Chidi had dropped out of Caltech when a billionaire awarded him a hundred thousand dollars to pursue a 3D printing venture. He’d since launched a wetware product dealing with longevity; that is, attempting to prolong the human life span to Old Testament proportions. He lived off a uniquely Californian income in the interim—exit money from the first company’s sale, supplemented with Bitcoin investments. He was half-Nigerian, the product of an Oakland Hills secular Jewish mother and a transplanted Lagos doctor, and I attributed all differences between us—his proclivity for risk, his openness with his parents—to the nonimmigrant side.

Avi appeared duly impressed. “Are you guys raising? I’m surprised you’re out.” Then, to me: “Book going okay, Neil?”

“Dissertation. A book implies someone’s going to read it. It’s coming.”

At that time, I was going to be an Americanist—a professional interpreter of this land and its layers. My specialty was to be late-1800s California, with a focus on the rise of immigration, the ballooning of enterprise, and the economic stratifications that buoyed the nation into the twentieth century. In other words, the aftermath of the gold rush. But these days, staring at the papers piling up on my desk, I couldn’t imagine spending decades burrowing into this corner of the past. It didn’t help that I stood out in this land of utopian technofuturists, committed as I was to the secular preservationist priesthood that is the history academy.

“You know,” Prachi said. “We just hired an ex-academic from Berkeley for my team.” She fumbled for her name, then remembered.

I knew the woman. “Oh. She’s an ABD—all but dissertation,” I clarified at Prachi’s quizzical expression. The ABD wasn’t the first to flee the academy for Big Tech’s six figures and office nap pods and wouldn’t be the last. The specter of dropping out—burning out—loomed over my life and the lives of many in my cohort. Few of us would land where she had. Without Berkeley, I was a Southern state school grad with two years of debate coaching on my résumé.

Prachi: “Ha! That sounds like ABCD!”

No one had applied that acronym—American-born confused desi—to me in quite some time. We’d grown out of it as we grew up; our generation had perhaps not resolved, but had at least begun to get over that Miss Teen India riddle: What does it mean to be both Indian and American?

Avi chortled. “Drop the C, and you’re an ABD! You could follow her to the big bucks.”

“I think I’ll remain confused, for now.”

But Avi was ignoring me to answer his phone. He worked for a Sherman Act–violating behemoth and was always nursing side startups, fielding endless calls. Chidi made for the couples playing Cards Against Humanity at the Crate and Barrel dining table, and I slipped off to greet Manu. He was a rarity in San Francisco, in that he had read a book not ghostwritten on behalf of an investor or a CEO in the past year. He quizzed me on my research and asked about my opinions on the election.