Fact check: True.

Explanation: This really happened.

 

 

The Career Woman

June 11, 2034:

Dear diary,

Today I stepped over a heroin addict (some old white male loser who probably didn’t even go to college), on my way to the IVF clinic. I wish the municipality would do something about these people, they deserve real help and they’re becoming a danger to everyone.

Today is a big day for me. I’m 44 and just finished my doctoral degree in social media studies, so now I finally qualified for a promotion at my job with Meta. That’s right bitches, I’m becoming a real boss babe now! While you got to spend your life chained to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, I was busy getting ahead and traveling the world!

Me and Kevin are now planning on buying a house. Because we’re both full time employed we can borrow 130% of the value of the home. After taxes, administrative fees and other shenanigans, that means we can now borrow 25% of the value of the house to refurnish it and do other things to celebrate. Yep, we’re now rich, we will have half a million dollar to spend as we see fit!

Fortunately president Cortez has finally forgiven my college debt, because I’m officially a person of color as my great-great-great-great-grandmother was a full-blooded member of the Timbisha people! Yes, a lot of people are very judgmental and don’t believe me, but I am in fact Native American, although I am aware of my passing privilege as I am white presenting. Anyway, I’m glad I voted for President Cortez and not for the incumbent president Prescott Bush III, like those racist white men do!

We’re planning on going on vacation to the Bahamas to celebrate my promotion, but first we have something else to do: I’m going to implant one of my frozen eggs! Yes, that’s right, I’m becoming a mother. Wish me luck xoxo.

June 12:

Uh-oh. I just received a phone call from the IVF clinic. Apparently there’s some issue with my womb. The doctor thinks I’m at an increased risk of an ectopic pregnancy and so he recommends that I don’t carry the child myself. Well, better to be safe than sorry. We’re now going to look for a surrogate mother.

June 13:

After some browsing on my phone, I think we found the perfect candidate: Isabel Gonzalez, an illegal undocumented Venezuelan immigrant! She is a 28 year old single mother who works as a waitress. She lives nearby, so we’re going to meet her today. She seems nice!

June 14, 2034:

So, we met Isabel and she seems very friendly. Of course she’s being paid a hefty sum under the table to serve as our surrogate mother, so it makes sense that she would be friendly to us, but I do think she is the perfect woman to carry my child. Kevin seems to agree, in fact, they got along pretty well! Isabel insists that she hopes the child will be “pale and fair” like me and Kevin, which was a little awkward, but I just laughed along, I didn’t feel like pointing out to her why this is a problematic attitude.

June 18, 2034:

We’re on our way to the Bahamas! I’m so excited, I’m going to lay on the beach and get a tan! People will finally notice that I’m Native American when I return home! I’m not going to ruin my tan with any sunscreen, my skin can handle the sun on its own.

June 19, 2034:

“My skin can handle the sun on its own” Yeah, about that. I can’t fall asleep, it feels like my whole back is on fire. #whitegirlproblems No, in all seriousness, it was such beautiful weather, I should’ve been more responsible and stayed in the shade.

June 30, 2034:

Well that was fun. Sorry for not giving you any new updates, we had such a great time in the Bahamas. We’re on our way back to San Francisco now. Kevin has to be at the clinic tomorrow morning, to deliver a semen sample.

June 31, 2034:

Haha Kevin is at the clinic now, so I asked him if he needs any help! 😉 Well I sent him a picture of my knickers and it seems that got the job done! Sorry I’m laughing hysterically now and I probably shouldn’t be updating my diary when I’m drinking cocktails. xoxo

July 3, 2034:

So, today was an odd day. The cat bumped into Kevin’s phone, it fell towards the floor and I caught it for him. I didn’t want to invade his privacy, but I saw he had searched for “thicc latina”. This confuses me, I never knew he had a thing for LatinX women. Should I bring it up, or am I just being overly insecure? [Note to self: Probably going to delete this later.]

July 5, 2034:

It’s now the first day in my new responsibilities as senior compliance manager over at Meta. I’m so proud and I’m so excited!!! I have a team of fifty people under me, who spend every day trying to figure out whether we’re violating any European privacy laws with our targeted advertising. Privacy is a very important value to me of course, but we need to offer people the content that appeals to them too, if we want to stay ahead of the competition.

August 19:

We just received a call: Isabel is pregnant! I jumped up from my chair in excitement! If all goes well, then next year we will be taking care of our little darling. Kevin wants a son, but I don’t care whether our kid is going to be a boy, a girl or non-binary. In fact, I plan on raising them gender-neutral, so they can figure out for themselves what fits them best. I don’t want to impose my values and expectations on our child, although I do hope they will do good in school of course.

September 11:

Woah, I haven’t updated in almost a month. Sorry I’m just very busy with work. The EU says they’re going to ban our platform if we don’t follow their new rules. I’ve discussed this with my higher-ups and I encouraged them that we should call their bluff. As if the EU could just ban Instagram, haha. Yeah, stressful times.

Oktober 5:

We finally bought a new house. It’s an eco-friendly tiny house, built from biodegradable material like hemp fiber. It has two bedrooms, so we have a place for our little baby too! It’s a bit of a fixer-upper, but at just over two million dollar, we have plenty of money left to redecorate it. I’m so excited!

November 2:

Well, we’ve settled into our new home quite comfortably. For Silicon Valley standards we have a lot of room, in fact it’s, spacious enough for Kevin to do pushups in the living room!

November 22:

Sorry, boring workstuff today. It doesn’t look like the EU is backing down, which is causing some friction between me and management, who I assured we should call their bluff. We can still back down now and throw away all the code our developers have written over the past six months and start from scratch, or we can push it. If I now say we should back down, my own compliance people will think of me as weak and I’ll be embarrassing them by going against their suggestions. If on the other hand I push it, either management will disagree and my own position will be threatened or they follow my judgement and then we risk really pissing off the EU. Only bad options remain.

December 14:

This is really weird. I took the day off work because I was going to do my Christmas shopping and I ran into Kevin in the shopping mall. He was together with Isabel! It turns out they ran into each other by accident. I’m… a little perplexed! But I suppose everyone is doing their Christmas shopping now haha. I asked Isabel how she’s doing and besides the regular initial nausea the pregnancy is apparently going uneventful, which is good to hear. Her belly is growing, but she joked that she has plenty of weight at the back to even it out. I love Isabel, she is so honest.

January 1, 2035:

Ugghh I hate that I have to write this, but it really happened. We celebrated New Years at our house and we had some friends over. We ordered Mexican food, it took forever to arrive and Kevin and his STUPID drunk friends began chanting “build that wall”. This is not how I know Kevin, he was dragged along by these dumb friends I wish he would have ditched years ago. Worst of all, I fear that the taco delivery person (is that a term? sorry!) might have heard them.

I try to be a good ally, so I tried explaining to Kevin and his friends how hurtful this is to the LatinX community, to be constantly confronted with these sort of jokes, but they just ignored me, except for Bob, who said: “You know what’s really hurtful? Pushing a baby’s head out of your sour little wrinkly dry cunt. Smart of you to skip out on that.” Well suffice to say, the mood for the rest of the night was ruined. I got Kevin to agree that Bob is no longer going to be invited.

January 20:

Well this is not good. The EU is having none of it and in fact, we received an ultimatum to delete all our European users data within two weeks. Our stock dropped by 30% as soon as the headlines hit the news. My employee options are going to be worthless, that much is obvious. My own job is probably on the line too.

February 5:

There are rumors of insider trading on our office floor, it’s the big talk of the day. There has been unusually heavy volume in put option trading apparently in our company. Someone at the office must have been leaking information. I don’t know who it could have been.

February 22:

Rumor now has it the SEC is apparently launching an investigation into what has happened. I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m not being invited to any meetings anymore, which is honestly what I expected after this whole debacle. Frankly, I’m kind of happy about it, in a weird way. I can’t handle any more stress right now.

March 11:

This must be the worst day of my life. I just got back from my Yoga classes in the evening, when Kevin told me we had received a letter from the SEC. That’s when it all spilled out. Kevin admitted that during the New Year’s Eve party he had told some of his friends to buy some put options on my employer, after he heard me complain to him about how bad things were going at work. They must think we’re the leak. I’m invited for questioning.

March 14: So, I was invited for questioning and I bluffed my way through it. I never told anyone anything. Not my friends, not my family, not my boyfriend. I never talk about work to anyone. I think I’m good.

March 18:

We haven’t really heard anything from Isabel anymore in a while, although the pregnancy should be pretty far along. I am growing curious to know what gender our child has. Oof, I mean, what set of genitalia. Is my child going to menstruate, like me, or is my child going to ejaculate?

March 28:

This is weird. Isabel is apparently on vacation in her homeland Venezuela. I always assumed she lived hand to mouth. I mean, sorry, yeah, that sounds presumptuous, but I mean, she works as a waiter, we paid her to carry our child, I’m frankly surprised she can even afford two weeks off.

April 4:

Alright now I’m livid. Apparently Kevin has been having contact with Isabel without letting me know. He says Isabel feels uncomfortable around me, so apparently that’s why I get ignored. Turns out, we’re having a seemingly healthy boy (he tells me NOW? can you believe this). Or well, we’re having a seemingly healthy child with a penis, a prostate and testicles. You get what I mean.

April 8:

This is the worst day of my life, by far. I decided to call Isabel, I wanted to see if I could heal the rift that had developed between us. And here are the words I heard: “Oh hello puta, sisisi, the child. Well let’s see, did Kevin already tell you he couldn’t do it at the IVF clinic, so he visited my apartment, bent me over, pulled down my pants and gave me the best fifteen seconds of his life, alright? I’m trying to enjoy my tequila, can you call later?” I don’t know what to do or say anymore. I punched a hole in the wall and I screamed from the top of my lungs.

I immediately confronted Kevin, who broke down crying. Apparently this is all true. And worst of all, because he feared losing contact with “his son” (his words, not mine, I won’t assume the child’s gender), he tried desperately to keep contact with Isabel. He even went so far as to recommend her to buy put options on Meta. This explains how Isabel has suddenly left the country. I don’t think we’re ever going to see her again.

So, this also means that I am officially the leak. Which means the SEC will be coming for me and I will lose my job. I left my house overnight and fled to Canada. A conviction of insider trading can mean twenty years of jailtime. I’ll start a new life elsewhere from scratch.

April 14:

I’m heart-broken. There is no way to describe what I feel today, because I just received a phone call, informing me that Kevin has died. The entirety of California is covered in darkness today, because of an incident at a Bitcoin mining farm. Kevin, Bob and his other STUPID FRIENDS thought they could earn some money on the side, by renting an abandoned warehouse and stealing electricity to mine Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrencies. In the process of trying to divert electricity they were all electrocuted or burned alive, which led to a giant blackout.

April 25:

Apparently they’re having difficulty restarting the electricity grid. My old colleague who I keep in touch with says they’re very worried now at the office. We don’t just have data centers in the valley, for some of us this is more personal. We have family members who are cryonically frozen, but the emergency aggregates are starting to run out of fuel. And worst of all, my eggs have melted too. An entire generation of ambitious women like me was just neutered, by the failure of the electricity grid.

 

FIN