by Matt Richtel
“What happened to your eye?” Sandy asks.
The question hardly sounds maternal but it’s curious in a way that suggests she’s softening.
“I went to Chinatown to follow a lead and got clobbered by a thick guy with a crooked smile. He looked like a bouncer at a prison nightclub.”
“Steve.”
Steve. “You know him?”
“Not really. He hired me, and ran interference with management at PRISM. Kept the parents from being a pain in the butt. How much is he paying you? He pays well.”
“PRISM isn’t running this operation?”
“I report to Steve. I think you do too.”
“I swear to you, Sandy. He’s my enemy.”
“He’s always talking about security breaches and how he used to deal with them in rural China. Likes to use the word ‘electrodes,’ and sounds stupid when he says it. Clyde says I shouldn’t buy a word of it. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he put you up to this to see if I’m violating my confidentiality agreement.”
“He tried to set you on fire. And me.”
I hold out my singed forearms. She looks at them, unconvinced. I know that look, something like pity and skepticism. I feel like I engender that look more than is healthy.
We’re at an impasse.
“I see a counselor.”
“What?”
“Her name is Wilma. I see a counselor named Wilma.” I’m now talking for Sandy’s benefit as much as for mine. My sentences feel just shy of revelation. I’m remembering that once a week I go to Wilma and, after many months of sitting across from the gangly counselor in a high-backed chair in a boxy office, I resigned myself to lying, cliché-like, on a stiff couch. But I can still sense Wilma’s looking at me with pity and skepticism when I recite the goings-on of each week. I remember my latest homework assignment for her: I’m supposed to define the word “loss,” or some inane exercise like that. How has this memory eluded me the last few days? What else have I forgotten or misunderstood or misplaced since Alan Parsons slammed my head onto the subway pavement? Didn’t it happen when I was heading home from Wilma’s office?
“Admitting you see a shrink—is that supposed to make me sympathetic? Just because you’re weak doesn’t make you an ally.”
“Go fuck yourself, Sandy.”
She smiles, a kilowatt grin. It’s the kind of raw response she craves.
“Clyde returns tonight, in a few hours. He’s been in Wyoming shooting photos of some rich family on a luxury camping trip.”
“Good for you.”
“Should be home anytime and he won’t hesitate to shoot you. Actually, he probably won’t shoot you but he will blacken your other eye.”
“I won’t give him any reason to do so. Besides, I don’t see why it’s a big deal that you basically ran classes at the learning annex. It’s why they recruited you. They knew you’d be good with this population.”
She stands up, still training the rifle on me. “I want a share of the movie rights.”
“For what?”
“Do you agree?”
I nod. I have no idea what she’s talking about.
“Don’t you dare print that I just do volunteer work at the learning annex. That’s slander, or libel or whatever. It’s a bigger job than that. Otherwise, why would they have tried to burn the place?”
“But it sounds like you were just monitoring the kids, babysitting, essentially . . .”
“I knew something weird was going on,” she cuts me off, as I’d hoped. “I told Clyde. I told him it was more than just keeping those kids entertained and product refinement.”
“What product?”
She says: “You honestly won’t believe how cool this is.”
43
Sandy takes two steps back from the chair just as I feel my phone buzz. I’m not sure whether to answer when it becomes clear that Sandy has picked up my distraction. She tells me to pull out the phone and put it on the table. She watches the movements carefully. The phone buzzes again, jumping lightly on the table, then stops.
“Interesting,” Sandy says.
“Why?”
“Usually we don’t get reception here, unless you stand on one foot near the window in the downstairs bathroom.” She smiles at what feels to her like a clever line. “You probably just got a text.”
From the phone’s abbreviated buzz, I’d have to concur. She reaches forward and pulls the phone nearer. It’s a surprisingly painful invasion of my personal space. She clicks with her thumb and she says: “I remember Alan Parsons.”
“You do?”
“That’s what it says.”
She slides the phone toward me. I start to raise my hands.
“Leave them on the table, palms down.” Sandy’s playing a part she once saw on TV. I have a vision of Faith being held somewhere at gunpoint, just like this.
I look down at the screen of the phone. It reads: “I remember Alan Parsons. Call me.”
It’s from Jill Gilkeson, mother of Kathryn, the girl who ran into traffic.
“It’s from a woman who works for Andrew Leviathan. Can I call her?”
“You can’t call anybody.”
She reaches forward and she pulls the phone to her edge of the table. “What’s it mean?”
“It means that another piece of evidence suggests that whatever you’re involved with—whatever we’re both involved with—points to one of the most powerful industrialists in the world.”
“Movie rights.”
I want to throw up. But I’m liking the way the psychology is unfolding; Sandy’s paranoia is giving way to her narcissism, which is the easier of the two of her prevailing traits to manipulate. And she’s feeling taken advantage of by PRISM or her Chinese handlers and humiliated that the world will see her as merely a volunteer teacher. Still, even as I try to keep her gaze, I’m glancing around for some escape hatch—a weapon, sharp object, fire extinguisher, anything I could use to throw or wield, distract, not harm or injure her so much as facilitate my exit.
Rifle trained on me, she takes two steps backward, bumps into the chest-high counter that separates the kitchen from the dining room, feels her way around its rounded edges until she, without taking her eyes from me, winds up in the kitchen. She slides open a drawer, looks down. I reach down at my feet and lift my untied sneaker with my right hand. It’s a hapless projectile I drop when Sandy returns and I see what she’s holding aloft: a black plastic device that’s shaped like a cross between a portable video-game console and a small baseball mitt. It lies in her right palm, attached by a strap that encircles the back of her hand.
“Meet the Juggler.”
My head suddenly goes light. I picture Polly holding up an empty fortune cookie poised to lay something heavy on me. I cough twice, sharply, begetting a dry heave. I raise my head, eyes watery, trying to keep a grip. Reality, memory and mystery have begun to collide. Everything feels scrambled up inside my gray matter, an omelet of imagery and emotion and I can’t seem to separate out the ingredients.
I recall where I’ve seen this device before. Piles of them sat burning at the learning annex on a long cafeteria table.
“It’s obviously a prototype.” Sandy moves to the edge of the counter to my left. She sets down the rifle but not in a way that offers me any particular advantage. She’s ten feet away from me, not close enough. If I tried to attack or flee, she’d have ample time to take aim.
Eyes still on me, she reaches to her left and lifts a second device from the drawer. It’s identical to the first. She slips the second one onto her left hand and she holds up the two Jugglers, palms facing me. I can see now in the center of each device a rectangular video screen slightly larger than the screen on a mobile phone. On each screen shines an image of a juggling ninja, an image I recall seeing on the mural inside the burning learning annex. Above their hands, these cartoonish, macho Ninja juggle tiny little clouds, not balls. What strikes me is the image quality. It’s more vivid than I’ve seen on any tel
evision or even movie-theater screen. It’s not just the colors but also the way they seem to leap from the screen like they’re combusting with the air. I can’t take my eyes from them, to the extent I’m wondering if I’m imagining it.
Sandy lightly lifts the device in her right hand. Into the air pops a high-definition image of the number 1. It arcs in the air and it lands on the device in her left hand. She holds up the device in her left hand so that I can see the screen; on it is the number 1. The image has traveled, wirelessly, from one device to the other.
She then starts moving the devices at the same time, as if she were juggling them, though they remain in her palms. But the air starts popping with images of ones and zeroes. They travel in neat little arcs from one device to the next. It’s a digital air show, 21st-century wizardry, something from the hands of a supernatural creature in a Harry Potter story. But even as I stare in wonder, I know this hardly is science fiction. It’s well within the realm of software.
“Data juggling, literally?”
“Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Her hands have stopped moving. In the air, above the devices, a static image appears: ninja jugglers with their hands beneath an arc of tiny clouds.
I shake my head.
“It’s infrared and wireless technology, Bluetooth, twelve hundred hertz image refresh, basic stuff.” She knows she’s got me. “It captures body motion like the Nintendo Wii system. I don’t even know all the technical terms. But this is just the sizzle, not the steak.”
She has grown more impassioned, her mouth slightly agape, lips moist, lost in presentation.
“You should see how excited the kids get.”
“How many kids?”
“Fifty overall, give or take. But only twenty on any given day. A totally captivated group. Taking care of struggling kids is really the wave of the future in forward-thinking communities. This is where we start building the middle class from people who might otherwise get stuck at the bottom rungs.” She’s reciting from a manual. “There’s one kid, Samuel. He’s ten, I think. Robbed a convenience store. Cutey. Loves me. Gets what I’m about. He spends hours with the Jugglers, and so fast. He can whiz through the data.”
She reaches with her right thumb and swipes the side of the device in her palm. She starts moving the device again, literally in a juggling motion. This time, a maze projects into the air; on the end of the maze near her left hand is a virtual piece of cheese while on the other hand is a mouse. She starts moving the fingers of her right hand, prompting the mouse to move in fits and starts through the maze. It’s awkward, either bad design or she’s just not very good. All of a sudden, the device in her right hand beeps. A cat appears and begins chasing the mouse, and is just about to catch its virtual prey in the maze when her left hand beeps.
“Level Two,” she says.
The maze seems to leap such that it now hovers only over the right-hand device. Over the left device, a new maze appears. It’s got a different configuration, this time with a tiny egg on one end of the maze and a dinosaur on the other. She starts glancing back and forth between the mazes, trying to move the creatures simultaneously—the mouse to the cheese and spiky-backed dinosaur to the egg.
Between the two mazes, there’s a bridge, projected about two feet in the air above her hands. A cacophony of beeps commences, marking the appearance of new images. Beep. Mouse. Beep. Cheese. Beep. Cat. Beep. Dinosaur. Beep. Bigger dinosaur chasing smaller one chasing egg. She lowers her hands, prompting the images to waver, then disappear.
“Samuel can switch and switch and switch. He’s a genius. He’s going to run the twenty-first century.” She pauses and laughs. “Just so long as there are no food trays.”
“Huh?”
“He’s incredible when he’s on the device. But when he’s not using this thing, he’s a little tyrant. Can’t sit still. In the dormitory, he climbed onto a table, started throwing food trays. He started a riot, got a black eye and then detention. I’d have been more upset but it honestly reminded me of myself as a little kid, raised in a tough environment.”
I take it in.
“There are a dozen games. The older kids can do the hard ones but even the younger kids can do better than I can. The boys get so focused on the firefighter game. No tension between them, the anger and all that just melts away when they’re Juggling. They . . .” She trails off.
“Sandy?”
“Watch for yourself.”
She pushes a handful of buttons and a scene appears over the pair of jugglers. It’s a high-tech, translucent video. I’m watching footage shot of the learning annex. A boy wearing the devices moves his arms in fits and jerks, a controlled spasmodic, sending ones and zeroes flying through hoops and tunnels.
Click.
A small boy—shaved head and syrupy-thin arms—spins three holographic balls down three holographic bowling lanes. He alternately grimaces, smiles, focuses, his face a bubbling landscape of the turmoil within. I feel like I’m looking at the physical correlate to the chaos going on inside their brains.
Click.
Five boys in a semicircle, juggling, captivated, at once completely active and utterly inert.
Click. The static image appears, the ninja jugglers and the clouds. Click. The image vanishes.
“Clouds?”
“The Cloud.”
“Juggling the cloud?”
“C’mon.” Impatient with my evident stupidity. “We’re moving into the cloud, all of us. This next generation, they’re the cloud warriors, the digital ninjas. I guess we’ve got lawyers getting a bunch of different trademarks.”
Before I can follow up, she switches directions. “They obviously lied to me.”
“Who?”
“The brain images. Something’s not right. I know that. They say they’re giving the kids physicals, full consent from the county and the parents whose kids get bussed in and all that. They say they’re making sure that playtime builds better kids. But it’s obviously not that.”
The brain images. “What do you mean?”
With her right thumb, she clicks off a button on the device in her palm. She pushes it onto the counter. She seems suddenly defeated.
“Everything I’ve told you is true.”
“I know that.”
“I’ve been there less than a year. They wanted a celeb to reach out to the annex and inspire the kids to use the Juggler. Y’know, get them thinking that if they followed my lead, maybe they could get on TV, stuff like that. A lot of the parents are heavy TV watchers or first-gen Americans, some right-off-the-boat support staff. They like the idea of having me as part of the mix.”
“Okay.”
“I can tell you, without any reservation, these kids are getting smarter with their devices. And I honestly don’t see what the big deal is; sure, this is great technology, but it’s just an amped-up version of portable video games and mobile devices with some of the brain-game technology mixed in.”
“Then why did Steve try to burn it down?”
She shrugs and drops her eyes.
“It was an accident, I’m sure.”
I give her the “give me a break” look.
“I think you’re the one who’s lying. You’re doing corporate espionage, just like they warned me someone might do. You want to know how it works, how it works so well with their brains.”
“I’m a journalist.”
“Then do what modern journalists do and wait for the announcement.”
I shake my head, not understanding.
“It’ll all be public soon enough. Ten days. The marketing and product launch.”
“At PRISM?”
“Chengdu.”
I shake my head again. Am I hearing correctly? My ears feel like they’re ringing. Two weeks. The launch. What I’d been warned about.
“Huge city in China. I guess they’re all huge. They’ve got a zoo there. They’re going to have clowns and, of course, jugglers.”
“China.”
I’m surprisingly staggered by this piece of information. It doesn’t conform to the picture I’ve been forming. And I can feel the wary gears of my overtaxed brain trying to adjust. “Why test it in San Francisco? When is the U.S. product launch?”
“Never. That’s the big thing. They did some refining of the software here, for obvious reasons. Smart engineers, U.S. know-how, and all that. But they don’t want this product to come to the U.S. Not ever. Or at least not until they establish control over the intellectual property.”
“Why not?”
Sandy’s eyes go wide. But she’s not looking at me. She’s looking at the front door of the house. I follow her gaze. I don’t see anything. Then I do: some movement, a whisking in the shadows.
She raises the rifle.
44
With Sandy’s eyes averted, I reach for my iPhone. I lift it from the table, undetected, then slip it into my pocket.
“Clyde?” Sandy directs her shout at the door.
It’s not. At the door, a figure appears through the glass, not Clyde. He peers inside. He sees the shotgun and recoils. I can’t see what he does next but I infer that he slinks a step or two down the stairs, and pastes himself against the outside wall. He’s thin, tall, with a rounded head that, near as I can tell from the partial darkness, is bald. The buzzard.
“I know my rights.” Sandy squeezes the trigger, prompting a blast and then an explosion of glass.
A rectangular window next to the front door seems to ripple, a slow-motion effect, then its puzzle pieces start to fall to the ground. The door itself looks lightly peppered with buckshot and punctured on the far right, just above the handle, with a hole the size of a baby’s fist.
I slide to the ground and peer through the legs of the dining-room chairs at the doorway. No movement. No fallen body. The whole thing feels both violent and almost comical; melodramatic Sandy Vello makes her last, loud stand.
“Call 911,” Sandy orders.
There’s a pause, then a sound from the outside, the buzzard making some kind of noise near the front door. Hurt? Taking aim? Suddenly, an object flies through the shattered window. It’s making a wailing sound, like an alarm.