The Towering Sky

by Katharine McGee

  “What would you call them?”

  “Opportunities. A value change. The beginning of something new.”

  Rylin’s eyes fluttered shut. She shivered hot and cold at once.

  “Rylin,” Cord said, “I’m not going to kiss you.”

  She recoiled a step, stiff with wounded pride, but Cord’s expression gave her pause. “I want to—I really do,” he croaked. “But I refuse to be that asshole who makes a move on you when you’re fresh out of a relationship.”

  Their gazes met for a long, dark, hot moment. Sound seemed to dissolve into silence. Rylin’s thoughts, her blood, seemed to move with a poignant slowness.

  She rose on tiptoe to kiss him.

  She was startled by the tender brush of longing she felt as Cord’s mouth touched hers. She tried to kiss him lightly, but it had been too long; they both fell forward into the kiss. Rylin pulled him instinctively closer. She felt dizzy with it, drunk with it, that Cord was here and real and hers.

  But was that a good thing?

  She had been here before, and it ended badly then, and why on earth did she expect it to be different this time?

  Even though it cost every last ounce of her resolve, Rylin tore herself brutally away from the kiss.

  “Cord,” she whispered, trying to ignore the way his hands felt, still clasped around her back. “What are we doing?”

  “Making out, until for some inexplicable reason you forced us to stop,” he said and began to lower his mouth to hers. Rylin took a step back.

  “You and me, together again? This is crazy.” No matter how much she wanted him, Rylin knew that she couldn’t go through it a second time: all the countless small wounds they’d inflicted on each other, all the misunderstandings and hurt and loss. Wasn’t that the definition of insanity, to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result?

  “Of course it’s crazy. I’m crazy about you, Myers. I have been since that first day you stormed into my apartment last fall.” When she didn’t smile at that, he let out a breath. “What is it? What are you afraid of?”

  She leaned her forehead against his chest to avoid having to look into his eyes. “That we’re being foolish. That nothing has changed, and we’ll just hurt each other all over again.”

  “We both made mistakes last time, Rylin. I know now that I should have given you a chance to explain yourself that night. I should have realized how much I loved you before it was too late.” He bit back a sigh. “Eris told me to, you know.”

  Rylin’s head shot up at that. “Eris?”

  “The night she died. She told me that you were the real deal—that I should fight for you.”

  “She didn’t even know me,” Rylin protested weakly.

  “Eris made a lot of snap judgments,” Cord said, as if that explained everything. “She said that she could tell what you meant to me from the way I was looking at you.”

  “Oh,” Rylin breathed. She probably should have felt weirded out by that, but for some reason it was nice—to know that Eris, a girl Rylin hadn’t even known, had believed in her and Cord.

  And Leda believed in them. Rylin remembered what she’d said the other day, about needing something good to root for. As strange as it was, that thought warmed Rylin too.

  “Rylin, I swear to you that if you give me another chance, I won’t make the same stupid mistakes. I can’t promise that I won’t make other, equally stupid mistakes,” Cord added ruefully, “but I’ll try my best.”

  Rylin gave a cautious smile. “That seems fair. As long as we don’t repeat the old ones.”

  “God, I’ve missed you.” Cord began to kiss her again, a rain of small warm kisses, each one punctuated with a sentence.

  “I missed your laugh.” Kiss. “The way you call me out on my bullshit.” Kiss. “That turquoise bra you secretly wear under your dark clothes, just because you can get away with it.” Rylin opened her mouth to protest, but she couldn’t say anything, because Cord was already kissing her again and listing more things; and so she gave up and tilted her head back. Her pulse was going haywire, her entire body humming sharply to life.

  “I missed that look you get on your face when you’re filming, your nose all crinkled.” Kiss. “The way your hair falls out of your ponytail and hangs around your face, just like this, when I kiss you.”

  Rylin started to reach her hand up to fix it, but Cord shook his head. “No, leave it. You look beautiful.”

  She smiled up at him in the shadows. “Getting me alone in a dark room and showering me with compliments? If I didn’t know better, Cord Anderton, I would say you’re attempting to seduce me.”

  “Is it working?” he asked, and Rylin laughed, circling her arms blissfully around his shoulders.

  They kissed more slowly this time as the tattered lights of the hologram flickered over them.

  WATT

  “TURN LEFT HERE,” Nadia whispered into Watt’s eartennas. Normally he would have let her direct him visually, with glowing arrows inscribed over his vision, but right now he wanted to soak in every last detail of MIT’s campus. Tall stone buildings stretched on either side of its paved streets, which were still wholly pedestrian; Cambridge had refused to ever tear them up and embed the magnetic flecks needed to keep hovercraft aloft. The bright winter sun danced over the white dome of the main building, its rows of elegant pillars standing guard over the quad. Watt was surprised how much he liked the old-fashioned classical architecture. Something about its brutal orderliness appealed to him. This, he thought, was where real learning happened.

  The invitation to interview at MIT had come just two days ago. So far it was the only thing that had pulled Watt out of his dazed state—after he had somehow, inexplicably, screwed things up with Leda yet again.

  But then, he had wanted MIT long before he even knew who Leda was.

  He’d taken the Hyperloop this afternoon from Penn Station. Watt had never ridden one of the high-speed maglev trains before, and spent most of the ride staring out the window at the blurred sides of the tunnel, marveling at it. They’d been going almost a thousand miles an hour, yet there were no bumps or turbulence or discernable changes of speed. It hadn’t really felt as if they were moving at all.

  Here goes nothing, he thought now, and walked up the steps of the admissions building into an anonymous waiting room. Half a dozen sets of eyes immediately darted toward him, sizing him up.

  The other applicants looked just like him, Watt noted in sudden panic, except that they were all wearing suits, even the girls. Watt glanced down at his own interview ensemble, a wool-blend blazer and button-down paired with khakis, and felt instantly self-conscious.

  I’m the only guy here not in a tie! he thought frantically to Nadia. He should have asked Leda what to wear. Except, of course, Leda wasn’t talking to him anymore. Might not ever talk to him again, after what he’d accused her of.

  Leda will forgive me again, won’t she?

  I don’t know, Watt, Nadia replied. I don’t exactly have a data set for this.

  Watt nodded—realizing a beat too late that he probably looked as if he was bobbing his head for no reason. He’d promised himself that he wouldn’t think about Leda. It would only make him even more unsettled and anxious than he already felt.

  The tension in the room was stretched impossibly tight, like a cord about to snap at any moment. Watt perched on an unoccupied corner of the couch and cast a surreptitious glance around the room at his competition. The other students were all hungry and beady-eyed, exuding that ruthless confidence that comes from being the top of your class—from being the biggest fish in your own personal pond, from always winning.

  Watt didn’t feel quite so confident anymore.

  He waited while a few other names were called—Anastasia Litkova, Robert Meister—shifting his weight nervously, plucking at the threads of the couch. Nadia offered to run a few questions with him, but Watt thought it would only make things worse. Finally a young man in a maroon sweater vest peered in
and announced, “Watzahn Bakradi?”

  “That’s me!” Watt said quickly, stumbling in his eagerness to get up. A girl in a tailored navy pantsuit rolled her eyes at him and went back to muttering some kind of focusing mantra under her breath.

  Watt followed sweater-vest guy down a dim hallway, his footfalls absorbed by the thick carpet, and emerged into an austere, brightly lit room. He was relieved to see a single wooden table with two chairs. At least this wasn’t a panel interview, with multiple admissions officers grilling him at once.

  “Watzahn. I must admit, I’ve been looking forward to this interview,” said Vivian Marsh, the head of admissions at MIT. She had deep-set eyes and straight chestnut hair that just brushed her shoulders. Watt had met her once, last year, after an information session at his high school.

  The door behind them clicked as the admissions assistant stepped out of the room, leaving Watt and Vivian alone.

  Watt pulled out his chair and took a seat. The surface of the table was empty, except for a pencil and paper arranged by his chair—was he expected to take notes?—and a funny instrument near Vivian, a container that was fat on both sides but narrow in the middle, and filled with sand.

  That’s an hourglass. An old-fashioned way of marking the passage of time, Nadia informed him, just as Vivian reached for the hourglass and tipped it over. The sand began to stream back through, to spill into the other side. “Just to make sure I don’t run over our half hour,” she explained, but Watt recognized the hourglass for what it was—an intimidation technique.

  He sat up a little straighter, trying his best not to be intimidated.

  “Your grades are very impressive,” Vivian began without preamble. Watt was about to say thank you, but before he could she had steamrolled onward. “You wouldn’t be here if they weren’t, of course. So what else?”

  “What else?” Watt repeated dumbly. Nadia! Help! He and Nadia hadn’t practiced anything vague or open-ended like this. He was ready to rattle off answers to all the usual questions, like Why do you want to go to MIT? or What are your greatest strengths? But What else?

  Vivian leaned forward a little. “Watzahn, there are thousands of applicants with GPAs like yours. And most of those applicants are leaders of, or at least participators in, multiple extracurricular activities—which means they have experience delegating tasks, working with teams to create a final product. But all I see here is that you joined the math club last year,” she said, her eyes glazing over a little as she reviewed his file. “What do you do in your spare time? What makes you tick?”

  Oh, you know, the usual. Operating an illegal computer, taking on some hacking jobs for extra cash, investigating the death of a girl I barely knew. Trying to win back the girl I love.

  “I’m really interested in computer engineering,” he attempted.

  “Yes, you wrote about that in your essay,” Vivian said impatiently. “But why you? What makes you especially qualified to build a quantum computer?”

  Watt glanced at his contacts, where Nadia was helpfully listing all his strengths. “I’m able to get deep into the code without losing sight of the big picture. I’m creative but also analytical. I’m patient, but I know when to be quick on my feet, and spontaneous.”

  “Why don’t we see some of that quick thinking at work. I’m going to give you a little mental-math problem,” Vivian decided. “Are you ready?”

  Watt nodded, and she continued. “A standard golf ball is forty-eight millimeters in diameter. A New York elevator car measures twenty meters high by three meters wide by four meters tall. How many golf balls—Don’t you want to write these numbers down?” she broke off, gesturing to the paper and pencil.

  Oh, right. Normal people probably needed to do that. Watt considered doing as she said; but then, what good was it to be normal? MIT wasn’t interviewing for normal.

  “Three million two hundred thirty nine thousand and ninety-nine,” he said instead. “That’s what you were going to ask, right? How many golf balls can fit in the elevator car?”

  Thanks, Nadia, he thought in relief. Finally, an interview question he knew precisely how to answer.

  It took a moment for Watt to realize that Vivian didn’t seem all that impressed.

  “Who told you?” she demanded. “Someone told you that question ahead of time. Who was it?”

  “What? N-no one,” Watt stuttered. “I just did it in my head.”

  “No one is that fast,” Vivian snapped, and Watt felt like a complete idiot, because of course she was right. No human was that fast.

  “Here,” he said, “I’ll walk you through my mental math.” He sketched all the numbers out for her—it was a simple multiplication problem, really; the trick was remembering to subtract the golf balls that you’d double- and triple-counted, on the sides and corners of the imaginary cube. But Vivian still looked livid.

  “We have no tolerance for cheaters at MIT. Should you ever get a chance to work with quantum computers, you’ll see how incredibly powerful they are.” You have no idea, he wanted to say. “Their processing capabilities truly defy comprehension. Do you know what quantum computers are used for in today’s world?” she finished abruptly.

  “The Department of Defense, NASA, financial institutions—”

  “Exactly. Which means that they traffic in incredibly sensitive information: people’s identification numbers, bank passcodes, issues of national security. Data that cannot be compromised at any cost. Don’t you see why the individuals who work with them need to be of unimpeachable integrity?” Vivian shook her head. “I would never allow someone who cheated anywhere near a quantum computer.”

  “I didn’t cheat,” Watt said again, though of course that wasn’t true. He’d cheated simply by bringing Nadia into this interview. “I’m just really good at mental math. It’s why I joined the math club,” he added hopelessly, fighting off a sinking sense of despair.

  “I hope so. Because if I thought you had done anything morally questionable, I wouldn’t have invited you to campus today.”

  Watt tried not to squirm. He’d done plenty of morally questionable things—lying about Eris’s death, breaking into the police files about Mariel, not to mention building Nadia. He hoped his face didn’t betray how much his heart was pounding. Suddenly all he could hear was that soft, inescapable hissing sound of the sand falling through the hourglass, each grain of it marking a moment less of this single crucial interview.

  “Now, moving on,” Vivian said smoothly. “What’s your favorite book?”

  Favorite book? Watt hadn’t actually read a full-length text for himself since he was thirteen. He just had Nadia compose summaries for him.

  Pride and Prejudice, Nadia suggested, and Watt vaguely remembered that he was supposed to have read it for English class at some point, so it was clearly a good option. He went ahead and said it.

  “Really,” Vivian replied woodenly. “Jane Austen.”

  Nadia had pulled up a synopsis of the work, but Watt had a sickening sense that Nadia’s prompts weren’t really helping him. He tried to talk over the new, unformulated fear that was clogging his throat, making his brain slow down. “I love that book, the way that Darcy is so prideful and Elizabeth is prejudiced,” he babbled—but wait, was that wrong? “And of course she is also prideful, and he’s prejudiced,” he added miserably.

  Vivian stared at him for another beat. The disappointment was clear in her eyes. “I think we’re done here,” she said quietly, reaching for the hourglass. “You’re free to go.”

  Watt finally found his voice. “This isn’t fair. I’m applying for a computer science degree. What do you care what I read?”

  “Mr. Bakradi, half the students who come in here tell me that Pride and Prejudice is their favorite book. You think that’s an accurate indication of the population, or do you think it’s because I listed it as my favorite book, at the top of my public profile on the feeds?”

  Oh, crap.

  “I don’t want to know my own favo
rite book; I want to know yours!” She let out a frustrated breath. “It’s clear to me that you’re smart and good with numbers, but that isn’t enough to work with quantum computers. The whole point of the interview was for me to get to know you as a person. I wanted to see some individuality, some texture. I wanted someone who will put himself out there, not cut corners and try to tell me what I want to hear. I’m sorry this didn’t work out, but you’ll find the right place.” She smiled—a thin, watery smile, the first time she’d smiled during the whole interview. “Can you have Harold send in the next candidate?”

  Watt didn’t move. He couldn’t move. Perhaps he hadn’t heard her properly. Surely this wasn’t over.

  Watt, Nadia prodded. When he still didn’t react, she sent a little zap of electricity down his spine, and it forced him into action.

  Somehow, amid the great roar of the entire world crumbling to pieces around him, Watt managed to thank Vivian. In the waiting room, the heads of all the other candidates darted up eagerly, counting the minutes, realizing that he must have failed. Their eyes stayed locked on him as he walked past, as if they were predators stalking a wounded prey, watching it leave a bloody trail behind it.

  Watt found his way blindly to a bench outside, his head sinking into his hands. His chest was constricting strangely. It felt difficult to breathe.

  I’m so sorry, Watt. I thought this was the right approach—it’s widely accepted in the research that people prefer to see themselves reflected in interviews, that similarity begets liking—

  It’s not your fault. Watt could hardly blame Nadia for that disastrous tailspin of an interview.

  No, Watt knew that this was his fault, and his alone.

  I wanted someone who will put himself out there, Vivian had said. Not someone who will tell me what I want to hear. But that was how Watt had always gotten by—gaming the system and telling people what they wanted to hear, whether it was teachers or girls or even his parents. That was what he used Nadia for. And what was so wrong with it, anyway?