Chapters (27)
At least this turbulent and confusing part of her life meant that she would be seeing Olivia again. They would be meeting in London in a few days and later in Oxford, where Lucy had to introduce Hunter to lots of heads of departments during his lightning tour of Europe. It would be useful to have Olivia around since the pages of her own Oxford address book were a bit foxed after six years. It was difficult to know who Hunter might not want to see, given the breadth of the Digitas portfolio. She was particularly intrigued by the biotech division but had already made a study of its other holdings, including an AI and robotics division, Brainwaves, run by a guy called Saul Prokosh. Hunter had told her that Brainwaves had a project, nicknamed Happy Helmets, that was ‘going to be huge’. They were still looking for a marketing name that didn’t make it sound like a children’s toy. There was also some military stuff that Lucy was going to keep well away from, although Hunter had told her that his ‘ethical position’ was to provide protection and not to develop weapons. Her science background had been recognised at Strategy, but only so that she could work out more efficient ways to deliver antibiotics to cattle that should not have been taking them in the first place, or to calculate the patient population of a disease, so as to tell a drug company whether one of its products was an ‘orphan medication’, or whether some of its side effects could be repurposed for a new market. Moving from consulting to entrepreneurial science would stretch her talents for the first time in a while.