Prof. Logan has this dream, which I must admit sounds kind of nice, especially for a shy recluse like me. Right now, EMBRS uses existing stuff people post on social media. But his real goal is to turn it into an all-encompassing journaling app where people write freely about their lives. The journals stay private, just between you and EMBRS. His voice goes all soft when he describes this: he says to imagine you’re at a party where you don’t know anyone, but EMBRS has already compared your life journal with everyone else’s in attendance, and can tell you that you and the guy wearing sunglasses, who you previously thought very rude and standoffish, are actually both huge fans of the same anime, have both written mature fan fiction about the same pairing, which is maybe something that neither of you would have admitted to a stranger at a party. Suddenly you have this shared interest, and just like that, a connection is sparked. Around then is when Prof. Logan gets on his soapbox and says social media posts are enough for EMBRS now, but that they’re too short, too performative, and contribute to our perceived isolation, our fractured democracy, whereas a life’s journal with only EMBRS as a reader is real and true, and all his fanboys start singing his praises on Reddit.

I guess it’s also why I started keeping this journal, even though EMBRS isn’t a journaling app quite yet, and that’s because Prof. Logan is maybe the only person ever to try to think through content moderation before building a product—we don’t want to be in the business of sparking connections between Nazis, after all. While I have to respect him for this, I’m not totally sold on radical sharing yet. I figure maybe one day I will be, though, and I’ll feed all this into EMBRS, to let it know some stuff about me, and it’ll help me make connections that I haven’t really been able to make on my own, on account of the whole recluse thing.

Each minute that passed without a reply from grandmother was killing me. I can’t ever repay my grandparents for all they’ve done for me. They raised me when my parents wouldn’t, supported me in every possible way, rejected all attempts to show my gratitude. This was the one thing I could do for them with the skills I have.

I was about to call the landline when she finally texted back.

👩🏻➡️⬅️👩🏻 ☑️ 🙏 xiexie

Relieved, I composed a careful message to Louise Sun. I asked if the woman in her picture was by any chance Chen Meng (陳夢), that if so, she was a cousin of my grandmother’s (Wong Yun 王筠). Would she please let me know if it was really her?