Mother of Invention

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On day one of the Seahorse Trial, Tessa Callahan awoke at 4:45 a.m., eased into consciousness by the dawnlike glow of the KindClock on the nightstand. Her husband, Peter, slept on his back beside her, wearing only plaid boxers, his rib cage rising and falling in slow measure. Outside, it was dark, the streetlamps of Atherton still haloing the sidewalks, dew just beginning to form on the wide lawns of houses as perfect as designer cakes. Tessa’s own was a five-bedroom Georgian neoclassical, which she’d purchased and renovated four years ago, after Loop Industries had gone public and made her rich. She’d married Peter that year also, the year they’d both turned forty, and they’d turned the property into a suburban oasis: two gardens—succulent and vegetable—infinity pool, guesthouse/“Zen den” in the backyard.

Peter had trepidation about living so well—he’d been in a railroad apartment in the Mission District of San Francisco since finishing grad school and was a minimalist by nature—but Tessa was unconflicted. She’d worked hard, harder than most people she knew, even here in Silicon Valley, where a forty-hour workweek was considered part-time. She’d put herself through business school without racking up a cent of debt; founded two hit biotech startups, both of which had released products that improved the world; and was currently running a third—Seahorse Solutions, her most ambitious project yet. Part of Tessa’s stock portfolio went to cause-based investing. She gave generously to charity, ate low on the food chain, volunteered at a nonprofit that taught young girls to write software code. She’d earned her life.

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