The Doomsday Equation

by Matt Richtel

  She hesitates, looking his way, shaking her head.

  “I’m leaving,” he says.

  She sighs. “You’re an asshole, Jeremy. You know that. I deserve to be treated better. But then, so do you.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I owe you one. I’m here to pay my debt. But after that I’m done.” She gestures to a valet who stands beneath the awning, arms crossed. He hustles over and grabs her ticket, says something into a walkie-talkie. She walks back into the restaurant.

  Mere seconds later, the sport utility vehicle with the black tinted windows pulls up. Andrea walks to it, opens the back, puts her purse inside, waves the man off when he offers her the keys and points to Jeremy, who is walking across the street.

  She climbs into the passenger seat. Jeremy, having reached the other side of the street, scopes his surroundings, unsure what he’s looking for, clicks to power off his phone. He takes the keys of the car, pulls off his rain slicker and hands it and his nearly drained coffee to the bewildered valet, and climbs inside.

  CHAPTER 25

  YOU’VE CHANGED,” Andrea says.

  Jeremy adjusts to the light inside the car. He sees the long hair, the preternaturally smooth skin, the overall look of someone who doesn’t have to take too many pains to rise from attractive to irresistible but takes pains nonetheless. He tastes her perfume in the back of his throat. She’s got a half smile, knowing, practiced, showing perfect white teeth against light brown skin. But her discomfort is betrayed by the tight cross of her arms against her chest, the way she’s pulled back against the door, as far as she can get from him. Beneath her blouse, he can picture the blue tattoo. Tipsy, one night, she showed him, a jagged knife starting just above her left breast, pointing at an angle toward her heart and cleavage.

  “Not the patsy you remember.”

  “Your hair. Longer. Nice. And, it’s true, you were always more of a counterpuncher. Usually, you’d wait for the slightest provocation before going on the attack. I’d heard through the grapevine that you’d gotten more aggressive but this is an impressive display by any standard.”

  “Grapevine.” He puts the keys into the ignition. Does she mean Evan? He’ll draw her out.

  She ignores the edgy comment. Just another Jeremy trap. “Where are we going? I don’t have all night.”

  He looks in his hand and discovers he’s holding a plastic key, a fob, one of those newfangled deals that let you start the ignition not by inserting it but by merely pressing a button on the car. He presses, and the car purrs to life.

  “You owe me. Besides, it’s a nice night for a drive.”

  Jeremy takes in the decked out dashboard, a built-in nav screen, a CD changer, the radio tuned to NPR but with the volume so low it creates only a hum of background chatter.

  “Sweet rental for a low-level bureaucrat.”

  She shrugs, uncrosses her arms. “I’m rolling my eyes. Are you really planning to drive wearing your backpack?”

  Blood rushes to his face. Rookie move, so clearly betraying his attachment to his device. And without realizing he’d done it. He slips out of it and nestles it between the back of his legs and his seat.

  He pulls into thickening traffic, eliciting a honk. “You were saying.”

  “What was I saying?”

  “You owe me.”

  “So no foreplay, then. I was hoping we’d have a drink.” She clears her throat. “Jeremy, we’ve always been honest with each other. We talked, and it was real stuff. I always told you what I knew.” She pauses. She shifts, sitting straight back but looking out the window into the rain, a faraway look. She turns back and meets his gaze. She has clear blue eyes, their power undercut with the slightest puffy redness, sleeplessness.

  Jeremy turns away, feeling an adrenaline burst he tries not to show. She’s going to lay it out for him, whatever it is. Maybe. Something in her voice sounds far less than revelatory. It sounds sincere, even kind. He remembers their rapport, that handful of conversations where he stretched out on the couch in his sleeping gear—boxer shorts, T-shirt, socks—and got lost in the banter. Work talk turned to personal chat, the edges of flirtation, light pokes around the edges of personal matters. He picked up bits of her failed relationships and a childhood that had a painful core she was careful to guard with thick yellow police tape. He felt kinship with her, liked that she was protecting him amid the brass, but also felt an uneasiness. It’s not that he didn’t trust her intentions, or maybe he did. It was more that he couldn’t get comfortable with her emotions. The playfulness excited him, left him feeling challenged, but feeling that he always had to be on, that low-grade intensity was the price of admission in talking to Andrea. With Emily, by contrast, he could be completely at ease or, rather, as much at ease as he could possibly be.

  “No foreplay,” he says. They’ve hit a stop light at Howard. Jeremy, eager to get out of the bumper-to-bumper traffic, puts on his blinker. He reminds himself that Andrea lied about Evan. Urges himself to be careful.

  “What I’m about to tell you I didn’t know. I swear that to you.”

  He doesn’t say anything. He glances in the rearview mirror at the car that followed him onto Howard. A fancy black sedan. Doesn’t look suspicious. He sees Andrea glance in the passenger-side mirror. Following his gaze? Suspicious herself? Hoping someone is tagging along?

  She continues. “I found out a few weeks ago, or that’s when I began suspecting. But this was my first chance to come out without eliciting a fuss. I came out to—”

  He interrupts. “Visit another asset.” It’s what she’d told him earlier on the phone. He wants to remind her of her lies. Keep her off balance, keep piling up chits.

  He hits a patch of cars, guns the powerful engine and slips into the right lane then back into the left. Buys himself half a block of clear sailing. He passes Third Street. Were he to take a left, he realizes, he could soon be at home. He could query the building manager. Needs to. Was it Andrea who will appear on the surveillance tape, busting into his condo?

  “I’m sorry,” Andrea blurts out.

  A sizzle burns through him. Jesus, he thinks, it’s the government. They’re the ones who have duped my computer and she’s here to fess up.

  “The maps, the warnings. Unbelievable. Harry.”

  She shakes her head. She’s not understanding him.

  Harry. Dead. He’s holding that back. Does she know? Will she tip her hand?

  “Let’s just start with basics. Was Harry involved?”

  “With what?”

  “Harry introduced us.”

  “Okay, so?”

  “Why?”

  “He consulted for us. He helped us understand patterns of conflict. He said you could do the same. You and your computer.”

  “He wanted to see me go down, right? He felt threatened.”

  “Jeremy, Harry cherished you, like a son.”

  Jeremy feels a terrible twitch, grief. Harry, in a pool of his own blood.

  “And Evan is involved too. Don’t lie to me. I know about you and Evan.”

  Jeremy flashes on a theory: Evan, starting SEER, a new company that crunches Big Data in order to predict the future, creates the illusion of an impending conflict and then swoops in to save the day and, in the process, lend a helping hand to Jeremy, the mad and incompetent genius with Harry in league. A proof of concept and a marketing coup?

  What is SEER? What’s Evan up to?

  The half-baked theory makes no sense, clears Jeremy’s brain as instantly as it appeared. Why would they kill Harry? Had he realized the folly and was he threatening to tell Jeremy the truth? It’s all so far-fetched.

  “I’m not jockeying for position in this conversation, Jeremy. We can drop the dance. Just hear me out. As it turns out,” she starts, pauses, picks up again, “you were not wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “Don’t play stupid, Jeremy. This is embarrassing enough. About Al Anbar. And the skirmish at the Afghani-Russian border. Both of them. I
had no idea.”

  He looks at her, then out the window, eyes glazed at the skewed light of urban neon coming through the prism of drizzle. Al Anbar, the Afghani skirmish, the two mini-conflicts that the U.S. military used as a test of the validity of Jeremy and his algorithm. They told him that he and his computer were wrong, that they had miscalculated the length and nature of the conflict.

  “You weren’t wrong,” she repeats. “Put another way, Jeremy, you were right. Your computer was right. You, it—your computer—correctly identified when those conflicts would end, with, frankly, eerie accuracy. Almost like you had a crystal ball.”

  He realizes he’s holding his breath. He blinks, hot tears in his eyes. He repeats the words in his head. Did he hear right? He forces himself to pick out an object through the window. It’s an umbrella, being unfurled by a tall woman in a long, shiny raincoat standing next to an ATM.

  He feels a pulsing around his clavicle. He puts his hand on his shoulder, suddenly, momentarily, grateful for the pain. It says to him: you are here and this is not a dream.

  “Jeremy, we had our reasons. . . .” She pauses. “Not me. I didn’t know. I suppose they had their reasons. That’s a lot of power you had that we didn’t understand. It was, is, a potential game-changer. Understandable enough, right? That’s what I thought too. But I think it’s something else.”

  She’s not making sense. But it doesn’t matter. Jeremy’s finally getting a grip on the conversation. He turns to her. “I was right? I was right?!” Not a question; an accusation.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. I just—”

  “Bullshit!”

  She puts up her hands, surrender, and a primal show of defense.

  “I know things haven’t worked out for you. But I thought you should know what happened. Maybe there’s some way we can work together in the future. I don’t know. I’m in way over my head here.”

  Someplace, in a faraway corner of his brain, he hears a piercing noise, a honking. He looks down at his white-knuckled fists gripping the wheel. Honk. He’s at a green light, cars piling up behind him. HOOOONKK.

  He puts his left hand over his right because it keeps him from reaching out and grabbing Andrea. I was right?

  “When I started to piece this together I figured they just didn’t want a computer nerd to know more than they did but it’s not that. It’s something else. To be honest, I’m not sure they ever gave a damn about you and your computer.”

  He waves her down with a hand. Shut up, shut up! If the computer was right before, then is it right now?

  “It’s about something else? Like what? What do you mean they didn’t give a damn about me and the computer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he roars. “It’s a trap, a game.”

  Jeremy pictures Evan coming out of her car. Too many coincidences; how can he now, suddenly, take her confession at face value?

  Honk. Finally, he punches the accelerator. She continues: “Why would I make up something this embarrassing? Jeremy, please, I can appreciate the skepticism. You’ve gotten the runaround. So have I. Believe me.”

  The sound of her voice makes him want to scream. He paws his pocket, feels his cell phone, making sure it’s there. He pictures Emily, her hair half covering her face, sees Kent. What’s he supposed to do; call her? Warn her? Say what? Emily, you and Kent should arrange transport to the moon, just in case.

  In case of what, Jeremy?

  The end of the world.

  Or maybe, for whatever reason, the government is playing with him—piling lie on lie. Does it have the capacity to mess with his algorithm? Probably, but why? What could its incentive possibly be?

  “Give me your phone,” he says.

  “Um, no.”

  “Fuck you. Log cabin.”

  “What?”

  “What’s the log cabin?”

  “I saw him, Andrea. Evan. I saw you and Evan.”

  “What?”

  He looks at Andrea. She brings a thumb to her mouth.

  “Everything connects together, somehow, all of you. It’s in the V, on Harry’s desk, with the numbers. In the computer.”

  “It’s in the computer? What is?”

  “Harry’s dead. But you know that.”

  “What?” Pause. “Harry Ives?”

  Jeremy spits a foul half laugh, opens the door. He starts running.

  CHAPTER 26

  HEAD DOWN AGAINST the wind, he dashes away from the car and into the oncoming drizzle. Navigates a handful of damp commuters coming the other way. He runs on. Brain searing, like an iron pan that’s been too long on the stove. Too hot to be useful. One thought predominates: keep the backpack out of the rain, protect the iPad from the wet and cold.

  Hence his direction. Into the wind.

  The iPad, the computer, the algorithm. It was right.

  He glances over his shoulder and sees Andrea’s big car heading in the opposite direction, or trying to, absorbed in traffic, stymied. Good, right? He had to get away from her but, if only he could’ve kept his cool, he had a captive audience, someone who knew something. He needs to look her in the eye and go point by point, assertion by assertion, lie by lie.

  Does she know what the computer is telling him? That the whole world explodes in, what, twenty-four hours?

  Is that the real reason why she’s here?

  “Easy there.”

  The voice belongs to a pedestrian he’s nearly collided with. He skids on the brakes, does a half spin, stopping short of three smokers huddled outside the bar, impervious to the chill. He catches eyes with another smoker, guy with droopy jowls. Guy flicks his cigarette, coughs, half nods, emphysema-laughs. “You okay, pal?” Adds: “You know it’s a rough day when a smoker asks if you’re doing okay.”

  Jeremy starts running again, his legs churning in erratic rhythm with his frantic mind, shuffling and tossing puzzle pieces. Harry, dead; Evan, mysteriously appeared; Andrea, conceding his computer was right; log cabin; AskIt.

  At the end of the block, Jeremy passes a shuttered sandwich shop, turns left, leans up against the concrete, barely registering the fact that, far from protecting himself from the weather by pressing up against the wall, he remains exposed to the direction of the wind and wet. The drizzle has intensified, now just shy of real rain. To his right, a tall man in a long jacket comes across the intersection, walking Jeremy’s way. The man’s face is down, shadowed. At the corner, the man looks up and Jeremy flinches, a threat in every glance.

  Jeremy looks left, sees an opening between the building he’s leaning against and the one next to it, an alley, a refuge.

  He slips inside it, sidestepping a homeless man who seems fully passed out, wrapped in a sleeping bag, covered in refuse. The man mutters something, rolls over. Jeremy winces at the stench of spoiled milk and dry leaves. He steps backward, bumping into the bottom rungs of a fire escape.

  He closes his eyes. All the questions and disparate pieces of evidence fall away and he pictures Emily. Just at this moment, he can see her putting the broccoli crowns in front of Kent, cajoling him to eat just one, just one, please, allowing him to talk her into letting him instead eat only mac-’n’-cheese for the four-hundredth night in a row. Then he hears her voice, talking to Jeremy. I’m done. He knows she means it. Done with his nonsense. He instantly feels why. As soon as something gets close to great, even just good, he attacks it. Not just with her, with Kent. The fight they had, over the puzzle. Why was he trying to outflank a little boy in a conversation about how best to solve a cardboard puzzle of a rocket ship?

  What’s the point of saving the world?

  Jeremy shakes off the pointless image, and question. He opens his eyes. He pulls his phone from his pocket. He needs . . . who? Nik, the police? Demand answers from Evan? Isn’t that Peckerhead’s office nearby? So what? Would he even be there? Jeremy goes to the list of his most recent calls. Presses Nik’s number. It rings and rings. No answer. Into his assistant’s voice ma
il: “I need your help.” Click. He looks up, sees in the distance a foggy horizon, vapors and mist swirling around the apartment complexes on the skyline, near the ballpark. He thinks he makes out his own apartment building in the mist.

  Was it Andrea who busted into his apartment? Evan?

  Took his knife and stabbed Harry.

  Jeremy paws in his back pocket for his wallet and pulls from it a business card, the one belonging to his building manager. He dials the number on it.

  After the first ring, a pickup. “Aaron Isaacs.”

  “Did you get the security tapes?”

  A brief pause, the fuckface getting his bearings. “Glad you called, Mr. Stillwater.”

  “Did you get the tapes?”

  “I got permission to go through them. I’m not entirely sure what to look for but I started looking.” He pauses.

  “Hello?”

  “A lot of people go in and out of the building—”

  “Anyone in the middle of the night looking like they might want to play Jack the Ripper with my couch?” Jeremy asks.

  “I don’t much like the tone.”

  This is actually, Jeremy realizes, exactly what he’s hoping for.

  “Are you sure you were looking at the security tapes and not just spending another afternoon eating Cracker Jacks and watching Oxygen?”

  There’s a silence. Then, calmly: “Mr. Stillwater, why don’t you come down here and check them out for yourself? Maybe you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for.”

  “I just insulted you by saying you watch girl TV in the afternoons and eat junk food. Did I mention I suspect you jack off watching women on the front-door security camera?”

  “Look, I know you’re frustrated—”

  “The cops are there.” Must be following the evidence, looking for Harry’s killer.

  A tiny silence, then: “You’re being very paranoid, Mr. Stillwater.”

  “Tell them I didn’t do it.”

  “What?”

  Click.

  No cops.

  Something compels Jeremy to look up. He sees the woman.

  She’s standing across the street, at a bus stop, covered by a thick plastic shell, bathed in the murky yellow neon of a McDonald’s. She’s thin, shapely, arms crossed, familiar. It’s the woman from the bar last night and the Embarcadero. His stalker. She’s looking at Jeremy, not making the slightest effort to hide her interest in him.