THE PUBLIC RELATIONS COUNSEL

She spent a career jumping the ladder from one promising start-up to another, first as a brand manager, and later as a communications and PR expert. Now, in her fifties, she's counseled dozens of the biggest tech titans on reputation management, and her reputation is second-to-none.

She smiles, her eyes gleaming, catlike, as she tells me about her brief time representing the legendary entrepreneur Pablo Gnosh. "Pablo told me he wanted to make a 'bigass spectacle,'" she says. "His words, not mine. I guess he got what he wanted, yeah?"

The days leading up to the reveal of the industrial replicators were surreal.

Pablo was getting a real kick out of saying "It's going to be even bigger than the replicator." He used that line on everyone: journalists, customers, people coming in and out of his office. We heard it ourselves a thousand times, until we were exhausted by it.

I can't deny that Pablo succeeded in drumming up press interest, but still, I was concerned. If people really didn't know what we were planning, it was possible that expectations might be mismanaged. I didn't want to leave anything to chance. So I drummed up some NDAs and did a little strategic leaking to journos from the Wall Street Journal, the Times, and all the big TV outlets. I knew they'd break their NDAs and quietly spread the word to their colleagues. That was my goal.

After all, the potential of the product we were launching—the very idea of super-sized replicators—was simply too big to keep to oneself.

My title back then was "Chief Public Relations Counsel," but half the time I was just Pablo's babysitter, and the rest of the time I was an event coordinator. For the reveal of the "Rep XL," we'd secured a really incredible venue: One of Howard Hughes' old aircraft hangars, which we bought from Google after they went bankrupt in '25. The space was massive, and you really do need a space that big to show off a bunch of supersize reps.

The plan was for Pablo to do a little speech in front of the doors to the hangar, then pull them open to reveal a bunch of industrial-sized reps already running, printing out luxury electric cars. The big flourish would be the reveal that every single person in attendance would receive their own car for free. Like an Oprah moment.

The big day came. We had probably a thousand press, influencers, and Los Angeles luminaries in attendance. Pablo was like a little kid. Just giddy.

Me, I was a wreck. The presentation of everything looked smooth from the outside, but it was chaos on our staff. I just had this sense that something was gonna go wrong, I don't know why. I don't normally get so stressed out before press events. But I was really in bad shape, sweating every detail. I literally fired an intern for bringing me decaf coffee.

I mean, you'd think I was a fucking psycho like Steve Jobs or something.

That was right before Pablo's speech started.

I think he made a good faith effort to stick to the speech I'd written for him. It was all highfalutin language about the economic possibilities the replicators would offer for our children and for ourselves.

But of course he started winging it at some point.

I actually sort of loved one of his lines for how memorable and shocking it was: "What I'm about to show you is something bigger than the replicator. It is, frankly, the final kick in the balls for capitalism that'll bring the whole system to its knees."

What an absurd visual. Capitalism as a fourteen-year-old boy, collapsed on the ground and clutching its 'nards.

Pablo finished his speech and gave me a look.

I signaled to my team to open the doors.

It went exactly like we'd imagined it. People gasped when they saw how big the Rep XLs were. And there were ten of them, already printing away.

Pablo had suggested that we install a bunch of concert-style laser lights in the hanger, along with a ton of smoke machines. I thought that was ridiculous. Fought it for weeks.

(That's PR 101, by the way. You put up a big fight about some of the small things but ultimately make the concession so they'll leave you alone about the bigger decisions. Easiest trick in the book.)

So I'd given in to him on the smoke and lasers. And I have to admit, the effect was pretty mesmerizing. Speakers surrounding the building started pumping this angelic EDM track, and a blast of wind from an air canon blew away a line of smoke leading to a Rep XL in the middle of the room.

With simulated lightning—which I did NOT approve, by the way—and lasers crashing through the fog around him, he made his way to a platform next to one of the big reps.

It was like the parting of the red sea. And Pablo was Moses, strolling through the calm in the middle of the deluge, leading all of us to freedom. That was the visual he wanted. He believed in that stuff: The power of images to overwhelm people subconsciously and force them to make associations they don't want to believe in.

When he reached the reps, we cranked up the volume on his microphone so Pablo's voice boomed out from all corners of the hangar. He told everyone that this was only the first Rep XL facility, and that there were plans to build more in six different states within the next month. When he told everyone they'd be walking away with a free luxury electric car, they lost their minds, of course. But then I noticed that the next bit of news sort of took the wind out of their sails—he said we'd only be charging $100 per car for everyone else in the country as well.

He started going on about how he would do it completely for free if it was possible, but we needed to cover the cost of labor and energy consumption or whatever. By that point people in the crowd had sort of stopped listening. There was even grumbling. The fact that literally everyone would get a luxury car meant that it wasn't so special, right?

It wasn't too long after that when the militia rolled in.

What did you know about the militia movement at the time? Were you aware before the event that it was a potential threat?

Well, Bastille Day II had shaken us, of course. And we knew that militias had spun up in response to that day's events. But the police crackdown that occurred in the weeks following Bastile Day II made us feel like the worst of it was over.

From what I'd heard about the militias, I really thought they were on our side—that is, the side of business. Order. That sort of thing. I didn't realize they were just a different breed of anarchists.

I have to be honest with you. I blame myself for what happened next. For not realizing we'd need more force to secure the hangar.

I guess I wasn't thinking about the fact that the giant reps would be seen as so valuable. Reps were already so common at that point that everyone I knew had at least one. But this was the first Rep XL. So of course people were going to do whatever it took to get their hands on it.

So tell me how it happened.

There were five or six SUVs, all with big guns on the roof and a hole for the guy manning them. They came in from the other side of the airfield—must have cut through the fences there and just gunned it across the runways to reach us. As they rolled in, they first started shooting in the air. That sent everybody screaming and running.

We had probably half a dozen security guys lined up, but they were just there to check badges. Right away I saw a few of them throw their uniforms off and head for the parking lot.

Of course we had a small police presence as well, but not enough. The gunners targeted them first, took out half the men and all the vehicles.

I was in blind panic mode. I grabbed a couple of junior people from my team. Shoved them into my car and started screaming for everyone to get the fuck out of there. My second-in-command hopped into the driver's seat, so I dove in the back and hollered for him to floor it. I allowed myself a glance out the rear window as we peeled away, and the last thing I saw was one of the luxury electric cars screaming out of the hangar. The machine gunners took a bunch of shots at it, but they mostly just dinged up the rear of the car. Last I saw, it made it all the way to the other side of the airfield and crashed through a fence.

You think that was Mr. Gnosh?

Who else? He's the type that could pull off the disappearing act. Nobody has seen or heard from him since, as far as I know.