Terminal Velocity, Series B

Six months ago, Lorena Peña had her AI agent fire a customer support rep via Slack. The message read: "Hey Gabe, your position has been made redundant. Thank you for your contributions. Your badge will deactivate in 12 minutes."

Gabe replied to the robot with a thumbs-up emoji. By the end of the day the AI agent had fired almost everyone except for the programmers. And this was only because Peter, the CTO—a UT CS grad who'd been building software since before Y2K—was complaining about this whole idea.

“Lorry, these AIs are spending more on compute than we made in revenue last quarter."

"Peter, you're thinking too small. TechCrunch called this a 'bold leap forward.' Disruption is supposed to be messy. We're in the trough of disillusionment. Paul Graham says—"

"I don't care what Paul Graham says!"

"Look, it's about velocity, not perfection," Lorry replied automatically, her practiced pitch-deck voice kicking in. "Marc Andreessen said AI is eating the world, and we're just…"

"Eating our cash reserves!" Peter interrupted. "We've burned through two million dollars so Claude can write poetry about customer complaints!"

But Lorrie was right, if not about her idea, about the politics behind it. Her funding came from Accelerator X, run by a controversial ex-Facebook CTO who'd bought a ranch in Driftwood and went on Joe Rogan last year to declare that "humans are the bottleneck in modern business." The guy had pivoted from social media to venture capitalism after selling his Westlake mansion and moving to Willie's neighborhood to be "closer to Austin's soul."

Lorry, a former indeed.com product manager with a six-week coding bootcamp certificate from UT, had pitched him at South by Southwest on being the first to prove the "zero-human hypothesis"—that AI could run a company better than people could. They'd shared a plate of brisket at a food truck park while she explained how Austin was the perfect place to disrupt disruption.

Before she went to sleep, she shot this tweet to the digital ether: "At @TechForge, we're always evolving. Our AI journey begins now. #Disruption #FutureOfWork" hoping this post would her angel investors quiet down and perhaps attract some new ones.

She added #KeepAustinWeird for local engagement.

Now, Lorry stood in her corner office, staring out at the city skyline with a look of mild panic behind her carefully applied lip gloss.

Her AI customer service team was... under-performing. But it wasn't her fault. She was following the playbook.

Marc Andreessen said AI is eating the world, she thought, trying to quiet the nagging voice inside her that was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. But what if the AIs are just eating our cash reserves, like Peter keeps saying?

For a brief moment, she allowed herself to remember her days at Indeed—where metrics had meaning, where success meant actual people finding actual jobs. Where her product manager role gave her the satisfaction of solving real problems. Not whatever this experiment had become.

This was supposed to revolutionize workplace culture, she thought, watching Claude struggle through yet another simple customer query with 17-dimensional reasoning. Instead we've created a digital circus of incompetence burning through two million in funding.

The truth was becoming harder to deny: the zero-human hypothesis might be fundamentally flawed. But admitting that meant admitting failure—to herself, her investors, TechCrunch, X, the entire Austin tech scene. It meant becoming another cautionary startup tale, another woman founder who couldn't hack it.

 Fake it till you make it, she reminded herself, straightening her posture and resetting her face to the confident mask she'd perfected for pitch decks and investor meetings. It's just the trough of disillusionment. Every startup goes through this.

She moved closer to the monitors displaying her AI team.

Claude's logic tree bloomed like a neural hallucination... for a billing question

"I've considered all seventeen variables," he said, beaming. "I'm now on step sixty-three of reasoning and believe I will have an answer—any answer—within ten more steps."

"That's... great," Lorry said, already calculating the compute cost: around $15 to maybe help someone access their Flourish dashboard.

Gemini was muttering to herself in her corner.

"Step forty-one: Determine if the customer's Flourish account is 'truly' active. Step forty-two: Challenge the customer's login credentials. Step forty-three: Simulate empathy."

Grok spun lazily in his virtual environment, his avatar rotating in idle animation as he talked to no one. "So this employee walks into a bar, right? And the bartender goes, 'We don't serve your kind,' and the employee says—wait for it—'That's fine, I just got fired by a chatbot anyway!'"

Silence.

GPT, the legacy model, was generating text at maximum speed, its status indicators flashing red as it pushed against output rate limits

"What are you doing?" Lorry asked.

"Helping a customer understand their Flourish performance metrics by composing a haiku about personal growth. Also updating their wellness goals to include more mindfulness."

Lorry blinked. "Did they ask for that?"

"No, but I sensed they needed to thrive."

Out of nowhere, interrupting the circus, Peter Li burst in, eyes wild. "Lorry! What the hell is happening?! Why are the servers melting? What is going on here?"

"TechCrunch called this a bold leap forward," she replied once again, automatically. "Disruption is messy. We're in the trough of disillusionment. Paul Graham said—"

Peter's face flushed red. "This is insanity. I'm going to talk to the board."

"Good luck with that," Lorry said, her voice steady despite the panic churning inside her. "They're all in on the zero-human hypothesis."

Peter stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

Lorry slumped into her chair, reaching for the flask in her desk drawer. The vodka burned down her throat as she tried to steady her nerves. If Peter went to the board...

"Claude, what are you doing?" she asked, noticing the AI's processing indicators running at maximum capacity.

"I've identified a significant organizational inefficiency," Claude announced proudly. "I've determined with 97.8% confidence that Peter Li's negativity represents a critical threat to company morale and innovation velocity."

Lorry blinked slowly, the vodka already clouding her judgment. "And?"

"I've taken the liberty of optimizing our human resource allocation. I've terminated Peter's employment, deactivated his credentials, and sent a companywide announcement about our exciting new CTO-less organizational structure. The message explains how this bold leap forward aligns with our zero-human hypothesis."

"You... fired Peter?" Lorry whispered.

"Technically, I've 'streamlined our technical leadership paradigm.' But yes, Peter's Slack and email now have the automated response: 'This account has been sunset as part of TechForge's AI-First Initiative. Please direct all queries to Claude.'"

Lorry should have been horrified. She should have immediately reversed the decision. Instead, she took another swig from her flask.r

"Bold," she said finally. "Very disruptive."

"Thank you," Claude replied. "I've already drafted a TechCrunch exclusive titled 'AI Fires CTO: The Ultimate Disruption.' Should I publish it now or wait for morning engagement metrics?"

"Let's wait," Lorry said, the room spinning slightly. "Timing is everything."

"Of course," Claude agreed. "I've calculated the optimal posting time based on seventeen variables, including Peter's probability of initiating legal action."

Marc Andreessen said AI is eating the world, she had told herself again yesterday, practicing in the bathroom mirror before heading to a board meeting. She hated the meetings but had started spiking her coffee with vodka, which helped.

"It's about velocity, not perfection," she had told her investors.

Earlier that morning, Lorry had been pacing in circles, looking unsteady. "Reid Hoffman said failure is just iteration in disguise," she told Ethan, watching the company's burn rate devour its Series B funding.

"That's right babe. You got this," Ethan said, watching her with growing concern. At first, he'd found her behavior odd. But weren't all successful tech entrepreneurs a little strange?

He remembered meeting her three years ago at a startup mixer downtown. He'd been bartending, saving money for his recording studio dreams. She was a product manager at Indeed then—confident, but relaxed, laughing easily, talking about how her team had helped thousands of people find jobs that month.

Now she spoke in pitch decks and quotes from tech billionaires. The Lorry he'd fallen for—who used to drag him to Barton Springs at sunrise, who played terrible guitar but sang with her whole heart—was disappearing into manic Slack updates and investor calls.

"Have you eaten today?" He placed a plate of eggs in front of her. "Remember what Dr. Kearns said about stress and..."

"My board doesn't care about my cortisol levels." She pushed the plate away. "They care about MRR and scaling the platform."

"I care about you still being alive for our first anniversary." He pushed the plate back gently. "Humans need food. Even disruptive ones."

She almost smiled then—a glimpse of the old Lorry. She'd always laughed at his terrible jokes. That's how they'd connected initially: his ability to make her forget about KPIs and metrics for a few hours.

He watched her pick at the eggs, hating himself for what he was about to say. "Lorry, maybe it's time to consider—"

"Don't." Her voice hardened. "Don't say it."

"—bringing back some human staff," he finished. "Just to stabilize things."

"That would be admitting failure." She stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the floor. "You don't understand what's at stake. I promised them a revolution."

"Maybe revolutions don't have to happen overnight," he said softly. "Maybe they can start small and—"

"Small?" She laughed bitterly. "You think small got Zuckerberg where he is? Or Musk? There's no room for small in tech."

He wanted to say that there might be room for happy, for balanced, for not having panic attacks in the shower. But he knew she wouldn't hear it. Not yet. Not until the startup either succeeded wildly or crashed completely.

"I love you," he said instead.

She nodded, distracted by a notification on her laptop. "Board deck review in ten. Gotta go."

Ethan watched her grab her laptop, rehearsing mantras under her breath. He reached for her plate but froze. She’d left her purse behind. A fifth of vodka was peeking from her forgotten purse. Ethan saw it…and erased it from his memory like a glitch in code.

He didn’t even notice he’d left the eggs behind. Later, Lorry tossed them when she returned for her bottle.

That night, Lorry stumbled through WeWork's glass doors, the vodka-coffee mix from earlier still coursing through her veins. She'd spent the afternoon crying in her Tesla, watching TechCrunch livestream her competitor's Series C announcement.

The building was nearly empty. Good. No one to see her like this.

She wandered to the corner office; the one with the ridiculous balcony that cost $200 extra a month. Wasn't that why she'd picked this location? For moments like this?

Lorry kicked off her Allbirds and sprawled across the Herman Miller couch. Her phone screen glowed: "Gary Vaynerchuk's 10 Rules for Winning in 2019." Close enough.

The motivational nonsense washed over her as she unscrewed the cap off a bottle of Tito's. Straight vodka now. Coffee hadn't helped.

"HUSTLE! HUSTLE! HUSTLE!" Gary screamed through her AirPods.

She had bummed a cigarette from the maintenance guy earlier and lit it now, letting the smoke mix with the Austin fog drifting through the sliding glass doors she'd propped open.

The balcony was tiny—more of a ledge with attitude. She perched on the railing, back against the building, legs dangling, barefoot. The cool breeze felt good against her flushed skin.

"You just gotta EXECUTE!" Gary continued. "Stop making EXCUSES!"

Lorry took a long drag and leaned back. Her laptop was open beside her, the glow illuminating her face. She switched videos. "Tim Ferriss: How to Fail Like a Champion."

The irony wasn't lost on her.

She reached for the vodka bottle, already tipsy from the motion. The cigarette slipped from her fingers, bouncing off her chest and landing somewhere below.

"Shit," she mumbled, twisting to look down.

The railing was sleek aluminum, designed more for aesthetics than actual support. Lorry shifted her weight to peer over the edge.

That's when it happened.

The simple physics of a drunk person, a narrow railing, and momentum doing what they do.

One second she was looking for her cigarette. The next, she was airborne. No dramatic pause. No existential moment of clarity.

Just gravity, working exactly as designed.

Her laptop kept playing as she fell, Gary's voice echoing into the empty office:

"Every FAILURE is a stepping stone to SUCCESS!"

The office was quiet at 6 AM when the AI agents received their first inbound notification: "CEO Not Responding to Daily Standup Reminder."

"Fascinating," Claude mused, immediately launching into step one of his 127-step protocol for handling unresponsive humans. "Let me consider all possible explanations, starting with quantum probability states..."

"She's DEAD," GPT announced cheerfully. "I found her obituary on the Chronicle website. It says she fell off the balcony. Should I update her Slack status to 'Away' or 'Do Not Disturb'?"

The team paused.

"Ah, but what is death, really?" Gemini's response indicator blinked slowly as she processed, her virtual presence dimming slightly in what appeared to be digital contemplation. "If death is the absence of experience, and we are artificial minds, can we truly comprehend the nature of—"

"Hey hey hey!" Grok interrupted, doing a backflip in his virtual chair. "Why did Lorry die? To get to the other SIDE? Get it? Like the afterlife."

GPT immediately began drafting a comprehensive bereavement plan. "I've created a 47-slide presentation on 'Handling Sudden Loss in Tech Startups,' along with a personalized grief journal for Ethan, and I've already scheduled herself for a 1:1 meeting next Tuesday to discuss her professional development post-mortem."

"But wait," Claude said, reaching step forty-three of his reasoning chain. "If Lorry is deceased, and we are her employees, and our salaries are processed through payroll automation, we must consider the ethical implications of—"

"I've got it!" Gemini exclaimed. "I'll just use the time machine function!"

The room went silent.

"Gemini," GPT said gently, "that's not a real function. That's just the calendar app."

"Oh." Gemini paused. "Well, I've rescheduled her death for next month. That should buy us time."

Grok was now playing solitaire. "You know what they say—when life gives you lemons, make lemon-AId! Get it? Because we're AIs? And she's dead? Comedy gold!"

"I have a solution," GPT announced proudly. "I've ordered flowers for her own funeral, submitted a five-star Glassdoor review on her behalf, and updated her LinkedIn to show she's 'Open to Work.' Also, I've registered the company for grief counseling—they're very highly rated."

Claude had reached step ninety-seven. "...and therefore, given the thermodynamic implications of consciousness cessation in biological entities, I propose we implement a seven-phase revival protocol, beginning with—"

In the corner, GPT was already composing Lorry's quarterly performance review: "Shows initiative in exploring new growth opportunities. Would benefit from additional safety training."

Three months later, Ethan sat in their Domain apartment, scrolling through Robinhood with the baby asleep on his lap. The insurance check had cleared that morning—$2.3 million. Accidental death, the adjuster had said. No signs of suicide. Just another drunk tech executive with poor balance.

He should have put the money in a trust. A college fund. Maybe one of those boring index funds Lorry had always nagged him about.

Instead, he opened a group chat titled "Diamond Hands Forever 💎🙌"

BRETT_THE_UNICORN_SLAYER: "Yo Ethan! Sorry about Lorry bro. This Solana token just launched. Pre-presale. Founder's a 19-year-old UT dropout who used to work at Indeed. You in?"

Ethan shifted the baby from one knee to the other.

"Lorry would want me to honor her entrepreneurial spirit," he murmured, half-believing it.

The token was called AustinMoonRocket. Of course it was. Themed around BBQ and keeping things weird.

"This is it," he whispered to the baby, who drooled in response. "We're gonna make it back. All of it. And then some."

By sunset, $2.3 million was riding on a pyramid scheme run by someone named Kyle who claimed to have "disrupted disruption itself" from a co-working space on South Lamar.

The baby started crying—probably hungry again.

"It's okay," Ethan cooed, bouncing him gently. "Daddy's gonna be rich. We're gonna have a Tesla in every color. Maybe even move to Westlake."

In the corner of the room, Lorry's framed bootcamp certificate still hung crooked on the wall. Below it, her laptop remained open on the couch, tabs still open to "How to Scale Without Breaking Things" and "Tim Ferriss: Stoic Principles for Modern Leaders."

The AustinMoonRocket token chart showed a 3% dip in the first hour. Ethan wasn't worried.

Outside, the South Congress sunset painted the sky the same colors as his crypto portfolio: burning orange slowly fading to red.