Dead On Arrival

by Matt Richtel

  The more Jackie thought about it, the more it had her rethinking the entire way people were interacting with their devices. They would stare at the screen, slack-jawed. She’d just assumed that resulted from the capturing of their attention. Now she was thinking about it differently. The electrical impulses might be stuttering their brains. And when those impulses were “perfected,” so to speak, when they were sent in bursts, it had the effect of capturing the brain altogether. Putting them on hold. Hijacking a moment of reality, erasing it, in a way.

  “Let’s keep at it,” she said to Denny in as noncommittal a way as possible, declining to elaborate on her theories.

  She couldn’t read Denny’s face. Maybe he suspected she had figured out more than she was letting on or maybe he wasn’t sure to trust her just as she had no clear handle on him—this man who had hand-plucked her from a class, shown her the bowels of a secret project, saved her from a stalker, but also was not coming fully clean with her about what the hell they were doing.

  She had every intention of figuring it out.

  Less than a week later, sitting over an uneaten frozen pizza in the middle of the night, it hit her. She understood how it all worked. Then, almost as instantly, she understood the power of it, and maybe why they’d kept it from her. This wasn’t something you shared with just anyone. Holy shit—she stood up so quickly with revelation that she tripped over the back of her chair.

  Thirty-One

  Denny lived like a tech millionaire—in a modest one-bedroom Mountain View condo sparsely appointed and littered with take-out food wrappers. Blackout shades over his bedroom window let him sleep late—engineer’s hours—and helped keep out the noise from El Camino Real, a blazing thoroughfare two blocks north. This was what $1.3 million bought you in this market. His clock said 3:14 a.m., and he slept with earplugs and eyeshades in the pitch black.

  Jackie sat next to the bed in a chair.

  “Ahem,” she said.

  Denny squirmed and turned. In the red light of the clock’s digital numbers, she made out the outlines of a small pill bottle. Benadryl, she surmised, the over-the-counter nightcap of champions. It was dulling Denny’s senses. Jackie tapped on his bulky shoulder. He stirred, made our her foreign shape, bolted up.

  “Jesus!”

  “Nope, just Jackie,” she said.

  He swallowed, trying to make sense of it.

  “Jackie of Nazareth,” she said. “I like the sound of it.”

  “What are you—”

  “Savior complex.”

  “Jackie, what time is it?” He knew, he could see, but he was trying to make sense of this. “Turn on the light.”

  “Let’s leave it like this,” Jackie said. “Darkens the mood.”

  She knew the darkness left open the possibility in his mind that she was armed or something. Clearly he wasn’t all that concerned: he reached over to the nightstand and clicked on a lamp. Dim light took over the small, square room. Denny studied her. She wore a gray sweatshirt, zipped up high, and a Giants cap.

  “Is everything okay, Jackie?”

  “More or less. I’ve come to talk about Lantern.”

  “I don’t mean to be glib but can it wait until morning?”

  “It’s waited long enough.”

  He ran his hand over his hair, pushing the sleeping mask off, then blew air out, a kind of silent concession. “I’ll make us some coffee.”

  They sat at a dark, round wood-laminate table off the kitchen and drank from “Google” mugs. Low sounds of a melodic symphony performance leaked from the Google Home device on the near end of the kitchen counter. They sat quietly for a few minutes, Jackie happy to let Denny figure out how to express himself, content that she held a lot of cards and he knew it.

  “You could’ve asked me during daylight hours,” he finally said.

  “I’ve asked you on multiple occasions. You’ve bobbed and weaved.”

  He sipped his coffee. “I’ve told you the truth.”

  He saw her ball her fists, open them, ball again. Anger, tension.

  “Just not all of it,” he conceded. “There are a bunch of different applications that we’re toying with.”

  “Bullshit, Denny. You’re holding people in a stasis state.”

  He let the words settle over them.

  “It doesn’t have to do with memory or attention, or advertising, any of our usual business,” she continued.

  “It does, Jackie.”

  “Maybe I should just tell Kara Swisher, or Wired.”

  “Jackie, I’m really not allowed—”

  “What? Not allowed to tell me? Or to use me without telling me what I’m being used for? Or experiment on innocent Walmart employees trying to make an extra buck signing up for a test that freezes their brains? Lantern.”

  “Calm down.”

  She laughed.

  “We’re not hurting anyone, Jackie. We’re exploring the idea of doing just the opposite—keeping them from getting hurt. Honestly, I’ve been largely frank with you but for a few details. If it’s this important to you”—he saw how ticked she was starting to look and withdrew his passive-aggressive language—“I’ll indulge you with the fuller theory of Lantern. But you have to bear in mind it is just a theory. It is embryonic. And it is well intended and will likely come to nothing.”

  He told her the story.

  Several years earlier, Denny was tasked by higher-ups at Google with exploring the way in which heavy use of devices was impacting the brain. Much work was already being done at academic centers in subjects like attention and addiction. But an executive at Google became curious about the hypnotic power of the device, the way it seemed to pull people into a kind of alternative universe, essentially robbing them of the reality around them.

  “I got to set up a small team and it wasn’t long before I brought you on, Jackie.”

  “So far you’ve told me almost nothing I don’t already know.”

  “I’m getting there. With your help, we discovered that certain radio waves, sent in certain combinations—staccato bursts at different frequencies—could elicit a seizurelike response. This wasn’t deliberate, in the sense we didn’t want to hurt anyone. It is science, though, and it does inform a”—he considered his next words—“higher purpose.”

  “What could be a higher purpose than giving people seizures?”

  “That’s neither the end, nor the point. Look, Jackie, believe it or not, Google and . . .” He paused.

  “And the companies you’ve partnered with on Lantern, all the big boys; yes, I know about that.”

  Denny raised his eyebrows. She knew a lot. More than that, he noticed the twitch in her left eye. It was more than exhaustion; the twitch revealed her feeling of being betrayed, and crimson intensity, the tendency that made her valuable but also gave Denny pause.

  “Jackie, it’s no secret that this country, the world, stands on the brink. We’re barreling into conflict and it’s closer than anyone realizes.” He sipped his coffee. “It’s worse than anyone realizes.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Look, we’ve analyzed a ton of data, social media, buying habits, changes to political leanings and demographics. We’ve looked at the patterns of explosive rhetoric on the Internet. We’ve seen the . . .” He wasn’t sure whether to add the next phrase, then went ahead with it. “We’ve seen data from the military, too, about hostile communications, profoundly concerning statements from foreign leaders, militant groups, and so forth.”

  “This is government blessed?”

  “No. Not officially, anyway. The truth is, the real truth is, I have no idea. But you’re a fool if you don’t think that Google, Facebook, et cetera, have very close relationships with the spy agencies. I’m not telling you anything, or alleging, anything. I just suspect data sharing is much, much closer than anyone fully knows. It’s in the interest of all parties.”

  “But you digress.”

  “Maybe. You want more coffee?”

  “Please. So
what you’re telling me is that Lantern has something to do with people being at each other’s throats, a world bordering on hostilities, and . . .” Suddenly, she closed her eyes, tightened her jaw, lightly shook her head. She’d been struck by a thought, even revelation. Denny turned around from the coffeemaker.

  “Things are adding up for you. Do tell,” he said.

  “I’d rather hear you tell it.”

  He topped off her coffee, put the Mr. Coffee carafe on a hot pad on the table, sat.

  “You haven’t made the connection between a hostile world and Lantern,” she said.

  “It’s not that direct a connection. I’m giving you background. There’s one more important piece. Look, Jackie, the tech industry is in no small part to blame for the . . . intensity in the world today. We’re not idiots. We can see that the pace of media, the onslaught of conflict-centric communications, stokes the flames of hostility. Hell, we elected a demagogue last election in this country. People made some comparisons to Hitler. There are many differences. But a key one is the fact that when Hitler rose to power, there was a deep, deep economic crisis in Germany. By contrast, we’ve had economic challenges in this country but nothing like hyperinflation and massive unemployment. It’s just the media could make it feel that way. The hammering of negative messages, sensationalism, coupled with people feeling keyed up by their interaction with devices, leads to a world fertile for conflict. Then add in a lot of high-powered, easily accessible weapons and—”

  “Now you are definitely digressing.”

  “Probably,” he said, smiling. “Look, one of the reasons why we’ve explored Lantern is to see if there just might be a way to . . .” He looked for the words. “Slow things down.”

  She thought about it. “A seizure-like state. Not just slowing things down, slowing people down,” and then after another moment: “It’s like a human pause button.”

  “What?” Now he seemed as if he were genuinely not following.

  “You’re putting people on pause. That’s what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s just a theory, something we played with, a kind of fail-safe. What if the world started to really get out of control?”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  He put his hands up, as if to say: guilty as charged. “Yes, it sounds like a joke and that’s how it probably will remain. We felt, though, it was worth exploring. Maybe, just maybe, we can use the same tools that fuel the flames to interrupt them, for just a few minutes, stop the fury from spilling over. If and when things truly come to a head, we can hit pause, as you say, reboot. We can hold people still, for a moment.”

  “Wow.”

  “Look, we still don’t know how it works. Maybe what you’ve identified, this electrical mechanism, it’s like the spinal cord acts as some kind of electrical antenna. I’m way out on a limb now. But it’s not so far-fetched. The cord sends electrical impulses through the body. Hell, like I say, it’s all very basic, and new. So you can see why I didn’t say anything. This will likely not go far, and you’re not compromised and . . .”

  “No, no, no, no.” She slammed a hand on the table. Coffee spilled. “No!”

  “Jackie, calm down.”

  “First of all, I still don’t believe you’re telling me the full extent of it. You’ve got satellites out there, and a team. A small team, so you’re trying to keep it on the down-low. And other companies are involved. And that’s why you didn’t tell me all of it, and why you’ve still not told me.” She was shaking.

  “Jackie!”

  She glared at him.

  “I didn’t tell you because of what’s happening right now,” he said.

  “What’s happening right now? I’m just trying to get to the bottom—”

  “You’re unhinged, Jackie. You’re unstable.”

  She blinked rapidly. She put her palm to her right eye to will it to stop twitching. She could see that Denny regretted what he’d said. He hung his head then looked up again.

  “You’ve been like a sister . . .”

  “Don’t.”

  “You’re a brilliant woman, Jackie.”

  “Fuck you.” She stood up. She felt her hands once again involuntarily tightening into fists at her side. She flashed on the memory of her mother, little hands just like hers, shoving her father through and over the balcony. She turned the memory in another direction and saw herself, the little girl, watching, impotent.

  “I trusted you,” she muttered.

  “What?”

  “I shouldn’t have. That’s the worst part of this. I made yet another stupid decision. Helpless Jackie, no compass.”

  “I’m honestly not sure what you’re talking about.”

  She looked down at her shoes, noticed a lace untied, tried to focus on that single image, and count. She begged herself to find control and let go of the fury. By the time she reached the number ten, she had regained herself.

  “Jesus, Denny, I’m sorry. I . . . I was just so disappointed. I wanted you to trust me.”

  “I know, Jackie. I understood that. I could see that. I tried to tell you as much as I felt it made sense.”

  “I understand.” It was such an about-face that Denny couldn’t tell whether she meant it or not. “Maybe I just need to sleep this off,” she said.

  “You and me both. How about you consider tomorrow a day off.”

  “You mean today. Today already is tomorrow.”

  He laughed. But he sensed this wasn’t over, not remotely. When Jackie left a few minutes later, he watched her walk down the stairs and frowned—because he could see, in the lamplight over the staircase, that she smiled.

  Part V

  Six Months Before Present Day

  Thirty-Two

  The Met’s next Live in HD presentation is Falstaff, Verdi’s last opera, a comedy about the randy Sir John and his botched sexual conquests. We’re at a subterranean rehearsal room three levels below the stage, where former maestro James Levin has returned to lead an early musical rehearsal with some of the principals and the cast. They’re working on the second act where the scheming Falstaff gets his comeuppance by being thrown into the Thames, along with a lot of dirty laundry.

  Let’s listen in.

  The image shifts from the woman introducing the scene to the background: a small ensemble of singers and musicians, led by the man at the front with wild hair. He waves a baton and a soprano’s voice soars.

  Jackie smiled.

  She sat on a recliner, consumed with the digital tablet on her lap. Headphones plugged into the gadget’s bottom fed her ears. A drop of drool pooled at the right corner of her mouth, lost in Lantern. This went on for more than an hour. Over and over, she saw the same video footage, her brain consumed by it.

  Suddenly, she jolted. A sharp buzzing sound punctured her carefree, dull-witted isolation. The picture on her screen, and in her mind, fractured. It shattered into so many puzzle pieces. She stirred and looked up. She put a hand on the recliner chair and clung, as if steadying herself after a small earthquake or holding the railing of a boat after a swirl at sea. She blinked. Okay, she thought, I’m in the testing room at Lantern.

  What am I doing here?

  She pulled the headphones out and set down the tablet. Even as she surveyed the familiar scene, her mind’s eye drifted to the wonderful images of the wild-haired symphony director.

  Unsteadily, she made her way to the door. So that is what Lantern felt like. More like time had stood still.

  She walked out of the side door and then into the observation room—on the other side of the two-way mirror.

  At a table sat Denny, facedown.

  “Denny?”

  Her boss and mentor didn’t move.

  “Denny?” Now with more urgency. She hustled closer, shrugging off the disorientation. She leaned over the inert man. He stirred. She froze. “Denny?”

  “Why . . .” he said.

  “Denny. Are you okay?”

  He tried to lift his head, but he on
ly labored against an impossible weight. He dug for breath.

  “Denny, I’ll get help. Alex!”

  “You . . .”

  “Hold on, Denny. I’ll get—”

  “No!” His arm shot out and he grabbed her.

  “You did this.”

  “What, no. I was in the—”

  He interrupted her by trying to squeeze her arm and his hand fell away and through one sidelong glance from the table he fought to meet her eye. He had to tell her something.

  “You have no idea how powerful it i—” he started.

  “Alex!” She interrupted him. Now many thoughts flew through her brain: What happened to Denny? and, simultaneously, It’s a blur, all of it.

  “Shut it down, Jackie.” The life seemed to be draining from him by the second.

  “Why didn’t you trust me?” she whispered and now she looked hurt.

  He raised his head and looked suddenly revived. His eyes teared but remained steadfast on her.

  “Denny!”

  Jackie hurriedly turned Denny over. She frantically felt for a pulse on his neck. She laid him out on the table and she pumped at his chest.

  “Alex!”

  She opened the door and screamed again.

  The ambulance pulled away with Denny. Not heading to the hospital but the morgue.

  Alex, the small woman who helped run Lantern, held her arms crossed around her chest.

  “What happened, Jackie?”

  Jackie told her: she had been in the testing room and returned and Denny was slumped, laboring for breath. He was conscious but barely. He muttered some things that didn’t make sense.

  “Like what?” Alex asked.

  “I’m not sure.” That much was true. Then she stared at Alex. Where had Alex been in all of this?

  Jackie couldn’t piece it together. She kept seeing these odd images, like dream moments but they were paved over with this YouTube video of this beautiful soprano voice and the thrilling opera rehearsal. Images bubbled to the surface: Alex greeting Denny and Jackie; Denny sipping tea; Jackie climbing into the experiment chamber. That was the one that stuck. Glorious images of the opera.