by Alan Glynn
‘Are you guys hungry?’ I say. ‘Because I’m making dinner tonight. I was thinking something simple, pasta . . . a puttanesca maybe?’
11
Shaw drops by early the next morning. It’s clear from the look on his face that he’s been fully briefed, so before he gets a chance to open his mouth I launch a pre-emptive strike. Does he think I’m an idiot? Does he think he can just entrap me? Does he not realise that, apart from anything else, sneaky, sleazeball shit like that is counterproductive? As I throw these questions at him, I’m standing in the main hallway with a kale and blueberry smoothie in one hand and a copy of the New York Times in the other and doing it – more or less unconsciously, I think – in my Trager 2.0 persona.
This is something Shaw hasn’t seen yet, and when I’m done, he laughs out loud. ‘Holy fuck.’
I take a step forward. ‘What?’
‘Oh my God, Teddy . . . Danny, that . . . that is amazing.’
I stare at him for a moment, hesitating, part of me gratified (stupidly) and part of me wondering how I can parlay this into further leverage. ‘Well, Doug, if it’s so amazing, don’t jeopardise it.’
‘Okay, okay.’ He holds a hand up. ‘I made a mistake. I wasn’t trying to entrap you. Jesus, I just thought . . . you might . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘You know what? Let’s just forget about it, let’s move on.’ He pulls out a sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket. ‘This is . . .’ He hands it to me. ‘Well, see what you think.’
I put the smoothie and the newspaper down on a nearby console table and then take the piece of paper from him. I study it for a moment. It looks like some kind of financial statement. It shows a sequence of cash transfers that appear to end up in the account of the debt-collection agency that owns Kate’s loans. It’s in the exact amount of what she owes.
I look at him. This is his idea of moving on? Is he fucking serious?
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘We’ve sent Kate a message, fully pretexted. It states that a private loan-forgiveness programme run by an anonymous philanthropy group has liquidated five million dollars’ worth of debt across a range of educational institutions.’
‘What?’
‘I know, I know.’ He shrugs. ‘But believe me, stuff like this goes on. We modelled it on a real case.’
Still shocked by his tone-deafness, I exhale slowly. ‘Look, I don’t know . . . Kate’s not stupid. I mean—’
‘What, you think she’s going to contest this?’
‘No . . . I guess not.’
‘Anyway, it’s done.’
I hand the sheet of paper back to him. ‘Okay.’
There’s a lot more I could say here, but really, what would be the point? I decide to just move on myself. ‘Listen, Doug . . . you’re going to have to loosen things up a bit.’ I make a gesture with my hand. ‘Here, I mean. The apartment. You can’t expect me to believe that Teddy wasn’t on the grid. I need Internet access. I need to watch some TV. I feel like I’m in a prison. This is a long game. Potentially. You’re going to have to put a little faith in me.’
Shaw thinks about this. ‘Okay, you’re right. But I’ll tell you what, let’s get the Bloomberg thing out of the way first. It’s early next week. Then we can talk. But in the meantime, maybe stay out of the kitchen as well, will you?’
‘What? That was . . . I just needed to cook something.’
‘Danny, these people, they’re hired help, and, to be honest, you were making them a little nervous. We can do without that.’
‘Fine. Whatever.’ As I turn to pick up my smoothie again, something occurs to me. ‘By the way, what was that you said there, the Bloomberg thing?’
‘Yeah, Bloomberg TV. Cristina Stropovich. The Up Take.’
‘Oh . . .’
‘What?’
‘A lot of people watch that, right?’
‘I guess. I mean, it’s not the Tonight Show or anything.’ He looks at me and sighs. ‘You’ll be fine. It’s a business channel, people are focused on information. And besides, Teddy wasn’t that well known, not outside the whole . . . VC tech start-up echo chamber. Which is something we can use to our advantage, by the way.’ He pauses again. ‘Maybe I’ll get Karl to fix you up with something, Xanax or—’
‘No,’ I say, picking up the smoothie. ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine.’
*
The next two days see the third and final phase of my so-called fine tuning. Shaw himself takes over, with the focus now on lingo and terminology, on how to talk about and sell something like the PromTech deal. Each day, I undergo eight straight hours of hardcore, presidential-debate style prep. Covering more topics than could possibly be touched on in a single ten-minute interview, Shaw anticipates questions, one after the other, and then coaches me through plausible and natural-sounding replies. Occasionally he encourages me to improvise but then can’t help shutting me down as soon as I veer even slightly from a position he’s trying to push.
The day before the interview is scheduled to take place, we drive out to a PromTech facility in New Jersey. This is a research lab where technicians test drive some of the company’s more speculative projects, stuff that has made it past the shoot-for-the-moon phase and into actual development. I’m aware that on this visit Shaw is sort of test-driving me too, that he wants to walk me around and see me interacting with people.
At one point, in conversation with an intense young roboticist named Zabruzzi, I start to feel dangerously out of my depth. I can now talk convincingly and at length about the business end of this stuff, but when things get technical, I’m lost. The problem is that while Shaw is seen here as a business guy, I’m seen as a science guy, as essentially one of them – someone who should be comfortable talking about capacitors and quantum dots and flexible interface hi-res . . . whatever-the-fuck. Before the conversation gets too awkward, I remember something Trager mentioned in the car, and I decide to bring it up.
‘So,’ I say to Zabruzzi, ‘how is that remote DNA tracker, tracking . . . thing coming along?’
His eyes light up, and he launches into an impromptu and very welcome demo of what turns out to be an amazing piece of technology: a compressed rectangular unit of ‘opto-electrochemical nanosensors’ fitted to a neat little drone bot that can, in theory, roam around at a height of three hundred feet and over a radius of two and a half miles, picking out DNA matches from the populace below. Holy fuck is what I want to say, but I’m supposed to know about this shit already, and even be bankrolling it, so I keep my response muted.
Afterwards, in the back of the car, and channelling what I imagine to be at least a trace of Teddy Trager’s passion for this kind of stuff, I ask Shaw where he sees Paradime taking PromTech in the long term.
Concentrating on sending a text, Shaw says, ‘What do you care?’
‘Teddy obviously cared.’
Shaw looks up from his phone. ‘Oh please. Teddy cared . . . Give me a break. Teddy was a boy scout. Teddy thought these guys could be preserved in geek formaldehyde. Teddy thought I had corrupted his soul by making him into a billionaire.’ Shaking his head, he turns back to his phone. ‘Can you believe that?’
*
At Bloomberg the following day we are greeted in reception by a senior producer. We observe security protocols and are then led up to a frenetic, open-plan, glass-domed newsroom and studio space, where we go through make-up and a sound check. There’s a lot of small talk, a lot of standing around, and the whole thing passes like a particularly vivid anxiety dream.
When the interview finally begins, Shaw and I – well-oiled PR machine that we now are – sell the shit out of the PromTech deal. The interviewer, Cristina Stropovich, is well briefed but fairly soft in her approach. The questions are predictable and the answers boring. Nonetheless, we get our point across, and, although I’m nervous at first, mainly because of the unfamiliar studio setting, I don’t feel at any point that I’m going to blow it.
Then, towards the end of the interview, she injects a shot of human inter
est into the proceedings by bringing up the accident. How am I doing? How has the recovery process been? I tell her I’m not going to lie to her, that even though my injuries could have been so much worse, it’s the brush with mortality that leaves the deepest impression on you, the exposure to vulnerability that sparks a recalibration of your priorities. Then, a little tentatively, and as though she’d been saving this one up, she asks me about my perceived early ambivalence vis-à-vis the deal and if my recent change of heart had anything to do with the crash. I try to shrug this off, but when she persists in her line of questioning, I ramp things up a notch.
‘What, I’m not allowed to change my mind? Come on. This is complex stuff, Cristina, sands are shifting all the time, and you’ve got to be able to adapt. What was that thing Walt Whitman said? Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.’ As I say this stuff, my heart is pounding. I’m aware of Shaw beside me, tensing up, and of Cristina opposite, leaning forward slightly, a subtle shift in her level of attention. And I’m not done yet, either. ‘You see, Cristina, the essence of good leadership isn’t such a mystery, none of it is, not when you’ve looked into the abyss and realised what’s actually in there . . . because let me tell you it’s not darkness, it’s not the void, it’s a clock, a gigantic LED display that’s counting down the seconds and minutes and days of your life, so either you let that define and diminish you or you let it drive you. How? By thinking big, by never compromising, by finding smart solutions that impact the lives of people all over the world. Now I’m not claiming this as an original thought or anything, but time is our most precious resource and to waste it being idle or unfocused or timid?’ I shake my head. ‘It’s just not an option.’
‘Wow!’ Cristina says, turning to the camera. ‘And remember folks, you heard it here first!’ Then she turns back, her face just a tiny bit flushed. ‘Well . . . gentlemen, Mr Shaw, Mr Trager, that was great, and thank you both so much for dropping by the studio to see us today.’
Out on the floor of the main newsroom, she’s all over me . . . I must come back and do an in-depth interview, a one-on-one, a special, anything. She loved my honesty, it was so refreshing, so inspiring, and she knows her viewers will love it too. I nod along, and say sure, half aware of the buzzing ecosystem behind her and half aware of Shaw ten feet away talking to one of the producers.
As we’re leaving the building a few minutes later, I can tell that Shaw is not happy about something. He doesn’t speak until we’re in the back of the car. He turns to look at me. ‘You went a little off the reservation there, no?’
‘What? That all came up naturally, Doug. You don’t think it’s the kind of stuff Teddy would have said?’
‘Oh, I do, for sure, Walt fucking Whitman, it was pitch perfect, but maybe that’s the problem.’
I’m about to argue the point when his cellphone rings. He answers with a grunt. The call seems to go on for ages, but during it he says very little, apart from the occasional yeah, okay, or fine.
As we cruise down Lexington, I stare out through tinted windows at the city floating past – people, storefronts, sidewalks I’ve pounded – and wonder how I ended up here, in the back of a limousine. It’s insane . . .
Shaw puts his phone away, sighs wearily, and takes a deep breath. ‘Apparently, you did a good job. A very good job.’
Apparently?
I wait for more, but that’s it. He doesn’t say anything else. I look at him. He’s perspiring. His jaw is tense. I wonder who he was talking to on the phone just now. I wonder what he was told.
*
With the media appearance out of the way, I push Shaw to deliver on his promise of Wi-Fi and cable. However, after a couple of days of continuous screen time, I start to get bored. I mostly stick to neutral stuff, restaurant reviews, industry blogs, aggregated news sites, listicles, shit like that. I also listen to a bunch of podcasts, watch movies and season-binge some cable shows. But it’s not as if I watch that much TV anyway, and I’m not a big fan of social media, so I inevitably max out. I can slip down the digital sinkhole as easily as the next person, but it’s not something I have to do every day.
The laptop Shaw gives me is a Mac. It’s new and has nothing on it. I have access to Trager’s various accounts, from Amazon to Netflix, and that’s it, but what was I expecting? All of his personal stuff? His list of contacts, notes, emails, documents? Hardly, but without any of that, how do I become Teddy Trager, how do I maintain even a shadow version of his life?
And this highlights a question I have that needs to be addressed sooner or later. Where is everybody? If Nina is supposed to be my girlfriend, where’s she? Why hasn’t she shown up at the apartment, or called me? Where are Teddy’s friends? His business associates? The people who work for him? Why hasn’t his sister called again? How sustainable is all of this? In a way, I don’t care, and I’d be relieved to end it now, today. At the same time, I’m aware that ending it might be complicated, that if I stop cooperating, then surely they would have to . . . what? I don’t know, frankly. But leaving all that aside for a minute, even on a purely practical level, the question remains: if I’m Teddy Trager, where’s my life?
I bring this up with Shaw the next time he sinks wearily into what I now regard as his couch. At first, he’s reluctant to engage, but I push him on it, and eventually he tells me that there is an ‘apparatus’ in place, a sort of buffer zone between the outside world and . . . and . . .
‘And me, basically.’
‘Yeah.’ He nods. ‘All calls, all communications, requests, invitations, whatever, are screened, and we deal with them. We’re using the narrative of your recovery from the accident, your need for rest, for isolation—’
‘As a pretext.’
‘Yeah.’
I get up and start pacing back and forth, trying to block out or deflect or trick the light that seems to flood in up here, enhanced-interrogation style, at all times of the day or night. ‘Okay, then,’ I say, ‘what about the interview we just did? It was on television, Doug. I was there, I was talking, I was lucid. I even referred to my recovery. How do you square that circle?’
Shaw visibly deflates at this. He seems to be on the point of throwing his hands up and saying I don’t fucking know.
I stop directly in front of him. ‘You know, Doug, I get it, there’s a lot at stake here, and it could easily go south, but you’re worrying about the wrong thing. I’m not the problem. I’m on board.’ I pause to let that sink in. ‘I mean, you’re the one who said I get to be Teddy Trager. So come on, take the leash off. I can do this.’
Shaw looks up at me. ‘It’s funny,’ he says, ‘that’s what they want. I’m the one who’s being cautious.’
I swallow. They? I’m not about to ask him if he means Lessing or someone else. Because maybe he thinks I already know. Either that, or he’s not being cautious any more, he’s being reckless.
‘Well, whatever.’ I shrug. ‘So how about it?’
He hesitates, then gets to his feet. He pulls his phone out and holds it up. ‘Let me make a call,’ he says with a resigned air, and moves away. He walks towards a section of window directly ahead of him, and, as he gets closer to it – closer to this sheer glass wall beyond which lies a dreamlike, hazy blue expanse of morning sky – it seems to me as if Shaw could maybe keep going, and not stop . . . as if he could slide right off the edge and simply disappear from view.
*
That afternoon, a package is delivered to the apartment by courier. Inside it is a USB flash drive that contains nearly a terabyte of data, all of it relating to Teddy Trager. It’s his list of contacts, his emails, notes, letters, memos, photos – hundreds of files, thousands of pages – everything you could possibly need for a good first draft of a biography. What I need it for, however, is a little more intimate, and a little more immediate. Because once I’ve had time – four or five days, say – to familiarise myself with what’s on here . . . the leash comes off.
&n
bsp; Apparently.
I have no idea what this is going to mean in practical terms (and it’s clear that Shaw still has serious reservations about the entire thing), but I’m all over it, because the alternative is fast becoming unthinkable.
I start with the emails.
I only get through a small fraction of them, but ninety per cent of what I do read is fairly tedious, either that or just incomprehensible. There’s a lot of working shit out, a lot of math, a lot of jargon. The remaining ten per cent is interesting enough and tends to be personal – his struggle with social anxiety, his fear of emotional commitment, there’s an account of a bruising lawsuit he was involved in, and then there’s this whole email exchange with some guy at MIT about his vision for the future of humanity, about space exploration and, specifically, about the possibilities of asteroid mining.
I remember he mentioned this in one of the first clips of him I watched. I find a lot more on it now in these notes – detailed proposals, budgets, a file with potential company names (Orbit Resources, Terra Nova, Offworld Exploration) and a directory of companies already working (or, let’s be realistic, hoping to work) in the sector. The projected costs mentioned seem so insane to me that I have to wonder if any of this can be taken seriously. At the same time, it puts a dent in the notion of me being able to pass myself off as Teddy Trager in front of people who know him – people who might expect to hold an actual conversation with him about this shit.
The next day, however, I get an unexpected visit from Dr Karl Lessing. He shows up alone and asks me how I’m faring with the ‘material’.
‘It depends,’ I say. ‘There’s quite a lot of it.’
I invite him into the living room, where he takes Shaw’s place on the couch. I ask Mrs Jeong to bring us in some coffee. I sit down opposite Lessing and study him for a moment.
It strikes me that I have no idea who this person is, or who he represents. Is he a psychiatrist? That’s the impression I got from some of the things Shaw said, but why would a shrink have the kind of influence that this guy seems to have? I don’t know. I’ve dealt with psychiatrists in the past, and they tend to be slippery motherfuckers. Karl here isn’t doing anything to dispel that notion. He’s annoyingly calm and with a blank expression on his face that occasionally breaks into a self-regarding smirk.