One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B. J. Novak Page A

also hard for him to let go of someone who would say something like that.
    But the truth was actually much simpler than that, more visceral. I just realized that I was never going to get over the feeling I had the first time I met him, like I was walking on eggshells.

The Impatient Billionaire and the Mirror for Earth
    “If only the earth could hold up a mirror to itself …”
    Say no more, thought the impatient billionaire in the audience at the TED conference, who found the speaker’s voice as whiny and irritating as his ideas were inspiring and consciousness-shifting. He already knew the part of the speech that was going to stay with him: a mirror up to Earth—amazing, unbelievable. Tricky but doable. He got it. Let’s make it.
    “I want you to build a mirror for Earth,” he said to his engineers, who were used to things like this.
    “How big do you want the mirror to be?”
    “Full length.”
    “How big do you want Earth to look?”
    “Full size.”
    “Can’t be full size,” said the head engineer.
    “Yes it can be,” said the impatient billionaire. “And by the end of today, my head engineer is going to be somebody who tells me
how
it’s going to happen, not why it can’t.”
    “If it’s full size,” said the head engineer, “you’ll only see the reflection of what is in your field of vision up to your horizonpoint. That’s not what you want, is it? You’re picturing seeing, like, China, right?”
    “Yes,” said the impatient billionaire. “Exactly. Things like China.”
    “So let’s figure out how big,” said the engineer.
    “I want you to be able to look up with binoculars and literally wave at yourself,” said the impatient billionaire. “But you could also look at the White House, or your grandmother in Florida, or see two people on a date in Brazil. My God, do you realize what this is going to mean for humanity?”
    “You’re only going to be able to see one hemisphere at a time,” said the head engineer. “That means you won’t be able to see China and Brazil at the same time. Which one is more important to you?”
    “I don’t know. Same. Brazil,” said the impatient billionaire.
    The engineer took some notes with a little pencil.
    “Wait!” said the impatient billionaire. “Is this mirror going to burn up the whole planet? Don’t just ‘yes’ me on everything, really think about it: a mirror that big, reflecting the sun, facing us? I do not want to burn up the planet. I do not want to be ‘that guy.’ ”
    “No, that should be okay,” said the head engineer. “We should be able to come up with a material that reflects plenty of light but not a meaningful amount of heat. Let me talk with the team.”
    The engineers talked numbers and said they could probably have something up in eighteen months.
    “Why not six?” asked the impatient billionaire, trying to force into his eyes the rogue, intoxicating glimmer that he knew had served him well in life so far.
    Eighteen, said the engineering team.
    Fine, said the impatient billionaire. If you can really guarantee eighteen months, fine.
    We can, said the engineering team.
    Thirty-five months and two weeks later—more than a year late and seven hundred million dollars over budget—the Mirror for Earth finally went up into the sky.
    But nobody remembers how long anything takes; they only remember how good it was in the end.
    And in the end, the mirror was magnificent.
    After a very short amount of time, the Mirror for Earth became one of those things that people couldn’t ever imagine not existing.
    When people caught sight of themselves in the mirror—individually and as a species—they thought twice about how they looked doing whatever they were doing. Crime disappeared. Wars evaporated. Meanness declined dramatically.
    The mirror changed everything, forever, for the better.
    Besides all that, the thing was, quite simply, beautiful.
    One summer night a few years later, the impatient billionaire couldn’t