I drive toward the address listed on a piece of paper that sits in my lap, the address I pulled from Adrianna’s office, the only clue I’ve got to go on. This is where we’ll find the computers associated with Biogen, ADAM, the Advanced Life Computing department—whatever the hell any of that is.
The phone rings. I answer.
“It’s me,” responds a male voice. Bullseye. He never calls; he hates the phone.
“You cracked the thumb drive?” I ask.
“Couldn’t do it. Tried everything.”
I digest the disappointment. “Will you try one more thing for me?”
I glance at the sheet of paper, though by now I’ve memorized the information. I tell Bullseye that I suspect the user name might be some variation of one of the following: Lulu Adrianna Pederson, or LAPederson, or maybe ADAM1.0, or Biogen. The password, I say, could be some version of Newton—with various different spellings.
“Bullseye, it could be—I’ll spell it out: ‘N-e-w-t–0-n–1–2–3.’ ”
“I’ll call you back,” Bullseye says. He sounds more excited than I’ve heard him in years.
Before I can hang up, Samantha takes the phone.
“Are you still with Lane?” she asks.
“Yep.”
“Is there any way around that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I dreamed about you last night. The two of you were standing in the parking lot at Disneyland. You were trying to take her inside, and she wanted to stay in the car,” she says. “It’s a message.”
“I get it.”
“You’re like a brother to me, Nathaniel.”
“Okay.”
“So please don’t take this wrong. I just wish you wouldn’t drag your grandmother around on one of your treks. Take her home—to her retirement home.”
“I gotta go, Sam. Grandma’s doing just fine.”
We hang up.
We’ve arrived at an industrial building located in a desolate cul-de-sac a few blocks off Highway 101—the thoroughfare that connects San Francisco to everything south of it.
The single-story beige building has a corrugated roof and tinted windows with bars on them. No signs on the building. No signs of life. Feels like industrial storage. We park in back in an empty lot.
Grandma’s fiddling with her cell phone. Not playing, just looking at the screen and pushing on the buttons.
“Do you want to wait here?”
“I’d like to see Harry,” she responds, without looking up.
“Soon enough,” I say. “I’m back in five.”
In front, I pull on the cool handle of the thick metal door. It’s locked. Next to the door is a keypad. Into the keypad, I type: “Newt0n123.” I hear a click. I pull down on the door handle. It opens.
The first thing I notice is the low noise and the cool air; it’s the hum and lower temperature emitted by an air-conditioning system used to cool a gaggle of servers.
My eyes adjust to low light. I look across a relatively small room—perhaps four times the size of my apartment. It has a high ceiling and a smooth concrete floor. In its center are rows of metal racks holding uniform square boxes. It’s a dazzling array of computing power.
Along the wall where I’ve entered stands another set of racks. On them sit two dozen monitors. Page after page of text scrolls rapidly down the screens.
These servers and monitors form some sort of nerve center.
But it’s the human that is of the most interest to me.
He sits across the room at a metal desk, his back to me. He wears a gray hooded sweatshirt. He fiddles with a small square object.
“Hello, Mr. Idle,” he says without turning around.
“You drive a Prius,” I say.
He starts to turn. “Our dependence on foreign oil is bad for our sovereignty. Besides, gas is expensive. And the Prius has nice trunk space to store rifles.”
Staring at me is a ruddy face, a few years older than me, or aged poorly or baked by years in the sun, thick jaw, big shoulders, doughy nose that’s been broken more than once. He’s got an edgy toughness men instantly respect and some women wouldn’t appreciate.
“What’s your title at Biogen? Chief Mauling Officer?”
“Guess again.”
He’s got a mild accent. English? Australian?
I divert my eyes from him so that I can look at the servers. On the side of the racks there is a sign with initials: “HMC.” I’ve seen the initials before—on the piece of paper I took from Adrianna’s office.
“I get it,” I say.
“I doubt that.”
“Human Memory Crusade.”
He cocks his head to the side.
“You’re recording people’s memories. You’re recording my grandmother’s memories. You’re storing them here. Why?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Would it be easier if I asked true/false questions?”
“Sure.”
“You’re studying the pace at which people lose their memories.”
“True.”
“You are?” I surprise myself sometimes.
“Sounds very sinister, doesn’t it? Recording people’s stories. Alert the Marines.”
“Vince is involved? And the nursing home?”
He stops tinkering with his box
“You’re getting warmer.”
I pull out my phone.
“I’m calling the police.”
“I wouldn’t. Listen. We made a mistake. We were wrong.”
“We?”
He’s got my attention. He goes back to tinkering.
“We want to get the truth out of her as much as you do. We need the truth. Without sounding too dramatic, it has major national security implications,” he says. “We thought you were going to be able to help us get the information out of her head.
“Adrianna?”
“But you didn’t come through. So we’ll get it from her ourselves.”
“Her?” I repeat.
He shakes his head without looking up.
“What’re you working on?” I ask. It strikes me he’s stringing me along, stalling for time. Maybe he’s erasing some evidence.
“Mr. Idle, if I were you, I’d be wary of trusting anyone—your family members, your closest friends, lovers, the police. Anyone. People have a way of looking out for themselves, even the ones you share your secrets with—especially them.”
“My grandmother?”
“Like I said, you’re getting warmer.”
He looks up and at the monitors behind me showing scrolling text. Periodically, a word pops out and takes up a quarter of a screen in large font. On one monitor, I happen to see the word “Cadillac.” On another, the words “butter churn.”
On the top right edge of each monitor is an image of the globe. Within each image, a red dot located in a different spot within the globe.
“You’re experimenting around the country, around the world.”
He looks down and fiddles intently with the box in his hand. His eyes fall to the ground. He looks at a wire that extends from the small object he’s holding to the servers.
“You’re not just warm. You’re hot,” he says.
“This thing is everywhere.”
“You’re about to get scorching.”
He presses a button on the box he’s holding. He stands, walks away from me, towards the back of the room. I take a step to follow.
The servers and the monitors explode. I feel intense heat. My phone flies from my grasp. I picture Grandma, sitting alone in the car, vulnerable, keeping some great truth.
Surrounded by fire, I grow woozy, then succumb.