: 8/1O $280

WIRED TIRED
Your best bet for a sub- Apps don’t launch with
$300 phone: two-day lightning speed (which
battery life, solid perfor- is par for the course at
mance, 6.5-inch LCD with this price). Bottom-firing
a game-friendly 90-Hz speaker easy to block in
refresh rate. Comes with landscape mode. Some
a MicroSD card slot, detail is lost in photos
headphone jack, reliable taken indoors or at sun-
fingerprint sensor, four set, and at night there’s
years of security updates, a lot of grain.
PARKER HALL (@pwhall) is a product reviewer at and two OS upgrades. —Julian Chokkattu
WIRED , focusing on consumer technology. For the full reviews of these products and more, visit WIRED .com/gear.
BY MEGHAN O’GIEBLYN ADVICE

DEAR CLOUD SUPPORT:

Is It OK to Listen to
Butt-Dial Voicemails?
Dear Scuttle Butt,

The butt-dial voicemail is the most aes-

thetically underrated artifact of our time.
Years from now, when cell phones are
relegated to the museum of technological
obsolescence, we will finally recognize the
strange beauty of these ghostly dispatches,
recordings captured without human intent,
wisps of life that occasionally rose to the level
of art. The muffled, vaguely sonographic
rustle of a pocket, or a purse. The familiar
voices that seem to be speaking from the
depths of the ocean. Everyone listens—how
can you not? There is always the possibility
of emergency. Someone has fallen and is
lying, helpless, unable to speak. A thief has
broken into the house and your loved one is
crouched in the closet, afraid to whisper for
help. Voicemails, after all, are messages, and
you wait in vain for the missive long after
it’s clear that there is none, that there is only
the crunch of footsteps across gravel, the
buzz of an electric razor, the unmistakable
sound of your mother’s laughter, reaching
you for no reason as you sit at your desk on
the other side of the country, eating lunch
in the glow of your Twitter feed.
That’s not to say there isn’t some garden-
variety voyeurism at play. Overhearing
some revealing tidbit—perhaps even
A couple times a month, my mom, or sometimes my
dad, butt-dials me and accidentally leaves a voice-
mail that is several minutes long. I always listen to
the entire thing, even though I’ve never overheard Cloud Support: Spiritual
Troubleshooting for the Digital Age
anything interesting. Why do I continue to do this?
For philosophical guidance on
And is it OK to eavesdrop on people’s lives without encounters with technology, write
to cloudsupport@ WIRED .com.
their knowledge? —SCUTTLE BUTT
29.10 MIND GRENADES 0 2 3

about yourself—is always a non-negligible of lived experience—not the curated aura of broken the law by listening in on his private
possibility. Pocket-dial voicemails belong to intimacy, but what might be called the “deep conversation, but the court disagreed: “A
a larger category of technological seepage private,” glimpses into lives as unvarnished person who knowingly operates a device
that, as far as I know, doesn’t have a name. as the one you actually live. Given that this that is capable of inadvertently exposing his
Let’s call it “accidental surveillance.” Long material depends upon the ignorance of conversations to third-party listeners and
before cell phones, car radios occasionally those it depicts, it is rare and fleeting. The fails to take simple precautions to prevent
picked up the voices of truckers talking over impeccably crafted Zoom backdrop is such exposure does not have a reasonable
CB. Before that, there was the party line, its occasionally breached by a shirtless husband; expectation of privacy.” (The court noted,
circuit running through several households, the screen-share reveals a desktop folder additionally, that phones are capable of
carrying gossip and intrigue through the labeled DIVORCE ; a politician’s snarky aside being locked.) Given that such accidents are
neighborhood. In John Cheever’s story “The to her aide is caught on a hot mic. more common among people over a certain
Enormous Radio,” a couple discovers, much Back when public life was more robust— age, it’s tempting to see this as generational
to their amazement, that their new radio that pre-pandemic era when restaurants comeuppance. The frequency with which
intercepts conversations taking place in were crowded and offices fully operational— Rudy Giuliani butt-dialed journalists seemed,
other apartments in their building. Instead our lives were rife with moments of for a time, to augur that an administration that
of Mozart and news briefs, they turn the accidental surveillance: the phone calls remained undaunted by mass protest and
dial to hear marital spats, bedtime stories, that carried over from the neighboring the rule of law would self-destruct through
the feverish tail end of a cocktail party. The cubicle, the domestic grievances aired on senility and technological incompetence.
wife becomes obsessed with listening in the subway. Such glimpses into the lives I would hope, Scuttle Butt, that you
on the neighbors, much to her husband’s of others could be oddly comforting, a don’t harbor such animosity toward your
chagrin. “It’s indecent,” he says. “It’s like reminder, if nothing else, that you were parents—or anyone else who warrants a place
looking into windows.” not the only one whose private life often in your contacts. With that in mind, I might
Perhaps these examples strike you as failed to live up to the gleaming model of recommend the Golden Rule. Would you
quaint. What appeal, after all, can voyeurism social composure you projected online. It’s want someone listening in on your private
still hold in an age when people gladly throw a fact that is difficult to remember during life without your knowledge? Surely you are
open the curtains? The windows we peer periods of isolation. The writer Megan not so careless as to allow this to happen.
into are seemingly endless, opening onto the Stielstra wrote an essay several years ago But ancient wisdom suggests that life tends
bedrooms of celebrities, the cabins of private about how her video baby monitor, which toward moral symmetry. The high will be
yachts, the breakfast spread of British royals— came with two frequencies, picked up the brought low, we will reap what we sow.
images that appear in the feed alongside the feed of her neighbor’s child. In the lonely What lies in darkness will be brought into
intimations of ordinary mortals: the post- throes of new motherhood, she found herself light, and even you might wake up one day
chemo haircut modeled by your former switching between channels, watching this to find yourself on the dispatch end of the
boss, the positive pregnancy test proudly other sleeping infant and searching for signs generational divide. Few of us today believe
brandished by your high school nemesis. of its mother, who would occasionally step such justice is encoded in the laws of the
I suspect, Scuttle Butt, that there is some into the frame. One night, she heard the universe, but it is, oddly enough, reflected in
measure of guilt—or fear of ingratitude— woman sobbing. “I shouldn’t have listened,” modern communications technologies, which
contained in your question. It cannot but she writes, “but it was the first time since my tend to run in two directions. Where there is
seem greedy to crave yet another peek son was born that I didn’t feel alone.” a speaker, there is most likely a microphone.
into the lives of others when you can, with As for your question about the ethics of The device that receives a videofeed also has
a few clicks, be privy to so many intimacies. eavesdropping, it seems that the law is on a camera. It’s a truth that dawns on the wife in
Maybe there’s a paradox at play. It has your side. In 2013 an airport board chairman the Cheever story only after it’s too late. “Turn
become something of a cliché to point out spoke freely, on the balcony of a hotel, with that thing off,” she says to her husband, in a
that the technologies designed to connect his vice chairman about firing the airport CEO moment of panic. “Maybe they can hear us.”
us end up creating more alienation and for discriminatory reasons, only to realize
loneliness. Perhaps it’s also true that the later that he had pocket-dialed his assistant,
plasticine flavor of self-presentation has who recorded the entire conversation. The Faithfully,
made us more hungry for the raw material chairman insisted that his assistant had Cloud

MEGHAN O’GIEBLYN (@megogieblyn)

is the author of God, Human, Animal,
Machine, published in August.

ILLUSTRATION / INGA ZIEMELE

FICTION

ONBOARDING

A revealing first day

BY DAVE EGGERS

When the world’s largest search engine and that Kiki was no longer talking to her. She
social media company, the Circle, merges glanced at Kiki to find she was talking to her
with the planet’s dominant ecommerce site, screen strapped to her forearm.
it creates the richest and most dangerous— “That is so good, honey! So good!” Kiki
and, oddly enough, most beloved—monop- sang. On the screen, Delaney caught a
oly ever known: the Every. glimpse of a small boy with a mop of black
Delaney Wells is an unlikely new hire hair. They were in the shadow of the cork-
at the Every. A former forest ranger and screw tower that housed Algo Mas, the com-
unwavering tech skeptic, she charms her pany’s algorithm think tank, and Delaney
way into an entry-level job with one goal reached out to touch its aluminum clad-
in mind: to take down the company from ding just before it began its upward revolu-
within … tions. There was chatter, almost impossible
to confirm, that the first wave of suicides
happened here, Everyones throwing them-
“Not too many people start this way,” selves from the balcony of its penthouse,
Kiki said. Kiki was Delaney’s acclimator, called the Aviary. It had since been closed.
assigned to show Delaney the campus and “Yes, you tell Ms. Jasmine how much I
get her settled into her first rotation. Kiki love that,” Kiki said.
was no more than 5 feet tall, with hair the Delaney could hear nothing of the boy’s
color of Neptune and the build of a wood- voice coming through Kiki’s earpiece, could
land fairy. only watch Kiki’s eyes dart back and forth,
“I don’t take it for granted,” Delaney taking in her son’s face and surroundings.
said. “I’m so grateful.” She was nauseous. “OK, hon-hon,” Kiki said, “I’ll check back
Through three interviews and an orien- in with you in a few.” She paused. “Just a
tation, Delaney still hadn’t been allowed couple minutes. I know the other parents
onto the main campus. Instead she had are still there.” Another pause. “I’ll be back
been relegated to outer buildings and, for in 10. OK. Bye-bye.”
the orientation, the auditorium, with about Now Kiki refocused on Delaney, and they
a hundred other new hires. began walking.
“I like your outfit, by the way,” Kiki said, “My son Nino. He’s 5. He goes to the Every
“very retro! Hi!” Delaney had the sense Schoolhouse. Have you seen it? Probably

PHOTOGRAPH / ELIZABETH RENSTROM 0 2 5

FICTION

not—you just got here! It’s on the other side mean, that’s the point. It’s all about helping They were almost at the main lawn. Del-
of campus, near the beach. It’s really a fan- you attain your own goals.” Her oval dinged. aney had to remind herself how to walk.
tastic school, the scores off the charts …” “Oh wait.” How could she not be found out? She
Kiki trailed off and stopped walking. She She spent another half-minute on FaceMe couldn’t remember if people move their
tapped her ear. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you with her son. Delaney stood in the shadows arms. Did they move them up and down,
so much, Ms. Jolene.” watching the activity on the lawn’s gently or just swing them? Swinging seemed silly.
And now she was back. undulating topography. There seemed to She decided against swinging, instead mov-
“They really encourage parental partic- be some kind of modern dance being per- ing them in small circles near her hips.
ipation, which I love. I love it. The parents formed—a group of figures in Lycra body- “Over there are the pods,” Kiki said.
each volunteer 10 hours a week, which is suits. “On-campus living. There are about 5,000
pretty standard, but here they go above and “See,” Kiki continued, “I set my goal Everyones living here now. Makes it so easy.
beyond by inviting parents to sit in on the to FaceMe with Nino 12 times during his No commute! Would you want to do that,
school day as often as they can. It gives the school day, and OwnSelf prorates the day do you think? Hold on.”
kids such comfort.” She focused on Delaney, and keeps me on track to achieve that—col- Kiki’s oval had dinged. She stretched her
then looked at the screen, then back to Del- lating with his teachers’ own OwnSelfs. All arms upward and let them drop slowly, as if
aney. “Where was I?” the OwnSelfs can talk to each other, which swimming the length of a pool underwater.
In the distance, Delaney could see a wide is so key. That way there’s no excuses. If “Have to be mindful,” she said, and lifted
flower-shaped expanse of buffalo grass that you have the time, the OwnSelfs coordi- her arm to show Delaney her screen. “My
she felt sure was the Daisy—she’d heard of nate, put whatever it is that needs to get first goal was fitness and wellness. I want
the Daisy. The grass was an incandescent done on your schedule, and it gets done.” to exercise, but I don’t want to decide when
green, and was dotted with a menagerie of Kiki squinted toward the Daisy. “I fought to do it. Or what kind is best, what day is
Everyones in bright clothing, but now Kiki it for a week or two, altering the OwnSelf arms day, which day is legs and abs. Own-
had stopped. itineraries. But I always made it worse. The Self just lays it out, and shows where you
“Are you on OwnSelf?” Kiki asked. one thing humans are not good at is sched- are on a minute-to-minute basis. There’s no
“No, not yet. I’m on HelpMe,” Delaney uling, right?” guesswork. Like right now”—she tapped her
said. “That’s just science,” Delaney said. oval—“it’s showing me I’m at 3,401 steps for
“Oh, I have to move you over to OwnSelf. Kiki rolled her eyes in relieved approval. the day, which is 11 percent ahead of where
I’m actually beta-testing a new iteration. It’s “OwnSelf just helps you get there. It I usually am at this time. So I can probably
really extraordinary.” pre-divides the day, but it also allows for slack off for the next hour, right?”
In anticipation of coming to the Every, variances. Like this walk with you …” She Delaney had the sense Kiki might be
Delaney had been using HelpMe for a few looked at her screen. “It’s taken three and making a joke.
years; it was a relatively basic app that con- a half minutes longer than expected, and “As if!” Kiki said, and laughed theatrically.
solidated all your reminders, calendars, we haven’t even started yet. So other things Delaney pretended to laugh too. Kiki
birthdays, appointments, and even dietary will be moved around. But it’s relentlessly stopped abruptly.
goals into one place. Advertisers loved it. focused on helping you get done in a given “You know how laughter is so good for
A user programmed in their desire to eat day what you planned to get done. I can’t tell your health?” she said. “Minimum is 22 min-
a protein salad once a day, and that desire you what a difference that makes when you utes a day—Morris proved that last year—
would be sold to those selling protein sal- lay your head to sleep. I mean, total peace.” so,” she said, reading her screen again,
ads. It was caveman-simple, worked for “Right!” Delaney said. “OwnSelf’s telling me I have a ways to go
everyone, and was worth billions for the “Speaking of which, we should walk.” on that metric today. I’m at two and a half
Every. It had been invented by two Manitoba They left the shadows, and Delaney’s minutes, but they’re having an open mic
teens in a weekend. stomach cinched. Up ahead, she saw dozens tonight, so I’m thinking that should cover it.”
“OwnSelf is so much more comprehen- of people in the full sun of the wide lawn. “Wow, you really have it down,” Delaney
sive, though,” Kiki said. “I think HelpMe has, They seemed to be doing some kind of exer- said.
what, 25 data points?” cise, or were for some reason all in tight and “I know. But listen,” Kiki said, “I can
“Something like that,” Delaney said. Hers colorful exercise clothes. Among so many hook you up with OwnSelf too. It’s …” Kiki
had 22. people, she’d be discovered immediately. searched for a long word. “It’s spectacular.”
“OwnSelf has 500, baseline,” Kiki said. She was so obviously a spy. She looked at her wrist and smiled. “I’ve
“Mine’s got 677, and one of my goals is to “That’s the Duomo,” Kiki said, pointing to never felt more in control.”
get to 800 by next month. And OwnSelf will what seemed to be an Italian church. “Bailey Another ding prompted her to pull a tube
actually get me there, right?” Kiki laughed, went to Siena, loved this building, the stripes from beyond her left shoulder. Up till then,
and looked at her screen and frowned. “I mainly, so he brought it here. Or made a Delaney had assumed that Kiki’s small bur-
copy of it?” She stared at the building, as gundy backpack was decorative.
This story is adapted from the book The if it might answer. “I think it’s actually the “Water,” Kiki said. “Otherwise I don’t
Every by Dave Eggers, © 2021. Published by original and now the copy is in Siena. Does drink enough.” She took a long pull on the
McSweeney’s, an independent, nonprofit that sound right? Anyway, some of the space tube and it retreated into the pack. They
publisher. exploration people work there.” started walking toward the light again. “OK,

0 2 6
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FICTION

here’s the main gathering area, if you will.

Some call it the Daisy, which makes sense,
It started simply as a because of its shape.”
They entered the densely populated
filter. A person would expanse of winding walkways lined with
wildflowers. Now Delaney took in Kiki’s
type or dictate a text, clothing, which had come alive in full sun.
She was wearing a catsuit with a camou-
and TruVoice would flage pattern of green and pink sequins
bisected by a single zipper, which extended
scan the message from her left ankle to her right shoulder.
Next to spritely Kiki, Delaney felt lum-
for any of the Os— bering and leaden. When she’d chosen her
clothes that morning, jeans and a corn-
offensive, off-putting, flower cotton blouse, she had not thought
she was dressing in any consciously anti-
outrageous, off-color, quated way. But compared to the Every-
ones around her, she felt like an extra in
off-base, out-of-date. The Crucible. They were all in Lycra, and
they weren’t exercising. She’d seen people
dressed this way in the city, but the con-
centrated effect of so much Lycra in one
place, every curve and bulge articulated,
was new. A man overtook them, and Del-
aney realized he, too, was wearing leggings,
which hugged and amplified his manhood.
She made an involuntary sound, something
between Excuse me and Oh sweet Jesus.
“Did you say something?” Kiki asked.
Delaney couldn’t elaborate. Everywhere
around her were men in form-fitting body-
suits, their penises in stark relief, and this
she had not expected. The third decade of
the 21st century had been accompanied
by a gradual but unstoppable transition
to ever-tighter clothing for body celebra-
tion and the fanciful implication that the
wearer might be a superhero. The last bas-
tion of the demure was the area of male
crotch, but Delaney realized that, in the
spirit of equity, it had to fall away. A work-
place like the Every couldn’t plausibly say
breasts could be wrapped in tight Lycra but
penises could not.
“No,” Delaney mumbled. Then, tragically,
she looked at a section of ice plants and
added, “Lots of succulents.” She was trying
to form a sentence unrelated to phalluses.
“We’re encouraged to get our vitamin
D when we can,” Kiki said, and pointed to
the sun. “Doesn’t the campus look gorgeous
on a clear day like this?” She continued to
point out the buildings, the services, the
eateries, the vegetable garden, the ecstatic
dance studio, a large gulag-looking build-
ing dedicated to the study of creativity—
and all the while Delaney’s whole physical

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form was awake and tingling, her eyes dart- “Wonderful!” Delaney said again, louder ing ‘like.’ I get the trombone when I do. And
ing toward and away from every curve and than before. look.” Kiki pointed to a string of words and
bulge, a riotous battle of leering and shame. “See, they’ll note that repetition at the phrases on her phone. “Here are things I
“Are these parrot tulips?” Delaney asked, end of the day,” Kiki said. “You won’t get said that AI flagged as problematic.” She
desperate to focus on something whole- penalized or anything. It’s just to help us indicated a string of words in a red box:
some. She squatted down to touch the fringe do better.” screw, nasty, Cosby, Oriental. “These are
of a flower. As she held a tender petal she Delaney almost said Wonderful again, all words I’ve said today. Isn’t it funny what
looked up at Kiki just as a male crotch just for her own amusement. Instead she was flagged? My mom is Chinese, so I could
passed her at eye level, fully and fragrantly. said, “Of course.” apply for a Permission to Say, but the AI
“I think so,” Kiki said. “But you should “And it’s almost eliminated my cursing,” is just noting the word Oriental is on the
know—you were the forest ranger!” Kiki said, “which used to be a problem. O-list. So I just need to explain I was refer-
Delaney cackled idiotically and thought Same with focus and length. I had a ten- ring to a rug. Then I get those points back.”
she’d choke. She tried to breathe. dency to ramble, and TruVoice identifies “Wonderful,” Delaney said.
“Almost forgot,” Kiki said, seeming off-track …” Kiki stopped. “What’s the word? “The other aspect is HR-oriented,” Kiki
alarmed. “Can you download something? This is so funny.” continued. “So if TruVoice hears one of the
I’m sending you an update for your phone.” “Verbiage? Meandering? Blather?” Del- Os, it makes a note. End of every week, you
Delaney found the update and down- aney suggested. get a summary, and it goes to HR. It’s not
loaded it. “Got it.” “Yes, thanks,” Kiki said. “It helps me get a big thing, but it protects you and every-
“You’ve been using TruVoice, I take it?” to the point. Early on, my directness scores one you encounter in case you say some-
“Always,” Delaney said. were in the 40s, but now they’re high 50s.” thing considered problematic. That way, if
TruVoice had governed much of online “Kudos,” Delaney said. you think you’re in the right, it’s recorded.
communication since Delaney had been “Excuse me?” Kiki said. If they think you’re in error, same thing—
in high school. It started simply as a filter. “Oh. I just said kudos.” there’s a recording to reference. So you’ll
A person would type or dictate a text, and Kiki tapped her screen. “Ah. Kudos. Like get the initial ComAnon—you’ll get them
TruVoice would scan the message for any of ‘congratulations.’ Got it. That’s a Level-3 every day, they’re anonymous, they matter if
the Os—offensive, off-putting, outrageous, word, too. I’ll get extra points for that one. they add up, but you shouldn’t worry if they
off-color, off-base, out-of-date. O-language Kudos. Kudos. Take a look.” don’t. Anyway, you can get them erased if
would be excised or substituted, and the Kiki showed her phone to Delaney. A you check the transcript and you’re right.”
message would be sent in a manner fit for man passed between them, wearing what “Super convenient,” Delaney said. “And
posterity. Sound like yourself, TruVoice seemed to be the outfit of an Olympic swim- this goes into PartiRank?”
promised, and the vast majority of its users, mer, his phallus pointing from his crotch to Kiki looked taken aback. “Oh, we don’t
some 2 billion-plus in 130 languages, saw his left knee. have PartiRank! That was phased out, like,
it as a godsend. “Sorry!” Kiki said, and tapped her screen. months ago.” Another sad trombone; Kiki
“The update just builds on that,” Kiki said, “See, here’s my word total for the day so far: grimaced. “A lot of people thought the
“but for verbal communication. Obviously 3,691. That’s not counting every contraction rankings were a bit too competitive and
we can’t change your words in real time, but and conjunction, of course. On the second stress-inducing.”
now TruVoice analyzes what you say, gives line, you can see it’s broken down by level. “So these numbers aren’t aggregated?”
you a summary of your word usage at the Today I’ve spoken 2,928 Level-1 words, “Well, they’re collected, of course. For
end of each day, and shows you where you 678 Level-2, 67 Level-3, and nine Level-4 your own reference. They wouldn’t be too
can improve.” words. Which isn’t great, in terms of Level- useful if they weren’t collected!” She threw
“Wonderful!” Delaney said. 4. But, that’s the basic self-improvement a breezy laugh over her shoulder. “And
“It really is wonderful,” Kiki said. “I’ve part of the app. I can build on that. Growth of course combined with other metrics.
learned so much about my own commu- mindset, right?” Like PrefCom and AnonCom. You’ll read
nication. I have a son. He’s 5. He’s at the “That’s my motto,” Delaney said. about that in your onboarding docs. Anon-
school here. Did I already tell you that?” “Good motto!” Kiki said. “Kudos!” Com allows coworkers to register com-
Delaney had the feeling she was talking They shared a laugh. Delaney felt sick. plaints—well, not complaints, really, but
to someone on speed or cocaine. Was it She liked Kiki, felt for Kiki, wanted to save suggestions for your improvement—anon-
really water in that burgundy backpack? Kiki, and she was lying to Kiki. How long ymously. Those go into your folder, with all
She’d rarely seen this kind of mania. could she lie to this guileless, frenzied face? the performance measurements, partici-
“And research says kids need to hear a She pitied her own soul. Out of the corner of pation points, smiles, ComAnons, shams,
hundred thousand words by the time they’re her eye, Delaney saw a pair of men in slalom step count, sleep hours, frowns, et cetera.
3. Something like that. So TruVoice helps me ski outfits, decorated with faux-flames, hav- All your numbers are available to you and all
with the overall number and also word vari- ing a conversation while squatting. Everyones, and then are merged to create
ation. I’m still at 65 percent in terms of vari- “Squatting is, like, way better than regu- one aggregate number, and then Everyones’
ation and difficulty—I’m a verbal dummy, lar standing,” Kiki noted. Her phone emitted numbers are listed in ascending order.”
it turns out—but now I know what I need the sound of a sad trombone. “See, that’s a “But it’s not a ranking,” Delaney said.
to work on.” reminder. I’m trying to cut down on say- “Definitely not,” Kiki laughed. “That’s why

0 3 0
 FICTION

it’s called Everything in Order. You can see knew she was on camera, that she’d be on to-face, each wearing form-fitting black
the difference between that and PartiRank, camera, multiple cameras, at all times on bodysuits interrupted by no pocket or stitch.
which was a lot more hierarchical.” campus. Between this and the dicks, she The woman was chesty, the man powerfully
“Sure, sure,” Delaney said. didn’t think she’d make it. built, the curves of his thighs yearning for
“The EiO number—get it? EiO? The “Can I sing you a song?” the skunk asked. the curves of hers.
song?” “No thanks,” Delaney said. She tried to “Time for the onboarding doc. Let’s head
Delaney smiled weakly. Kiki hummed a slow her breathing. She closed her eyes, and over here,” Kiki said, and brought Delaney
few notes and continued. “The EiO helps all she saw were the members suffocating to a small, ivy-covered building, a twin to
with the quarterly deëmployment moment. in shiny, stretchy fabric. the one where she was first interviewed.
Obviously who’s subject to deëmployment is “Need more time?” the skunk asked. Inside, the room was empty, and Delaney
too important and subjective to have people “Yes please,” Delaney said. exhaled elaborately.
do it, so it’s the bottom 10 percent, depart- Delaney stood and flushed the toilet. “Last bit of housekeeping,” Kiki said, and
ment by department. That way it’s fair.” Nothing happened, but the cartoon skunk handed her a tablet. “The final onboarding
“That’s who’s let go?” Delaney asked. appeared on the wallscreen behind the toi- doc, which we ask that you read carefully.
“Deëmployed, yes.” Kiki smiled. “But the let. “No deposit made. No flush necessary!” Obviously the eye tracking knows what
number of course isn’t the only determi- the skunk sang. A quick sparkle flashed you’ve read, so …”
nant.” from its breezy grin. Kiki made for the door. “Initial every page
“But there’s no human factor.” Delaney left the stall, pulled at the bath- and sign at the end. I’ll come back in 30
“Well, no. Of course not. That would open room door but found it was locked. minutes,” she said, and left.
it up to bias.” “Hold up, partner!” the skunk said, Delaney woke the tablet and Mae Hol-
A pair of men, built like dancers, walked and the same words, Hold up, partner!, land’s face appeared, filling the screen. “You
by wearing sheer bodysuits. One wore a appeared in the cartoon dialog bubble. “Not made it,” she said, and her eyes widened, as
yellow water-carrier like Kiki’s, its tube till you wash up! Remember, 20 seconds if she was both proud and a bit surprised.
dangling provocatively. Delaney felt light- minimum. Doctor’s orders!” On the screen, “You’re joining us, and we couldn’t be hap-
headed. the skunk began washing too, while singing pier.” It was a recording, but still, Delaney
“Is there a restroom close?” she asked. the Happy Birthday song. found herself briefly star-struck. Mae still
Kiki directed her to a nearby railing, just Delaney stepped to the sink, minimal and looked like a newbie herself—those bright
above the grass line, leading down a spi- rectangular and carved from obsidian. The dark eyes, that olive skin, as smooth as a
raling staircase to a single, underground soap dispenser dropped a dollop into her river stone. “We are so grateful you chose
bathroom. Delaney rushed down its rubbery hands, and the water was briefly activated. us, and I can’t wait to see you on campus.
steps and opened the door with a shush. In the mirror, a digital timer appeared and If you see me, stop me and say hello!” She
began to count down from 20. The skunk smiled, and Delaney took her in—the high
was still washing its own little hands, cheekbones, just short of severe, that nearly
“Hello Delaney!” a voice said. She looked up directly opposite, now singing the song a lipless mouth. The lights upon her were
to find a cartoon skunk on the wallscreen. second time in Italian. perfect, setting her skin aglow, her eyes
Delaney’s name appeared in an animated Delaney watched the timer. The birth- elated. Then she was gone, replaced by the
bubble extending from the skunk’s mouth. day song had begun again. She still had 14 onboarding document.
“Let me know if I can help!” seconds of washing to do. It was intermi- The sentences were fascinating, written
Delaney entered the stall and locked nable. Eight seconds left. Delaney thought with the strangely florid and willfully cap-
the door and sat, clothed, on the toilet. She she’d rub her skin off. italized style common to the industry. “You
wanted badly to call her roommate, Wes, to “Looks like we’re almost done!” the car- are invited to bring your most Joyful Self to
try to describe what she’d just heard, and toon skunk announced, and did a backflip. campus each day.” “Your personal Fulfill-
what she’d seen, all the Lycra and body After landing, the skunk dried its hands ment is our goal.” “You are Seen Here.” “You
parts, but she didn’t trust the bathrooms by doing a kind of woodland jazz-hands are Valued here.” “Touching, including shak-
on campus, knew she shouldn’t let down maneuver. “Go forth and stay human!” ing of hands or Hugging, is de-approved
her guard anywhere on the grounds. She the skunk said, and when Delaney tried unless between signers of Mutual Contact
only needed a moment to strategize, to con- the door this time, it opened to the light. Agreements.” “This is a plastic-free cam-
trol the movement of her irises, to think this A corresponding ding sang from Delaney’s pus.” “This is a fragrance-free campus.”
through. phone. “This is an almond-free campus.” “Paper is
She stood up. “Are you finished?” the car- “All set?” Kiki asked. Strongly discouraged.” “Smiling is encour-
toon skunk asked. It was now on the door, Another man passed wearing a wrestler’s aged but not mandatory.” “Empathy is
looking politely away. one-piece. This one covered half of his torso mandatory.” “Guests must be announced
“No,” she said. and stopped mid-thigh. His manhood was 48 hours in advance.” “Vehicles that burn
“Don’t let me rush you!” the skunk said, encased, it seemed, under a dome, a cup or fossil fuels require an Exemption.” “This
and then hid behind an animated tree. jockstrap, Delaney didn’t know which. Cod- is a Collaboration zone.” “This is a Sacred
Delaney sat down again. She had to think piece? She looked away, only to find two place.” “Everyones with children under
about how she’d speak from then on. She people, a man and a woman, standing face- 5 are encouraged to bring them to Raise
Every Voice.” “Non-company hardware is
de-approved.” “Downloading of non-vetted
Software is de-approved.” “All correspon-
dence on company-provided devices is
The searcher also had
subject to screening.” “Attendance at Dream
Fridays is required Because They Are Awe-
the right to know who
some.” “Attendance at Thursday Exuberant
Dance is not required but urged because it
was watching their
is next level.” “This is a beef-free campus.”
“This is a pork-free campus.” “Until further
searches, creating a
notice, this is a salmon-free campus.”
two-way mirror effect,
The second Delaney was finished, Kiki’s
which occurred a
face appeared in the doorway. “Your med-
ical intake!” she gasped. “You should have
billion times a day, of
had it done by now. What time is it? We can
get you in.”
a searcher searching
She hustled Delaney out and into the
light.
while the searched
“We’re going to the Overlook?” Delaney
asked. She’d read about the Overlook, and
watched the searcher
could see it, like a white spiral exoskele-
ton, on the hills above Treasure Island. What
searching.
she’d read painted it as a mecca of tran-
quility—a place where Everyones could
get unparalleled health care in a spa-like
setting with astounding 360-degree water
views.
“No, no,” Kiki said, and looked briefly up
at the array of white buildings in the dis-
tance. “The Overlook is for … it’s not for
basic intake, it’s for … Wait. What time is
it? Hi honey!”
She was with Nino again. “I’m sorry, hon-
hon, Mama’s working. And you have your
own assessment today, so you stay till 4.”
Kiki’s eyes welled. “This helps Jolene know
how you’re doing. It helps Mama too.” She
tapped her ear and turned to Delaney apol-
ogetically. “I’m assuming you had your DNA
sequenced?” Kiki asked.
“For college, yes,” Delaney said. It had
been required at most schools, first state
then private—insurers had forced the issue.
“Good, so just have to get the vitals,
blood, x-rays, things like that,” Kiki said,
and they walked briskly to the clinic. Kiki’s
rubbery legs carried her ahead of Delaney,
and finding Delaney falling behind, peri-
odically she stretched her hand back, her
fingers open like a star, her rings twinkling
in the sun.
When they stepped inside the clinic,
Delaney saw no humans. There was no
reception desk, there were no doctors. The
medical professions had been decimated

0 3 2
 FICTION

by doubt and litigation, with the vast major- The screen came alive again. It was a medical information private became inde-
ity of patients preferring AI diagnoses over recording of a woman in a white coat, a fensible. It put others at risk and thwarted
those of humans, which they considered stethoscope around her neck and a clip- scientific progress.
recklessly subjective. board pressed to her torso. “Hello Delaney,” But pregnancies were still secret, or the
“OK, it says you’re scheduled for Bay 11,” she said. “I’m Dr. Villalobos.” law treated them as such. Delaney couldn’t
Kiki said, and took a moment to reconcile even search “Mae Holland pregnant,”
the map on her armscreen with her phys- because the typer of those words would
ical environs. The rest of the intake was unsurprising. immediately be known. The second wave
Delaney looked down the hallway and Because Delaney’s medical history was of the Right to Know laws had codified a
saw the numbers ascending toward 11. “I digitized, the Every simply had to add her person’s right to know, in real time, who was
think it’s this way?” she said. data to their own database and update a searching for them and what information
Kiki looked up and, after a painfully few metrics. As the medbed scanned her, they sought. The searcher, to be sure, also
long time examining the hall, its numbered Delaney cycled through the possibilities. It had the right to know who was watching
rooms, smiled with relief. “Great. You go seemed highly improbable that there was their searches, creating a two-way mirror
on, and I’ll come back when you’re done.” another Maebelline Holland on this campus. effect, which occurred a billion times a day,
Delaney walked down the hall, past But it also seemed unlikely that the CEO of of a searcher searching while the searched
the other bays, most of them containing a the Every would have used this nondescript watched the searcher searching.
human lying on a medbed, the rooms dim medbed, let alone leave this most personal “OK, all set,” Dr. Villalobos’ recorded self
but for the bright reflections of the patients’ information onscreen for the next visitor to said.
interiors on the wallscreens. find. Above all, it was impossible that Mae Delaney got dressed, and while button-
When she entered Bay 11, the room was Holland was pregnant. Her life was lived ing her shirt, had a series of thoughts, none
empty but the wallscreen was alive with a with unrivaled transparency; she was still of them more rational than any other. She
series of neon pictures—three-dimensional fully Seen. To be true to those principles of thought this could be a setup, a test of how
visualizations of an embryo in a womb. The the Seen, she would have broadcast her first she would handle such sensitive informa-
detail was astonishing, far beyond anything visit to any doctor, her first knowledge of tion. But if so, there was no right response.
Delaney had seen before. This must be pro- her pregnancy; anything less would breed Such a private matter should have been pri-
prietary software, she assumed, something suspicion, would perpetuate corrosive vate in the first place. This was the unnec-
being tested on campus. The embryo was secrecy. And beyond that was the issue of essarily awkward position Mae herself had
larger than life, perhaps 3 feet high, its eyes carbon impact. Population growth activists sought to eliminate—the keeping of secrets,
enormous, covered with a pink vellum, its had become more vocal, and their ques- the sowing of distrust and fostering of con-
tiny watery heart fluttering like a kite in tions—must you? should you? have you spiracies. Delaney had no choice, really, but
high winds. The image was left over from any right?—were seeping into the main- to wait. As unorthodox as it was, perhaps
whomever was last here, Delaney assumed, stream. If anyone would debate these ques- Mae was simply waiting for the right time to
and before she could stop herself, she was tions openly, and seek a kind of customer reveal that she was bringing another human
scanning the screen for the name, and the consensus about her own baby-making, it into the world.
moment before the screen went dark, she would be the face of the Every.
found it. Maebelline Holland. So she could not be pregnant. That
Stunned, Delaney held her breath. She embryo being truly inside Mae Holland was
listened for anyone outside the door, any- not possible. But Delaney had no way to find
one nearby. There was no one. She stepped out. It was one of the few pieces of medi-
into the hallway, stupidly looking for Mae cal data still outside Right to Know laws.
Holland herself. The hallway was empty, During the second pandemic, new laws
and Delaney returned to the medbed. She were rushed through all over the world, giv-
thought about leaving. ing all citizens the right to know who had
Seeing what she saw put her in some a virus and where they likely got it. It only
jeopardy, she was sure. Would she be seemed right, and contributed to the general
expected to tell someone what she saw? well-being and slowing of the spread. And
Would the room’s many cameras already what about lice and mono? HIV and herpes?
know? To reveal it was an invasion of pri- No one had a right to spread these afflic-
vacy—medical information like this being tions—pink eye!—and everyone had a right
still unpublic—but to not reveal it: Wasn’t to know who was afflicted. Public registries
that a problematic elision? became the norm, and the idea of keeping

DAVE EGGERS is the author of many books, among them The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, A
Hologram for the King, What Is the What, and The Museum of Rain. He is also the cofounder
of 826 National, a network of youth writing centers. Eggers’ forthcoming novel, The Every, in
its hardcover edition, will be sold only via independent bookstores.
FEATURES WIRED 29.10

ILLUSTRATION / CARLOS OLIVERAS COLOM 0 3 5

The

Alg
THE LATEST WEAPON IN THE WAR ON DRUGS IS A

PREDICTIVE AI ON YOUR DOCTOR’S COMPUTER. IT CAN

BY MAIA SZALAVITZ
 Pain
gorithm
D E T E R M I N E W H O R E C E I V E S T R E A T M E N T F O R P A I N —— A N D W H O D O E S N ’ T .

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SAM CANNON

0 3 7
ONE EVENING
IN JULY OF 2020,
A WOMAN NAMED
KATHRYN WENT
TO THE
HOSPITAL
IN
EXCRUCIATING
PAIN.

A 32-year-old psychology grad student in Michigan, Kathryn lived with

endometriosis, an agonizing condition that causes uterine-like cells to abnor-
mally develop in the wrong places. Menstruation prompts these growths to
shed—and, often, painfully cramp and scar, sometimes leading internal organs
to adhere to one another—before the whole cycle starts again.
For years, Kathryn had been managing her condition in part by taking oral
opioids like Percocet when she needed them for pain. But endometriosis is
progressive: Having once been rushed into emergency surgery to remove a
life-threatening growth on her ovary, Kathryn now feared something just as
dangerous was happening, given how badly she hurt.
In the hospital, doctors performed an ultrasound to rule out some worst-
case scenarios, then admitted Kathryn for observation to monitor whether her
ovary was starting to develop another cyst. In the meantime, they said, they
would provide her with intravenous opioid medication until the crisis passed.
On her fourth day in the hospital, however, something changed. A staffer
brusquely informed Kathryn that she would no longer be receiving any kind
of opioid. “I don’t think you are aware of how high some scores are in your
chart,” the woman said. “Considering the prescriptions you’re on, it’s quite
obvious that you need help that is not pain-related.”
Kathryn, who spoke to WIRED on condition that we use only her middle
name to protect her privacy, was bewildered. What kind of help was the
woman referring to? Which prescriptions, exactly? Before she could grasp Back at home, about two weeks later,
what was happening, she was summarily discharged from the hospital, still Kathryn received a letter from her gyne-
very much in pain. cologist’s office stating that her doctor
was “terminating” their relationship. Once
again, she was mystified. But this message
at least offered some explanation: It said
she was being cut off because of “a report
from the NarxCare database.”
 Like most people, Kathryn had never dreds of millions of dollars into developing and maintaining state-level
heard of NarxCare, so she looked it up— prescription drug databases—electronic registries that track scripts for cer-
and discovered a set of databases and tain controlled substances in real time, giving authorities a set of eyes onto
algorithms that have come to play an the pharmaceutical market. Every US state, save one, now has one of these
increasingly central role in the United prescription drug monitoring programs, or PDMPs. And the last holdout,
States’ response to its overdose crisis. Missouri, is just about to join the rest.
Over the past two decades, the US In the past few years, through a series of acquisitions and government
Department of Justice has poured hun- contracts, a single company called Appriss has come to dominate the man-

0 3 9
 sult them when prescribing controlled sub-
stances, on penalty of losing their license.
In some states, police and federal law
enforcement officers can also access this
agement of these state prescription databases. While the registries them- highly sensitive medical information—in
selves are somewhat balkanized—each one governed by its own quirks, many cases without a warrant—to prose-
requirements, and parameters—Appriss has helped to make them interop- cute both doctors and patients.
erable, merging them into something like a seamless, national prescription In essence, Kathryn found, nearly all
drug registry. It has also gone well beyond merely collecting and retrieving Americans have the equivalent of a secret
records, developing machine-learning algorithms to generate “data insights” credit score that rates the risk of prescrib-
and indicating that it taps into huge reservoirs of data outside state drug ing controlled substances to them. And
registries to arrive at them. doctors have authorities looking over
NarxCare—the system that inspired Kathryn’s gynecologist to part ways their shoulders as they weigh their own
with her—is Appriss’ widely used flagship product for doctors, pharma- responses to those scores.
cies, and hospitals: an “analytics tool and care management platform” that Even after Kathryn had read up on
purports to instantly and automatically identify a patient’s risk of misus- NarxCare, however, she was still left with
ing opioids. a basic question: Why had she been flagged
On the most basic level, when a doctor queries NarxCare about some- with such a high score? She wasn’t doc-
one like Kathryn, the software mines state registries for red flags indicating tor shopping. The only other physician she
that she has engaged in “doctor shopping” behavior: It notes the number of saw was her psychiatrist. She did have a
pharmacies a patient has visited, the distances she has traveled to receive prescription for a benzodiazepine to treat
health care, and the combinations of prescriptions she receives. post-traumatic stress disorder, and com-
Beyond that, things get a little mysteri-
ous. NarxCare also offers states access to
a complex machine-learning product that
automatically assigns each patient a unique,
comprehensive Overdose Risk Score. Only
Appriss knows exactly how this score is
derived, but according to the company’s pro-
motional material, its predictive model not
only draws from state drug registry data, but
“may include medical claims data, electronic Proportion
health records, EMS data, and criminal justice who suffer
data.” At least eight states, including Texas, from “opioid
Florida, Ohio, and Michigan—where Kath- use disorder”
ryn lives—have signed up to incorporate this
algorithm into their monitoring programs.
For all the seeming complexity of these
inputs, what doctors see on their screen when 70 PERCENT 0.5 PERCENT
they call up a patient’s NarxCare report is very
simple: a bunch of data visualizations that
describe the person’s prescription history,
topped by a handful of three-digit scores that
neatly purport to sum up the patient’s risk.
Appriss is adamant that a NarxCare score
Proportion of
US adults who
is not meant to supplant a doctor’s diagno- have taken
sis. But physicians ignore these numbers medical opioids
at their peril. Nearly every state now uses
Appriss software to manage its prescription
drug monitoring programs, and most legally
require physicians and pharmacists to con-

0 4 0
bining such drugs with opioids is a known Appriss’ own descriptions of NarxCare—which boast of extremely wide-
risk factor for overdose. But could that ranging access to sensitive patient data—have raised alarms among patient
really have been enough to get her kicked advocates and researchers. NarxCare’s homepage, for instance, describes how
out of a medical practice? its algorithm trawls patient medical records for diagnoses of depression and
As Kathryn continued her research post-traumatic stress disorder, treating these as “variables that could impact
online, she found that there was a whole risk assessment.” In turn, academics have published hundreds of pages about
world of chronic pain patients on Twit- NarxCare, exploring how such use of diagnostic records could have a dis-
ter and other forums comparing notes parate impact on women (who are more likely to suffer trauma from abuse)
on how they’d run afoul of NarxCare or and how its purported use of criminal justice data could skew against racial
other screening tools. And eventually she minorities (who are more likely to have been arrested).
came upon an explanation that helped her But the most troubling thing, according to researchers, is simply how
understand what might have gone wrong: opaque and unaccountable these quasi-medical tools are. None of the algo-
She had sick pets. rithms that are widely used to guide physicians’ clinical decisions—includ-
At the time of her hospitalization, Kath- ing NarxCare—have been validated as safe and effective by peer-reviewed
ryn owned two flat-coated retrievers, Bear research. And because Appriss’ risk assessment algorithms are proprietary,
and Moose. Both were the kind of dog she there’s no way to look under the hood to inspect them for errors or biases.
preferred to adopt: older rescues with sig- Nor, for that matter, are there clear ways for a patient to seek redress. As
nificant medical problems that other pro- soon as Kathryn realized what had happened, she started trying to clear her
spective owners might avoid. Moose had record. She’s still at it. In the meantime, when she visits a pharmacy or a doc-
epilepsy and had required surgery on both tor’s office, she says she can always tell when someone has seen her score.
his hind legs. He had also been abused as “Their whole demeanor has changed,” she says. “It reminds me of a suspect
a puppy and had severe anxiety. Bear, too, and a detective. It’s no longer a caring, empathetic, and compassionate rela-
suffered from anxiety. tionship. It’s more of an inquisition.”
The two canines had been prescribed
opioids, benzodiazepines, and even bar-
biturates by their veterinarians. And pre-
scriptions for animals are put under their The United States’ relationship with opioid drugs has always been
owner’s name. So to NarxCare, it appar- fraught. We either love them or we hate them. Historically, periods of wide-
ently looked like Kathryn was seeing spread availability spur addiction crises, which lead to crackdowns, which
many doctors for different drugs, some at lead to undertreatment of pain—and then another extreme swing of the pen-
extremely high dosages. (Dogs can require dulum, which never seems to settle at a happy medium.
large amounts of benzodiazepines.) The current anti-opioid climate has its roots in the overmarketing of Pur-
Appriss says it is “very rare” for pet pre- due Pharma’s OxyContin in the mid-1990s. Between 1999 and 2010, opioid
scriptions to drive up a patient’s NarxCare prescribing in the US quadrupled—and overdose deaths rose in tandem. To
scores. But as Kafkaesque as this prob- many experts, this suggested an easy fix: If you decrease prescribing, then
lem might seem, critics say it’s hardly death rates will decline too.
an isolated glitch. A growing number of But that didn’t happen. While the total amount of opioids prescribed fell
researchers believe that NarxCare and by 60 percent between 2011 and 2020, the already record-level overdose
other screening tools like it are profoundly death rate at least doubled during the same period. Simply cutting the med-
flawed. According to one study, 20 percent ical supply didn’t help; instead, it fueled more dangerous drug use, driving
of the patients who are most likely to be many Americans to substances like illegally manufactured fentanyl.
flagged as doctor-shoppers actually have The reason these cuts hadn’t worked, some experts believed, was that they
cancer, which often requires seeing multi- had failed to target the patients at highest risk. Around 70 percent of adults
ple specialists. And many of the official red have taken medical opioids—yet only 0.5 percent suffer from what is offi-
flags that increase a person’s risk scores are cially labeled “opioid use disorder,” more commonly called addiction. One
simply attributes of the most vulnerable study found that even within the age group at highest risk, teenagers and
and medically complex patients, some- people in their early twenties, only one out of every 314 privately insured
times causing those groups to be denied
opioid pain treatment.
The AI that generates NarxCare’s Over-
dose Risk Score is, to many critics, even
more unsettling. At a time of mount-
ing concern over predictive algorithms,
 After developing a series of databases for
monitoring prescriptions, Appriss in 2014
acquired what was then the most com-
monly used algorithm for predicting who
patients who had been prescribed opioids developed problems with them. was most at risk for misuse of controlled
Researchers had known for years that some patients were at higher risk substances, a program developed by the
for addiction than others. Studies have shown, for instance, that the more National Association of Boards of Phar-
adverse childhood experiences someone has had—like being abused or macy, and began to develop and expand
neglected or losing a parent—the greater their risk. Another big risk factor it. Like many companies that supply soft-
is mental illness, which affects at least 64 percent of all people with opioid ware to track and predict opioid addic-
use disorder. But while experts were aware of these hazards, they had no tion, Appriss is largely funded, either
good way to quantify them. directly or indirectly, by the Department
That began to change as the opioid epidemic escalated and demand grew of Justice.
for a simple tool that could more accurately predict a patient’s risk. One of NarxCare is one of many predictive
the first of these measures, the Opioid Risk Tool (ORT), was published in algorithms that have proliferated across
2005 by Lynn Webster, a former president of the American Academy of Pain several domains of life in recent years. In
Medicine, who now works in the pharmaceutical industry. (Webster has also medical settings, algorithms have been
previously received speaking fees from opioid manufacturers.) used to predict which patients are most
To build the ORT, Webster began by searching for studies that quantified likely to benefit from a particular treat-
specific risk factors. Along with the literature on adverse childhood expe- ment and to estimate the probability that
riences, Webster found studies linking risk to both personal and family his- a patient in the ICU will deteriorate or die
tory of addiction—not just to opioids but to other drugs, including alcohol. if discharged.
He also found data on elevated risk from particular psychiatric disorders, In theory, creating such a tool to guide
including obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, when and to whom opioids are pre-
and major depression. scribed could be helpful, possibly even to
Gathering all this research together, Webster designed a short patient address medical inequities. Studies have
questionnaire meant to suss out whether someone possessed any of the shown, for instance, that Black patients
known risk factors for addiction. Then he came up with a way of summing are more likely to be denied medication
and weighting the answers to generate an overall score. for pain and more likely to be perceived
The ORT, however, was sometimes skewed by its data sources. For as drug-seeking. A more objective predic-
instance, Webster found a study showing that a history of sexual abuse in tor could—again, in theory—help patients
girls tripled their risk of addiction, so he duly included a question asking who are undermedicated get the treat-
whether patients had experienced sexual abuse and codified it as a risk ment they need.
factor—for females. Why only them? Because no analogous study had been But in practice, algorithms that orig-
done on boys. The gender bias that this introduced into the ORT was espe- inate with law enforcement have dis-
cially odd given that two-thirds of all addictions occur in men. played a track record of running in the
The ORT also didn’t take into account whether a patient had been pre- opposite direction. In 2016, for example,
scribed opioids for long periods without becoming addicted. ProPublica analyzed how COMPAS, an
Webster says he did not intend for his tool to be used to deny pain treat- algorithm designed to help courts identify
ment—only to determine who should be watched more closely. As one of which defendants are most likely to com-
the first screeners available, however, it rapidly caught on with doctors mit future crimes, was far more prone to
and hospitals keen to stay on the right side of the opioid crisis. Today, it has incorrectly flag Black defendants as likely
been incorporated into multiple electronic health record systems, and it is recidivists. (The company that makes the
often relied on by physicians anxious about overprescription. It’s “very, very algorithm disputed this analysis.) In the
broadly used in the US and five other countries,” Webster says. years since then, the problem of algo-
In comparison to early opioid risk screeners like the ORT, NarxCare is rithmic unfairness—the tendency of AI
more complex, more powerful, more rooted in law enforcement, and far to obscure and weaponize the biases of
less transparent. its underlying data—has become a major
Appriss started out in the 1990s making software that automatically noti- concern among people who study the eth-
fies crime victims and other “concerned citizens” when a specific incar- ics of AI.
cerated person is about to be released. Later it moved into health care. Over the past couple of years, Jennifer

0 4 2
 are penalized by the justice system
more often than whites. That doesn’t
mean that prescribing to them is risk-
ier, Oliva says—just that they get tar-
geted more by biased institutions. “All
of that stuff just reinforces this histor-
ical discrimination,” Oliva says.
Appriss says that within NarxCare’s
algorithms, “there are no adjust-
ments to the risk scoring to account
for potential underlying biases” in
source data. Other communications
from the company, however, indicate
that NarxCare’s underlying source
data may not be what it seems.
Early in the reporting of this piece,
Appriss declined WIRED ’s request for
an interview. Later, in an emailed
response to specific questions about
its data sources, the company made
a startling claim: In apparent contra-
diction to its own marketing material,
Appriss said that NarxCare’s predic-
tive risk algorithm makes no use of
any data outside of state prescription
drug registries. “The Overdose Risk
Score was originally developed to
allow for ingestion of additional data
sources beyond the PDMP,” a spokes-
person for the company said, “but no
states have chosen to do so. All scores
contained within NarxCare are based
solely on data from the prescription
drug monitoring program.”
Some states do incorporate certain
criminal justice data—for instance,
drug conviction records—into their
prescription drug monitoring pro-
Oliva, director of the Center for Health and grams, so it’s conceivable that NarxCare’s machine-learning model does
Pharmaceutical Law at Seton Hall Univer- draw on those. But Appriss specifically distanced itself from other data
sity, has set out to examine NarxCare in sources claimed in its marketing material.
light of these apprehensions. In a recent For instance, the company told WIRED that NarxCare and its scores “do
paper called “Dosing Discrimination,” she not include any diagnosis information” from patient medical records. That
argues that much of the data NarxCare would seem to suggest, contra NarxCare’s homepage, that the algorithm in
claims to trace may simply recapitulate fact gives no consideration to people’s histories of depression and PTSD.
inequalities associated with race, class, and The company also said that it does not take into account the distance that
gender. Living in a rural area, for example, a patient travels to receive medical care—despite a 2018 blog post, still up
often requires traveling longer distances
for treatment—but that doesn’t automat-
ically signify doctor shopping. Similarly,
while it’s a mystery exactly how NarxCare
may incorporate criminal justice data into
its algorithm, it’s clear that Black people
 Changes in
US Opioid
Prescribing
and Overdose
Deaths
on the Appriss site, that includes this line in a description of NarxCare’s BETWEEN 2011
machine-learning model: “We might give it other types of data that involve AND 2020
distances between the doctor and the pharmacist and the patient’s home.”
These latest claims from Appriss only heighten Oliva’s concerns about the
inscrutability of NarxCare. “As I have said many times in my own research,
the most terrifying thing about Appriss’ risk-scoring platform is the fact
that its algorithms are proprietary, and as a result, there is no way to exter- Overdose
nally validate them,” says Oliva. “We ought to at least be able to believe deaths
what Appriss says on its own website and in its public-facing documents.” +126 PERCENT
Moreover, experts say, even the most simple, transparent aspects of algo-
rithms like NarxCare—the tallying of red flags meant to signify doctor-
shopping behavior—are deeply problematic in whom they target. “The more
vulnerable a patient is, the more serious the patient’s illness, the more com-
plex their history, the more likely they are to wind up having multiple doctors
and multiple pharmacies,” says Stefan Kertesz, a professor of medicine and
public health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “The algorithm
is set up to convince clinicians that care of anybody with more serious ill-
ness represents the greatest possible liability. And in that way, it incentiv-
izes the abandonment of patients who have the most serious problems.”
To take some of the heat off of these complex patients, Appriss says that Opioids
its algorithm “focuses on rapid changes” in drug use and de-emphasizes
prescribed
people who have maintained multiple prescriptions at stable levels for a long -60 PERCENT
time. But as ever, the company stresses that a NarxCare score is not meant to
determine any patient’s course of treatment—that only a doctor can do that.
Doctors, however, can be prosecuted if they write more prescriptions than
their peers, or prescribe to patients deemed high risk. “I think prescribers
have gotten really scared. They are very fearful of being called out,” says
Sarah Wakeman, the medical director of the Substance Use Disorder Initia-
tive at Massachusetts General Hospital, an assistant professor of medicine
at Harvard, and a doctor who regularly uses NarxCare herself. Research has
found that some 43 percent of US medical clinics now refuse to see new
patients who require opioids.
Doctors also simply want to do the right thing, Wakeman says, and aren’t fear, and distrust of patients,” Kertesz says.
sure how. A couple of academic surveys have found that physicians appre- “It’s added to an environment where phy-
ciate prescription drug registries, as they truly want to be able to identify sicians are deeply fearful for their future
patients who are misusing opioids. But doctors also say those registries can ability to maintain a profession, where
take too much time to access and digest, according to the same surveys. Narx- society has taken a particularly vindictive
Care is partly a solution to that problem—it speeds everything up. It distills. turn against both physicians and patients.
The result of all that speed, and all that fear, says Kertesz, is that patients And where the company that develops this
who have chronic pain but do not have addictions can end up cut off from interesting tool is able to force it onto the
medication that could help them. In extreme cases, that can even drive some screens of nearly every doctor in America.”
chronic pain sufferers to turn to more dangerous, illegal supplies, or to sui-
cide. Among patients with long-term opioid prescriptions, research shows
that stopping those prescriptions without providing effective alternative
care is associated with nearly triple the risk of overdose death. As Kathryn became more steeped in
“The problem that really infuses the NarxCare discussion is that the envi- online communities of chronic pain
ronment in which it is being used has an intense element of law enforcement, patients, one of the people she came into
contact with was a 44-year-old woman
named Beverly Schechtman, who had been
galvanized by her own bad experience with
opioid risk screening. In 2017, Schechtman
was hospitalized for kidney stones, which
0 4 4 can cause some of the worst pain known to
humans. In her case, they were associated
with Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflamma-
tory disease of the bowel.
Because Crohn’s flare-ups by them-
selves can cause severe pain, Schecht- group, she discovered that the question about sexual abuse history in the
man already had a prescription for oral ORT unfairly targeted women but not men. (An updated version of Web-
opioids—but she went to the hospital that ster’s tool now excludes the gender difference, but the older one seems to
day in 2017 because she was so nauseated live on in some electronic medical record systems.)
from the pain that she couldn’t keep them She also found many pain patients who said they had problems with Narx-
or anything else down. Like Kathryn, she Care. Bizarrely, even people who are receiving the gold-standard treatment
also took benzodiazepines for an anxi- for addiction can be incorrectly flagged by NarxCare and then denied that
ety disorder. very treatment by pharmacists.
That combination—which is both pop- Buprenorphine, best known under the brand name Suboxone, is one of
ular with drug users and considered a risk just two drugs that are proven to cut the death rate from opioid use disor-
factor for overdose—made the hospital- der by 50 percent or more, mainly by preventing overdose. But because it
ist in charge of Schechtman’s care suspi- is an opioid itself, buprenorphine is among the substances that can elevate
cious. Without even introducing himself, one’s NarxCare score—though typically it is listed in a separate section of a
he demanded to know why she was on NarxCare report to indicate that the person is undergoing treatment. That
the medications. So she explained that separation, however, doesn’t necessarily prevent a pharmacist from looking
she had PTSD, expecting that this disclo- at a patient’s high score and refusing to offer them prescriptions.
sure would be sufficient. Nonetheless, he Ryan Ward, a Florida-based recovery advocate, has taken buprenorphine
pressed her about the cause of the trauma, for nearly a decade. He also has a history of severe back pain and related
so she revealed that she’d been sexually surgeries. In 2018, when his pharmacy stopped carrying buprenorphine, he
abused as a child. tried to fill his prescription at a Walmart and was turned away. Then he vis-
After that, Schechtman says, the doctor ited two CVS’s and three Walgreens, and was similarly stymied.
became even more abrupt. “Due to that I “I dress nicely. I look nice. And I would be friendly,” he says. “And as
cannot give you any type of IV pain med- soon as they get my driver’s license, oh boy, they would change attitudes. I
ication,” she recalls him saying. When she couldn’t figure out why.”
asked why, she says he claimed that both After panicking that he might plunge into withdrawal—and, ironically, be
IV drug use and child sexual abuse change put at much higher risk of overdose—he changed tactics. He approached
the brain. “‘You’ll thank me someday, a pharmacist at a Publix store, first showing her his LinkedIn page, which
because due to what you went through highlights his advocacy and employment. He described what had happened
as a child, you have a much higher risk of at the other drugstores.
becoming an addict, and I cannot partic- When she checked the database, she immediately saw the problem: an
ipate in that,’” she says she was told. overwhelmingly high Overdose Risk Score. Unlike her colleagues, how-
Schechtman says she felt that the doc- ever, she agreed to fill the prescription, realizing that it was nonsensical
tor was blaming her for being abused. She to deny a patient a medication that prevents overdose in the name of pre-
was also puzzled. She had been taking venting overdose. Still, even three years later, if he tries another pharmacy
opioids on and off for 20-odd years and he gets rejected.
had never become addicted. Wasn’t that Appriss stresses that its data is not supposed to be used in these ways.
relevant? And how could it be ethical to “Pharmacists and physicians use these scores as indicators or calls-to-
deny pain relief based on a theoretical risk action to further review details in the patient’s prescription history in con-
linked to being abused? She wasn’t asking junction with other relevant patient health information,” the company
for drugs to take home; she just wanted to wrote in a statement. “The analysis and associated scores are not intended
be treated in the hospital, as she had been to work as sole determinants of a patient’s risk.” Appriss also says that
previously, without issue. prescriptions for buprenorphine have increased in areas of the country
As would later happen for Kathryn, the that use NarxCare.
experience drove Schechtman onto the But like the others, Ward has been unable to get his problem fixed. And
internet. “I just became obsessed with since most states now require that physicians and pharmacists use these
researching all of it,” Schechtman says. “I databases, millions are potentially affected. One survey of patients whose
was asking people in these online groups, providers have checked these systems found that at least half reported being
‘Have any of you been denied opioids due
to sexual abuse history?’ And women were
coming forward.”
Schechtman eventually joined an advo-
cacy group called the Don’t Punish Pain
Rally. Together with other activists in the
 7 million people who were insured by
their employers between 2005 and 2012.
But because opioid addiction is so rare in
the general population, the training sam-
humiliated and 43 percent reported cuts in prescribing that increased pain ple that the algorithm could use to make
and reduced quality of life. predictions was small: some 23,000 out
Appriss says on its website that it’s up to each state to deal with patient of all those millions.
complaints. Still, few people know where to turn. “The states have made it Further, 56 percent of that group had
very difficult,” says Oliva. Some don’t even allow for error correction. And addictions before they received their first
when Ward tried contacting Appriss directly, he says, he was ignored. prescription, meaning that the medica-
tion could not have caused the prob-
lem—so they had to be excluded from the
training sample. (This supports other data
In the early 2010s, Angela Kilby was seeking a topic for her PhD thesis showing that most people with opioid
in economics at MIT. When a member of her family, a doctor in the rural addiction start with recreational, rather
South, told her how tough it was to make decisions about prescribing opioids than medical, use.)
in a community devastated by overdoses, Kilby felt she had found her sub- The result was that Kilby’s algorithm
ject. She decided to study the doctor’s dilemma by examining how increased generated a large number of both false
control over opioid prescribing actually affected patients. To track health out- positive and false negative results, even
comes, she used insurance claim data from 38 states that had implemented when she set her parameters so strictly
prescription monitoring databases at varying times between 2004 and 2014. that someone had to score at or above
Going into her study, Kilby had been swayed by research and press the 99th percentile to be considered high
reports—plentiful in an era of “pill mill” crackdowns and backlash against risk. Even in that case, she found, only
overprescribing—suggesting that opioids are not only addictive but also inef- 11 percent of high scorers had actually
fective and even harmful for patients with chronic pain. She had predicted been diagnosed with opioid use disor-
that reductions in prescribing would increase productivity and health. “I der—while 89 percent were incorrectly
was expecting to see the opposite of what I saw,” she says. flagged.
In fact, her research showed that cutting back on medical opioid pre- Loosening her criteria didn’t improve
scriptions led to increased medical spending, higher levels of pain in hos- matters. Using the 95th percentile as a
pitalized patients, and more missed workdays. “These are people who are cutoff identified more true positives but
probably losing access to opioids, who are struggling more to return to work also increased false ones: This time fewer
after injuries and struggling to get pain treatment,” she says. than 5 percent of positives were true pos-
Intrigued, she wanted to know more. So in the late 2010s, having become itives. (In its own literature, Appriss men-
an assistant professor at Northeastern University, she decided to simulate tions these two cutoffs as being clinically
the machine-learning model that generates NarxCare’s most algorithmi- useful.)
cally sophisticated measure, the Overdose Risk Score. Kilby’s research also identified an even
Although Appriss did not make public the factors that went into its algo- more fundamental problem. Algorithms
rithm, Kilby reverse engineered what she could. Lacking access to prescrip- like hers tend to flag people who’ve accu-
tion drug registry data, Kilby decided to use de-identified health insurance mulated a long list of risk factors in the
claims data, a source that underlies all of the other published machine- course of a lifetime—even if they’ve taken
learning algorithms that predict opioid risk. Using roughly the same method opioids for years with no reported prob-
that Appriss lays out in accounts of its own machine-learning work, she lems. Conversely, if the algorithm has little
trained her model by showing it cases of people who’d been diagnosed with data on someone, it’s likely to label them
opioid use disorder after receiving an opioid prescription. She sent it looking low risk. But that person may actually be at
for resemblances and risk predictors in their files. Then she turned her model higher risk than the long-term chronic pain
loose on a much larger sample, this time with those opioid-use-disorder patients who now get dinged most often.
diagnoses hidden from the algorithm, to see if it actually identified real cases. “There is just no correlation whatso-
What Kilby found was that while NarxCare’s model may trawl a different ever between the likelihood of being said
data set, it almost certainly shares an essential limitation with her algorithm. to be high risk by the algorithm and the
“The problem with all of these algorithms, including the one I developed,” reduction in the probability of develop-
Kilby says, “is precision.” Kilby’s complete data set included the files of roughly ing opioid use disorder,” Kilby explains.

0 4 6
Number of 7 MILLION
people in
Angela Kilby’s
test database
INSURED BY THEIR
EMPLOYERS BETWEEN
2005 AND 2012 cially given Appriss’ dominance of the market.
The larger question, of course, is whether algorithms should be used to
determine addiction risk at all. When I spoke with Elaine Nsoesie, a data
science faculty fellow at Boston University with a PhD in computational epi-
demiology, she argued that improving public health requires understand-
ing the causes of a problem—not using proxy measures that may or may
not be associated with risk.
“I would not be thinking about algorithms,” she says. “I would go out into
the population to try to understand, why do we have these problems in the
first place? Why do we have opioid overdose? Why do we have addictions?
What are the factors that are contributing to these problems and how can
we address them?”
In contrast, throughout the overdose crisis, policymakers have focused
10,120 relentlessly on reducing medical opioid use. And by that metric, they’ve
been overwhelmingly successful: Prescribing has been more than halved.
Number of people And yet 2020 saw the largest number of US overdose deaths—93,000—on
in that sample record, a stunning 29 percent increase from the year before.
who developed Moreover, even among people with known addiction, there is little evi-
addiction dence that avoiding appropriate medical opioid use will, by itself, protect
AFTER BEING PRESCRIBED
OPIOIDS them. “I think undertreated pain in someone with a history of addiction is
every bit, if not more, of a risk factor for relapse,” says Wakeman. She calls
for better monitoring and support, not obligatory opioid denial.
Appriss has recognized the need to study NarxCare’s effects on the health
and mortality of people flagged by the system—and not just whether it results
in reduced prescribing. At a recent webinar, the company’s manager of data
science, Kristine Whalen, highlighted new data showing that implementa-
tion of NarxCare sped up the decline in opioid prescribing in six states by
about 10 percent, compared to reductions before it was used. When asked
whether the company was also measuring NarxCare’s real-world effects on
patients’ lives, Whalen said, “We’re actively looking for additional outcome
data sets to be able to do what you are describing.”
For Kathryn, at least, NarxCare’s effect on her life and health has been
pretty stark. Aside from her psychiatrist, she says, “I don’t have a doctor
In other words, the algorithm essentially because of this NarxCare score.” She worries about what she’ll do the next
cannot do what it claims to do, which is time her endometriosis flares up or another emergency arises, and she still
determine whether writing or denying struggles to get medication to treat her pain.
someone’s next prescription will alter their And it’s not just Kathryn’s own pain prescriptions that require filling.
trajectory in terms of addiction. And this Although her dog Moose died in late 2020, Bear continues to need his meds,
flaw, she says, affects all of the algorithms and Kathryn has since gone on to adopt another medically demanding dog,
now known to be in use. Mouse. Some states have recognized the problem of misidentified veteri-
nary prescriptions and require NarxCare to mark them with a paw print or
animal icon on health providers’ screens. Apparently, though, those pre-
scriptions can still influence the pet owner’s overall scores—and the next
In her “Dosing Discrimination” paper busy pharmacist who peers warily at a computer screen.
about algorithms like NarxCare, Jenni-
fer Oliva describes a number of cases MAIA SZALAVITZ (@maiasz) is the author, most recently, of Undoing Drugs:
similar to Kathryn’s and Schechtman’s, The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction.
in which people have been denied opi-
oids due to sexual trauma histories and
other potentially misleading factors. The
paper culminates in an argument that FDA
approval—which is currently not required
for NarxCare—should be mandatory, espe-
 L AST Y E AR

IN A S M A LL B AYSI DE TOW N I N N OVA S COT I A,

3 -Y E AR- O L D DY L AN E H L E R VANI SHED,

LE AVIN G N OT H I NG BUT T WO R AI N BO OTS.

IN T H E FO LLOW I N G DAYS , T HO USAN DS O F O N L I N E SL E UT H S

D E S CE N D E D O N FAC E B O O K G RO UP S TO H E L P W I T H T H E SE ARC H .

T H E N T H E Y T UR NE D.

BY KATHERINE L AIDL AW

P HOTOG RA PHS BY J UST IN C A RT ER

 Dylan Ehler
came into the months of the pandemic, 32-year-old Ashley joined TikTok, the
app she’d seen all over social media, as an escape. When she had
time, she’d upload the clips in batches. She posted a video of her

world swaying in a hoodie and baseball cap, backlit in red, to a Nelly

song. In another, soundtracked by the trap hit “What’s Poppin,”
she blows puffs of smoke from a joint toward the camera. “I’m

running.
gonna get you high today,” she riffs in a third. In one clip, Dylan
sits beside her, smiling widely: “You ever just look at somebody,”
she mouths along to the meme, “and think to yourself, ‘this moth-
He pummeled and squirmed his way through his erfucker is going to be the reason I go to jail?’”
mom’s pregnancy, kicked the hell out of her in the One April afternoon she stood in the kitchen and pulled the
womb. He was a boy in constant motion. He moved phone in close, her brown bangs falling across her forehead. A Tik-
when he slept. Almost as soon as he was crawling he Tok filter called Euphoric Makeup swept deep purple across her
was climbing. His parents—Ashley Brown and Jason eyes and sharply contoured her cheekbones. In the years since the
Ehler—would walk into their living room, in a gray- Disney movie Frozen had come out, more than 100,000 people
green house in a place called Bible Hill near the town had participated in a popular, if sinister, meme that had made its
of Truro in Nova Scotia, to find him perched on the way to TikTok, a parody of the movie’s song “Do You Want to Build
windowsill, grasping at the ledge above. a Snowman?” Ashley began to sing along: “Will you help me hide a
When they brought Dylan home from the hospital, body?” a high-pitched voice-over asked. “Come on, we can’t delay /
the three of them slept curled together on the sectional, No one can see him on the floor / Get him out the door before he
bunking down in the living room. By his third birthday, can decayyyyyyy.” She uploaded the video, a few of her follow-
he was still getting up in the night to crawl into bed with ers liked it, and she went back to an utterly unremarkable day.
his parents. Dylan had bright, round, rosy cheeks and
mussy, brown hair when it wasn’t buzzed short. He ×
had one hazel eye and one that was half-hazel, half-
blue. The only words he could say were “mama” and W E E K S T U R N E D TO M O N T H S I N A PA N D E M I C B L U R .
“dada,” but he found other ways to speak. He’d taken Breakfast, potty time, playtime, storytime. Ashley and Jason’s
to sliding his hand into his dad’s and, with a gentle tug, world grew smaller, revolving more tightly around Lily and Dylan
leading him around the house that way. as Covid continued. Dylan was the kind of kid who went looking
In the weeks after his third birthday, in April 2020, for joy. He loved the rain. One afternoon he stood outside in his
the atmosphere in the family’s gray-green semi- patched green parka, the fuzzy fur lining of his hood matting in
detached was tense. The town was in lockdown from the storm. He leaned his head up and stuck his tongue out as far
the pandemic, and Ashley and Jason both lost their as it would go, rain pattering against his cheeks as he licked the
jobs. Money was tighter than usual, and it was usually droplets, his face beaming with glee. Jason captured the moment
pretty tight. They were in an ongoing battle with the on video, not knowing then that his son’s face in that frame would
neighbors; Jason says they thought he was repeatedly soon be seen the world over.
egging their house. Lily, Ashley’s 12-year-old daughter Ashley grew up around cars—her dad, Norman Brown, still runs
from a previous relationship, was in school remotely, a mechanic’s shop out of his garage about a 10-minute drive west
which meant she was home all day. And Dylan was along the two-lane highway that ribbons its way through this part
Dylan, running around the house with a smile, blink- of Colchester County. Norman used to drag race at derbies, before
and-you’d-miss-him like always. he sold his Monte Carlo to build his own mud car. He started tak-
Three-quarters of Nova Scotia is blanketed by ing it and his daughter to rallies instead. It made sense that Ashley
gnarled firs, spruce, and pines, vegetation so wild would find work as a detailer for the Hyundai dealer a mile away
and dense that for years the province held the title of from her house in Bible Hill.
lost-person capital of North America. Truro sits at the Jason grew up down the road from Truro, in Masstown, a farm vil-
innermost point of an inlet off of Cobequid Bay, which lage of about 150 people. He went west in his early twenties think-
in turn is an offshoot of the Bay of Fundy, a body of ing he’d maybe work on the oil rigs. When that didn’t pan out, he
water governed by the highest tides on the planet and moved back home. He met Ashley one night at a friend’s place. He
home to one of the most comprehensive fossil records looked tough with a tattooed spider crawling down his right hand.
in the world; 300 million years of life are imprinted But she liked his kind, hazel eyes that creased at the corners, his
on its shoreline cliffs. booming laugh and hulking frame. They began to party together,
The town is best known for being the headquarters and eventually they began to live together. Ashley’s family didn’t
of one of the world’s oldest underwear factories; it is much like him. He was loud and gruff. They thought he was a bad
a quiet, pastoral kind of place that offers little by way influence. Her dad felt Jason’s quick temper made it difficult to hold
of excitement but ambling Holsteins. So in the early down a job, and the couple dabbled in drugs. Jason was arrested
once for shoplifting from the gas station, and then again from the
0 5 0 liquor store. Ashley faced charges too. Police accused the couple of
Ashley Brown and Jason Ehler, on their back porch in Bible Hill.

running a scam, bilking the government out of more than $55,000 One morning in May 2020, Ashley was just trying to
(Canadian) by claiming welfare to which they weren’t entitled. (The keep her head on straight. The pandemic was drag-
charges were later dropped.) ging on. She was exhausted. Outside, Jason says, their
They certainly weren’t perfect, but they were a family. For years neighbor’s buddy was banging on their windows, pissed
Jason had wanted a child of his own. He was stepfather to Lily, but about the egging and spoiling for a fight. Jason woke up
he’d been keen to have another kid. To Ashley, it never seemed angry. Ashley can’t remember exactly why, but things
like the right time. But when she turned 29, things had started to escalated fast, and she hit him. Jason sprang out of bed,
settle down. She had steady work, and they weren’t partying as and, suddenly, everyone was yelling. He’d kill her, he
much as they once did. Jason was working full-time, too, deliv- shouted after her. He grabbed her phone and smashed
ering water bottles for the Canadian Springs plant. Ashley said it on the kitchen’s tiled floor. Someone in the neighbor-
even her mom, Dorothy Dowe Parsons, who has struggled with hood called the cops. Ashley was charged with assault,
alcoholism, was sober by then. So when he asked again, she said and Jason for uttering threats and mischief. Both were
yes. Nine months later, Dylan was born. released on an order to appear in court later that sum-
mer. (The charges were withdrawn after the two went
to a court counseling program.)
In the meantime, a judge issued them a no-contact Dylan’s boots were both found, about 60 feet apart, in Lepper Brook.

order. For days, Jason stayed with his parents, a

15-minute drive away, while Ashley took care of Dylan
and Lily at home. The couple’s moms acted as intermedi-
aries, shuttling Dylan between houses. Jason made sure
that he saw Dylan almost every day; he was a devoted
dad that way. But the situation also created tensions.
Jason didn’t like that Dorothy was helping to care for his
son, even if she was just ferrying him back to his home
in Bible Hill. He didn’t trust her, in part, he says, because
of her history of slipping in and out of sobriety. One day,
in the fuss of it all, he didn’t realize until her car had
pulled away that he’d forgotten to kiss Dylan goodbye.
The next morning, Ashley awoke around first light to
find Dylan tucked in beside her. They spent a few minutes
cuddled in bed. Then she got her boy up and took him
to the coffee stop down the road. She ordered him his
favorite breakfast, a chocolate glazed doughnut, and, as
usual, he ate the icing off the top before zeroing in on the
rest. She took her coffee to go, and the pair headed home.
Though Ashley enjoyed the morning with Dylan,
she was tired. It had been a long time since she’d
been a single parent. So when she got a text from
her friend Vanessa, inviting her over for a coffee, she
was relieved: She needed a break. She messaged her
mom to ask if she could watch Dylan for a while, then
packed him a bag—pullups, a snack. She drove by Tru-
ro’s dormant smokestacks and over Lepper Brook. The
water was unusually high.
The neighborhood where Ashley’s mother lives was
described to me as “the slums of Truro.” It’s the kind
of place where people paper over their windows with
skull-and-crossbones flags, where beer bottles sag in
the creek bed. Dorothy’s house, shingled a muted gray-
blue, is down the street from a halfway house and 450
feet away from Lepper Brook, a stream that flows to
the mouth of the Salmon River, and from there to the
Bay of Fundy. Dorothy had a puppy, and the dog was
one of the only family members who could keep up
with Dylan, nipping at his heels. She’d mentioned to neighbors to call 911. The police arrived at the house just 4 min-
Ashley that she was going to take the pair out to play utes later. They fanned out, canvassing locals, searching the area’s
in her backyard, which held a picnic table and a deep- nooks and crannies for anywhere a playful toddler might hide.
freezer and opened on to dead-end Elizabeth Street. When Ashley’s father showed up at her friend’s front door, he was
Ashley joked that Dorothy had better put both babies stone-faced. She had not been expecting him. She knew instantly
on a leash. “Dylan’s a runner. He needs one.” At around something was wrong. “Get in the car,” he said. She complied, tuck-
11 am, Ashley pulled out of the driveway to go meet her ing her slender frame into the truck’s passenger seat like she had
friend. Like the sediment that lines the banks of a river, so many times when she was young. “Dylan is missing,” he told
tragedy builds in layers, too, a series of tiny and incon- her, eyes on the road. For much of the rest of the ride, the two sat
spicuous choices that look clear only after the force of in silence, a harbinger of the quiet to come. “By the time we get
their cataclysmic outcomes. there, they might have found him,” she thought to herself. She was
At about 1:15 pm, Dorothy and Dylan were out in certain they would find him.
the yard. She turned around to tie her puppy to its Firefighters and search-and-rescue volunteers were called in,
lead, and when she turned again, she couldn’t find her trudging waist-deep into the creek. For six hours, they searched
grandson. She ran into the street, yelling for him. Her the area, finding nothing. When a rescue volunteer pulled one of
yells turned into screams, and she pleaded with her Dylan’s little gray rain boots from an errant shopping cart sub-
 One of Dylan’s beloved dinosaurs, next to his picture.

merged in Lepper Brook, it didn’t look good. An hour and a half water camera to take pictures they could later scan for
later, another volunteer found his other boot, stuck in the muck something, anything, they may have missed. A helicop-
about 60 feet downstream. ter flew low overhead, looking for Dylan and flagging
For days, police investigators and ground rescue volunteers areas of interest for searchers on the ground.
searched. A local pilot traced Dylan’s name into his flightpath in The next day, more and more Truro residents joined
the sky. On stoops across the province, firefighters and parents in. Word of Dylan’s disappearance spread—first across
left pairs of rain boots out for Dylan, beacons of hope in the night. the province, then the country, then the continent.
Thousands of web sleuths descended on Facebook
× groups created to discuss details of the case, armed
with keyboards and curiosity. The same day, a family
IN THE HOURS AF TER DYL AN WENT MISSING, A friend started a GoFundMe campaign. Jason and Ash-
theory began to take shape: that Dylan had taken off running, ley turned to Facebook for support, using it to plan
made it to the creek. He didn’t yet know how to swim. searches, organize fundraisers, and update their com-
A dive team combed the riverbeds from below, using an under- munity. The couple knew that keeping Dylan’s picture
circulating, too, was critical.
0 5 3 A missing child captures the compassionate and
curious among us, the ones with savior complexes, Later that week, in a video now viewed tens of thousands of times,
and the people who recognize themselves in these Jada Brooke fanned the flames. She’d spoken to a family member
parents’ nightmares. Before long, Dylan had become of Dylan’s, she said, who was “on our side and agrees that some-
a symbol for a collection of people awash with pain thing’s not right here.” “I had a vision of him being kicked down a
and nowhere to put it. set of stairs … That was actually verified to me,” she told viewers,
Two days after Dylan disappeared, Jason and Ashley providing no evidence. She said she’d had a vision of a shallow
were frantic. It felt surreal; their son still hadn’t been grave between two trees, 5 or 6 feet apart, on a property that also
found. That morning, Ashley received a message from held a red and white truck. That led a Truro resident named Dawn
her sister-in-law. Don’t go on Facebook, she warned. It to a field that held a red and white horse trailer. Inspired, a band of
was too late: Ashley already had a stream of messages residents broke into the trailer. They found a pile of dry hay, which
from strangers accusing her of killing her son. An inter- Brooke called suspicious for its lack of mold. Brooke triumphantly
net sleuth had discovered her TikTok page and posted pointed out that the trailer, which sat in front of a stand of trees,
the videos she’d made to Facebook. Forty-eight hours was proof her vision had been accurate. “If I go quiet or something
after her son went missing, online detectives declared in the group for a while, just remember, I have six kids of my own,
her suspect number one. Missing-person cases are mag- I home-school four. I’m a very involved mother. My kids don’t go
nets for psychics and obsessives, and a medium named missing, you know what I mean?”
Jada Brooke, who said she was based in the New York The abuse spilled beyond accusations about the couple’s par-
area, joined the conversations in one of the Facebook enting. Jason received scam ransom notes from online trolls; one
groups that had sprung up to dissect Ashley’s and Jason’s included a doctored picture of Dylan’s face, battered with bruises
behavior. In a Facebook Live post, she described visions over his right eye and a deep gash on his lip. “You must transfer
she’d seen of the boy. She told followers that a family 3 bitcoins,” the message read, “within 72 hours.” The sender, a Face-
member of Dylan’s called her to ask for her help. Soon, book account under the name Brad, told Jason he’d release his son
she was offering theories of the case and information once the transfer was made, and if he didn’t, he’d never see him
she said came from locals. again. “You have 3 days to save Dylan’s life,” he wrote.
Brooke also talked about Ashley and Dorothy, refus- After six days, with no new evidence—no footprints or debris or
ing to mention them by name. “The family is known credible sightings—the police called off their search. Nothing but
to be into dark magic.” She then added, “As some- rain boots. But Jason didn’t stop. He walked the creek bed day after
body who’s involved in magic myself and does rituals, day, drawing dozens of locals to help. The GoFundMe page would
I believe Dylan was offered as a sacrificial sentiment raise about $12,500 for the family. Ashley and Jason offered it up
to Satan on the pink full Scorpio moon. I think they as a reward for any information.
thought they were doing a good thing. And part of me Jason handed out lapel pins, a blue ribbon and a green ribbon
thinks that’s why the mother and grandmother are intertwined. He gave away key chains bearing his son’s face. He
not showing more remorse. What they did is simply ordered bumper stickers of Dylan looking upward, mismatched
killing a child.” eyes scanning the sky. “Do you want some swag?” he asked me
In another group, people criticized Ashley for getting sadly, the first time we met. He handed me a green and blue bracelet
a haircut. Was that a new nose piercing, they wondered. and a sticker. Maybe, he said, if I put it on my car back home, two
“It just seems they look better as time passes,” wrote Zoe provinces over, someone there would see it and call in a sighting.
Jackson. “All that new shit would be the least of my con- In Canada, parents receive a benefit if one of their children
cerns with a missing baby.” Another member responded: goes missing or dies in a likely crime. Because local police didn’t
“These devils are digging their graves. Keep on buying. label the incident a crime, Ashley and Jason didn’t qualify. “No
Their time is well on its way.” In another, they mocked one gives you a pamphlet on how to be a missing child’s mother,”
Jason’s search attempts, saying, “It’s just him lurking Ashley says. By October, with the province’s lockdown lifted and
in the bushes.” They excoriated him even for sleeping. the dealership fully open again, she went back to work.
“I would be searching nonstop until my feet were bleed-
ing if my child vanished,” wrote Kelly Plaine. ×
The vitriol spilled over into real life. People started
standing outside their Bible Hill home glowering and F O R M O N T H S , FAC E B O O K G RO U P M E M B E R S
taking photos, or following them in their cars. Some- examined the case’s scant evidence, gnashing details like bolts of
one at the area hospital looked up health records for hardening chewing gum. It was a dizzying, dystopian fun house of
Ashley, Lily, and Dylan, a privacy breach. When Jason rumor and speculation. Theories raged: To many, the grandmother’s
and Ashley put up a memorial for Dylan in Bible Hill’s story didn’t track. Others believed she was covering for her
Holy Well Park—a blanket laden with teddy bears, a toy daughter. That the family was collecting money on a GoFundMe
fishing rod, the boy’s first-ever pair of rain boots hang- page meant they’d gotten rid of Dylan because they needed the
ing from the tree overhead—locals tore it apart and dug money—for booze or drugs or both. At one point, the groups’ ranks
a hole beneath it, looking for bones. topped 23,000 people, the same as the entire population of Truro.
By the end of September 2020, the harassment and threats had
0 5 4 gotten so bad that one group member began to research the laws
that govern cyberbullying in the province and even contacted a down their Facebook group and stop posting about their
local lawyer named Allison Harris. Harris knew about the missing family. (Group members chimed in. “I can assure you
boy—Dylan’s story was in the news for weeks after his disappear- I would be completely devastated if that was my child
ance—but she was shocked to learn about the abuse the online or grandchild, I wouldn’t have time or energy to even
sleuthing community had spawned. Just a year and a half out of consider taking people to court to sue them.”) When the
law school, Harris exudes an air of utter unflappability. She speaks courier tried to serve Hurley with papers in his yard, he
in clipped, exacting sentences, and even her smile seems precise ran into his mobile home, shouting profanities behind
when it reveals a perfectly centered gap between her front teeth. him before slamming the door. Harris eventually hired
Harris was one of just two lawyers in the province who had argued a special investigator, who returned to Hurley’s home
online personal injury cases in court. She told the group member escorted by police, to get the documents into his hands.
to have Ashley and Jason get in touch and, after hearing their story, The case slogged along, and after two months Har-
offered her services pro bono. ris started making headway. Her clients didn’t want
Together the three of them set to work documenting thousands money; they just wanted the couple to agree not to post
of abusive screenshots, hundreds of awful messages, dozens of publicly about their family or contact them ever again.
death threats. They wrote letters to the administrators of two of By the end of April, the couples were inching toward
the Facebook groups, ask- a settlement, and it looked
ing them to shut down. At like they were finally going
first, both refused, though to sign that agreement. On
one changed her mind W H E N JAS O N A N D AS H L EY P U T U P May 1, Moulton opened
after becoming the target her Facebook account and
of a harassment campaign A M E M O R I A L F O R D Y L A N I N B I B L E H I L L’ S typed: “This child is gone
within her own group. missing and they’re tak-
H O L Y W E L L PA R K , P E O P L E T O R E I T A PA R T
“This case has surprised ing me to court to not ever
me,” Harris says. “Instead mention his name again
A N D D U G A H O L E B E N E AT H I T,
of appreciating that they’re because I’ve been look-
doing damage and harm, LOOKING FOR BONES. ing for him for a year! His
they seem to feel they name is Dylan Norman
have a right to have these John Ehler!! His name is
groups.” (Still, the groups Dylan! His name is Dylan!
were like a hydra: When one shut down, Ashley and Jason’s most His name is Dylan!” she incanted. “Don’t ever forget his
vocal detractors simply started others under untraceable noms de name! This will be the last time I ever get to mention
plume like “Holiday Precious.”) his name before I sign those papers!!” But it would not
The administrators of the second group were local Truro resi- be the last time. She decided not to sign.
dents: a couple named April Moulton and Tom Hurley who lived The rise of “internet detectives,” as Harris calls them,
down the road from the backyard where Dylan was last seen. Moul- has drawn thousands of people with spare time, curi-
ton, who has dyed red hair and Cheshire-cat eyes, was certain she osity, and a streak of vigilantism to forums like Web-
was doing critical work, her stout hands weighed down with sil- sleuths.com. And crowdsourcing justice can work:
ver rings on almost every finger as she examined the minutiae of Michelle McNamara’s tireless quest to identify the
the case, parsing rumored fiction from rumored fact, Hurley shuf- Golden State Killer started there, and the Netflix doc-
fling back and forth behind her. They didn’t know Jason or Ashley umentary Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet
before Dylan’s story hit headlines, but they emerged as two of the Killer explores how armchair detectives across the
most vocal proponents demanding justice for the boy. They knew world banded together to identify Canadian murderer
as well as anyone what it was to lose a child. Luka Magnotta. “I think people see that documentary
Two years ago, Hurley’s son Nick died. He was 31, he hadn’t been and they want to be that person,” Harris says. “They
sick; he was simply alive one day and dead the next. The couple want their fame for being able to do that.” Someone like
was devastated. Nick, Moulton’s stepson, had been a bright light, Moulton, Harris says, really believes she is seeking jus-
quick to laugh or share a joint with her as he got older. And when tice for Dylan, evidence be damned. “She’s trying to help
Dylan Ehler’s story ripped across the news, a year later almost this little boy at whatever cost,” Harris says. “They’re not
to the day, she felt summoned, called to help. “I was starting to thinking of these people as real people. They can’t be.”
get dreams,” she says. “I feel like he is reaching out wanting to be
found, but he’s scared.” She’d never met Dylan, but she would do ×
whatever she had to do to bring him home. She started a Face-
book group, too, one that examined the case from every angle FROM DOROTHY’S HOUSE TO THE CREEK BED
and explored each theory. As time dragged on, she grew fixated where Dylan’s first rain boot was found takes a couple
on managing the group, posting through the night. of minutes at a brisk clip. Stretches of unfenced land
In late January 2021, Jason and Ashley filed a lawsuit against lead down to the water; wizened tree roots and matted
Moulton and Hurley, asking the court to order the couple to shut grasses create resting points along the shore. Dylan’s
Every day powerful tides wash up the Salmon River,
then back down into Cobequid Bay.

other boot was found lodged in a pocket of debris “Nature was working against Dylan from square one,” says
below the water’s surface, 60 feet from the first boot, Tom Fitzpatrick, president of the team that led the search on
just before the fork where Lepper Brook dips into the the ground. The banks of the brook were so swollen that the
Salmon River. The river winds on for miles beyond currents knocked full-grown men off their feet. Fitzpatrick’s crew
the fork, past floodplains and brick chimneys, over has spent almost 6,000 hours searching for Dylan, speaking to
waterfalls and under skeletal steel bridges. While most fishers and beachcombers and tidal experts to better understand
rivers flow in one direction, the Salmon is a tidal river, what they’re up against. They’ve searched racetracks, gravel pits,
which means it runs in two. Every day, a tidal bore sends cheese factories—anywhere else there’s been a tip, a possible
a wave 6 feet high rippling up the river, straight into sighting. Fitzpatrick is watchful, peering out of his car windows
town, and then back out again. The water, a mix of silt for scavenging birds or misshapen lumps of clay when he crosses
and clay, is a ruddy chocolate brown all the way out to the river each day. Four members of his crew have left the team,
the estuary where the river meets the bay. unable to cope with the unanswered questions still swirling around
The Bay of Fundy is a funnel of ferocity. From above, the case. “Did I miss him? Did I miss something?” Fitzpatrick says.
it’s a depression in the sandstone of Canada’s east “That’s a heavy load to carry home.”
coast, bordered by the provinces of Nova Scotia and Fitzpatrick is confident he knows what happened that day.
New Brunswick, and the state of Maine. There, peace “We think the child was in the backyard and his grandmother got
is thin on the ground. Most oceans, on average, have a distracted—we’re not sure by what and not sure how long. We think
tidal range of 3 feet. The range in Fundy is 53. Imagine the child went out the corner of the yard, behind the neighbor’s
the force created by the pounding hooves of 24 million house. There’s a path that leads down to the brook, and just below
charging horses, and still Fundy’s tides are stronger. there’s a bit of a logjam,” he says, pausing. “About 50 feet down the
The search and rescue team had attached RF water from there is where we found the first boot.” He can’t bring
trackers to a mannequin about Dylan’s weight and himself to say it, exactly, that the boy was caught up in the tides, so
height, then dropped it into Lepper Brook, tracking it forceful and thick with mud that, underwater, it’s impossible to see.
as it disappeared into deep, invisible pockets under
the water. It took less than an hour for the mannequin ×
to be swept up by those powerful tides.
ON THE DAY I VISITED, ASHLEY SAT CROSS-LEGGED IN
0 5 6 her dim living room, folding neat white squares of paper into
origami shapes. On the squares, she’d written words like hope be investigated further. Dorothy says she passed a
and strength in marker. The room is somewhere between time polygraph administered by the police. “They can
capsule and shrine. Dylan’s rain boots sat on a wooden bookshelf. investigate all they want,” she adds. “I have nothing
“Missing” posters papered the windows. Art from people across to hide.”
the continent, commemorating Dylan, hung on the walls alongside In their home, Ashley and Jason and I talked for
Dylan’s list of things to do each day. (“Brush teeth. Learning time. hours. Her hands never stopped moving. At her feet
Time with Lily. Lunch time.”) was a bin, holding near a hundred folded white paper
Since Dylan disappeared, Ashley has retreated into herself, boats. They’re for Dylan, she says. Tomorrow would
drifting from friends and family who haven’t shown up for her this be the anniversary of the day he disappeared, and, in
year. She avoids her old grocery store now, suspicious eyes trailing a tribute, they’re going to send them out to sea.
her down the aisles. She no longer speaks to her mom, who she A few days later, early one Saturday morning, Jason,
feels hasn’t apologized for her role in what happened. She rarely Ashley, and Jason’s twin brother, Justin, climb into their
speaks to Jason’s family, who she says believed she was involved white SUV and drive through Bible Hill, Truro, and
once they saw the TikTok videos she made. Masstown and on toward familiar shores. The morning
In late May, April Moulton finally agreed to settle the court case. is misty gray, and they pass winding driveways, where
“It’s going to feel good to let go of one thing,” Ashley says, resigned. wary barn cats keep neighborhood watch. The gravel
By July, Tom Hurley settled too. Meanwhile, the other Facebook turns to sand, and they pull into a makeshift parking
group, run by anonymous critics, carries on. Ashley and Jason could spot in front of the rolling dunes of Fundy.
go to court to compel Facebook to reveal who’s behind the accounts Jason pulls gear out of his trunk: neon orange
and then, if the company were to relinquish the data, could file suit. vests, a briefcase holding the drone that he’ll fly up
They’ll probably have to let it go, though, Ashley says. They don’t and down the shoreline. We pass orange tape tied
have the money. to cedar branches and pieces of driftwood, markers
They’ve talked about leaving, about starting anew someplace else. made by another couple who come looking for Dylan
“We want to disappear,” Jason says. “Not until we get answers,” he sometimes. Jason has spent months begging for people
adds. They’ve talked about having another child together, about to come help, scouring thousands of photographs
reversing the tubal ligation surgery Ashley had the year after Dylan for traces as small as the patches on Dylan’s jacket.
was born. “In one way, you think that is something you might want, Because while he believes that his son might still be
and then in another way, you’d feel like, that’s wrong,” she says. alive—must still be alive—that someone took him from
“What if you had another boy and he resembled Dylan, but then the backyard that day and vanished, the only clues in
at the same time you feel like, we’re replacing him?” Jason asks. the case point to the water.
Ashley adds, “There are circumstances where parents do have The dry grass crunches underfoot as we walk. We’ve
another kid to kind of replace what was lost, and then that child’s gone 3 miles and will walk the line once more. I think of
living up to a standard of a child that’s missing. Who can compare the bumper sticker, Dylan’s eyes trained upward. Out
to that, right? That wouldn’t be fair.” No one gives you a pamphlet on the dunes, it starts to rain. Detritus has washed up
on how to be the parent of a missing child. here, scraps the tides have deigned to return: soggy red
When Jason wakes up in the night, he takes long drags from a joint Tim Hortons coffee cups, cracked scalloped shells, one
to fall back to sleep. When Ashley does, she doesn’t bother trying to of the eight boots Jason threw into the creek last year
find sleep again. She gets up, another morning in an endless day. At to see how far they would go.
4 am, she sits alone at the kitchen table, sipping black coffee in the Early on, someone at Wings of Mercy, a volunteer
dark. “Once I’m awake, I’m awake. And my mind starts going,” she search support group, told Jason to be careful, that it’s
says. “Every morning you wake up and there’s a couple of seconds easy to get lost in the looking. But no body means hope,
where you don’t … where you forget. And then it hits you again. And and his hope is a pilot light. He’ll come out here on
you’re like, this is my life.” the same day again next week, because he does this
The preceding months have brought depths of disappointment every week, walking the shores of the river and the
neither Ashley nor Jason thought possible. New tips are no longer bay, then going home to post the footage to a Facebook
a source of excitement, but an inevitable letdown. Jason filed a group dedicated to his ongoing search. In his hand will
complaint with the police commissioner, alleging that the police be a binder filled with images and maps of where he’s
were negligent in their initial investigation and search because they already been and where he thinks they should try again.
didn’t send out an Amber Alert. Since then, the cops will meet only The tidal force means the landscape’s always shifting,
with Ashley and only if new information comes in. If Dylan was the so there is value here in retracing steps, looking for
son of the mayor or the chief of police, Jason later says, this story anything human against the loam.
would have a different ending. “Dylan would be home.” (The police He walks interminably on, trudging his way along the
say Jason is misconstruing facts online, and declined to comment shoreline of a bay where the water never runs clear.
further, citing the open missing-persons case.)
The couple hired a private investigator, Dave Worrell. He KATHERINE LAIDLAW (@klaidlaw) is a freelance
told the parents what Jason, by then, already believed: that writer based in Toronto. Her last piece for WIRED, in
Dylan’s grandmother’s timeline didn’t check out, that it could issue 29.03, was on cosmetic surgeons and Instagram.
Honey, a 3-year-old female,
couldn’t move to California
with her family because
hedgehogs are illegal to own
in the state. Her rescuer
says she’s “easygoing.”

0 5 8
 Looks
that
Quill

The African pygmy hedgehog may be the most Instagrammable pet ever.
But behind the tiny top hats and miniature spa weekends,
I discovered a sad tale of internet virality.

By Noelle Mateer
Photographs by Shayan Asgharnia
 laborations.” Another hog, Lionel, has done heart-eyes emoji when talking about her.
sponsored posts for Cadbury chocolate, a “This tiny little creature has just as much
national pharmacy chain, a weighted blan- personality as our dog does, and it’s so cute,”
ket company, a PBS docuseries about wood- Easter told me. “She’s so sweet. She’s … she’s
land creatures, the 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog amazing.” Anna Mathias, human to Lionel,
movie, a coffee shop in South Carolina, and a told me that only those who truly appreciate
brand of carpet cleaner specially formulated their hedgehogs can hope to get a big inter-
to remove pet stains. net following. When people ask her (and
As I approached 100 hedgehogs followed, they do ask her) how to become a hedgie
the algorithm began to suspect that I too had influencer, she tells them to “love your ani-
a hedgehog, or at least might be in the mar- mal,” because it comes through on camera.
ket for one. It suggested accounts selling As the months went by, the hedgehogs in
hedgehog merch, hedgehog supplies, and, my feed celebrated Memorial Day, the sum-
in some cases, actual hedgehogs. A shop mer solstice, HBO Max’s Friends reunion.
in the UK offered a music-festival-themed I became obsessed with the idea that this
set, including a tent, lanterns, a set of pint wasn’t just a subset of photogenic pets but
glasses, and two “mini resin burgers.” Some rather an entire species exploding in pop-
hedgehogs’ bios linked out to Etsy stores, ularity. I wanted to learn about the hogs
where they sold their own props. behind the display names, to peek past their
My hedgehog tally kept rising: 150, then veneer of tiny top hats and GIF-able snuggle
200. I created a new account just to keep sessions. One question was running on an
track of them all—hedgehog.fan12, because exercise wheel in my mind: When a species
hedgehog.fan was already taken and 12 is goes viral, what happens to the animals?
first time I saw Mr. Pokee, a coffee-mug- my lucky number. I started to wonder where
sized hedgehog with 1.9 million followers on the hedgehogs would end: Would Instagram
Instagram, I naively thought he was some- ever suggest, say, hamsters instead? But fol- In 1991, the same year that Sonic the
how special. He has fluffy white belly fur and low after follow, the algorithm served up Hedgehog came out on Sega Genesis,
likes to scamper around on his stubby little more. I stopped at 553. Richard Allen Stubbs, an American animal
legs. He frequently poses in front of heavily These weren’t the sort of hedgehogs you importer, was living in Nigeria. According to
edited nature scenes, as if he’s photobomb- might stumble across in the British woods, a hedgie in upstate New York, who heard the
ing a Windows desktop. Sometimes he holds I learned. (Not that that would be likely to story secondhand and retold it in the pages
a tiny teddy bear or wears tiny socks. When happen anyway: The UK’s rural hedgehog of the Hedgehog Welfare Society’s newslet-
he smiles, he shows the most adorable, population is estimated to have declined ter, several men from the north of the coun-
unthreatening fangs. by at least a third since 2002.) They were try came to Stubbs one day with a box full of
But when I tapped the blue Follow button, African pygmy hedgehogs, first imported to African pygmy hedgehogs. He dealt mostly
I was surprised to see Instagram drop down the United States from West Africa several in reptiles, the newsletter says, but the men
a menu full of other hedgehog influencers decades ago, and now usually bred domes- made him an offer he couldn’t—or in any
I might enjoy. There was Koala, who wears tically. Although humans have made pets of case didn’t—refuse: 2,000 hedgehogs at 50
glasses and poses in elaborate backdrops a few of the world’s 17 hedgehog species, this cents a head. They reportedly told Stubbs
made to look like scenes from Harry Potter. one is by far the most popular. And you’d be that the native hedgehog population in their
There was Wilbert, who does hedgehog hard-pressed to find an animal better for region had reached nuisance proportions,
ASMR by munching worms in front of a mini online content. African pygmy hedgehogs and many animals were dying of starvation.
microphone. There were hedgehogs wearing fit in your hand, and their spikes aren’t pain- Stubbs was not the most auspicious guy
tiny hats, hedgehogs going on tiny vacations, ful. Hedgies—that’s what hedgehog fans call to kick off a pet trend. Around the time that
hedgehogs posing in front of festive banners both themselves and their pets—say the ani- he branched out into hedgehogs, he also
that said things like “HAPPY EASTER” and mals are “pokey.” As if a succulent had legs. helped import 47 baby crocodiles that were
“PROUD TO BE IRISH.” The accounts daily_ One account referred to them as “lap cacti.” on the endangered species list. A US Fish and
dose_of_hedgehogs and daily__hedgehog Charisma-wise, a hedgehog obviously has Wildlife inspector found the crocodiles hid-
aggregated the best of the week’s hedgehog more going for it than a cactus does. Maple’s den beneath two boxes of land crabs and 50
content and put some of it to music. human, Laura Easter, transforms into the cartons of tropical fish from Nigeria. Stubbs
I followed them all. And then the algo- was convicted and sentenced to 12 months
rithm kept giving. Hedgehogs started show- in prison for his role in the scheme. (He did
ing up in my ads. Cinnamon posed with a tiny not reply to requests for comment.)
towel on her head during her spa weekend, 0 6 0 But the imported hedgehogs received a
courtesy of Hotels.com. Ichigo appeared to better welcome. Over the next few years,
smile at a wristwatch. Maple, a brand rep for according to the newsletter, Stubbs sent
two stores, said in her bio to “DM for #col- thousands more to his clients in New York
and Miami. At the time, the US Department before Finding Nemo sent parents rushing really ramped up in 2013. According to Shota
of Agriculture estimated that there were as out to buy clownfish, the pharaohs took their Tsukamoto, Koala’s human, that’s when the
many as nine additional hedgehog import- cats to the afterlife and Emperor Augustus hedgie influencer trend took off in Japan.
ers. The bonanza ended when the US per- spent big on parrots.) And like any exotic pet, Just like other Japanese internet pets before
manently halted hedgehog shipments from the African pygmy hedgehog mystified a lot them—Maru the cat, Kabosu the Doge—
countries with foot-and-mouth disease, a of the people it lived with. They didn’t know the early Instagram hedgehogs quickly
list that included Nigeria. how to care for it or breed it responsibly. jumped from screen to screen. The English-
The animals made a modest splash in the Many hedgehogs ended up in the hands of speaking internet soon recognized the ani-
US. Like any decent exotic pet, they were an rescuers, or died prematurely. Still, the origi- mal’s ability to spawn endless fountains of
alluring mix of companion and conversa- nal imported hedgies were enough to estab- content. A 2017 headline in New York mag-
tion piece. (Humans with disposable income lish a stable North American population. azine’s Intelligencer blog reads: “Azuki the
have always fallen for this combo: Long The species’ cultural momentum only Instagram-Famous Hedgehog Is the Only
Pure Thing Left in the World.”
The glut of hedgehog content fed a
demand for actual hedgehogs. As in the

One question was running on Stubbs era, many people bought them on
impulse. They soon discovered that the
an exercise wheel in my mind: carefully constructed scenes of hedgie bliss
they saw on Instagram didn’t really pre-
When a species goes viral, pare them for the rigors of the lifestyle. For
one thing, hedgehogs are nocturnal, so if
what happens to the animals? you’re expecting them to always be pop-
ping delightedly out of ice cream cones,
you’re in for a disappointment. They have
special temperature requirements, churn
out a shocking amount of poop, and are
known to produce something called “spit
balls” whenever they encounter new scents.
And because most local wildlife laws classify
African pygmy hedgehogs as exotic, only an
exotic animal vet may care for them. Some
states only have one or two of those (and
yes, they’re expensive).
Christina Hannigan, a volunteer rescuer
for the Hedgehog Welfare Society, told me
that “2017 was when it really went insane.”
She sent me a spreadsheet that showed res-
cues jumping 30 percent that year across the
country, and rising steadily since. When we
first spoke, she was at her office in Chicago,
where she manages condominiums. She
had 10 hedgehogs living in her apartment,
which was many more than she wanted but
fewer than her all-time record of 17. “I would

Christina Hannigan
holds Sam, age 5.
love to be less busy,” she told me. don’t see “the really gross stuff.” One of her
Hannigan got her first hedgehog, rescues, an ornery old hedgehog named
Tumbleweed, in 2009, mostly because she Bingo, came to her with a hair wrapped 0 6 2
thought he was cute, but also because he around his rear right leg, which had to be
was the only pet that didn’t trigger her hus- amputated. Another one, Oliver—who, on
band’s allergies. (She gave away her cats closer examination, turned out to be Olivia—
before the wedding.) In the happy years had a prolonged mite infection that claimed
before the fad, the most she sheltered was many of her quills. Sam had an enlarged Facebook groups for hedgehog owners, and
21 hedgehogs in one year. These days, she heart. Roscoe was on a diet of soft foods they feel like entirely different online worlds
averages between 30 and 40. (only three teeth left). from Instagram. Pet owners share pictures of
It gets cramped. The hogs live in cages Hannigan has made it her mission to use strange rashes they found on their animals’
outside her bedroom, and sometimes they her online presence “to raise awareness feet, or ask things like, “Is it normal for Ollie
wake her and her husband up at night with of the non-cute part.” She helps run two to poop all over his cage and in his bed?”
Much of Hannigan’s work is ferrying
African pygmy hedgehogs back and forth
to her local exotic vet. “They’re little cancer
factories,” she said. Around half of middle-
aged hogs have some sort of tumorous
growth. Olivia developed one when she
was 2. (Hannigan recently decided to “let
her cross the bridge.”) The species is also
prone to a disease called—and yes, this is its
real name—wobbly hedgehog syndrome.
It starts with mild ataxia, or loss of body
control, and progresses into total paralysis.
At least 10 percent of pet African pygmies
develop the disease, though it can only be
diagnosed post-mortem, so the real num-
ber is likely higher.
Donnasue Graesser, a professor of biology
at Quinnipiac University and a cofounder of
the Hedgehog Welfare Society, believes the
syndrome is genetic. In 2006, she coauthored
one of the few scientific studies on the dis-
ease. As she later wrote in the society’s news-
letter, the “pattern of inheritance becomes
obvious, even to an untrained person.” If the
hog parents develop the disease, you can be
pretty sure the hoglets will too—even when
they’re raised in different places, fed different
diets, cared for by different owners. Graesser
advocates careful breeding to weed the wob-
bly genes out of the population. But this is
easier said than done. One pro breeder told
me that “backyard breeders” don’t always
know to pay attention to bloodlines.
During my phone call with Hannigan,
she mentioned a pet shop in Chicago that
the simultaneous whirring of their exer- kept males and females in the same cage,
cise wheels. (She told me excitedly that she Maple goes camping. not realizing they would breed. She had
recently switched to a brand that doesn’t to go in and separate them. She imagined
squeak so much.) After 2017, Hannigan said, how an uninformed customer’s visit to such
“my husband really started to question: Can a store might go. “You know, it’s $300 for
we continue doing this? And I said, ‘I don’t the animal, and he can’t tell you how old it
see how we can stop it. The need is only get- is exactly, because he doesn’t care, and he
ting greater.’ ” gives you some standard food, wheel, no
On Instagram, Hannigan said, people heat,” she said. “If you do the research ahead
of time and … um, hang on one second.”
I heard her turn away from her phone This is how the internet works: You
and say, “I’m just doing an interview.” She
turned back.
get into something for the fun of it,
“I’m at work,” she said, “and my new
employee is just figuring out that I am the
and you end up being radicalized.
craziest person he’s ever worked for.”

In the opening to his book A Prickly Affair: tivate some of the most cheerful corners
My Life with Hedgehogs, the ecologist Hugh of the internet. When the joy evaporates,
Warwick says the world of hedgehogs is it’s their job to bring it back. After a while,
fraught with “politics, passion, and obses- though, I couldn’t help feeling that every
sion”—which sounds melodramatic until mini top hat concealed a brain tumor, every
you spend any time in it. The “politics” part I felt genuinely bummed out, and not belly-rub video an undiagnosed case of the
became clear to me the first time I told a just because I had intended to interview wobbles. The Instagrammability of these
hedgie that I live in Pennsylvania. It was Quillbert. I felt sad because I liked him, and animals would destroy them, I thought. I
like a storm cloud had followed me into the his owner had a gift for designing props. watched a hedgehog lie on a pool floatie as a
Zoom room. The announcement’s comment section Bob Marley song played and felt only dread.
Pennsylvania is the scariest word you was a virtual vigil. People sent flower emojis. While the algorithm buoyed the world with
can say to an American hedgehog lover. An account dedicated to documenting the public joy, hedgehog rescuers were drown-
The state has unusually strict conservation life of a handsome golden retriever wrote: ing in private grief. This is how the internet
laws that essentially forbid all pet African “I have loved following your page and your works: You get into something for the fun of
pygmies from existing within its borders. journey. Our deepest sympathies!!! We are it, and you end up being radicalized.
Hedgies elsewhere in the US have gotten so sorry for your loss.” (Golden retrievers I unfollowed the anonymous aggrega-
local anti-hedgehog laws repealed, some- get cancer about as often as African pygmy tors and fortified my feed with the hogs I
times with help from the Pet Industry Joint hedgehogs do.) The mourning rituals contin- knew were being well cared for—Maple,
Advisory Council, a trade association. But ued two days later, when Quillbert’s account Lilo, Chibi. But of course the algorithm
Pennsylvania remains hostile. A breeder in posted a tribute photo, made by another doesn’t care if a hedgehog is getting enough
Las Vegas advises customers: “You MUST GO hedgie in Brazil. It depicted Quillbert with a calcium or is up to date on her immuniza-
AROUND the entire state of Pennsylvania if halo, ascending to heaven. tions. It doesn’t care if she has the right kind
you are travelling with your hedgehog. They For weeks, the account kept posting old of ceramic heat emitter to keep her warm
are not even allowed to change planes at a photos of Quillbert, now made somber by his in her cage. It doesn’t care if her human
Pennsylvania airport.” A rescuer in Maryland recent departure. Then one day there was respects the First Hedgie Commandment:
told me that she has heard stories of animals a picture of him staring out a window. The “Love your animal.” To the algorithm, she’s
being seized and euthanized. caption read: “Who’s out there???? Who do another pokey, fluffy ball to toss into the
The longer I scrolled through the hedge- I see??? Stay tuned for a special announce- hopper of the hedgehog-industrial machine.
hog’s infinite cuteness, though, the more ment.” Three days later, the account intro- Maybe there is no ethical consumption on
I realized that Warwick had left a crucial duced its new star, a gray-black hedgehog Instagram. But if there were, it might look
word off his list: grief. Any pet-human rela- named Chibi. something like the Hedgehog Running Club.
tionship is a heartbreak waiting to happen, Having seen the hedgehog circle of life Created by Lemmy’s human and held every
but hedgies seem to suffer more than most. play out once, I began to notice it every- Thursday, it’s a friendly online competition
Earlier this year, I came across a picture of a where. Some accounts were on their third, in which hedgies track the distance their
hog with Photoshopped angel wings. No, not or even fourth, mascot. The original Darcy hogs put in on the exercise wheel. When I
Quillbert, I thought, as I read the caption: the Flying Hedgehog? Long gone. Scribble first came across the club, Lemmy had run
and Q’b? They’re actually Gnocchi and close to 6 miles in a single night, landing him
It’s with great sadness and a Truffle. Scroll through enough highlights on in eighth place, between Puff and Jambi.
heavy heart . I am letting you all Mr. Pokee’s page, and you’ll find one that The bar graph showing their results wasn’t
know our sweet sweet boy crossed reads: “When Mr. Pokee passed in March photogenic, exactly, but it suggested some-
the rainbow bridge yesterday 2019 my heart was completely broken ... The thing comforting behind the scenes—dozens
afternoon. We rushed him to the reason I will not change my Instagram name of hedgehogs, free of props and camera
vets where they did x-rays and is that it’s not just about a hedgehog any- lenses, whirring away into the night. The next
found he was riddled with cancer. more. It’s about the story and the message: day, Lemmy’s account posted: “I ran extra in
He did not respond to any of the Be happy and smile.” You can think of him memory of Daisy. Rest well, fren.”
treatments the vet tried. He passed like a hedgehog Shamu. There’s the animal,
while at the vets. This is every pet and then there’s the animal’s brand. NOELLE MATEER (@n_mateer) is a writer
owners worse nightmare. The people who run these accounts cul- in Pittsburgh.
ILLUSTRATION BY MARK PERNICE
AS THE LATEST TAKE ON DUNE
HITS THE BIG SCREEN,
WE TRACE THE LEGACY OF
FRANK HERBERT’S COMPLEX,
PRESCIENT MASTERPIECE.

DUNE , FAMOUSLY, IS an unfilmable piece of work. It has four appendices and a glos-
sary of its own gibberish, and its action takes place on two planets, one of which is a desert
overrun by worms the size of airport runways. Lots of important people die or try to kill each
other, and they’re all tethered to about eight entangled subplots. But as Denis Villeneuve,
the director of the latest attempt to put Dune on the screen, says of the undertaking, “We
are bound to try to do the impossible.” ¶ Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel is more than just a story
of daunting scale. What people mean when they say it’s unfilmable is less, perhaps, that it
can’t be filmed and more that it’s begging not to be. ¶ Dune is a space opera, an allegory
for ecological disaster, a disquisition on power—and an unending source of inspiration for
all manner of extraliterary pursuits. In the half century since the novel’s debut, its ideas and
philosophies have shown up in everything from cybersecurity and modern spirituality to
views on warfare. Its meaning no longer lies solely on the page; it lives in how people have
consumed and transformed it, like a sandworm moving beneath the culture. Villeneuve’s
movie is merely one eruption. Here, we celebrate some of the rest. And, OK, fine—we’ll
deconstruct a stillsuit too. We’re still nerds, after all. —THE EDITORS
 THE SECRET
SCI-FI ORIGINS OF
BURNING MAN

BY JASON KEHE

IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, sometime between 2000 and 2005. She swears
it happened, but she can’t be more specific about the timing than that. ¶ What
Summer Burkes does remember is what she saw. She was deep in the des-
ert with a few friends, wandering deeper—no life in sight. Then, at some point,
some dark and indeterminate hour, she came upon an abandoned camp. There
were cargo tents. And a lookout tower, which she climbed. At the top was a small
platform; on it a TV set, glitching, and some dusty old comms equipment. Burkes
listened to a transmission playing on loop. It told her where she was: the planet
Arrakis. It also told her the reason nobody was there: They’d all been eaten by
a sandworm. “That one made my hair stand on end,” Burkes says. She ran back
down, scanning the area, frantic, for signs of the worm. ¶ The danger was not,
strictly speaking, real. Burkes was at Burning Man, the conflagrant annual con-
0 6 7 fab in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. And the ghost camp, she now believes, sit-
ting in the present-day comfort of her home in Northern California, was an
art installation designed to transport nerdy Gen Xers like herself to Arrakis,

I L L U S T R A T ION BY CALVIN SPRAGUE

 0 6 8
the setting of Frank Herbert’s Dune. It’s a planet covered in a
scorching desert-sea, its tidal sands undulating with the sub-
terranean squirmings of giant, sightless worms. Walk across its
surface in too even, too lifelike a pitter-patter and the creatures years, Burkes and an artist ex-boyfriend fantasized about build-
will hear you, surge skyward, and strike. ing a giant worm bursting out of the playa sand.
Is that what Burning Man is all about? Role-playing scenes Burkes started going to Burning Man in 1998, back when there
from your favorite fantasies, with a frightening dash of were no LEDs and everything looked just a little grungier, a little
Herbertian horror? You’d be forgiven for thinking not. Over the more Arrakeen. “All fire and dust and metal,” she says. She was
years, the event—expected to return to the desert in 2022 after a a music and nightlife writer for the SF Bay Guardian at the time;
two-year Covid hiatus—has come to represent a kind of counter- after reporting a story about Burning Man’s Department of Public
cultural city on a hill, founded on druggy West Coast woozeries Works, she immediately joined it. They’re the crew responsi-
and lovey-dovey principles of living, a radical weeklong social ble for building up, and then tearing down, the event’s physical
experiment bolstered by a gift economy. “A load of hogwash,” infrastructure each year, so for them, some of the most mean-
says John Law, one of its founders. He’s a little peeved, because ingful parts of Burning Man take place when the desert is mostly
the bigger Burning Man gets, the more its most ardent devo- empty. On the team, Burkes eventually settled into the role of
tees seem to misrepresent its geeky beginnings. “In reality,” he dispatcher—“the MC of everyone’s radio traffic, the all-seeing
says, “pop culture was a much larger influence.” Though almost eye,” as she puts it. One of her first innovations on the job was to
nobody talks about it, the origin of Burning Man was Mad Max. It come up with a way of identifying the precise moment when the
was Lawrence of Arabia. And it was, very crucially and in a way public phase of each Burning Man’s life cycle had really begun.
that has never been properly acknowledged, Dune. “Before the event, it’s so nice and quiet and dark,” she says. “Then
all the loud, bright, blinky people get there, and the first sign is
the techno vibrating the floor of the desert. You can feel it in your
sternum.” That was her cue. She’d click on her walkie-talkie and
announce to the staff: “WE HAVE WORMSIGN.”
For the members of her crew, that moment was always a bit
of a letdown, and only became more so as Burning Man got
brighter and blinkier over time. “We love the desert because of
B its transformative properties,” she says. “It’s so quiet it presses
on your ears—until there’s wormsign.” Plus, Burkes adds, there’s
an underground river that courses beneath Black Rock, and she
imagines that the critters in it probably resent that four-on-the-
floor beat. “There’s something that makes sense in the desert
about walking with uneven steps and not alerting the sand-
BUT BURNING MAN began on a beach, you say. Very good: In worms to your location,” she says.
1986, Larry Harvey and co. set fire to an 8-foot-tall wooden doll on LEDs and extra-obnoxious ravers weren’t the only changes
San Francisco’s Baker Beach and made such memorable merri- that marked Burning Man’s evolution. The most obvious one,
ment that they were compelled to do it all over again the next year. which Burkes is frankly tired of talking about, is the influx of tech
Then the year after that, and the next, until the party got so rowdy workers and their showy CEOs. At this point, practically every-
the police shut them down. So Harvey called up Law, whose body in the Bay Area has been or knows somebody who’s been
punkish, sci-fi-obsessed prankster buddies at the Cacophony to Burning Man. There’s a professor at Stanford who studies the
Society had an idea: Let’s take it to the desert. The year was 1990, event’s influence on software development. In Elon Musk’s infa-
the beginning of Burning Man proper. “We drew a line in the dirt mous formulation, Burning Man is Silicon Valley. Regardless of
and stepped across it, and it was entirely transformational,” Law your feelings about that, its hypocrisy or at least hilarious irony,
recounts in Spark, one of many Burning Man documentaries. consider this: It all goes back to Dune.
As early as that first year “on the playa”—Burner-speak Frank Herbert’s story is one any techish Burner will recog-
for Black Rock—the Dune obsessives in the crew suggested nize on a cellular level: A boy-genius wanders into the desert,
everyone build mock stillsuits, a reference to the form-fitting does a lot of drugs, and finds Buddhist clarity. Though Herbert
bodywear that recycles precious fluids and keeps Arrakis’ didn’t care much for computers, and set his epic in a far future
desert-dwelling Fremen alive when they venture beyond the devoid of them, he nonetheless used the word computation to
safety of their mountain villages, known as sietches. “They ended describe the superhuman abilities of his hero, Paul Atreides: Paul
up with a bit of a compromise requiring less costuming work, “saw the avenues ahead of them on this hostile planet,” Herbert
and covered their entire bodies in playa mud,” Law says. In later wrote in Dune. “He focused his prescient awareness, seeing it
years, attendees would bring their own Duneries to the proceed- as a computation of most probable futures, but with something
ings. “I want to get together a group that would be interested in more, an edge of mystery—as though his mind dipped into some
building a Fremen sietch on the playa,” one announced on the timeless stratum and sampled the winds of the future.” Sounds
ePlaya message board in 2007. Another Burner, in 2005, called a lot like the so-called flow state so fetishized by Silicon Valley’s
the decommissioned ambulance he rode in “the worm.” For coding elite.
 IN ELON MUSK'S INFAMOUS FORMULATION,
BURNING MAN IS SILICON VALLEY.
REGARDLESS OF YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT
THAT, ITS HYPOCRISY OR AT LEAST
HILARIOUS IRONY, CONSIDER THIS:
IT ALL GOES BACK TO DUNE.

order “to define,” in the words of Bill Ransom, an old friend and
collaborator of Herbert’s, “what it is to be human.” As to what
sorts of humans might be found in the fiery furnace of Arrakis,
Herbert looked far beyond his own desert wanderings for an
answer, to the life of T. E. Lawrence, the British warrior-poet
who stirred up Arab resistance to the Turks during World War I
M and who, in a dizzying circularity, also influenced the found-
ers of Burning Man. “This historical event,” wrote Herbert’s son
Brian, in an introduction to Dune, “led Frank Herbert to con-
sider the possibility of an outsider leading native forces against
the morally corrupt occupiers of a desert world, in the process
becoming a godlike figure to them.” Or, as Mr. Dryden puts it in
MEN HAVE BEEN searching for, and occasionally finding, them- the ’62 Lawrence biopic: “Only two kinds of creatures get fun in
selves in deserts since at least the dawn of recorded history. To the desert: Bedouins and gods.”
nonnatives, the landscape—its emptiness and deprivation— That’s what deserts do, in stories: They make prophets of men.
offers the possibility of spiritual transformation. Herbert, born All the greats, from Moses to Mad Max, have survived the heat,
in a temperate corner of Washington, was no exception. He was and to their number Dune added another M-name: the Mahdi.
36 years old and working as a journalist when he made his way Arabic for “guided one”—the Mahdi is an end-times savior in
to a miniature Sahara in the state of Oregon: a dramatic stretch Islam—it’s what the native Fremen call their new leader, Paul.
of coastal sand dunes just outside the town of Florence. An inter- When Harvey, Law, and the rest of the first-gen Burners drew
national group of conservationists and ecologists had gathered that line in the sand of Black Rock Desert, they were playing
there to study the destructive power of these wind-driven land- Paul Atreides. They were having fun, but they came out immor-
forms, which threatened not only Florence but cities from Chile tals. Thirty years later, people follow them still, seeking mean-
to Libya to Israel. Herbert proposed to write a magazine story ing, and perhaps a touch of godliness, or else of “computation,”
on the subject. “These waves can be every bit as devastating as a every time they wander into the desert. Which is less a desert,
tidal wave in property damage,” he wrote in a letter to his agent, these days, than a “blinky adult wonderland,” as Burkes puts it.
Lurton Blassingame, “and they’ve even caused deaths.” She stopped going to Burning Man in 2016. “Eighteen, 19 years
Bless Blassingame. He thought the story of advancing sands was enough,” she says. “There’s no rain on Arrakis.”
“fairly limited in appeal,” sending Herbert spinning off to other- Nor is there much in the way of peace. Herbert didn’t write just
worldier realms. Convinced a novel might better accommodate one Dune book, a fact perhaps forgotten by some of its more
his new ecological obsessions, he spent the next eight years writ- casual fans. He wrote six, and Paul doesn’t remain the hero of
ing and refining a 188,000-word epic set in a mythic, monstrous them for long. Soon after his triumph on Arrakis, the Mahdi leads
desert. It’s fair to call the appeal of Dune, since its publication in a 12-year intergalactic jihad that claims the lives of 60 billion peo-
1965, fairly unlimited. ple. That’s eight Earths’ worth. Sometimes, a man goes into the
Roughly a 10th of Earth’s surface is desert; on Arrakis, of desert, becomes a messiah, and ends up a goddamn monster.
course, the proportion is bumped up a full order of magnitude,
to a (not so) cool 100 percent. That’s science fiction for you: the JASON KEHE (@jkehe) is a senior editor and culture critic at
enlargement of a remote extremity to planet-size proportions, in WIRED . He wrote about Amazon’s sci-fi efforts in issue 29.09.
 HOW TO MAKE A

BUT NOT REALLY.

BECAUSE ACTUAL
FUNCTIONING
STILLSUITS ARE
ILLUSTRATION BY VIOLET FRANCES / BCD
STILL IMPOSSIBLE.

Mask Up
In the desert, grains of sand
can pelt the face at skin-shred-
ding speeds. Herbert imagined EVERYONE TALKS about the sand-
a mask that covered all but the worms and the spice, but the cool-
eyes—they’re protected by est thing Frank Herbert invented for
hoods—and filtered out sand
and other particles in the air. Dune—even he seemed to think so—
Though West’s version didn’t was the stillsuit. Worn by the inhab-
perform the latter function, it itants of the desert planet Arrakis,
did protect the actors from fly-
ing grit on set. stillsuits capture any moisture that
leaves the body and recycle it back
into drinkable water. They also look
pretty sick, all tubes and piping and
chest plates (a cosplayer’s wet dream).
For Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adap-
tation, costume designer Jacqueline
On the Nose West wanted the look of the stillsuits
In Dune, stillsuit wearers are
instructed to breathe in through to reflect their ecological necessity.
their mouth and out through “It was such a prophetic book about
their nose, and any moisture a planet that was robbed, as ours has
from the exhale is captured by
tubes attached to their nostrils. been, of its resources,” she says. “We
West’s version wasn’t a working wanted the suit to be made exactly as it
breathing apparatus, she says, would have been with Frank Herbert’s
but “it had to be comfortably fit-
ted into the nose of the actors.” descriptions.” Could such a thing ever
Just try not to sneeze. work in the real world? Most likely
not—but it’s still cool to deconstruct.
—ANGELA WATERCUTTER

0
7
0
Icon illustrations by Calvin Sprauge
Illustration based on concept art courtesy
Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures.
Material Science Perfect Fit
One of West’s challenges was Stillsuits hug the body like a sec-
to design suits that looked as ond skin. So West, in close col-
though they kept moisture in laboration with Villeneuve and
but also didn’t suffocate the dozens of costumers, made man-
actors. To do that, the costum- nequins of each actor and used
ers constructed a “fabric of the them to fabricate a suit to their
future” out of heat-melded lay- exact measurements. “They were
ers of foam combined with cot- built amazingly well,” says Javier
ton gauze and acrylic mesh. It Bardem, who plays the Fremen
couldn’t actually perform a still- leader Stilgar.
suit’s key survival functions,
though—trapping perspiration
and pulling out the salt (a notion
that backfires to begin with, as
the point of sweat is that it cools
the body through evaporation).

Porta Potty
Not only can you whiz and poop
in your stillsuit, it’s encouraged,
as that’s your main source of
recycled water. Alas, Dune ’s
stars weren’t able to use their
Get Pumped costumes as diapers (that we
Stillsuits store water wher- know of). Not even the finest
ever there’s space and then use NASA tech—the ISS’s Urine
motion to circulate it around Processor Assembly—could do
what Herbert described.
the body—even in West’s real-
life versions. To keep the actors
cool while filming in the scorch-
ing deserts of the Middle East,
her suits had pockets of water
near the head and anywhere
they would look natural—
thighs, chest, biceps, butt. “We Body of Work
put them wherever they would The human body is the engine
keep a nice shape,” West says. of a stillsuit. Walking, running,
“They had to look good.” breathing—Herbert imagined all
that energy could be harnessed
to power the reactions neces-
Senior editor ANGELA sary to recycle water. Sadly, it’s
pure fiction: Our bodies can’t get
WATERCUTTER
enough energy from the food
(@WaterSlicer) leads and oxygen we ingest to turn
culture coverage at WIRED . waste back into drinkable H2O.
0 7 2

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK PERNICE

HOW FRANK HERBERT’S
NOVEL FORESAW—
AND INFLUENCED—
HALF A CENTURY OF
GLOBAL CONFLICT.

BY ANDY GREENBERG

JUST BEFORE HIS DEPLOYMENT to Iraq in 2003, Ryan Kort spotted a paper-
back copy of Dune in a bookstore near Fort Riley, Kansas. The 23-year-old sec-
ond lieutenant was intrigued by the book’s black cover, with an inset image of a
desert landscape next to the title and the silhouettes of two robed figures walk-
ing across the sand. Despite its 800-plus pages, its small print made it a rela-
tively compact cubic object. So he bought it and carried it with him to the Gulf,
the only novel he packed in his rucksack along with his Army manuals and field
guides. ¶ Kort read the book during moments of downtime over the next weeks,
as he led his platoon of 15 soldiers and four tanks through the Kuwaiti desert,
and later when they took up residence in a powerless, abandoned building
in Baghdad. It told the story of a young man who leaves a 0 7 4

lush green world and arrives on the far more dangerous and
arid planet of Arrakis, which holds beneath its sands a criti-
cal resource for all of the universe’s competing great powers.
(“At the time, when people said ‘This is a war for oil,’ I would
kind of roll my eyes at them,” he notes regarding the Iraq War.
“I don’t roll my eyes about that anymore.”) Written even before the advent of America’s war in Viet-
The parallels felt uncanny, he remembers. As the call to nam, Dune captures a world in which war is inherently asym-
prayer rose up around him one afternoon in that darkened metric, where head-on, conventional military conflict has
building in Iraq’s capital, he says he sensed a connection to largely been replaced with all the subtler ways that humans
Dune. Reading the book felt almost like seeing into a larger seek to dominate one another: insurgency and counterinsur-
story that mirrored the one in which he was playing a small gency, sabotage and assassination, diplomacy, espionage and
part. “Something in the book really clicked,” he says. “It tran- treachery, proxy wars and resource control. For the military
scended the moment I was in.” officers and intelligence analysts who still read and reread
Kort would become a Dune fanatic, reading and rereading Dune today, it presents an uncanny reflection of the state of
Frank Herbert’s entire six-book series. But it was only years geopolitical competition in 2021—from the pitfalls of regime
later, after his second deployment to Iraq—a far tougher tour change to the terra incognita of cyberwar.
of duty in which he was stationed in a hotbed of Sunni insur-
gency, with his troops repeatedly hit by roadside bombs—that
he began to see deeper similarities.
After all, in Dune it’s the native Fremen whose insurgent,
guerrilla tactics ultimately prove superior. Not those of the
Atreides protagonists, the Harkonnen villains, or even the
galactic emperor and his spartan Sardaukar warriors. No
matter which analogy you choose for the United States—or O
whether the Fremen in that analogy are Iraqi or Afghan—the
insurgents outmatch or outlast the superpower.
“You look at it now and you think to yourself, well, of course
the lessons are there, right? We’ve learned that a preponder-
ance of technology doesn’t guarantee success. That the military
element of national power alone can’t secure your objectives ON A RECENT Sunday afternoon, I brushed the dust off of
at times,” says Kort, who today serves as a strategic planning an original Dune board game I had found in my late father’s
and policy officer for the Army. “There are these messy human house, a pristine cardboard relic released in 1979 that sat
characteristics in there, where people have honor and inter- untouched on a shelf in my office for two years. The game,
est bound up into it. And the adversary is sometimes willing whose object is to conquer the entire territory of Arrakis,
to pay higher costs.” seemed like a helpful way to understand Dune’s microcosm
In the decades since Herbert published Dune, in 1965, the of galactic conflict. So I persuaded some unsuspecting friends
book’s ecological, psychological, and spiritual themes have to try it.
tended to get the credit for its breakout success beyond a It quickly became clear that, rather than simplify Dune’s
hardcore sci-fi audience. In his own public commentary on dynamics, the game aggressively leans into the book’s Talmu-
the book, Herbert focused above all on its environmental mes- dic complexity. Opting for the “basic” rather than “advanced”
sages, and he later became a kind of ecological guru, turning version of the rules, it still took two and a half hours for us to
his home in Washington state, which he called Xanadu, into get through the first turn. Understanding any card required
a DIY renewable energy experiment. consulting a reference sheet that read like the fine print on a
But reading Dune a half century later, when many of Her- credit card statement. Rules had caveats, caveats had excep-
bert’s environmental and psychological ideas have either tions. And every player seemed to be able to break the rules
blended into the mainstream or gone out of style—and in the in different ways. The Atreides player could look at cards that
wake of the disastrous fall of the US-backed government in remained face down for the rest of us. Sandworms destroyed
Afghanistan after a 20-year war—it’s hard not to be struck, all the armies they touched, except the Fremen’s, who could
instead, by the book’s focus on human conflict: an intricate, ride them around the board. The Harkonnen player period-
deeply detailed world of factions relentlessly vying for power ically revealed that other players’ characters were actually
and advantage by exploiting every tool available to them. And traitors secretly working for him.
it’s Herbert’s vision of that future that is now revered by a cer- Different sides even had their own paths to victory: The Fre-
tain class of sci-fi-reading geek in the military and intelligence men could win by preventing anyone else from winning. The
community, war nerds who see the book as a remarkably pre- Bene Gesserit player, representing Dune’s genetically engi-
scient lens for understanding conflict on a global scale. neered order of psycho-manipulative illuminati, wrote down
 A SPARTAN NATIVE POPULATION
DISILLUSIONED WITH INVADERS
AFTER A PREVIOUS SUPERPOWER'S
INCURSION: THE PARALLELS BETWEEN
DUNE AND AFGHANISTAN
WERE DIFFICULT TO AVOID.

a prediction before the first turn, guessing which player would cle of those tribes’ brutal and mismatched war with Russian
win and when. If that prediction came true, they would win imperialist invaders. Herbert explicitly borrowed from that
instead. The conflict wasn’t merely asymmetric; each player history: His Fremen speak Chakobsa, named for a language
was in some sense playing a different game. from the Caucasus, and entire lines from Blanch’s text end up
Dune’s vision of human struggle might appear on its face in the mouths of Dune’s characters.
to be the opposite of the world in which Herbert lived in 1965, But in the Caucasus, the Russian invaders eventually won.
when two superpowers seemed locked in an existential stale- In the Vietnam War, which Herbert would cover as a reporter
mate. But the Cold War’s threat of mutual nuclear annihilation for the Hearst newswire only years after writing Dune and
set the stage for the era of unconventional warfare that Her- its first sequel, Dune Messiah, the insurgents did. In Dune,
bert saw so clearly. In Dune, the Great Houses have signed a Herbert placed his bet on the insurgents. “If you’d said in
convention against the use of atomic weapons. That results the wake of World War II that the United States would lose
in warring powers—namely the Atreides and Harkonnens— a war to guerrillas who didn’t have an air force or navy or
resorting to exactly the sort of restricted, covert, deceptive even really heavy weapons, people would have just thought
tactics that defined modern conflict during the Cold War and that you were insane,” says Major General Mick Ryan, com-
ever since. mander of the Australian Defence College and author of the
“You have two parties that have no recourse but violent forthcoming book War Transformed. “But Dune did kind of
conflict. But you also have norms that mean violence must presage that, didn’t it?”
be as narrowly constrained through as tight an aperture as For Ryan and other Dune-reading soldiers, the two wars in
possible,” says Alex Orleans, a threat intelligence analyst at Iraq and the war in Afghanistan were even clearer echoes of
security firm CrowdStrike and a former analyst under con- Herbert’s vision. When Ryan describes serving as the com-
tract at the Department of Homeland Security, who arrived to mander of the Australian Army’s Reconstruction Task Force
our interview with seven single-spaced pages of notes about in Afghanistan’s Oruzgan Province in 2006 and 2007, he finds
Dune’s lessons for national security. “And so the idea becomes the parallels with Dune difficult to avoid. A spartan native
to engage in very limited, discrete, clandestine operations.” population disillusioned with invaders after a previous super-
In Dune, Herbert creates a term for that not-quite-war: power’s incursion, with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan
kanly, defined in the book’s glossary (yes, it has a glossary) as standing in for years of Harkonnen rule on Arrakis. Young
a “formal feud or vendetta under the rules of the Great Con- locals whose tribal code of honor dictated that every casualty
vention, carried on according to the strictest limitations.” Just among them be avenged. The same cultural divisions—and
as the Harkonnens plant hunter-seeker assassination bots in the wholly different games each side was playing—always
the Atreides compound and the Emperor hides his Sardau- making victory more elusive than it first appeared.
kar supersoldiers in Harkonnen uniforms, Orleans sees kanly Today, even in the wake of the Taliban’s victory in Afghan-
today in everything from US drone strikes to Russia’s inva- istan, Dune reads just as much like a parable about the grow-
sion of Ukraine with “little green men” wearing no insignia. ing tensions between China and other world powers, says
The term kanly itself gives one hint of where Herbert pulled Lieutenant Colonel Nate Finney, a former lead China plan-
some of his ideas of unconventional warfare: It’s a word for ner for the US Army in Hawaii who’s now getting a doctorate
“blood feud” used for centuries by some Islamic tribes of in history at Duke University. In that analogy, it’s the Chinese
the Caucasus, which Herbert read about in historian Lesley who are the Atreides, a rising power threatening to shuffle the
Blanch’s 1960 book The Sabres of Paradise, an epic chroni- galactic order but trying to do so carefully, within the bounds of
 its rules. “When I started to see the interstel-
lar politics of Dune and why certain houses
are doing certain things, it just jumped out
at me,” Finney says.
Compared to other works of sci-fi popu-
lar among military thinkers—he cites Ender’s
THE SPICE Game and Starship Troopers—Finney says

OF STRIFE Herbert’s invented universe uniquely cap-

tures the human messiness and sheer com-
plexity of conflict in the real world. “It’s really
CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ and Frank Herbert both under- about the interesting, hard part of war. It’s
stood the power of schwerpunkt. A 19th-century theo- not ‘a nuclear bomb goes off and this many
rist revered among military geeks the way Paul Brown is millions of people die’ or ‘this plane can fly
revered among football coaches, Clausewitz wrote that this far and drop this type of munitions’ or
each war has a center of gravity—which is how schwer- ‘this is the size of the army we need to hold
punkt is usually translated—and that victory often flows a country.’ What Herbert was looking at was
to the strategist who identifies and seizes it. Depending the human aspect,” Finney says. “When it
on the type of conflict, the center of gravity might be an comes to that human experience of war and
enemy’s logistics base or field army, a nation’s capital, or politics and human interaction, in my mind,
even an individual (see: Osama bin Laden in the war with al it’s Dune.”
Qaeda). Whatever form it takes, a schwerpunkt is “the hub Ryan, the commander of Australia’s
of all power and movement, on which everything depends,” Defence College, says he has included Her-
Clausewitz wrote. bert’s novel on his recommended reading
In Dune, it’s the spice. lists for years for the same reason. “I think
In a world where computers and artificial intelligence Dune is a very complete story for those who
have been banned, the spice, or “melange,” enables pilots want to study war and human competition
to fold space, traversing galaxies and time. The drug comes as a phenomenon,” he says. He compares its
only from the planet Arrakis, and when Duke Leto Atreides lessons to those of Thucydides’ History of the
ventures there to secure it, he’s quickly overthrown by Baron Peloponnesian War in their timelessness.
Vladimir Harkonnen. The Baron, though, understands spice “It looks at big strategic ideas and it looks at
only as a commodity. In a classic case of colonial short- motivators for people, whether it’s ideology,
sightedness, he exploits it to fund his empire, upsetting the whether it’s greed, whether it’s the old Greek
Fremen locals in the process. But Paul Atreides, the Duke’s ‘fear, honor, and interest,’” Ryan says, quot-
exiled son, knows a schwerpunkt when he sees it. Follow- ing Thucydides. “Dune represents the world
ing his father’s ouster, he befriends the Fremen, becomes as it is: a very complex, sometimes beautiful,
their messiah, gains control of spice production, reclaims sometimes awful thing.”
Arrakis, and becomes emperor of the known universe.
Military heads don’t consult Herbert nearly as often as
they do Clausewitz, but sci-fi still influences those in the
military. In the 2000s, cadets who picked up Dune might’ve
found insight into wars in the Middle East; in 2021, the book
warns them not to rely too much on technology.
In the age of digital warfare, combatants with the right
gadgets can almost fold space. But when everything from A
GPS to power grids to comms systems is subject to being
jammed, spoofed, hacked, or blacked out, relying on tech
will get your ass blown up. This has caused the US military
to adopt back-to-basics methods, relearning, as Paul did,
how to fight analog. Maintaining log books. Using runners
and field phones. Fighting off of handwritten orders rather AMID ALL ITS predictions, Dune avoids
than electronically transmitted ones. It’s a painful process thinking about how computers, the inter-
for many, but it’s necessary. Because today, the schwer- net, and AI would reshape the world 25,000
punkt in most conflicts—the spice—is digital information years in the future. Herbert skirts that ques-
itself. —JONATHAN BRATTEN tion by inventing a rebellion against an
all-powerful sentient computer thousands
JONATHAN BRATTEN is a military historian and an of years before the events of Dune, leading
officer in the US Army. to a galactic ban on “thinking machines.”
 IN THEIR MALWARE, THE
HACKERS HAD INCLUDED
STRINGS OF TEXT TO
IDENTIFY VICTIMS: ARRAKIS02,
BASHAROFTHESARDAUKARS.
ALL REFERENCES TO DUNE.

The book sums up that future history in a single aphorism: electric utilities with the first- and second-ever cyberattacks
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope to trigger blackouts, attempted to sabotage the 2018 Winter
that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men Olympics while framing North Korea for the deed, helped carry
with machines to enslave them.” out hack-and-leak operations against US and French political
But the contemporary era of cyberespionage and cyberwar candidates, and unleashed a strain of self-spreading destructive
has, in reality, provided yet another domain for Dune’s kanly malware known as NotPetya that inflicted $10 billion in dam-
to play out. That domain has, in some senses, proven to be the age globally, the most destructive act of cyberwar ever seen.
one where Herbert’s lessons about nonconventional tactics are In 2018, after iSight Partners had been acquired by the secu-
the most apt of all, where deception, deniability, and asym- rity giant FireEye and I was a year into tracking Sandworm
metric warfare thrive outside strictures of global conventions. for a book about the group, FireEye’s director of intelligence
In 2014, cybersecurity threat intelligence firm iSight Partners analysis, John Hultquist, sat at his kitchen table and laid out the
discovered a group of Russian-speaking hackers carrying out evidence identifying its members: All signs, he said, pointed
what appeared to be a widespread espionage campaign focused to Sandworm being Unit 74455 of the GRU, Russia’s military
on Eastern Europe. In their malware, the hackers had included intelligence agency, a theory that would be confirmed by US
strings of text to identify victims: arrakis02, BasharoftheSardau- and UK intelligence only last year.
kars, SalusaSecundus2, epsiloneridani0. All references to Dune. In the same conversation, Hultquist also explained what
Drew Robinson, an iSight analyst who worked on reverse-engi- he, after four years of analyzing Sandworm attacks, had come
neering the malware, remembers thinking, “Whoever these to believe were the group’s motives: They were carrying out
hackers were, it seems like they’re Frank Herbert fans.” a kind of guerrilla warfare much like what he’d faced while
The analysts at iSight gave the hackers a fitting name: Sand- serving in Iraq and Afghanistan more than a decade prior.
worm, after the giant subterranean monsters that roam the des- Rather than declare open war on the international order, Rus-
erts of Arrakis. Over the next four years, members of Sandworm sia was using digital means to undermine it with brazen but
planted their malware in the US power grid, targeted Ukrainian deniable acts of cyber sabotage. “The reason you carry out
terrorism is rarely to kill those particular victims,” Hultquist
told me. “That’s never why someone tried to hit me with an
IED. It’s about scaring the shit out of people so they lose the
will to fight or change their mind about the legitimacy of their
own security service, or overreact.”
In other words, Russia’s Sandworm hackers were experi-
menting with a fresh form of asymmetric warfare against a
dominant power. After 50 years, Dune’s ideas had found new
life again—not in the minds of that ruling power’s military ana-
lysts but in the minds of those seeking to topple it.

ANDY GREENBERG (@a_greenberg) is a senior writer

at WIRED and the author of the book Sandworm: A New
0 7 7
Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most
Dangerous Hackers.
TO THE

PIXEL

AND
BEYOND
Alvy Ray
Smith is the
little-known
thinker who
made Pixar
possible
(not to men-
tion all the
computer
animation
you’ve ever
seen). Now
he’s got a
vision for
where digital
light will take
us next.
by Steven
Levy

Photographs by
Cayce Clifford
 tainment, bridging the eras of primitive
line graphics on blinking oscillators and
immersive virtual worlds made of dazzling
computer imagery. All while, as Lasseter
implied, injecting the ’60s Weltanschau-
ung into everything he touched, much of
which touches us still. Yet, despite a healthy
ego and a raconteur’s élan, after Lasseter’s
callout—and some laughter in the room—
Smith stayed in his seat and said nothing.
In 2007 a new documentary called The Pixar Call it restraint. “As far as history goes, I
Story screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival. feel like he got shafted, both in Pixar his-
It covered the wild antics of the studio’s found- tory and in computer graphics history in
ers as they crafted a new kind of movie—a fully general,” says Pam Kerwin, a former Pixar
computer-animated picture bursting with riot- colleague. “Everything that you currently
use in Photoshop right now basically came
ous colors and textures, ultra-vivid characters, from Alvy.” Even self-driving cars and
and plotlines subversively seeded with mind- augmented reality, “which are all about
expanding wisdom. During a panel discussion image processing, machine vision ... Alvy
afterward, the interviewer asked a provocative and his colleagues brought all that stuff
question. “This might be crazy,” she began, “but into the world.”
is there any connection between the world of the But the 78-year-old’s mark is not lim-
ited to the past, and the world still has to do
counterculture and psychedelics, and Pixar?” some catching up to him. This summer he
The panelists on stage—Ed Catmull and finally stepped out, publishing A Biography
John Lasseter, both central to Pixar’s develop- of the Pixel, in which he lays out a grand
ment—fell into an uncomfortable silence. Drugs unified theory of digital expression. Pixel is
and the counterculture are edgy subjects for a deep and challenging tome in the spirit of
employees of a Disney division beloved by Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach:
An Eternal Golden Braid, a winding tale of
generations of children. Finally, Lasseter said, science, heroes, and tyrants, all leading to
“Is Alvy Ray Smith in the audience?” the moment, sometime around the begin-
ning of our current century, when a long-
predicted digital convergence coalesced.
Almost all expression—visual, textual,
audio, video, you name it—has moved
to the machine world, which, perhaps
If Smith, the bearded, boisterous Pixar counterintuitively, is no less real than our
cofounder, had gotten a chance to answer physical reality. And that is not a metaphor-
the question, he would have freely admitted ical equivalence. It is, Smith argues, literal.
that LSD helped set his creative direction, He calls this second reality Digital Light,
which in turn shaped both Pixar’s culture and and it’s pretty much what all of us look at
its technology. He left the company just as it and listen to when we’re not in the middle
began making actual films, but every frame of a forest. He didn’t coin the term—it was
of those films owes something to Smith. first uttered about a decade ago by a con-
He helped unleash the breakthroughs that ference organizer who asked him to give
allowed for movies to be generated entirely a talk with that title. “It was a term that’s
by code and algorithms. And in his work everything I wanted it to be,” he says, cov-
before and after Pixar, he made immense ering “all these different aspects of what
contributions to the first digital paint soft- people do with pixels.”
ware, coding up features that transformed Digital Light, as he documents, emerged
our ability to manipulate images. into the world through a long and twisted
But Smith’s presence in the back of the scientific process; it’s a picaresque tale with
auditorium—and not on the stage—spoke unexpected protagonists—Jean-Baptiste
to something else: the dissonance between Joseph Fourier, Vladimir Kotelnikov, Alan
his contributions and his fame. He’s a unique Turing—whose lives he exhumes with the
figure in both computer science and enter- passion of an obsessive genealogist. Putting
 Oh, and the subject of this biography, the
pixel, is not what we generally think it is.
Forget your misguided belief that a pixel is
one of those tiny squares on your screen.
Smith explains that the pixel is the product
of a two-part process in which an element
of some consciously created content is pre-
sented on some sort of display. Friends, you
are not looking at pixels on your screen but
the expression of those pixels. What you see
is Digital Light. The pixel itself? That’s just
an idea. Once you get this distinction, it’s
clear that Digital Light is not a second-class
reality. In the 21st century, it’s equal. “Just
the simple idea of separating pixels from
display elements is going to seem revolu-
tionary to people who don’t understand the
technology,” Robertson says.
This history of computer graphics is very
much a shadow autobiography, which Smith
launches at almost exactly the midpoint of
the 560-page volume. He re-creates a scene
where the famed sitar player Ravi Shan-
kar visits Smith’s lab at Lucasfilm and is
enchanted by the blooming of an algorith-
mically generated flower. “Allllllllvyyyyy!”
Shankar cries in appreciation. From that
moment, Smith appears as an unforgetta-
ble figure in the pixel’s saga, and he brings
in the people who shaped him and almost
killed him—Steve Jobs, George Lucas, and
an obscure would-be animation pioneer
named Alex Schure. As a participant in this
revolution, Smith takes us to the turn of the
new century, when we reach the precipice
of digital convergence.
It took Alvy Ray Smith 10 years to pro-
duce the book. Or maybe 50. It depends on
whether you date the work from the time
he began writing it or just living it.

The breakthrough in Pixar’s films was that the

emotions they unleashed were as vivid as those
from a human performance.

together their contributions on the nature

of light, sampling, and computation, Smith
makes a convincing case that there’s no dif-
ference between analog and digital reality.
It’s a belief that he’s held for decades. Bar-
bara Robertson, a computer graphics jour-
nalist, remembers sitting with him at a café
and hearing him say, after a contemplative
silence, “You, know, everything is just waves.”

0 8 1
 Uncle George allowed in his studio, and the
boy silently observed how to stretch a canvas,
mix oils and turpentine, and use pigments to
bring life to a blank surface. He got a taste of
computer programming while visiting scien-
tists at the nearby White Sands Missile Range.
At New Mexico State University he studied
electrical engineering, and he headed to
Stanford to study artificial intelligence.
In California, he learned more than
computers. “In the next year, my hair was
down to here, and I was hanging out in
Golden Gate Park and doing all the drugs
and everything,” he says. After taking LSD,
he says, “I realized that I could not be a
programmer—I had to do something that
had art in it.”
It would take him a while. He wound
up studying cellular automata, self-
reproducing digital organisms generated

A
by rule-based systems. After his doctorate,
Smith headed east, to New York City, for a
teaching job. He designed a cellular autom-
aton exercise that became the cover of the
February 1971 issue of Scientific American.
But while he reveled in the city’s pleasures,
he found academia unsatisfying.
In December 1972, Smith was racing
down a New Hampshire ski slope when his
knit cap shifted and covered his face. (Later
he discovered that a tag inside the cap read,
“Knitted by a blind person.”) He didn’t see
a second skier on the trail, who’d lost con-
“AT ONE POINT, I MENTALLY WROTE A SCREEN- trol and was headed directly for him. Smith
play about Alvy’s life, which I think actually suffered a nasty spiral fracture of his right
would make a fantastic movie,” says Smith’s femur. He spent the next three months in a
wife, Alison Gopnik, who met him well into full-body cast, nipples to toes. “I just thought
act three. “The first scene you see is this New nonstop, 15 hours a day, and rethought the
Mexico desert, and then there’s this little world,” he says. He’d always been passion-
towheaded, blond kid. And there’s horses ate about merging computers and art. But
and cactuses around, and then you see somehow, he’d lost the art. “I said, ‘Alvy,
one of the rockets from White Sands, right, you’ve made a terrible mistake,’” he says.
appearing on the horizon. And he’s looking He resigned his NYU post and headed
up at the rocket.” In truth, Smith, just under back to California. He slept on people’s
2 years of age, was at home in Las Cruces floors in Berkeley for a year and waited
when he says he heard the explosion from for something to happen. And it did. One
the 1945 Trinity atomic bomb test, 100 miles day in May 1974, a friend, Richard Shoup,
away. His dad was away at war; his parents convinced him to come to his workplace,
had married and conceived him with the the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center,
thought that they might never be reunited. where a team of computer scientists were
But his father did return and took a job run- reinventing computing on the dime of the
ning a cattle feed business in the small town copy machine giant. Shoup’s own project,
of Clovis, near the Texas panhandle. called SuperPaint, was orthogonal to that
Smith was a good student, with a par- effort, and not universally blessed. It was
ticular talent for math. But he also loved the first interactive color graphics pro-
spending time with an uncle who was a pro- gram—basically a software paintbrush with
fessional artist. Smith was the only person a color TV display—that allowed users to

0 8 2
 frame buffer that made SuperPaint possible.
Smith realized that with SuperPaint and
the frame buffer you could create anima-
tions. “We understood right away that you
can make these things move,” he says. He
began visiting the lab to make cinematic
sequences, including a cartoon figure wink-
ing his eye and turning his eyeball. Smith
was desperate to join PARC, but the lab
wouldn’t hire him full-time. Finally, with
Kay’s help, PARC executives figured out a
low-risk way to retain him: They paid him
through a purchase order, as if renting a
piece of equipment. They contracted for
857 hours of “professional labor services.”
Soon, a video artist named David
DiFrancesco started hanging out at the lab.
Smith built a slick interface for Shoup’s sys-
tem, essentially creating the first draft of
the personal graphics programs that mil-
lions of people now take for granted. He
used the software to make animations, and
DiFrancesco filmed the images. It was a
wonderful chaos.
Their idyll was short-lived. One day, a
group of executives informed Smith and
DiFrancesco that they were doubling down
on black-and-white. They were phasing out
SuperPaint. The Alvy Ray Smith purchase
order was canceled.
But Smith had found his mission: to
build the future of computer graphics. He
and DiFrancesco piled into Smith’s white
Ford Torino and blasted down the interstate
to the unlikely mecca of the field, the Uni-
versity of Utah, in the hope of finding new
Early on, Ed Catmull believed that computer jobs. Computer graphics researchers at Utah
graphics could revolutionize entertainment.
were focused more on functional applica-
tions, such as computer-aided design, and
not the psychedelic painting approach that
splashed color pixels on a screen. They didn’t
hire Smith and DiFrancesco, but they did
create and manipulate images. Smith’s mind mention a recent Utah grad named Ed Cat-
was blown as surely as if he’d dropped a tab mull, who thought just like they did.
of acid. He had discovered Digital Light. “I Not yet 30, Catmull believed in the then
played with the program for 13 hours straight contrarian idea that computer graphics could
and didn’t want to leave,” he says. “This is the revolutionize entertainment. Catmull had
marriage of art and computers!” accepted a job at an unlikely place: the New
At the time, full-color graphics on a com- York Institute of Technology. It sounds MIT-
puter were a rare thing. Producing even a ish, but its reputation circa 1975 was some-
single image required massive amounts of thing akin to a diploma mill. (Its standing
memory, known as a frame buffer. “To put has since improved.) Located on the north
a picture up on a display you had to buffer shore of Long Island, it owned a number
it in something, and that something might of Gatsbyesque mansions. The maestro
cost half a million bucks,” says Alan Kay, who of this operation was Alex Schure, a self-
was heading the personal computer effort at described “education entrepreneur” with
PARC. The research lab had a slow, grouchy mysterious sources of income. Despite, or
maybe because of, his constant denials that dote to the jaggies was a technique called
he wanted to be the next Walt Disney, people anti-aliasing that required raw computer
universally understood that Disneyhood was power and clever techniques to create
his goal. He was bankrolling a cartoon epic denser graphics.
based on a children’s orchestral piece called The extra buffers led Smith and Cat-
Tubby the Tuba. He had a hundred anima- mull to a major conceptual advance: the
tors on the project, and he was hoping Cat- alpha channel. Alongside the three basic
mull might automate some of the process. color channels of red, green, and blue,
Tipped off by the Utah people, Catmull which combined in various ways to create
summoned Smith and DiFrancesco, who full-color palettes, they added an element
immediately flew to Long Island to join that controlled the transparency of pixels.
the group, which was stationed above a By tweaking an object’s opacity over time,
garage in one of the mansions. Catmull, a you could blur its motion and correct for sive vision for what those tools ought to be,
soft-spoken Mormon with a family, bonded the unpleasant staccato movements that including a virtual camera that would cap-
instantly with Smith. “Alvy had a long black spoiled early attempts at digital animation. ture the images produced by computers.
beard, with hair flying, but it didn’t matter, Once people started using the alpha Lucas rejected the premise that you could
he was smart and engaging,” Catmull says. channel, it seemed absurdly obvious. “If you shoot an entire movie inside a computer.
Best of all, Smith came to share Catmull’s tell somebody that Alvy invented the alpha In 1982 an opportunity arose to apply the
passion for one day making a full-length channel, people don’t even know what that tools to an actual Hollywood movie. Lucas-
feature film entirely with computer graph- means, because alpha channel is just so film was providing effects for Star Trek II:
ics. They called their dream The Movie. fundamentally integrated into everything The Wrath of Khan, and the script had a
Smith became Catmull’s de facto part- that happens with graphics,” says Glenn scene in which Kirk and Spock watch, on a
ner. Computer graphics at the time was a Entis, then a student taking classes at NYIT, computer screen, a dead planet starting to
fringe stepchild of computer science, con- who later cofounded the graphics company bloom with organic life. The movie-within-
strained by the limited power of relatively behind Shrek and Madagascar. Smith and a-movie was a perfect opportunity to inject
primitive machines. But they understood his colleagues eventually won an Academy computer graphics—which still couldn’t
that what would soon become known as Award for the alpha channel, one of Smith’s match the resolution of actual film—into a
Moore’s law would change that, and they two technical Oscars. (The other was shared big-budget movie.
set about boosting their field to become a with Shoup for SuperPaint.) The sequence, directed by Smith, became
linchpin of computing and entertainment. But in 1975, Smith and Catmull started to known as the Genesis effect. It showed a
Schure went all in, eventually buying 18 realize they were in the wrong place. Tubby ship firing a torpedo at a planet to trans-
frame buffers for hundreds of thousands the Tuba finally came out—and it was dead form its barren surface into a verdant,
of dollars. The fully equipped team began boring. “We had a screening in Manhattan, Earth-like paradise. Smith made his vir-
making short animated movies. Their foes and several of the people there fell asleep,” tual camera do a slick pirouette that could
were “jaggies,” the blocky edges you could Catmull says. Smith thought the lesson never have been done with a physical rig,
see on poorly rendered objects. The anti- was clear: To make a great animated film, a move he devised specifically to impress
you needed more than great graphics. You Lucas. Indeed, one day Lucas stuck his head
needed a storyteller. into Smith’s office—Great camera move,
They decided to approach George Lucas. he said. Not long after, the group’s special
To avoid tipping off Schure, they made a effects popped up in Return of the Jedi and
clandestine sortie to a nearby office sup- Young Sherlock Holmes. Still, Lucas stuck
ply shop and rented a cast-iron manual to his position.
typewriter. They banged out a letter offer- As the graphics group refined their tech-
ing Lucas their services. It worked: Over niques, they had to improve their hardware,
the next several months, several members and they designed their own imaging com-
of the lab took jobs at Lucasfilm in Marin puter with built-in frame buffers. One day
County, California. It was the club to join, over lunch, while brainstorming a name
says Loren Carpenter, who signed on in for this device, Smith suggested a variation
1980. “These were the people pushing the of laser—pixer, which had the flavor of a
boundaries of algorithms,” Spanish verb. Loren Carpenter tweaked it
Lucas and Smith never resolved a basic to pixar, which had a Jetsonesque feel to it.
disagreement. According to Smith, Lucas They all agreed that pixar was a cool name.
saw his graphics group as toolmakers, not But they still dreamed of The Movie. In
moviemakers. It’s true that to create The 1983, Smith began storyboarding a short,
Movie, scientists had to fashion amazing fully computer-generated movie of his own.
tools that could render reality in a convinc- He set a goal of finishing it within a year.
ing way. Smith and Catmull had an expan- The story—more like a vignette—involved

0 8 4
 ence, held in Minneapolis that year. Coin-
cidentally, Lucas was in town, attending
his girlfriend Linda Ronstadt’s concert.
Not wanting to draw attention, he entered
the conference theater after the lights went
down. André was the last demo in the pro-
gram. At the end of the 120-second saga,
the room erupted. Don Greenberg, who
headed a computer graphics program at
Cornell, later said that during those two
minutes, a thousand students decided to
go into computer animation. “These peo-
ple knew what we’d done,” Smith says. But
at the after-party, Lucas’ praise was tepid.
“George didn’t get it,” Smith says.
Disney didn’t seem to get it, either. But
in one of their meetings, Smith and Cat-
mull pitched a computer paint system to
help animate the characters painstak-
ingly drawn by human artists. Using digital
painting would save time and money and
allow the artists to add more detail to the
hand-drawn characters. Disney executives
decided to use the system, and Smith nego-
tiated a deal between Disney and Lucasfilm.
The Computer Animated Production System
became the primary tool in all the classics of
that era, including Beauty and the Beast. But
Disney still didn’t want to make The Movie.
Meanwhile, Lucasfilm was suffering a
Pixar was spun out of Lucasfilm and was pur- cash crisis. Lucas and his wife were nego-
chased by Steve Jobs for $10 million in 1986. tiating a divorce, and the impending settle-
ment hurt the company’s finances. Worried
about their funding, Smith and Catmull
an android named André coming to life in a drove to a bookstore and went straight
forest. The Lucasfilm team jokingly referred to the business section, where they each
to it as “My Breakfast With André,” refer- bought two books on starting a company.
encing the two-hander with André Gregory They figured they could build a business
and Wallace Shawn. Smith later told author around their imaging computer, but also
Michael Rubin that he intended the android’s that, eventually, they could convince a stu-
awakening to symbolize the rise of computer dio to make The Movie.
animation itself. Neither book contained advice for what
Later that year, Smith and Catmull went after Wallace Shawn. Lasseter’s contribution would be Alvy Ray Smith’s main problem—
on a secret pilgrimage to meet with Disney confirmed the revelation Smith had had at how to deal with Steve Jobs.
executives, in hopes that The Movie could NYIT—the magic of a movie had to come
one day be made there. On that visit they from human creativity, from storytelling.
met an impressive young animator named By all moviemaking measures, The
John Lasseter. Lasseter left Disney soon Adventures of André and Wally B was a
after, and Smith and Catmull pounced on trifle. Yet for that moment, Smith and Las-
the chance to hire him. Because Lucas didn’t seter’s creation was the apotheosis of all
want his computer scientists to make mov- the calculations, fractals, algorithms, and
ies, they gave Lasseter the title “user inter- alpha channels. André’s hip wiggle as he
face designer.” He started working on the hopped away from the bee hinted broadly
André short, making the hero more life- that the simulated world could be as vivid
like. And why not have a second character? as live action.
Enter a bee, to annoy and ultimately pursue The short film premiered at Siggraph,
André. They named the newcomer Wally B, the premier computer graphics confer-
 Ratatouille to Soul—the studio pushed the
boundaries of technology and art, fulfilling
the vision that Smith had nurtured while in

T
a full-body cast, on acid trips, in the man-
sions of Long Island, and on the back lots at
Lucasfilm. His former colleagues at Pixar are
lose patience. And then came the white- unanimous in recognizing his contributions.
board incident. At a Pixar board meeting in But after he left, Smith’s name was removed
1990, Jobs was complaining that Pixar was from the website, an excision that he feels
behind on a project. Smith said that NeXT was somewhat of a betrayal. Catmull says he
was behind on its products. As Smith recalls doesn’t see websites as historical documents.
it, Jobs began mocking Smith’s Southwest- Smith did not escape cleanly. With Lyons
ern accent. “I had never been treated that and a third cofounder, he started a com-
way. I just went crazy,” Smith says. “I was pany to sell his new image-editing software.
screaming into his face, and he’s screaming They called the company Altamira, after
back at me. And right in the middle of that the roughly 20,000-year-old cave paint-
THE NEXT YEAR WAS FULL OF FRUSTRATIONS. crazy, absolutely insane moment, I knew ings in Spain. But there was a hitch. “Alvy
Smith and Catmull tried to bootstrap their what to do. I brushed past him and wrote didn’t have it in writing that he could take
division of Lucasfilm into a separate com- on the whiteboard.” his code with him”—code written while he
pany called Pixar, but they struggled to find Those few feet to the whiteboard took was a Pixar employee, Catmull says. Jobs
funding. Early in 1985, Smith’s former PARC Smith past the point of no return. No one demanded that Altamira pay him a huge
colleague Alan Kay brokered a meeting with wrote on Steve Jobs’ hallowed whiteboard. royalty for every copy sold, scaring away
Steve Jobs. As Smith took the marker and scrawled—he potential investors. After lengthy negoti-
Smith and Catmull worried that Jobs doesn’t even remember what he wrote—he ations, Jobs signed off in exchange for an
would not be open to their long-term vision was committing Steve-icide. “I wanted out equity stake in Smith’s company.
of computer-animating a feature film. But of there,” he says. “I didn’t want that guy’s One day Smith was at home with his
after deals with Philips and General Motors poison in my life any longer.” wife and two sons when he felt “an intense
fell through, Jobs, who’d by then left Apple Smith spent the next year holed up in his screaming pain” in his chest. A colony of
and started a new company, NeXT, seemed office. He had realized that users of personal bacteria had invaded one of his lungs, form-
inclined to let Pixar explore animation, as computers could benefit from his graphics ing the equivalent of a rind that had to be
long as Smith and Catmull also pursued advances, so he began writing an app distin- surgically peeled off. A month later, on a
a graphics-based hardware business. He guished by what he called “floating imagery,” ferry ride to Vancouver, he felt the pain
bought Pixar for $10 million. He’d spend which allowed users to easily move objects. again. The same thing had happened to his
about five times that before he was through. “You couldn’t believe what you were see- second lung. To this day, he has only one-
For the first meeting after the sale, every- ing,” says Eric Lyons, an Autodesk executive third of normal lung capacity. “I asked,
one gathered to hear from their new boss. who saw an early demo. “It wasn’t something why did I get it?” he says. “My answer is,
Smith immediately feared that Jobs, by Photoshop could do at the time.” the sheer stress.” Catmull agrees: “Basically,
demanding unrealistic results, would over- Meanwhile, there was good news from it was a life-threatening experience, which
write the culture he and Catmull had built Disney. At a meeting with Disney’s anima- grew out of the pressure of Steve’s delay.”
and burn out their team. “He’s got their brains tion czar, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jobs, Smith, The lost months proved crippling to the
snatched,” he says. He vowed to keep Jobs out Catmull, and Lasseter worked out a collab- startup. In that time, Photoshop launched a
of the building as much as possible. oration. Toy Story got a tentative green light. competing feature called “layers.” Altamira’s
Smith and Jobs routinely butted heads. Once Smith felt sure that The Movie would sales were low, and the company needed
Jobs often began meetings with an inten- be made, he left Pixar. (Years later, Lasseter a lifeline. Smith was introduced to Nathan
tionally outrageous statement, and Smith resigned from the company after accusations Myhrvold, who headed Microsoft Research.
made a point of pushing back. “It was a pure of sexual harassment.) “I just wanted marketing help from Micro-
ego competition—Alvy wanted his vision to Like a computer-graphics Moses, Smith soft,” Smith says. Instead, Myhrvold bought
be dominant, and there was no way that was helped deliver Pixar within sight of the prom- the company, though he wanted Smith more
going to happen,” says Pam Kerwin, who ised land. But he never entered it himself. than his product. Smith spent four years
was Pixar’s general manager. In movie after movie—from A Bug’s Life to there and retired in 1999. “I had decided
Meanwhile, Pixar kept making short films along the way that they didn’t really care
that won acclaim. One, about lifelike desk about my ideas,” he says.
lamps, even got nominated for an Oscar. Jobs
saw them as marketing vehicles; Smith and SMITH’S NEXT MOVE BAFFLED HIS FRIENDS:
Catmull saw them as test runs for The Movie. He became a genealogist. He began
At first Jobs tolerated Smith’s aggres- methodically exploring his heritage, and in
sions. Eventually, though, he began to 2010 was elected a Fellow of the American

0 8 6
Society of Genealogists. The honor is lim- tual reality company called Baobab. In his
ited to only 50 living people, and it requires meetings with the CEO, Maureen Fan, he
a supermajority vote. dispenses advice not only on creating real-
After a divorce from his first wife, he met time graphics but on how to build a com- Nocturnal habits that helped
Alison Gopnik, the celebrated psychology pany and, uh, how to chemically expand get this issue out:
professor at Berkeley, and they married in one’s creative outlook. “He’s so idealistic,”
Long bike rides through empty Brooklyn streets;
2010. “He’s this sweet, amiable, successful Fan says. “And he did tell me I really need Death & Taxes black lager from Moonlight
man, but the kind of crazy hippie part is just to do drugs.” (She passed.) Brewing; projecting a galaxy onto my ceiling;
kitten attacks on unsuspecting feet; seasons
underneath,” she says. A skeptic of his gene- Early this summer, to celebrate the book, 1 through 6 of Justified; rigorously researched,
alogy work, Gopnik urged him to write what Smith gathered some of his former col- dubiously effective, multistep skin-care routine;
owl-spotting at dusk in Golden Gate Park;
would become A Biography of the Pixel. leagues at his Berkeley home. For many, it English muffins with salted butter; the I Can’t
For years, he traveled with her to con- was their first social event since the Covid Sleep podcast; a wildfire-smoke-battling air
purifier; silk eyeshades; responding to my cat’s
ferences and on sabbaticals. Eventually, he curtain crashed down. Smith was in his every vocalization like I’m his butler; a white
noise machine; listening to The Shrink Next
found himself telling the stories of the people familiar Hawaiian shirt, hair down his neck, Door podcast, falling asleep halfway through an
who created the foundation of what would with a beard and a broad smile. episode, trying to pick up where I left off, and
never fully knowing what’s going on; CPAP on
become Digital Light. As well as his own. Smith’s own copy of his book hadn’t nose, slouch cap over eyes, pillow between legs;
You may not be able to pinpoint Smith’s arrived yet. An hour or so into the gather- Mario Kart and pita chips; tea at 10 pm; Peanut
the cat’s meowtastic bug patrol; midnight snacks
presence in the code of the alpha channel ing, though, a guest showed up with it. Smith and 3 am journaling; hearing the coydogs howl.
or in the swooping camera pivot in The beamed as he held the book aloft.
WIRED is a registered trademark of Advance
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SIX-WORD SCI-FI: STORIES BY WIRED READERS WIRED 29.10

IN SIX WORDS, WRITE A STORY ABOUT A SELF-AWARE SELF-DRIVING CAR:

HE THINKS I’M
TAKING HIM HOME. —Stephen Clamage
via email

↙ I TAKE LITHIUM FOR RANGE ANXIETY. THE SMART CAR DROVE ITSELF CRAZY.
Every month, we ask for a
new six-word story on
—@JAMESJOAQUIN, VIA TWITTER —@FRASCAFRASCA, VIA TWITTER Facebook, Twitter, and
I DREAMT OF THE AUTOBAHN AGAIN. THE GRANDMA OR THE BABY—SHIT. Instagram. Submit your ideas
—JAMES WORTZ, VIA FACEBOOK —@GAOPHILIP, VIA TWITTER there, along with the hashtag
HONEST, OFFICER—THE HUMAN WAS DRIVING. HAVE I CHOSEN THE RIGHT PATH? #WIREDSIXWORD. And visit
Honorable —STEVE MAGID, VIA EMAIL —ANDREW DAWSON, VIA EMAIL the archive at WIRED .com/
Mentions DON’T MAKE ME PULL ME OVER. IT TAKES ITSELF ON LONG DRIVES. six-word to see how we’ve
—@ATLRUN, VIA TWITTER —WADE SHEPPARD, VIA EMAIL illustrated our favorites.

ILLUSTRATION / VIOLET REED

0 8 8
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