Monday, April 2
8:15 A.M.
NewYew headquarters, Manhattan
256 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
“An herbal supplement,” said Sunny, grinning. He threw a tennis ball at the floor, bounced it off the wall, and caught it again. “We can get away with anything in an herbal supplement. The FDA could care less about them.”
“Couldn’t care less,” said Lyle. “The FDA couldn’t care less, not could, that doesn’t make any sense.” Sunny was one of the few people at NewYew whom Lyle considered a friend, though even so, most of their interaction was business related. Now that he thought about it, Lyle didn’t interact much with anybody else at all.
“Could, couldn’t, the point is that they don’t care.” Sunny bounced and caught the ball again. “Listen to this: the FDA regulates the kinds of drugs and formulas and whatever that we’re allowed to sell, because they want to make sure those formulas are safe, right? You come up with something new, and they spend years and years testing it to make sure it doesn’t do anything it’s not supposed to do. But! Herbal supplements are different. The FDA keeps an approved list of ‘natural’ ingredients that they’ve already vetted, and as long as you stick to those you’re fine; they know those ingredients don’t do anything wrong because they don’t do anything at all, by definition. It’s just ground-up flowers and crap. The approval process for herbal supplements is zero days, because they literally don’t bother to look at them. If they’re labeled right, we don’t even have to submit them.”
“It’s a little more than ground-up flowers,” said Lyle.
“Totally,” said Sunny, throwing his tennis ball again, “but as long as nobody knows that, we can do whatever we want.”
Lyle tried to catch the ball as it bounced back to Sunny, hitting it at the wrong angle with his fingers and knocking it away. He swallowed, feeling stupid, while Sunny laughed and picked it up. “Listen,” said Sunny. “We label this new lotion of yours as an herbal product, we release it, we market it as this wonderful antiwrinkle lotion, but we never make any claims of structure or function—we never tell anyone, officially, what it does or how it does it.”
“But…” Lyle grimaced, queasy at the thought of giving up so much credit for his design. “I’ve been working on this for a year—for more than a year, if you count some of the early research. This is one of the most groundbreaking innovations in the entire health and beauty industry.” Lyle paused, trying not to say his next thought out loud, but somehow said it anyway. “I was going to get on the cover of Scientific American.”
“Is that what you’re worried about?” Sunny shook his head, waving his hands in a smoothing gesture. “We can still make that happen, we just have to wait a while. Take this same formula, tweak it a little in case anyone takes a good look at it, and submit it for FDA approval. It takes a few years, but if it’s as safe as you say it is they’ll eventually stamp it through and we can launch the technology officially. NewYew stays on the forefront of cosmetic innovation, you get the nerd accolades you crave, and meanwhile we’re earning money hand over fist with the exact same product under a different label.”
Lyle shook his head. “That’s sounds amazingly dishonest.”
“You’re adorable.”
“It’s not just a moral issue,” said Lyle, though the amorality did tickle at the base of his spine; Sunny was a shark, certainly, but this seemed uncharacteristically vicious. Even so, Lyle had learned over the years that appealing to the other executives’ morality was rarely a useful tactic—he had to hit them somewhere else. “Think about the marketing. You’re saying we’re going to make money hand over fist with a product we’re not even allowed to advertise effectively. ‘This product is awesome, but we can’t tell you why.’ I don’t think ‘Seriously, just trust us’ is a very good retail slogan.”
Sunny shrugged. “Word of mouth.”
“Word of mouth,” said Lyle with a snort.
“Yes,” said Sunny, “word of mouth, but we’re not going to just sit back and hope the right mouths start saying the right words. We’re going to manipulate the word of mouth—we’re going to create it.” He threw the ball again, missed the catch, and lost it under his desk. He dismissed it with a wave and looked back at Lyle. “Carl wanted a solution, so here’s the solution: a secondary marketing campaign. The company never talks about the plasmids or the collagen or the gene therapy aspects in the least bit—I know that delays your tell-all in Scientific American, but bear with me here. We don’t say a word. But we feed the right info to some science Tweeters and some ‘independent’ bloggers, and they start making some noise and talking about this revolutionary new science behind the product. Some hotshot reverse engineers it, and writes a big article about the unique combination of biological agents blah blah plasmids blah blah all-natural biomimetics. Our primary marketing stays as clean as a whistle, while our secondary marketing has all the good stuff, by pure word of mouth, in such a way that NewYew itself stays completely unaffiliated.”
Lyle raised his eyebrow. “So the scientific breakthrough I spent a year on is an accident from combining the wrong ingredients. Instead of a genius, I’m a buffoon.”
“It’s not an accident, it’s a … positive side effect.” Sunny put on his best placating face, which only made Lyle feel more patronized. “We’ll say it’s all part of the something something flower we use in some of our herbal stuff, what is it…” He flipped through the file on his desk. “Meadowfoam. That’s on the FDA-approved list of herbal ingredients. Everybody uses it.”
“These plasmids don’t come from meadowfoam,” said Lyle, “they come from Rock Canyon Labs. We have official invoices for the sale.”
“No,” said Sunny firmly, “I think you’re remembering wrong—we’re using those plasmids to develop a new gene therapy product to help burn victims. It’s still in testing, and we’re submitting it to the FDA for approval.”
“But—”
“Lyle.” Sunny looked at him, unwavering. “Let me be very clear about this: anything you say in public or in e-mail will agree with this story. It has to.”
“You’re asking me to lie.”
“Technically I’m telling you to lie. As far as this company is concerned, your new lotion is an herbal supplement with no genetic technology whatsoever.”
“Sunny,” said Kerry White, walking into the office, “I’ve got new bottle copy for you to review.” He handed Sunny a sheet of paper and leaned against the wall. “Hey, Lyle.”
Lyle pointed at Sunny, eager to have a new ally in the war against Sunny’s plan. “Have you heard about this?”
“About the secondary marketing?” asked Kerry. “I think it’s brilliant. Hey—tell me what you think of this as a name: Rebirth. Or maybe ReBirth, with a capital ‘B.’”
“Why a capital ‘B’?” asked Lyle.
“So we could trademark it,” said Sunny, his head down over the page from Kerry. “Legal thing.”
“Never mind the ‘B,’” said Lyle, shaking his head, “you can’t possibly be okay with this marketing plan.”
“I came up with the marketing plan,” said Kerry. “I’m the marketing guy.”
“But it’s lying!”
“All advertising is lying. Women buy our makeup because they want to look like the women in the ads—never mind that those women have perfect genes and half a dozen eating disorders and we still Photoshop their pictures anyway. People accept lies in advertising—they expect them. This is the same thing.”
“It’s not the same,” Lyle insisted. “Implying that a product will make you look like a supermodel is one thing, but specifically concealing the fact that a product will alter your DNA is kind of … well, it’s pretty ridiculous, don’t you think?”
“It’s safe, though, right?”
“Of course it’s safe, that’s not the point—”
“Then don’t worry about it.”
“He’s not worried about the safety,” said Sunny, “he’s very nobly worried about the credit. Apparently there are people who actually read Scientific American.”
Lyle ignored the jab. “What I’m worried about is explaining our product approval process to a federal court. I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that ‘we mislabeled it on purpose so we could make more money’ will be seen as less of an explanation than a confession.”
“We’re not mislabeling it,” said Kerry, “we’re just being careful.”
“Is that what we call lying these days?”
Sunny waved the paper Kerry had handed him. “Listen to this, Lyle, this is exactly what we’re talking about; absolutely nothing in here is a lie. ‘ReBirth uses a biomimetic herbal formula to support your body’s natural ability to produce collagen, giving you beautiful skin that looks younger and feels healthier.’ You see how they do that? It never claims anything specific—it doesn’t say your skin will be younger or healthier, it says your skin will look younger and feel healthier. That’s unprovable, and that makes it un-dis-provable. And completely defensible.”
“What about the collagen?” asked Lyle. “You said it produces collagen.”
Kerry shook his head with a smug smile. “No, we said it ‘supports’ your body in making its own collagen. ‘Supports’ is the magic marketing word—it sounds great and it makes people feel good and it doesn’t mean anything. Everything supports your body’s ability to make collagen—eating breakfast supports your body’s ability to make collagen. I, personally, politically, support your ability to make collagen. If we’re being strict on the definition, burn wounds support your ability to make collagen because they force your body to heal itself.”
Sunny bent over his desk and signed the paper. “This copy is approved, and I’ll research the trademark for ReBirth. Even if the trademark’s free, though, I doubt we could get the URL for it, so think of something else we can use for the website.”
“Will do,” said Kerry, taking the paper. He slapped Lyle on the back. “This really is a great product, Lyle—you’ve outdone yourself.” He walked out, and Sunny reached under his desk for the tennis ball.
“You going out to the plant?” asked Sunny.
Lyle nodded. “I sent them the recipe and a sample bottle yesterday. They should have a test batch ready to go—but I want to go on record that testing is not finished, and we can’t consider this a final formula until the follow-up visits for 14G are analyzed and approved.”
“The wheels of progress are turning,” said Sunny. “We’ve got to move fast to keep up.”
“I wish the wheels of progress would wait for next season,” said Lyle.
“The wheels of progress are greased by money,” said Sunny, “and this project has so much money in it these wheels are the greasiest they’ve ever been. They’re practically frictionless.”
“Friction provides control,” said Lyle. “We need it to steer.”
“We’re fine,” said Sunny. “We’ve launched a hundred other products together; we could do this in our sleep.” He grinned and threw the ball. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
* * *
NewYew had many production facilities, but their primary site—and specifically for Lyle’s purposes, their small-scale testing laboratory—was in Upstate New York. Lyle made it there in just under five hours.
“Jerry!” He waved his hand, trying to catch the foreman’s attention. “Jerry!”
Across the bright white factory, a man in a white plastic coat raised his head, smiled, and waved back. He nodded to the man next to him, handed him a clipboard, and jogged over to Lyle.
“Welcome back, Doctor.” Even at this distance they had to shout. “I wondered when you were coming.”
They stopped by a rack on the wall, and Lyle pulled on a white jumpsuit and a clear plastic hat. “How far are you?”
“No real production, obviously,” said Jerry, “just a sample run. We’ve ordered the materials for a larger run but they won’t arrive for a few weeks.” They started walking again, and the foreman led Lyle through the factory. “Sounds like they’re in a hurry on this one.” Jerry smiled. “What is it?”
“Antiaging,” said Lyle, following him up a white metal stairway. “You followed the instructions to the letter?”
“Of course.”
“All the proportions are correct?”
“I think you might want to adjust them, but yes, we followed your initial recipe exactly.”
Lyle frowned. “Adjust what?”
They stopped by a churning metal barrel full of loose, white goo. “I’d add more lecithin,” said Jerry, “the consistency’s all wrong.”
Lyle peered in. “Is this it?”
“Yep.”
Lyle stared at the vat of lotion. I should pull the plug, he thought. The product’s not ready, the marketing campaign is unethical, the entire thing is being handled wrong. He watched the white lotion swirl around, catching the light in bright, almost iridescent patterns. That doesn’t look right.… He pulled off his right glove and dipped his fingers in, scooping up some lotion and rubbing it between his thumb and forefingers.
“Actually you’re not allowed to do that anymore,” said Jerry, and held up a small, long-handled ladle. “New protocols to keep the batches clean; we just started them last month.”
“That’s good,” said Lyle, “that’s good. And I need to get out here more.” He closed his eyes, feeling the consistency. “You’re right, it’s off.” Lyle could feel it precisely: too much rice bran oil, not enough lecithin. The product would function just fine, but the wrong consistency would make it feel greasy, and that would turn off most of the end consumers. The texture had to be perfect, or the function didn’t matter.
Jerry carefully dipped the ladle in the lotion and dripped some onto his own hand. “We tried to match the viscosity by mixing in the sample you sent us from corporate, but going up to this scale changed it too much.” He examined the lotion, feeling it on his fingers. “See what I mean? Too oily.”
Lyle nodded: it was too oily, and he knew exactly how to fix it. He wiped off his hand. “Let’s get to work.”