Lost and Found

“Have you ever been lost before?” asked Matt Lorain. Slowly he navigated his electric luxury truck around the steep curves of the treacherous mountain road. The phone held up by a chuck of plastic connected to the car’s vent was supposed to be guiding him. It had always worked before, but not today. Today a blue arrow sat in the midst of a grayed out void. The helpful electronic voice was silent. Sweat began dripping down Matt’s forehead as he quickly began realizing that his chance of redemption might slip out of his fingers.

“Can't say that I have,” Answered Cassie. Last time Matt had truly spent time with her she was still wearing braces and in elementary…or wait maybe Jr. High, Matt couldn’t remember. Now she was a grown woman. The same age as some of the flings that he entertained from time to time. An odd thought. An uncomfortable thought.

Matt cleared his throat awkwardly while his brain attempted to think of something, anything else. “My mom used to always say that getting lost was good for the soul. That you needed to get lost every now and then in order to find yourself.”

“Sounds like she was wise.” Cassie’s voice was cold, distant. This outing was going nowhere near what Matt had hoped for. For the entirety of the two hour drive Cassie had looked out the passenger side window. Refusing to even acknowledge his presence. It wasn’t her idea to go along with him. He knew that. He knew that her mother had to convince her, but still he had hoped for something more.

“You never even met her, did you?” asked Matt as a ping of guilt shot through him. He was a crappy parent. He knew that, but his mom was a sweet woman. She had asked him about Cassie frequently. Every time they spoke actually. She had wanted to see Cassie, and had wanted to get to know her. Matt was always too busy for such things. He was trying to change the world. Sometimes that meant that certain sacrifices had to be made. When his mother died, he had greatly regretted that sacrifice.

“Nope.”

“That's my fault. I guess. I really wasn't there for you, was I?”

“You weren't.”

“Does that hurt you?”

“I'm not going to lie. It did for a time, but mom was really great. Like really great. I guess sometimes I didn't think that. And yeah sometimes we fought. Sometimes we fought really hard, but she's a really great mom.”

“I'm glad,” said Matt. His brain told him that this wasn’t going well at all. He was failing miserably, but he was a clever man. He could still solve this little problem, just like he solved the Doom Cell Hack, or the Jennifer Sawyer viewer surge crisis. He just needed to think of something good, perhaps some self-deprecating humor. “You know it might be a good thing that I wasn't around. I probably would have messed you up. That's what I do best after all. Make a big mess.” Ok maybe that didn’t come the best.

“I've heard.”

Matt’s features crinkled up. “You've heard what?”

“About you. How you lost your company.”

“I made a sound business deal, that's all. Part of that deal was supposed to be that they would keep everything quiet. I didn't want to hurt you.”

“You didn't want to hurt me, or you didn't want to hurt your reputation?”

“Both,” lied Matt, but it sounded good in his head. “And I mean there is nothing wrong with wanting to protect my legacy. And you know that isn't me being selfish either. My legacy is also your legacy. You are my daughter.”

“I hope your legacy isn't mine. Being the daughter of the guy that made a social media platform that divided the world isn't exactly the best.”

Matt sighed. “It didn't start off that way. I was once young and idealistic. I really thought that I was bringing the world together. That I was on the forefront of starting a utopia. Why not get rich in the process? I deserved it, you know. Survival of the fittest. The best and the brightest among us deserve to be rewarded. And really it's not my fault that Nurv@na became what it is. I just provided the paint. The users are the ones that made the pictures.”

“You made the algorithm, didn't you?”

“I did,” Matt had also trapped the soul of an ancient god of addiction into the software to get people extra hooked, but she didn’t need to know that part.

“You knew what it would do. You just didn't want to accept the responsibility. Just like you lost your company because you didn't want to accept the responsibility of being a scumbag. Just like you let me grow up without a father because you didn't want to accept that responsibility either. Just like now. We're lost because you didn't think ahead. Just accept it. Own up to it. Be a man for once in your life.”

She was right. Matt knew she was right. It was what everyone was telling him these days. He had treated life as nothing more than a game. A game that he'd been winning for a long time, or at least that’s what he thought.

The phone screen suddenly refreshed. The gray void slowly transformed into a top down map. The blue arrow was now once again on an actual path. “Make your next right. Then your destination will be on your left,” said the feminine mechanical voice.

Matt blew out a large sigh of relief, “Guess we're not lost anymore.”

“Guess not,” said Cassie. Her face was still glued to the passenger side window.

“Maybe my mom was right. You know. Maybe I was just lost for all those years. I’m not trying to justify it. Any of it. Some of what I did was wrong.”

“Some?”

“Ok, maybe more than some. Maybe a lot more than some. I…I don’t know what to say to make anything better, or if I ever could make everything better. I just know that I was lost, lost for a long time. And now…”

“Now?”

“Now I think maybe it’s time for me to be found again. Time to try and fix things. I can’t change the past. But…I think this might have been good. Maybe we needed this. Maybe we needed to get lost together for a while so that we could find each other once again. Maybe now we can move forward.”

“Maybe,” Cassie turned towards her dad and gave him the slightest bit of a grin. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.