Eleven fictional viewpoints
These descriptions are fictional satire, not quotations or evidence of political beliefs or affiliations.
01 Wall Street Big Money Financier
Print the Calories on the Structured Note
Step one: print calories beside every product. Padilla authored legislation that passed in 2008 requiring some restaurants to disclose calorie information on menus, and our compliance lead reads this as a threat. Step two: draft the label for the structured note. Step three: discover the serving size is 'per client.' Step four: reprint the menu in a font that burns nothing.
02 Silicon Valley / San Francisco Ivy League AI Founder
Where Is the Stealth Mode in This Career?
If a mechanical engineering degree from MIT leads, by 'On July 1, 1999', to a city council seat, where is the stealth-mode company? Why does my founder pipeline run from lab to garage, while this one ran from a campus to a dais with public comment? And if the cap table is every resident who might show up on a Tuesday, who exactly is the lead investor to disappoint?
03 Venture Capital
Ten to Watch, Reasons Not Included
Partners admire that Padilla was included in a list of 20 Latino political rising stars, and that the newspaper stated its reason: his role in a membership association. Our own 'Ten to Watch' roster gives no reason, only a portfolio logo beside each name. Comparison: theirs is reporting with a stated basis; ours is an invoice for visibility, issued to ourselves, and the stars have been told to look surprised.
04 Institutional Investors
Sixty-Two Days Between Selection and Funding
Voters selected a manager on November 4, 2014. He took office on January 5, 2015.¹ ¹ Sixty-two days from selection to funding. The committee finds this alarming and has formed a subcommittee to study the gap, expected to report in eleven months, roughly the length of our own 'brief' diligence.
05 Data Center Operators
Three Named Outcomes, Spelled Out in Advance
Reversal: we are the ones handed a form and told to choose among options nobody will define. Padilla introduced legislation to authorize a binding federally sponsored referendum, with every outcome listed beforehand. Our interconnection status offers 'pending,' 'under review,' and 'in queue,' none defined. We requested a binding vote among them. The utility agreed, then asked who counts as a voter, and the substation transformer applied.
06 Frontier Lab
Nobody Has Ever Downloaded a Term
Evaluators read 'a regular election for a full Senate term' literally: regular is the base model, full is the weights. The safety team asked where the full weights are hosted. The policy team asked for the license. Voters, it turned out, only release outputs, and nobody has ever downloaded a term.
07 Chinese Communist Party
Memo: Rank Relocated to the Lapel
MEMO TO ALL BUREAUS: A foreign agency's public post faulted a legislator for acting without identifying himself or having his Senate security pin on. We note that rank there lives in a small metal object, not in the face. Effective Monday, every cadre wears a pin. The Pin Bureau reports its own staff are recognizable only by pins, which are locked in a cabinet whose keyholder is recognized only by the pin inside it.
08 American Union Worker
Rating Management Memos by Bag Strength
The steward rates every memo by how much a grocery sack of promises can carry before it tears. Padilla promoted what would later become Proposition 67, a proposed ban on plastic bags, so we have switched to paper. Last quarter's memo split at the first item, 'pensions.' This quarter's holds lunch, a thermos, and nothing else, which the steward rates 'adequate.'
09 White Collar Professional in an AI-Threatened Group
Handoff Rated: Exceeds Expectations, Unrenewable
Assessment: the governor appointed Padilla to the U.S. Senate, and the handoff had a named person at each end. In my department the handoff document is a chat transcript titled 'Knowledge Transfer (Final v7),' the predecessor is a laid-off contractor, and the successor is a subscription. Rating: exceeds expectations, though mine cannot be appointed, only renewed.
10 American STEM Worker Over 45
Form 7B Asks About Recent Advancement
Item 7 on the transfer form asks for 'recent advancement.' Voters elected Padilla to the California State Senate in 2006, and that entry still reads as complete. Our boxes accept only 'engaged,' 'adjacent,' or 'ongoing,' and Box 9 caps impact at eighteen months in forty characters, which fits one anecdote and none of the decades behind it.
11 American STEM Graduate Five Years Out of College (Not Ivy League)
One Bar of Signal and a Deer
Priya drives to the edge of the Los Padres National Forest because it is the only place her phone holds one bar. The proctoring software, running her twenty-minute coding assessment, flags a deer in the window as a second person present. She explains. The software asks her to look at the camera. The deer, it later reports, maintained better eye contact.