Star Glance
The sensory alarm clock began to chime lightly as the lights in the room gently and gradually brightened on a Monday morning. Jasmine, a slender, tan woman with an angular face, turned over in her silk sheets and stared toward the face of the clock designed to wake her up when it was detected that she was in the stages of light sleep, as not to interrupt REM: 5:37AM. Next to her bed was an already prepared shaker full of powder and water—the powder promised the perfect blend of elite, adaptogenic mushrooms and nootropic herbs with just enough caffeine and B vitamins to get her going. She shook it up and chugged it down, then grabbed her phone to look at her sleep stats, courtesy of her smart mattress: she’d gotten a total of seven hours and 55 minutes of sleep, managing two hours and eight minutes of REM, one hour and 36 minutes of deep sleep, and four hours and 11 minutes of light sleep, with only low variations of oxygen levels during the night. Her sleep score was an 86. Ah, well—maybe she’d get up to 90 one of these days.
Now it was time to get up and face the workweek. Jasmine was the executive and chief assistant to one Mr. Timothy Ramos, the techie billionaire who’d designed a social media + shopping platform called Glance, which had exploded in popularity over the past 15 years. Originally a small website aimed at business owners, Mr. Ramos received great investments from his parents’ venture capitalist friends and turned his random business idea into a social media empire with several platforms, thousands of partners, and dozens of celebrity spokespeople.
Jasmine, born and raised in Palo Alto, California where Glance was headquartered, had no such connections, and genuinely worked her way up to her position. She worked hard in school, got internships with other tech companies near her hometown, earned scholarships to get her MBA from Stanford, and took an entry-level position at Glance when she was 24. Now, she was the executive assistant to Mr. Ramos himself. Not a personal assistant, mind you. She didn’t live with him or tend to his every order. She worked for Glance, and everything about Jasmine was business-oriented.
She dressed herself in her business-casual clothes—she liked to look Lean In nice without breaking the “casual” dress code of Silicon Valley tech companies. She did her makeup with all-natural, eco-friendly beauty products, rolled energizing essential oils on the inside of her wrists, put her black hair up into a tight bun, and grabbed herself a flavorless complete protein shake on the way into the garage, where her Tesla was charging.
Finally, she was on her way to work.
She arrived at 8:00 AM on the dot. Most of the other employees rolled in between 9:00 and 10:00–again, a typical laissez-faire workers’ schedule for the area—but Jasmine appreciated the ability to get started on work early, before anyone else was there, when it was still and silent. Using her employee badge, she got through the parking lot, the main complex, and into the executive suite, where high-ranking VPs, their assistants, and of course Mr. Ramos himself worked. Her badge could also open the door into Mr. Ramos’ personal office, but she didn’t go in there without him being present unless it was an absolute emergency.
She spent about two and a half hours finalizing the Glance company weekly schedule, responding to emails, and compiling Excel sheets into reports before Mr. Ramos strolled in. His salt-and-pepper hair was perfectly askew, his golden-skinned face was perfectly smooth, and his jeans and off-white Cucinelli t-shirt looked perfectly stylish with his Colin Kaepernick Nikes. He casually waved at others in the executive wing as he headed toward his office, then signaled Jasmine over. She followed him dutifully, carrying her tablet with her so that she could take notes as he spoke. They had a one-on-one every morning he was in the office (usually about three days of the week, but sometimes more or less), but Monday’s was always the longest.
This time, as they walked into his large office decorated with cherrywood furniture and designed like an Oxford College study hall, he shut the door behind them. This was unusual—his “open door policy” was something he often took pride in.
“So uh, hey Jasmine, we can discuss the weekly reports and schedule and stuff later—I’ve been thinking this weekend and I’ve got something to run by you. It’s almost a done deal, but we’re working out the kinks right now.”
She perked her eyebrow up. “Yes, Mr. Ramos?”
“Well,” he said. “We’re launching a space program. I’ve been in talks with an outside consulting firm for months, and you know, we just wanna compete with everyone else out there. We’ve already got satellites in space, and now we can have people in space too. We want people to connect—all over the universe. I’m going to fund the training and equipment out-of-pocket, but personnel and research will be funded by Glance. We’re going to start it as a separate corporation: Star Glance.”
Jasmine sat silently, trying to hide her stunned look. For years, Mr. Ramos decried doing anything that “other” tech companies were doing, and tried to differentiate himself—it had been a reason for his success. She supposed the publicity that other billionaires were getting recently was starting to gnaw at him, and he wanted to be part of the new space race. Well, okay.
Mr. Ramos kept talking. “Listen, you don’t have to take notes. Put the tablet down for a second. I want you to be a big, big part of this, Jasmine. I could see you at the helm of this thing. I can’t do it all, Glance AND Star Glance. I need someone I can count on. This is going to be a big project, and I want you to be be part of it.”
NOW Jasmine was interested. As the executive assistant of the CEO of one of the most profitable companies in the world, she pretty much had it all—notoriety, a great salary, benefits, connections, and an important place at the table for a social media service that pretty much everyone used. But, she never got to make any decisions about the company. Occasionally her opinion would be asked, but rarely did it get taken into consideration. She wondered if she had reached the end of the line for career advancement, which would have been fine, luckier than 95% of other people on Earth… but Jasmine had secretly always desired a bit more.
She imagined herself as the director of Star Glance, a female icon among all the male Silicon Valley male billionaires. She saw herself on Forbes lists of powerful people. She saw herself moving out of her condo and into an Atherton mansion. She imagined beating the other space programs to go to the Moon, or Mars, or establish regular and commercial rides into space. Jasmine wanted the celebrity that Mr. Ramos had, and she believed she deserved it, too.
“I don’t know what to say, Mr. Ramos. I’m honored to be considered for this project. I have always been very interested in space travel, personally, and I believe myself highly qualified to lead a project like this for Glance. Thank you for entrusting me with this information. I’m here to help in any way necessary.”
Mr. Ramos grinned, nodding. “Alright, then. Blow off your schedule this week. Give all your work to the other assistants—Emily and Jeff, maybe. You’ll be coming with me this week to all my meetings. Make sure you participate. You won’t just be there to take notes, you know. Next Monday morning, I’m going to have a big press junket where I’ll be announcing the formation of the Star Glance program, and of course, who will be the director of the new program.” He winked at her.
That week was one of the best of Jasmine’s life. During the day, she sat in on meetings about the necessary of diversity in astronaut selections, the advice of ex-NASA scientists, spaceship engineers, venture capitalists who were basically begging to be part of the project, green capitalists who wanted to know how they could get their eco-friendly products to be involved somehow, and more. She took it all in. At night, she studied the existent space programs and reached out to her connections at other companies to ask how they were leading their space programs.
On Friday, Mr. Ramos and Jasmine had their last meeting of the week. This was with a software engineer, and they wanted to help build a fully automated computer-based navigational program and discuss the possibility on an unmanned module to Mars, and what that timeline might look like. When the presenter tried to speak about the budget funding, Mr. Ramos pointed toward Jasmine in the meeting and said, “Hey, make sure you say that to her. You’ll be seeing her a lot more often soon. Maybe more than me.” Jasmine smiled inwardly—she knew good things were coming.
That weekend, she got her hair done, nails done, bought a new outfit, got a facial, and even got a gentle lip filler. She was going to be totally ready for the press junket, and she knew she was going to be on that stage.
As they met in the auditorium at the Glance headquarters about 30 minutes before the conference was set to begin, Mr. Ramos pulled Jasmine aside. “I’m about to change your life,” he told her. “I hope you’re ready for everything I have expected of you. Don’t worry about saying anything today. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about it afterward.”
Okay, thought Jasmine to herself. At least she won’t be expected to give a speech today. She’ll have time to hire a public relations specialist to help her craft the perfect statement to the press. It’ll be great. She sat in a chair, just offstage where she couldn’t be seen by the gaggle of journalists and cameras that were beginning to congregate and crowd around the platform.
Mr. Ramos took the stage.
“Hi everyone, I’ve gathered you here today to make an announcement, one that has been in the works for several months now. At Glance, we say, we are always glancing ahead to the next big thing. We never want to be complacent. So, I’m absolutely stoked to tell you that we are launching Star Glance, a space program aimed at reaching for the stars and expanding the limit of human capabilities and connection. Specifically, we are looking at exploring commercial space travel, landing on the Moon, and finally, landing on Mars. Our program will comprise of the brightest experts available, and our designs will be revolutionary in their eco-friendly approach: everything we design will be carbon-neutral. Our company will reflect the same values as Glance, with a focus on diversity and investing in future generations. Furthermore, I would like to announce we’ve already found a director for this program, as it will be operating as a separate entity. And that director is…” he looked sideways toward Jasmine, and nodded toward her, a huge smile on his face. “Me.” Jasmine’s perfectly manicured hands clenched into fists, and she felt her throat drop, a warm flush of anger hot on her face.
He continued, “I am stepping down as CEO of Glance to focus solely on the Star Glance endeavor, and the board of directors will be selecting a new CEO soon. We will operate from the headquarters here for now, but we are seeking to expand and relocate the Star Glance program within the year to somewhere we can test our products, likely Austin, Texas. Do you have any questions?”
For the next hour, Mr. Ramos took questions from the eager, tech-loving journalists in front of him while Jasmine stayed glued to her seat, unable to move or respond. She felt like she was dissociating, like she didn’t even exist, like all her hopes and dreams were shattering apart inside her.
Finally, Mr. Ramos came back off-stage and spoke directly to Jasmine. “Hey,” he said. “Told you I had a big surprise. We’re moving to Austin! I will definitely need you there to take care of everything for me. I want to be more design-oriented at Star Glance, you know, than I was at Glance. This is my dream program, so I don’t want to have to worry about constantly being in meetings or having to design presentations or whatever. I want to just DREAM. And I need you there to work out the details. Whaddya say?”
Jasmine was speechless and said, “I uh… yeah. Okay.”
“Alright, Jasmine, I’ve gotta go have lunch with the board of directors now, to see how we want to continue in Austin and to look at properties. I’ll call you at 2:00PM and let you know what they want from us so you can take care of it. Hey, thanks!”
Jasmine was seething as he walked off without waiting for her to respond. She took her work phone and shut it off. She couldn’t believe it. How could he just do this to her? As she saw him just casually strolling away like nothing happened, a thought occurred to her. Jasmine quickly opened her tablet and began writing. If Mr. Ramos wasn’t going to give her the opportunity, she would have to make it happen herself.There were still a few journalists left in the auditorium, typing up notes. She grabbed one of them who was on their way out and said, “Hey. I have something to say.”
A few hours later, Jasmine’s statement had superseded the announcement of Star Glance. This is what she had said:
“I’ve been the executive assistant at Glance for a decade now, working directly with Mr. Timothy Ramos and assisting him as we built the company into a megapower. With the announcement of Star Glance, I am resigning from my position. The greed of billionaires and corporations has led to a disgusting display of wealth and power as they use funds not to help impoverished communities or to fight injustice, but instead to fulfill their own space fantasies in some sort of sick contest. I will no longer be taking part of this company or its programs, and I believe we employees should stand up against the whims of our billionaire owners while there is still such an imbalance of power in the world today. I am starting a non-profit that demands accountability and transparency from the tech companies and billionaires of the United States. I hope you will join me in this mission to stand up for what’s right.”
And with that, Jasmine launched herself into the space of celebrity and status that she had always dreamed of.
Cover photo by Bernadetta Watts
