The Next Big Thing

by Sadie Hayes

  Arjun’s chest puffed at the implication that he wasn’t smart. “Yeah, of course. Sorry to bother you.” He stood and left, shutting the door a bit too forcefully.

  Adam had barely had time to recover from the affront before his door opened again.

  “Hey,” T.J. said, entering the office.

  “Hey.” Things had been tense between T.J. and Adam ever since the PKC meeting. Adam suspected T.J. wasn’t talking to him out of fear that Adam would use the same authority to fire T.J. It was a power Adam secretly relished.

  “Arjun told me he told you about the problem.”

  “Yeah, we’ve got it sorted,” Adam lied.

  T.J. looked at him, unconvinced.

  “What?” Adam shrugged defensively.

  “How’d you ‘get it sorted’?”

  “I told him to do his job and figure it out.”

  “Good, so you gave him permission to call Amelia?” T.J. said bluntly.

  “Amelia doesn’t work here.”

  “She’ll know how to fix it. She had it figured out before you fired her.”

  “He can’t call Amelia.”

  “Then figure out another solution, Adam,” T.J. said firmly.

  “Is that my job, T.J.? I can’t remember. I’m just chief operating officer, didn’t you know that?” he said passive-aggressively.

  “Unfortunately, everyone at the company is afraid you’ll fire them if they don’t agree with you. If you’re not going to let Arjun call Amelia, then use that HR power of yours to hire someone who can help.”

  Adam looked spitefully at T.J. and put his head on his desk.

  “And while you’re out solving problems,” T.J. continued coldly, “have some respect and call my sister.”

  Adam was speechless. T.J. knew about him and Lisa? What else did he know?

  28

  No Talking in the Library

  T.J. pulled up outside the dorm and found T-Bag waiting with Amelia. He stopped when he saw her and double-checked: He expected her to look sad, but she somehow seemed rejuvenated. Something was different about her, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He got out of the car and gave her a warm hug. It made him feel strong, the way her whole body fit into his arms. “It’s good to see you,” he whispered in her ear.

  “You, too,” she said, smiling.

  It was a bright, crisp day, and the sun felt good after three days of rain. T-Bag pushed forward the front seat of T.J.’s BMW and climbed in the back. “I’m hitching a ride with you if it’s okay.”

  “You don’t think I’d piss off the guy grading my problem sets, do you?”

  “God, I love having power over a man like you,” T-Bag said, and flirtatiously pinched T.J.’s cheek from the backseat.

  “Easy,” T.J. said, trying his best to counterparry with his trademark charm, but was still wary of the whole gay-guy-with-a-crush-on-him thing.

  Inside Gates, Amelia led T.J. to a computer while she went to check her CS department mailbox. T.J. watched her walk away—What had changed? His attention was distracted by the sound of Amelia’s phone buzzing and he instinctively looked at the text message on her screen: “You doing okay, love? Let me know if you need anything. xo.”

  T.J. felt a sudden chill as he read the sender: Riley. His Riley? How did Amelia know Riley?

  When he saw Amelia come back through the door, he quickly put her phone back down. “Anything good in your box?” he asked in polite fake interest.

  “Just some graded papers,” Amelia said, seeing the message on her phone, smiling, and typing a response. T.J. burned with curiosity. What were they talking about? Did either woman know about the other’s relationship to him?

  Amelia turned back. “Ready?” She pulled open the problem set T.J. had failed, and grimaced. “Here,” she said, reaching across him to control the mouse. Her leg pressed against his as she scooted to reach, and he felt the heat of her body in front of his chest. She pulled the mouse over to her side and he leaned forward to focus.

  “See these arrays?” she asked. “You need to highlight them—like this.” She showed him. Without thinking, he put his hand on top of hers on the mouse. She pulled it away and let him take control.

  “I think my problem is I can’t concentrate,” T.J. mumbled.

  He could see her chest rise and fall. “It’s hard,” she said. “I mean, it can be really boring, but you have to pay attention to the little things or the program won’t work.”

  She pushed the keyboard toward him. He keyed in the code as she’d instructed.

  “There,” he said when he was finished.

  She pulled the keyboard back to her, careful to avoid his touch this time. “Let’s try it.” She hit a few strokes to run and they watched the screen.

  “Dammit.” T.J. put his hand to his forehead. “What’d I do wrong?”

  “You probably just mistyped something. Sometimes one tiny missing variable can screw up the whole thing. Believe it or not, this one is a relatively easy fix.” Amelia took hold of the keyboard again, but her eye caught something and she paused briefly. He followed her eye path: What was she looking at? He glanced at his arm muscles underneath his t-shirt. Was she admiring him? He flexed his bicep, just in case.

  “So how are things at Doreye?” She changed the subject, her gaze now fully on the computer screen, fixing his bad code on the monitor in front of him.

  “I miss you,” T.J. said honestly, trying to follow her corrections but more interested in talking. Then, more cautiously: “I mean, we miss you. Really.”

  Amelia cocked her head. “Is everything okay?”

  “I promised you I wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “Yeah, but then I asked.”

  “It’s not good,” T.J. conceded. “Arjun’s smart, but he’s in over his head. If we don’t figure out this battery issue, I think we’re toast.”

  Amelia sat up in her chair. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Investors want Doreye to go to market within a few weeks, but every time we run the app in the wild the phone gets hot and loses all of its battery, or crashes,” T.J. said, and sighed, looking forlornly down at the keyboard.

  “But it should efficiently use the native processor if the code is correct. The last iteration I wrote was incredibly smooth. Each string should have a minimal description that follows Kolmogorov complexity. It should be fine.” Amelia’s voice was getting heated.

  T.J. laughed and said, “Are you listening to yourself? You don’t realize how smart you are. Kind of like how you don’t recognize how pretty you are.” He was thinking about Brandon and how wrong his friend had been in his dismissal of Amelia.

  Amelia opened her mouth but very little sound came out. “I—” she started, but a voice cut her off from across the room.

  “You two about done here?” T-Bag called from the door.

  T.J. tried to hide his annoyance. “Just about!”

  “We’re about to play a game of ZOSTRA if you’d like to join.”

  The spell was broken and Amelia resumed her previous calm. “Great! I’ll be right there.” She turned to T.J. “So I hope that helped?”

  He looked back at the computer, remembering he’d asked her to help him with his problem set. “Oh, yeah, super helpful. I think I understand it now,” he lied, then he threw in, “You’re a really good teacher.” He felt like he used to after playing a really hard soccer game and losing.

  “Sure. Was totally happy to do it.”

  T.J. remained seated for a moment, hoping they’d return to the previous conversation. But instead Amelia started putting her pen and notebook into her bag.

  “What’s ZOSTRA?” T.J. asked, giving up and following her lead to put his own stuff away.

  Amelia blushed. “It’s just a computer game.”

  “Oh, that’s cool,” T.J. said. “Like Dungeons & Dragons?”

  “It’s not quite that dorky,” Amelia assured him unconfidently. “But probably not your thing.”

  “Believe
it or not, I was pretty good at D&D as a kid,” T.J. told her, something he hadn’t admitted to anyone since he’d decided he was too cool for the game back in tenth grade.

  “Really?” Amelia asked, shocked. Her eyes glowed hopefully through her glasses.

  “Dungeon Master extraordinaire.” T.J. clicked his tongue proudly. He never thought that tidbit would pay off.

  “Well, ZOSTRA is kind of like an expanded version, but everyone has his or her own avatar, it uses Google Maps for the geography, and there aren’t too many rules around how you create your avatar.”

  “Sounds fun. Can I join you?”

  Amelia blushed furiously at the thought, but knew she couldn’t say no. “I mean, I’m sure you’ve got more important things to do, like run my company.”

  T.J. looked around. “Not much to run without you,” he said, smiling weakly. “Besides, I need the mental vacation, and maybe playing ZOSTRA will get me some extra credit with T-Bag, which I clearly need.”

  Amelia hesitated. “Okay,” she finally conceded, and they moved to the room next door.

  “We’re doing a mission today,” T-Bag explained to the group. “Everyone has been assigned one character type from the graph here.” He projected a matrix onto the screen that showed different character types. “One dimension is morality, where a character can be Good or Evil or Neutral, and the other dimension is ethics, where a character can be Lawful or Chaotic or Neutral.”

  “So,” T.J. cut in, “I can be Evil and Lawful or Good and Lawful?”

  “Exactly. There are nine alignments. For today’s exercise, no one knows who is who, and the point is to play the game and, through each other’s actions, figure out everyone’s alignment. Remember, we all will interact differently to accomplish different goals.” He looked around seriously. “A description of your player is being e-mailed to you.”

  “Excuse me.” Amelia, adorably, wanted to get it right. “Can we go through a few alignments?”

  “Of course, Amélie,” T-Bag said, smiling, “I thought you’d never ask. Let’s start with Lawful Good. These are the righteous crusaders or knights. They stand for a purpose and often die martyrs. Unlike Lawful Neutral, who are disciplined … like Jedi knights.”

  “I’m more interested in the villains,” T.J. said, and gave Amelia a wink. She smiled. Which made him smile.

  “So,” T-Bag said, growing animated, “the Lawful Evil characters are the diabolical ones. Think of a comic book villain or a dictator or a white-collar criminal: They exploit the system to their own advantage. This is very different from the Chaotic Evil characters: the demons and terrorists. They care about nothing but their own desires, violating the freedom of others. They have no regard for honor and no scruples.”

  “So they are the ones to watch out for?” Amelia asked.

  T-Bag sat down and, with dramatic flair, leaned in close to T.J. and Amelia. “No, my children. The Evil are not the ones to be afraid of. Instead you must watch out for Chaotic Neutral: Without moral code these characters are completely unpredictable. They are the wild cards. The free spirits. They change their appearance or disrupt order just for the sake of chaos. They change teams and allegiances on a whim. You cannot trust them.”

  “So we should always avoid Chaotic Neutral?” Amelia was trying to figure out the rules.

  “They can be useful, Amelia,” T-Bag said, leaning back and smiling, “because with the right incentives they can be quite powerful. If you ally with them, make sure you do so briefly and always have the upper hand.”

  The players broke apart with their character assignments. T.J. was assigned Lawful Neutral, the Judge archetype, and hastily created an avatar named Teranimus. This should be easy, he thought.

  T.J. proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon in the darkness of the Gates computer science building, fully engrossed in a fantastical mission that evolved into a quest across Northern Africa. The game was all online and provided access to perfectly pixelated images of the places they went. At first he had some difficulty navigating the tools and information but gradually got the hang of it. In the end, he, as Lawful Neutral, allied with an avatar named Hyperios, who was Neutral Evil, to prevent an avatar named Rollox, who happened to be Lawful Evil, from destroying a community he and Amelia (Lawful Good) were trying to build on an abandoned island.

  By the end of the game, when all the characters were revealed, T.J. was mentally exhausted but strangely satisfied. He felt a weird bond with these geeks and a sense of accomplishment for having defeated a bad guy and built an island, even if it was totally fake. And he felt a connection to Amelia he couldn’t quite describe. It wasn’t what he felt with other girls, but it was something.

  “Want to join us for dinner?” T-Bag asked.

  “Dinner?” he said quizzically. “What time is it?” He glanced at his watch and almost choked: 7:28 P.M. Had he seriously just spent six hours playing this game? He was supposed to pick up a friend for drinks at the Rosewood at 8:00.

  “Sorry—I gotta run meet a friend now. But this was really fun, guys, thanks for letting me play!” T.J. picked up his jacket and scurried out the door quickly, not noticing Amelia trying to work up the courage to ask him to wait.

  29

  What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks Down

  Adam spent the rest of the day being wholly unproductive in his office. He would start writing an e-mail and then find himself opening a new tab and going straight to Facebook to look up Lisa and peruse her photos. Once or twice he almost put her name into his status update instead of the search bar, but caught himself just before pressing “Enter.”

  When the day was over and he mustered enough courage, Adam went to the Delta Gamma sorority. He followed the garden path around to the back right corner of the house, where the girls left a playing card in the latch of a side door to keep it from locking without making it obvious to passersby. The card trick was a secret the girls only told house boyfriends after swearing them to secrecy.

  Adam opened the door and gently pulled it shut behind him so the card stayed in its place.

  He heard music in the kitchen and made his way through the house’s courtyard, which in the fall and spring was neatly occupied with lounge chairs where girls and their male followers skipped class to tan, but was for now barren, a dreary reminder of the winter rain.

  Adam entered the foyer and shook his head to repel the raindrops. He pushed open the swinging doors that led into the dining room and found a group of two dozen guys and girls drinking from red cups and talking loudly over the pop music coming from the speakers above.

  He scanned the room quickly for familiar faces and found Lisa sitting on one of the dining tables, leaning her weight back on her hands and propping her feet up on a chair. She was surrounded by three guys he recognized from Sigma Chi, all grinning broadly at whatever she was saying as she let her head fall back in a laugh. She was wearing short shorts and Ugg boots, rocking her knees back and forth flirtatiously as she talked to them. Adam’s face burned with jealousy.

  He beelined for her, pushing his way between two of the guys.

  “Lisa, we need to talk,” he blurted out.

  Lisa took a slow look at him and sipped her drink before responding, “No, Adam, we don’t.”

  “Yes. We. Do,” he said, pausing after each syllable and nodding his head toward the door to indicate he’d prefer to do it alone.

  “Dude, if she doesn’t want to talk, she doesn’t want to talk,” one of the guys said dramatically.

  Adam ignored him. “Lisa, come on.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you, Adam,” Lisa said, then added, insistently, “Really, I don’t.”

  “But—” Adam started searching for something to say to get her to listen. The room’s attention was quietly turning in their direction.

  “But I saw you the other day,” he finally blurted, “in the drugstore.”

  Lisa’s legs stopped rocking and she stared straight into his eyes, daring him to sa
y more. “That’s great, Adam. I do from time to time go to the drugstore. Great place to buy shampoo, don’t you think?”

  “Ouch!” one of the other guys said, snapping his fingers, clearly drunk.

  “Who is this guy, Lisa?” another asked, pointing to Adam.

  “I know him,” replied the third, “this is the dickwad that works at that app company and fired his genius sister.”

  A groan of jeers erupted from the crowd. Adam was undeterred.

  “You were at the drugstore, Lisa, and you were buying—” He stopped himself.

  Lisa had one eyebrow lifted and her left dimple smirked.

  “I just think we ought to talk.” Adam decided to go back to his original plan and tried to look kind.

  “There’s no need, Adam,” she said with a calm he found alarming. “We have nothing to talk about. I don’t need you for anything. You have nothing to worry about.”

  She turned her attention back to her suitors and continued a story she’d been telling before Adam arrived. Her long, smooth legs turned away from him. What he would do to touch them, just once.

  Adam swallowed and looked around as if searching for what to do. He felt like he was caught in a bad romantic comedy and wanted the ending to come, for everything to work out and her to come back to him with those legs.

  “Lisa,” Adam tried again, “I know—”

  Lisa didn’t even turn her head to acknowledge his existence.

  “I know you’re pregnant, Lisa,” he blurted out helplessly. The guys turned to look at Adam, then turned back to Lisa to see her reaction.

  Her eyes drilled into him. “You don’t know anything, Adam. Nothing. At all.” She said it sharply, with no room for protest or error.

  “But at the drugstore—I saw you—”

  “Jesus.” Lisa rolled her eyes and stood up, asking the guys to hold on for a minute while she dragged Adam to the next room.

  “I don’t know what you think you saw,” Lisa snapped, “but how dare you come in here and say such things in public?”