Cassio took charge of organizing the research group. Focusing on a new passion infused his body with the tension of well-being: the challenges were vast and complex, right at the level of his neural ambition. The fact that the technology’s potential hazards were still impossible to quantify—these were new, violent, devastatingly specialized techniques for approaching the data—made the job feel like a return to the simple and beautiful things life had to offer, things that didn’t require intricate abilities such as talking to people, participating in society, or smiling.

He’d arrived alone in Bariloche. Located near the southern end of the continent, surrounded by mountains and the blue mirrors of water, it had been the destination of choice for his earliest camping trips with his brotherhood of nerds. Cassio had spent the best summers of his life pushing deep into the swamps, advancing through the silvery conifers, swimming in cobalt-blue lakes, being eaten alive by horseflies, and taking respectful ownership of the immensity like some creature from Tolkien. Back then, everyone wore bermuda shorts, and no one shaved or cut their hair. Bariloche was a male arcadia bustling with sports—snowboarding, rock climbing—that he aspired to learn. Here were his most highly valued memories, his moments in the shadow of a shining, distinctly masculine life: striking out, fishing for trout in the lakes, offering soliloquies to the mountains, and investigating the darkest corners of his mind—the best ecstasy dealer he’d ever known.

And now he was working at the Balseiro Institute. If he hadn’t fallen under the Venusian spell of cryptography, he would have loved to study here. The fact that his lab belonged to the Balseiro was for him a hero’s badge: Balseiro was the closest to a romantic dream of academic life, but the fact that he was here to work on a secret disruptive technology project was the cherry icing on the nerd cake.

In certain places, the sky above the mountain range makes itself absolute, the clouds brushing against one’s very throat. Even Cassio could feel these sensations, and he’d developed a childlike ability to appreciate them. He rented a little apartment on Onelli Street, a block from the waterfront; from his armchair he could see Nahuel Huapi Lake stretching out like a languid blue animal. Eventually, he stopped thinking about Melina, though every so often he used her to boot up violent, abstract, haughty spasms in the shower. He decorated his room with a limited-edition poster of Chewbacca heading into the forest with his bandoliers of ammunition and his AK-47, a rousing portrait of the formerly tame beast that would accompany him from now until the multimillion-dollar sale of the company.