Solipsism, A Philosophical Day 10

I woke to the smell of black coffee and the sun blaring onto my pillow. The clock at my bedside table read 8:15 and I leaped out of bed.

“Shit!” I spoke, my voice still foggy. “Logic.”

“It’s fine,” Wes said, his finger grazing the back of my leg. “Email the teacher.”

“No,” I replied. “He hates me. I called him a Putin.”

Wes laughed loudly in response. “Vladmir? Why would you call him that?”

“Solipsism,” I said fumbling for my pants. “He said Putin was too cliché an example and he told me to name another. He’s pompous. And he’d been organizing students by tax bracket since we walked into the class. The man shouldn’t have asked if he didn’t assume the risk of being called a solipsist himself.”

Wes sat up in bed exposing his entire chest and messy hair. “That’s Professor Gist. And yes, he’s pompous, but Soph, they all are. That’s the trick of wealth and privilege.”

Glancing at the clock, I realized I’d missed nearly fifteen percent of the class already and sat back on the bed with Wes. “You’re right. I’ll have to email him.” I said first and then thought of what he’d just said. “But what if I don’t want to play the wealth and privilege game?”

He kissed my bare back between words. “You don’t have to play forever, but you do want the degree, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Well, coming from an Exeter scholarship kid, you better put on the act of your life,” he hugged my waist. “Bright side though. The coffee is yours and Deacon skipped, too.”

“What?” I asked. “How do you know?”

“Because I had to step over him to make the coffee.” Wes motioned toward the living area where we’d left Deacon and Iris the night before.

I got up to crack the door. Iris has fallen asleep on the loveseat while Deacon was knocked out on the hardwood floor. “I wonder how long they stayed up working on this?”

“My guess,” Wes said as he put his shirt back on. “All night. Look at your Google Doc.”

I sipped my coffee first. “Show it to me on yours while I drink my delicious coffee.”

I winked hoping he wouldn’t realize I wasn’t familiar with my computer yet. Though we’d just slept together, I was still leading him in this App endeavor and didn’t want to ask him how to login or setup or anything. I’d figure it out myself. I tried to turn off the thought of my virginity lost. There was work to do, but still, my heart ached for some reason.

“How many messages came through last night by the way?” I added trying to additionally muddy my thoughts.

“Oh,” he said. “Let me look.”

As he did, his eyes doubled in size. “What is it?”

He looked up at me. “Hundreds. Check this out.”

He turned his phone around to show an endless scroll of requests and comments. “What do they want?”

“They want to sign up,” he said. “Well, some are nominating themselves. Some… weird.”

“What?”

“Just read it because, wow,” he said handing me the phone.

Don’t know who u are. Y youre doing this. But you need to get this thing off the ground b4 MIT finds out. They will steal this shit in minutes.

“There’s no number,” I said.

“Yeah, that seems to be on purpose,” Wes said, opening his Google Doc. “Whoever it is, they aren’t wrong. We need to get something to download before this is swiped. Good news is Deacon and Iris are magicians.”

When Wes turned his computer around, I was shocked and impressed by the work they’d done through the night. They’d developed three initial landing page features with a punchy, brilliant crimson logo of a vintage Harvard sweatshirt with a Flavor Flav clock draped around it.

The first page required a Harvard.edu email address, name, age and enter at your own risk of getting your feelings hurt warning button, which I found hilarious. The second page was a guy’s Harvard letterman jacket with Leading Man Application written underneath beside a girl’s Harvard sweatshirt with Contestant Application written underneath. Both were clickable, and when clicked, they required a brief biography, photo, and video introduction from either the potential leading man or contestants. Also, an area under that required interests, personality traits and preferences. The third page was for general users to nominate, vote for the Leading Man and contestants in addition to an engagement section for live chatroom, comments, and Q&A.

“This could launch today,” I said. “Like now.”

“Wait, but…” Wes started but I was already headed for the living room.

“Guys!” I hollered. “Iris! Genius! Deacon! I take back everything I ever said about you! This is out of this world, y’all. Can we do a preliminary launch?

Groggy, they both shielded their eyes as I yelled my praises. “What are you on about?” Deacon asked. “Today as in…”

“Yes!” I said feeling frantic. “Why not?”

“Because Soph,” Iris said sitting up. “We need to shop this first. We can’t do a campus-wide launch after only four people see it.”

I paced the small living room. “The text message is correct. Someone will take this out from under us. It’ll be in the dust and there are so many powerful people in this city. They’ll eclipse us, leaving us with nothing at all. This is the land of a thousand Zuckerbergs. We need to create the official launch date footprint before it’s too late.” I looked around and everyone was surprisingly quiet. “Am I the only one who thinks this?”

Iris rubbed at her eyes and focused intently on me before jumping to her feet. “Sophia, come with me.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked a bit startled.

She stood directly behind me, walked to our shared bathroom, and closed the door behind us. “Babe,” she said gently. “Your leg.”

I looked down to find a trickle of blood creeping toward my ankle and I began to cry in her arms.