by Matt Richtel
Before he clicks for details, he runs his cursor over the second flag. A dialogue box pops up: “Rhetoric. Decline. Re: Fertile Crescent. Click for details.”
A fall in hostile language. A further decline in the semantics in the Fertile Crescent. That’s only good news. Would that all the world’s conflict rhetoric would decline.
He clicks on the third flag: “Weather update. Click for details.”
Jeremy tastes bile. Weather, a major factor in the onset of conflict; better weather can allow troop movements or beach landings; clear skies can permit air attacks. He clicks on the box for details.
There is a link to a web site called AccuWeather. The page is for the Hawaii weather forecast. On top of the page is a satellite image, clouds swirling above the Hawaiian Islands. Below that, radar images showing incoming weather and short forecasts for the individual islands, Maui, Oahu, Kauai, and so on.
In the middle of the page, he finds what looks to be an update. It reads: “Tropical Storm Serena downgraded. Westernmost islands, Pacific fisheries spared heavy rains as low-pressure system dissipates.”
That’s it. On this page of links and charts and graphs, a single sentence that might or might not be pertinent.
So what? What could the computer be inferring from this? He scrutinizes the page again, unable to make any clear associations or inferences.
He clicks on the fourth flag. Inside the dialogue box: “Update, Random Event Meter.” And he mutters: lemme guess, more lions. A Washington Post headline pops up: “Three More Lions Set Loose.”
Kooks have freed lions from zoos in Seattle and Portland and one from a traveling circus act stationed in Reno, serving a casino there. The article says police continue to investigate the acts as potentially involving animal rights activists. The article notes that the vigilante acts have left one person dead, an older man in San Diego who apparently was responsible for the freeing of the lion there. An unnamed official from San Diego said the man had on his back a curious tattoo: a lion standing on its hind legs, its tail up in the air.
“Thanks, computer,” Jeremy mutters under his breath. “Let me know every time someone in San Francisco takes their dog for a walk.”
But he can’t help wondering. Something about the image pulls at him.
Harry, is this what you want me to ask it? About lions?
He moves his cursor onto the other flag, the one about movers and shakers, clicks for details. A new window pops up. In it materializes a link to an Associated Press story with the headline “Russian Arms Exec Arrested in Paris.”
Marat Vladine, a billionaire who was former chairman of Russia’s state-controlled arms dealership, was detained in Paris today by French state police. The French said that he’d been held at the request of the Russian government investigating charges of tax evasion and money laundering.
However, one French authority said that Mr. Vladine’s detainment was instead related to an intensifying domestic political squabble inside Russia.
In recent days, Russian politicians at the highest levels of government have been in a public spat about the heavy foreign-policy influence played by the state-backed munitions dealer, Rosoboronexport State Corporation. Mr. Vladine was the longtime chairman of Rosoboronexport until earlier this year but is still thought to be heavily involved in the company’s strategic direction.
Opponents of the current government say the multibillion-dollar munitions corporation has encouraged policies that are in the interest of its shareholders and political backers, not the nation at large.
These opponents have seized on rumors that Rosoboronexport allowed nuclear-grade bomb materials to escape in recent years into terrorist hands—or sold such materials to rogue elements. Rosoboronexport vigorously denies the charges and dismisses them as political misdirection and, thus far, there has been no independent verification that such dangerous materials ever were sold or wound up in the wrong hands.
Erik Soliere, a Paris-based attorney retained by Mr. Vladine, declined to comment on the detainment of his client.
Jeremy scrolls down but discovers that he’s read the full article. He reads it again, feels a pinprick of disappointment at the lack of direct or helpful evidence. Where’s the smoking gun—an assassination or an attack on a capital city or something. Something that would make sense of the dire predictions. Something that would explain what’s happening—to him, to Harry. To his computer.
Looking at the AP news story, he’s wondering why the computer bothered to update him about such minutiae. Then he remembers. It is designed to report any new information, small or large, related to the larger variables that may be contributing to impending conflict.
Previously, the computer had reported changes to the level of conflict rhetoric in Russia and related to Rosoboronexport. So, Jeremy reasons, the computer is sending what it determines to be a related update, however tangential. The feature was Jeremy’s brainchild; the algorithm uses artificial intelligence to make decisions about whether two ideas are sufficiently related to send an update. But now Jeremy is mourning an update about one more seemingly meaningless data point.
“Say something useful,” he mutters to his iPad.
The computer, as if in response, beeps. Another different sound, or, rather three beeps, in quick succession, brief and shrill. And, at the same time, a box materializes in the middle of the window on his iPad. In the box, big letters, “Conflict Clock Reset. Click for details.”
It’s a feature that, as much as he chided Evan for demanding it, he quietly relishes. It provides an alert that the computer’s basic prediction has changed. It could mean that conflict is less likely, or more likely, or, if conflict is already ongoing, that the computer now predicts it will last longer or be more quickly resolved.
As Jeremy clicks on the dialogue box, he feels an eerie calm. He’s sure that the computer will rescind its dire prediction, the jig will be up, the dire prophecy revoked or revealed as a hoax.
A new box appears.
“CONFLICT TIMETABLE ACCELERATED. 27 HOURS, 17 MINUTES.”
Without moving his head, he glances at a woman in a Giants cap chewing her nails, looks down and taps his index finger against the screen, on the warning in the dialogue box. He puts his finger on “27 HOURS.” Some part of him wants to feel that this is real, not just some virtual, ethereal thing, the digital ranting of a box that Jeremy helped create, his cyber-subconscious taunting him.
He does the math. Previously, the computer had projected the outbreak of conflict in less than three days. As little as ten minutes ago, that was the prediction. Now, suddenly, it’s down to little more than one.
He taps the edge of the countdown box, bringing up another infobox. It shows the longitude and latitude of the project attack, the ostensible project attack. Still San Francisco. Right here, Jeremy thinks, tomorrow night, just after 7 p.m.
Then he realizes what’s bothering him. It’s no longer projecting April 1. If this is an April Fools’ joke, someone has mixed up the dates.
“What can it answer?” he mutters.
“Are you talking to yourself?”
The voice belongs to a boy in the aisle, little more than four years old, jacket zipped up to the bottom of his lip, holding his mother’s hand, staring intently at Jeremy. The woman looks at Jeremy with a sheepish smile, as if to say: from the mouths of babes. Jeremy looks down at his iPad but all he sees is the face of Kent. Dissolving into bullet points:
A computer warning about the end of the world. Here, in a few hours.
Log cabin: a rustic and homey setting for a final clash of wills between him and Harry
A message from Harry, symbols and numbers
A break-in at his apartment, at his office. Everything strewn.
Someone, more than someone, following him. Setting him up?
AskIt
In sum, clues left by an inscrutable computer and a geniusally turned foe. Can it add up the clues for him? What can he ask the computer that it can answer?<
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The train screeches into San Francisco. It’s 4:20. Should be crowded on the platform, thick with commuters, but easy enough for a cop to stand at the top of the escalator. Jeremy stuffs his iPad into the backpack. He looks at the mom, holding hands with the child, absent a wedding ring, in her early thirties. A New York Times tucked under her arm, the right audience.
“Caught in the act,” Jeremy says to the woman. “Talking to myself. I promise it’s not habitual. Something I only do in public places.”
She laughs.
CHAPTER 22
DRIZZLE COATS EVERYTHING, street, his cheap red slicker, the newspaper boxes and lampposts, the awnings. It pastes the pages of a torn real estate magazine to the sidewalk. An afghan of gray, just the cover Jeremy’s looking for. Makes people lazy, dulls them, puts mud into the machine, why military campaigns work so much better in sunshine.
But, now, the foul cover makes Jeremy feel that one less thing is going against him. He was able to file through the turnstiles with the irritable masses, the two cops a little less motivated, and probably dissuaded from wasting energy on the man interacting with the woman and the boy, talking flirtatiously, happily. He parted ways with Ivory and Johnny at the top of the escalator, their smiles holding a promise of an exchanged Facebook friendship, but not really, since they exchanged no last names or other personal identifiers. Just a little shared walking daydream.
He stands at the corner of the Embarcadero and Mission, looking out onto the Bay Bridge, strewn with wall-to-wall lights of people who mistakenly thought they could beat the commute.
He’s hunting.
Just around the corner, within easy sight, the valet stand for Perry’s. In the next ten minutes or so, he can watch Andrea arrive. He can decide on a course of action. At this point, all bets are off. Maybe she’ll show up with the general and a three-headed alien.
He extracts a phone. Not his iPhone, not the one he used to call 911, but his backup, a flip phone, an old standby that is something you just carry in Silicon Valley, like, because. It’s like being a soldier and carrying an extra ammo magazine.
Jeremy holds his finger over the on button. He wants to believe that the cops, if they are tracing his other phone—totally a possibility but far from a certainty—might not be tracing this phone. But he also knows that if they’re tracing the whereabouts of one, using simple triangulating technology, they’re likely tracing both.
Not if he keeps it quick, doesn’t let them get a handle on the signal. He turns on the flip phone. He calls his voice mail on his other phone. There are two messages. The first from Emily: You can’t do that to the boy. It’s not all about you.
The second one also from Emily: Are you okay?
He enters her phone number and taps her a text: “Take Kent to Eddie’s.” He looks up, sees a black sport utility vehicle pull into the circular entrance of a swanky downtown hotel. Looks back down at his device, wonders whether he should add “I love you,” which he tells her only in the dark. Will that get Emily to drive Kent to his uncle Eddie’s house outside Reno?
No, it’ll just engender a cascade of calls and texts from Emily. Or she’ll ignore it as spam or the work of a manic version of Jeremy. Maybe she won’t even recognize the phone number of the second phone.
He pictures her the morning they broke up, after making love on that futon. Or trying to. A rare instance in which Jeremy couldn’t finish. Couldn’t keep going. It’s okay, Emily said, brushing his cheek with the outside of her hand. Without warning, he started in about the bowl of half-eaten raisin bran that Kent had left on the floor, how much the boy needed to start acting his age.
“You’re upset over cereal.”
“You’re not listening.”
And then, before Jeremy could do his thing, Emily said: “I’m done.”
It was like a rifle shot. Cold, true, hollow-point rhetoric. You’d have to have a magic cape to stop the power of her words. And the stuff that came after, the tears and the explanation, really unnecessary. Something had changed, she told Jeremy, in the preceding few days and leading up to them, an even more confrontational Jeremy, as well as a feeling Emily couldn’t shake that he would undermine every beautiful thing.
“You are right. You are right more often than anyone gives you credit for. It doesn’t scare me that you’re almost always right, Jeremy. I like it that you speak your truth. What scares me is that being right isn’t ultimately what it’s about for you. That’s a means to an end. To burn it down.”
She’d had enough. All the while, Jeremy kept thinking about Kent. For days, Jeremy could think only about the boy and the argument they’d had over the rocket ship puzzle—whether to put the borders first as Jeremy suggested or group the pieces by color. Life had been teetering on the precipice, worse than that, Jeremy being held from plummeting by Emily and Kent—all the others having already abandoned him, or he them, and then, splat. Down he went.
In his phone, he texts: “Please.” That should get her attention. She used to beg him to try to learn the proper use of the word “please.” It became almost a joke between them. He’d ask for something and Emily would say “What’s the magic word?” And Jeremy would say: “‘Abracadabra’?”
Jeremy looks at his text. He taps: “I love you and Kent.” He erases it. Taps it again. He feels the sting of tears. Wipes them away. Hits send.
He’s poised to turn off the phone when, instead, he pulls up the calculator. He’s thinking of Harry’s admonition: AskIt. Ask the computer. Is that what Harry meant? If so, ask it what?
At the least, Jeremy finds he’s asking himself a question: do I believe the computer’s prediction?
For some reason, he just can’t get his head around an answer. He, and his computer, have been so discredited, by so many people close to him. Part of him desperately wants the computer to be right; he will be redeemed; he will show the world; he, alone, will save the world. But what if he can’t? What is the cost of being right?
And what is the cost of being wrong? How much more egg can his face withstand? On the corner, he sees a line of newspaper dispensers for the Chronicle, Examiner, Guardian, and one of those free real estate throwaways. Is that my play? Call a newspaper, or maybe that local TV reporter who a while ago mentioned Jeremy and his algorithm as part of a bigger story on a new generation of business ideas attracting venture capital?
And say what? My iPad thinks there’s going to be a war!
Proof. I need some proof, he thinks. He knows what he’d like to ask the computer:
Who is responsible for this alleged attack on San Francisco, the one that will ignite a global conflict?
And what can Jeremy do about it?
If none of the above, who is fucking with Jeremy? Why?
He’s already investigating who might be fucking with him, so he focuses for a moment on the first two questions. They are simple inquiries, at least on their face. But how to ask such questions is another matter altogether, a remarkably complex matter. In fact, it might prove impossible, even for a very good programmer like Jeremy.
The trouble is, in the first place the computer wasn’t built to answer such questions any more than an automobile was built to, say, make a breakfast smoothie. Sure, in theory, both an automobile and a blender are machines, and the car probably could be disassembled and its parts used to build a blender. But not in an eyeblink. No more can this computer, which was built to predict the timing, extent and length of conflict, be easily programmed to divulge who is responsible for an attack, and why.
Maybe he can get there indirectly.
“What if . . .” he says aloud. Then pauses, and looks up to see a woman stride by under an umbrella emblazoned with a Gap logo. She’s glancing at him—the man in the red slicker mumbling to himself. She quickens her pace.
The computer projects that war is imminent because of a change in the world’s circumstances—in a range of different variables. But, Jeremy wonders, would the computer still predict conflict if only one of
those variables changed, or several, or a different combinations of variables? Or would the computer still predict conflict if a single variable were removed from the equation? For instance, Jeremy is asking himself, if the conflict rhetoric in Russia hadn’t intensified, would the computer still prophesy Armageddon? What if there were no increase in the shipments of tantalum?
These are questions that he can ask this computer, at least indirectly. He can, he realizes, ask it to run simulations that remove a particular variable. He can ask it to remove two of the variables. He can mix and match and change the circumstances to see which of the variables are most instrumental in the computer’s projection of conflict.
And then, he can make a key deduction. If one variable stands out, he’ll know where to focus. It’s an idea, at least, a way of taking back some control from this suddenly inscrutable computer, from the conspiracy that has overtaken his life.
The computer has identified nine different potential variables, including the six different changes to rhetoric, tantalum, weather and the arrest. Jeremy does a quick computation of the number of simulations he’s got to ask the computer to crunch. Nine variables, a factorial of nine. Into the calculator on his phone, he does the math: 9 times 8 times 7 times 6 times 5 times 4 times 3 times 2 times 1 = 362,880.
362,880 different combinations of events.
Nothing. Not for a computer with any kind of horsepower.
Might take a few hours. That’s the easy part. But Jeremy’s got to program the computer with the question. How long will that take?
Would it even work?
He grimaces. First, he’s got to deal with Andrea. He glances at the clock. Still a few minutes to go. He’s about to turn off the phone when he sees he’s got a notification. He clicks. It’s a news flash about tantalum, the precious metal that has seen an explosive rise in shipments.
He clicks and discovers not a news story but a press release. It’s from a company called Elektronic Space Suppliers. Jeremy recalls that’s the company in Turkey that ships tantalum, the company whose stock price has soared. According to the company’s press release, a mere three lines, it has secured a long-term contract to deliver tantalum to a consortium of Silicon Valley companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Google, Intel and others.