Page 54 of The Unfluencer

It’s basically a glorified checklist-measuring contest. An interdepartmental battle of “who’s got more workflows and controls to absolve their team of liability if someone builds a structurally unsound house of cards from RealSpace outputs and it collapses spectacularly.”

It’s not that regulatory standards are particularly exciting, per se. I’m just feeling distractingly good.

Any other day—any other week or month, for that matter—I’d be the first one arguing for modular rule engines to update the compliance logic without redeploying the entire app. This is my business. My language. Pretty much my entire life’s purpose, all tucked into this tiny pinprick on the internet.

I built my flagship Mod3D app to put precision and safety in the hands of builders. Now it’ll connect directly with the RealSpace Engine to advance the goal of ensuring people live and work in structurally sound buildings. It offers hyper-optimized renderings and simulations tailored for real-world property modeling. Structural integrity with no thermal loss, water intrusion, or insulation failures.

I could talk about this stuff all day because it speaks to me on the deepest level, and that’s both fulfilling and beautiful.

It’s just a little hard to focus today when my head’s running on warp speed, thinking about dinner with Whitney tomorrow night.

I’m ready.

At least, I hope I am.

“Is something funny about end-to-end encryption, Warner?”

I glance up from my phone to the twelve department heads positioned around the conference table, looking at me expectantly, and as hard as I try, I can’t find it in me to massage their egos right now.

“Not at all,” I tell Ed, my head of engineering, who routinely elevates his team above legalities, regulatory standards, and even data security, as if any group operates in a vacuum. “I’m well aware it’s needed on all captured data. Photos, measurements, geolocation. Both in transit and at rest.”

Anything else? My jaw tightens under my clenched teeth.

“Great.” He pokes his tongue lightly into his cheek and inhales a long breath, watching me furtively. “You just seemed a little distracted, is all. But hey, I’m glad you’re in such a good mood today.”

“Likewise.”

He holds my stare a few seconds longer, his sharp features tightening, and I sense he’s debating whether to press me further.

It’d be a catastrophic mistake on his part.

Like Ed, every suit in this conference room, at one time or another, has assumed I’m just the face and funds behind the product. But what they quickly learned, and now Ed will too, is that I make it my business to read every document, release note, and compliance report before it ever reaches them. Our motto isn’t Precision in every layer because it sounds good. It’s my promise to the engine’s users as much as to builders. To city planners. To some eight-year-old boy whose home burned to ashes because of compromised structural integrity, leaving him homeless. To me.

My presence in these meetings is simply oversight.

So, if I want to sit at the head of this long wooden table with my head down, declining a counteroffer from Zeek Harrison and happily scrolling for tips on how to exchange Cord’s “Husband Material” label for the “Casual Sex with Whitney Graves Material” badge of honor, that’s my prerogative. And my dilemma.

Fuck.

Why does Zeek want these paintings so bad?

At the other end of the table, my compliance head flips the page on his deck loudly, prompting Ed to turn to him. “Encryption isn’t a problem,” he counters, before diving into a spiel about prioritizing regulatory adherence.

And cue the crossfire.

The team goes back to arguing about clarity on retention rules to allow architecting storage layers correctly and discussing compliance nightmares that’ll have us knee-deep in zoning laws and liability clauses for the foreseeable future. But after I confirm that the engine meets local surveying regulations, licensing requirements, and Georgia’s specific measurement standards, and legal breathes a sigh of relief, I return to my “How to Have Meaningless Sex” Google search just as a text from Cord appears on my screen.

Cord

Ready to kick off your marathon with Whitney this weekend?

Warner

Ten days is a marathon?

Cord

It is for you. Try not to fall for her before dinner’s over tomorrow.