FaceMate Read online

  “OK, OK, two minutes then, Bennie; I’ll keep it brief. Hey, you’re gonna love this kid’s idea, Ben, I’m a hundred percent positive you will. Here, what I’m gonna do: I’m gonna put the letter and prospectus on your desk; you’ll wanna read it later after I explain. But what it is in a nutshell—Hey, Benny, are you listening? I need your full attention here, OK? Stop chewing on those goddam glasses and listen up.”

  “Yeah, sure; I hear you, Ed; go ahead, but, like I said, you’ve got to make it quick.”

  “OK, then, here’s the thing, Ben; here’s the skinny as quick as I can lay it out. You know there’s a couple of sites on the Net that match up photos to find a person’s double—Did you know about them?”

  “Not specifically, no; but I might have guessed as much.” Internet investments had never really been Ben’s thing—which was why they’d dropped the ball on Facebook, he supposed—So now, this being an internet investment, his attention level tumbled down a good bit more and started on a rapid downhill plunge.

  “Well, listen, Ben.” Eddie raised both tone and volume of his voice to try and perk Ben’s ears a bit: “So—How ‘bout this? What about a site that could match folks up and match them forward and backward in time?”

  “Meaning what, Eddie? I don’t quite follow what you’re getting at. Explain and make it super-quick.”

  “Meaning this, Benny boy: The kid—this brilliant goddam kid; the guy’s a fucking genius—He came up with a program that takes apart the photo you send in and gets down to the bone structure and the fat and muscles underneath the skin—got it?—Then it takes the facial make-up back to the past and forward to the future—Not just what you look like now, but what you would’ve looked like ten or twenty years ago and what you’re gonna look like ten or twenty years in the future. That’s what he matches you up with—who you are, or who you were, or who you’re gonna be—You get the picture now?”

  “I get the picture.” Ben shook his head and glanced down one final time with manifest impatience at his watch. “But I don’t believe it’s possible to do that kind of analytic foolery with any accuracy. What about environment and stuff?—Don’t those factors enter in?”

  “Yeah, sure. He factors in environment, Ben—that’s the beauty of the thing. The more pictures you send in, the more accurate the projections become. So, say he’s got your photo from now and five or six years before—OK? He sticks that info in and the program figures the environmental input along with the heredity. According to the kid’s prospectus….”

  “The kid’s prospectus may be total bullshit, Eddie. It probably is bullshit. But, I must admit, the concept does sound remotely interesting anyhow in a far-out kind of way. How much does he want?”

  “Capital? Our stake? Peanuts—Twelve million is all he’s asking for right now.”

  “Twelve!—Twelve? What the hell does he think he can accomplish with a measly twelve?”

  “Hey, I don’t know, but that’s what he’s asking. Read the prospectus; it’s all in there. Then if you’re interested, let me know on Monday. And I’ll give the kid a call.

  3

  To label Benjamin Atherton’s residence with the euphemistic designation ‘mansion’ or ‘palace’ would be tantamount to—what?—saying that the Arizona noontime sun in mid-July is ‘kinda bright’ or that the Pacific Trench is ‘kinda deep’ and ‘kinda wet’? Ben’s home was ‘kinda like a mansion’, alright, if you really had to use that paltry term; but it was bigger, grander, more costly and elaborate than any palace or mansion you or anyone you know of might ever have set foot in.

  Twelve bedrooms, each with its own private sitting-room and bath—though rarely sat or slept or bathed in by any relatives or acquaintances since the year that it was built. A state-of-the-art home theater for fifty viewers—though rarely did anyone actually go in there to view. A kitchen suitable for the finest multi-chef, multi-ethnic restaurant—though Carole Atherton on only the scarcest of occasions scrambled an egg or sliced a chunk of ham in there—the latter with her professional deli slicer, de rigueur.

  Then there was the two-floor walkway-encircled library with shelves sufficient to house ten thousand books; the garage space for fourteen cars—both of which, at least, were reasonably full of leather-bound folios and classic rides respectively. There was a private gym with more sophisticated stations than you’d find in a top-flight health club, almost never used; the enormous indoor pool, never, ever swum in; and on and on and on ad infinitum. Marble and granite throughout, as was in keeping with such a palatial place; gold fixtures originally in the too-many-to-enumerate baths—though Carole had found the gold a bit too glitzy and torn it out en masse, getting bullion reimbursement for the metal, a quarter on the buck—Ben didn’t mind; a measly pittance in the scheme of things—Oh, and the marble walls in a few of the rooms had seemed a little cooler-than-optimally-comfortable to Carole, and had therefore been covered with inlaid paneling at exorbitant but relatively inconsiderable cost.

  You get the picture, I imagine. The Biltmore trimmed to manageable size, made more luxurious, far more up-to-date, set in a four-acre plot along the Raritan River in Northern Jersey, where the rock stars and TV news-folk paid a whole lot of millions for a whole lot smaller lot, and where Ben could keep his ocean-going yacht docked up—again an asset almost never used—where a helicopter could whirr on down and whisk him off in haste and super-luxury to the offices in Red Bank or the studios in New York in little more time than it might take to glance at a several-page prospectus on his desk.

  And it was late on the Friday evening of the Braverman meeting scheduled earlier that noon, that Ben plopped down at his inlaid gilt and cherry Louis XIV desk (bought by their New York decorator from Sotheby’s for a high six-figure bid, which he hadn’t so much as winked at) and read with considerable interest the prospectus that Eddie had brought to his office half a day before. A fascinating prospectus, as it turned out to be, which he now pored over carefully, deliberately, figuring, estimating, projecting growth, valuation, eventual cash-out under multiple disparate conditions.

  And what he concluded from this second run-through, was pretty much in keeping with what Eddie had presented with so much fanfare in the brief time prior to the Braverman meeting at noon: The long and short of it being this—that the damn thing had—what did it say?— Thirteen million users already? Thirteen million? And that was…. Ben looked back at the date the prospectus had been written—That was as of ... April—what was it? April 22? And this being August 4, that thirteen million was as of three months ago-plus, going on four? Thirteen million kids had sent their photos in by end-of-April? But how about since then? Was the web site taking off from there? Were the figures current? Had there been significant recent growth?

  Ben logged on and found the site, then clicked and scrolled:

  FaceMate

  Find your exact double

  Who you are.

  Who you were.

  And who someday you will be.

  That was what the opening blurb proclaimed in pretty nifty graphics, short and sweet; and farther down into the nitty-gritty of the listing, small print, so to speak; scrolling farther downward to the user tally, looking for a current number, up-to-date, it would be…. There! There it was: There were…. Current data on enrollment—it was … it was…. Ah! Here—As of hmm, July 22, the latest tally was….

  But….

  Ben blinked his eyes and shook his head in disbelief. Was that right? No; no way, it couldn’t be. Ben mumbled to himself in dubious expostulation: “No way—No fucking WAY!” Thirty-seven million, did it say? Thirty-seven? No—the figures must be wrong—But … but according to the site, there it was!—Ben mumbled audible incredulity again. There—There was the current census, pretty much up to date, as of ... as of the twenty-second of July—Thirty-seven million as of the twenty-second of July from a previous enrollment of just thirteen million only three months earlier? But … was that accurate? Could such explosive growth be possible? Growth t
hat was geometric, almost exponential! That’s what the figures seemed to say: but were they real? Were they factual?

  OK, good point—but … if they weren’t accurate, if they were intentionally misleading, you were talking potential securities fraud, right? And no rational solicitor of investment funding would risk his butt by engaging in securities fraud, not with the feds looking out to nail you if you overstepped the bounds by a fraction of an inch or less. So the numbers had to be based in fact—They simply did. Nearly forty million users—there it was in black and white—and the FaceMate web site was scarcely twelve months old? Forty million kids had sent their pictures in already, up from just a third of that only four months ago? Two hundred percent growth?—or more—more!—Christ!—The site was going bonkers! It was literally exploding with young folks logging on and signing up—the damn thing was on fire!

  Forget that crummy drug deal Eddie had mistakenly brought in; forget the measly twenty-some-odd million they had lost. This time Eddie Parker was onto something really big, bless his philandering soul This start-up kid and his team of techie wizards had stumbled on—what would you even call the damned idea?—A diamond mine!—The goddam mother lode! The publishing house merger they’d made big bucks on two years back? Hell—that was peanuts next to this. Chump change. This FaceMate web site blew the doors off a penny ante deal like that—at least potentially it did. This gimmicky idea, this cloudburst of manna from the blue—Man!—it had the potential of being another Facebook IPO writ large—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, no doubt—Well, providing that the damn thing was set up right and marketed the way the Atherton Group knew how to market a game-changing breakthrough miracle like this.

  H-o-l-y hell!

  And as for further growth, as for its ultimate potential just a wee bit down the road—why, the more participants in the matching, the more accurate the damn thing would become—the bigger the better in an exponential way. Seven billion people on the planet, right?—Well, wasn’t it conceivable, given the permutations and combinations of heredity, that there would be another man or woman, kid or senior, out there who was just like you in fundamental make-up?—Just like you, exactly—carbon copy! With seven billion possibilities to choose from—Christ! It was pretty near a sure thing that a person’s virtual genetic double could be found. If you could get a billion or two signed up to send their pictures in—even a few hundred million, say—then….

  Twelve million in capital, the kid was asking for? Nuts! A novice, a goddamn infant in the woods. To develop this kind of project right, to market it to the masses in the properly efficient way, would cost much bigger bucks than that—three or four times what he was asking—But how could fifty million dollars be better spent? Fifty million staked on this sure-fire winner would be like beaming back in time and buying half of Apple just before the I-Phone got launched, or Microsoft a month before Windows debuted—And so….

  Ben pored through the papers on his desk once more, tossing printed sheets aside with abandon, scattering them wholesale on the floor—That’s alright, the cleaning people would deal with it tomorrow; he paid them well enough—shuffling through the prospectus, flinging to his left the cover letter, flinging to his right the envelope the papers came in; sheets here and there, jumbled, crumpled—looking for, searching for….

  Aha!—a number—there it was! “If any questions, you can contact us directly at….”

  Late—OK, so maybe it was a little late, but—What the hell. Ben picked up the phone, clicked the hand-piece on, and dialed. One trill … two … three … and:

  “Hullo….” A husky voice, slightly winded, right in the middle of something that would make a young guy’s voice rather husky and slightly winded at eleven-twenty-eight on a Friday night.

  “Yes, hello. Who am I talking to?” Ben asked. Hell, this was more important than some whiz-kid teeny-bopper getting laid.

  The husky voice paused and coughed and cleared: “Well, who am I talking to, huh? You first.”

  “I’m responding to a request for capital investment someone who gave us this number has made. Is this.…” A momentary delay while Ben looked down at the paper on his desk for the Main-Man of the place, the investment-seeker’s name. “Is this, um, Alexander Daugherty?”

  “No, not Alex—Who wants to know? Are you from the Atherton Group? That’s the place we wrote to for the money.”

  “Yes, the Atherton Group, that’s correct. So … how do I get in contact with Mr. Daugherty?”

  “You don’t. I’m his contact person. You’re from Atherton, you say? Isn’t it kinda late for you Wall Street honchos to call?”

  “Late? There is no late or early for a company like ours. It’s morning in Tokyo now, and the shops are buzzing in LA. We don’t go by Eastern Daylight Time.”

  “OK, yeah, that makes sense, I guess. Anyway, what about the money we asked you for? Do you think there’s a chance you guys might put it up?”

  “That depends. What do you plan on using it for?”

  “We need to build the site—You know, advertising and all like that. More staffing too. Do you know anything about the kind of stuff we’re doing on the Web?”

  “I do. I’ve got your prospectus right here in my hand—I had it in my hand, that is—and I find it fairly interesting. So—Mister Contact Person: Have you got a name?”

  “Rajiv. Rajiv Patel is my name.”

  “Patel? Terrific. I love doing deals with Gujaratis. Gujaratis know how to do business. There’s nobody sharper than a fellow named Patel.”

  “Hey, my dad is from Gujarat, but me, I’m from Columbus, Ohio, Mr….”

  “Atherton—Ben Atherton. Columbus, eh? I thought I recognized the area code.”

  “Wait a minute—so—you’re the Ben Atherton? The one I see all the time on TV?—Well, yeah, I guess you kinda sound like him—So—Jeez, I can’t believe it’s really you on the line. You guys are really interested in maybe backing us?”

  “You’re the man I talk to about it, are you? You have authorization to negotiate for Mr. Daugherty—on his behalf?”

  “Sure do. Alex isn’t much of a people person, so I handle all the contact stuff.”

  “And you have the authority to make a deal about the financing and investment in the enterprise?”

  “Yep, I got the authority all right. A hundred percent.”

  “Well listen, Rajiv: If you have the power of attorney to make the deal right now, tonight, and if the terms I state are agreeable—we can’t shake hands over the phone, but you can email me a confirmation of our oral contract—Remember that it’s legally binding, so be sure—But…. By the way, I assume you’ve got a percentage ownership in the venture—is that correct?”

  “Yessir, twenty-five percent.”

  “And Mr. Daugherty owns the rest?”

  “Most of it. He gave some points to his folks and one or two percent to the other kids—I mean participants—in the group.”

  “But you and he own, say ninety-some percent between you; enough to dictate terms to the other partners, right?”

  “Right—yeah, of course.”

  “OK, then, here’s my proposal; listen carefully: You’re going to need a lot more capital than you asked for in your letter. I’d say fifty or sixty million ought to get things off the ground. We know how to handle everything from promotion to setting up the LLC. So, here’s my offer: You guys do your computer wizardry and let us do the heavy lifting. We put up the investment capital with no financial obligation to you, win or lose, and in return, we get 20% of the current profits now and 20% of the proceeds when we take the venture public. My guess is that we can make this into a sixty- to eighty-billion dollar enterprise if we act fast enough and play our cards exactly right. That leaves you guys with a total of seventy-odd percent of sixty to eighty billion—You think you can live in reasonable comfort on that?”

  “Sixty to eighty BILLION, did you say?”

  “Yep, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. I’d bet on the little
more to play it safe.”

  “And I’d wind up with—what?”

  “Hey, where’s that Gujarati blood in your veins? It’s simple math, Rajiv. Twenty-five percent less a fifth is twenty percent, right? And twenty percent of, say fifty-five billion is eleven billion. That ought to keep you in biryani and pakoras for a while, no?”

  “Yeah. Actually, I’m a KFC man myself, but—hell yeah, sure. If you’re really Mr. Atherton, and you’re serious, and this offer is for real—Man! Where do I sign?”

  “You and Alexander, you mean. He’s got to be totally on board as well; a hundred percent.”

  “He will be. Trust me, he will.”

  “OK, then, email me a letter of intent right now—remember it’s legally binding—and I’ll fly you two guys out here tomorrow to dot our I’s and cross our t’s by the books with our team of lawyers around….

  “So, tell me, Rajiv: You and your buddy Alex—you ever travel in a private jet?”

  4

  Eddie flew out in the six-seat Lear to pick them up.

  Matthew, the company pilot on duty that day—it was a Saturday, and Brandon, their regular weekday pilot, was off—Matthew liked the facilities at Bolton, about fifteen minutes out of downtown Columbus; so they landed there; and the limo scheduled to bring the two kids out to the airport, pulled up just in time, right onto the runway, just like clockwork—just like everything that Ben had ever ordered done and Eddie Parker executed—And the computer wizards climbed on board.

  Rajiv—the kid with the Indian-sounding name—turned out he wasn’t the least bit Indian at heart. Accent? Hell, it was American through and through, flattened in the Midwestern mode, typical of a college grad who rooted for the Reds and drove out early to tailgate at autumn Bengals games. He’d brought his lady friend along—Ben had said to let him do whatever he liked, carte blanche: No sari-wrapped Jyothi or Jayasri fresh off the boat, like the wives of those Indian fellows in the firm—no sirree—but a willowy bottle blonde with azure eyes and perky breasts named Vi. Rajiv was the mover and shaker of the group—that was obvious—Alex was his diametric opposite, cold as alpine snow. But Vi; a slender blue-eyed blonde like her—now, Vi, bless her nifty little soul, might turn out in the end to be something of a risk.