Four

Mom opens her eyes and blinks so fast I wonder if she’s trying to communicate in Morse code.

At first, the screen displays only static.

As Ada frantically types on the keyboard, the picture becomes clearer. Soon after, I see a ghostly outline of the room from Mom’s point of view.

“This part will be encrypted shortly,” Ada says to no one in particular. “For now, it’ll help us get an idea of what Nina sees.”

I make out shapes that correspond with the people in the room. Since this is Mom’s neural data we’re looking at, I half expect to look taller and handsomer—and maybe even have a halo over my head—but I’m just a shapeless blob, same as everyone else on the screen. I think that’s from our algorithms, though, and not my mom’s true perception of me.

The metadata shows up next to the shapes, just like the thought bubbles I expected. I don’t know about Mom, but I find these bubbles helpful. They make me recall the names of a few of the shyer engineers in the room.

Mom attempts to remove the brain-scanning contraption from her head as she looks around. Uncle Abe rushes in to help her. Some of the nearby monitors go berserk, but no one seems worried about it.

“This is so weird.” She waves her hand next to where her brother’s nametag data must be. “I feel like the Terminator.”

Uncle Abe helps Mom gain a greater range of motion by removing more monitoring equipment.

“Can I change what these subtitles say?” Mom asks after a few seconds. “Can some of them be in Russian?”

“You’ll have to learn how to use the mental computer interface first,” Ada says. “That’s something we’ll work on for the rest of the day.” When Mom frowns, she adds, “If you want to change a couple of them manually right now, you can. In fact, it’ll give us a small head start since we were going to have you type on a keyboard during the interface portion anyway. Let’s remove that IV and the rest of the gear so you can be more comfortable.”

“I’ll go get the nurse,” Uncle Abe says. “It’s safe to take all this stuff off, right?”

“Quite safe,” JC says. “Most of that equipment is meant to collect data for us, but we have a dozen more subjects to go. We’d need to remove all those devices to take the brain scans in a few minutes anyway. Besides, the Brainocytes are now collecting the most important data.”

When my uncle leaves, Ada tells Mom, “We’ll teach you how to keep your Einstein database up to date. It uses face and voice recognition technology, and it’ll know when you meet someone for the first time. From there, you’ll learn how to store a new person’s information. Relatedly, for future phases of your treatment, your Brainocytes will start monitoring your brain activity at crucial moments, such as when you interact with people you know well. Should your condition worsen, the Brainocytes will help your brain by recreating these healthier brain states when you meet that person again.”

“She means you won’t just see text, but also feel the right feelings,” I chime in.

The door opens, and the nurse, Olga, lumbers in, followed by my uncle.

She frees Mom from the IV, the blood pressure monitor, and all the other medical equipment. With a lack of curiosity bordering on the pathological, the nurse once again leaves the room.

Mom shuffles over to the monitor.

“Here,” JC says. “Touch the text box you want to edit and type in your custom information.”

“Wait,” Ada says. “If she’s going to use the keyboard anyway, why don’t I start the BCI learning algorithm?”

“We won’t gain much by capturing these few keystrokes,” JC says, “but go ahead if you want.”

Ada’s fingers dance over the keyboard, something pings, and she gives Mom a thumbs-up.

Mom proceeds to edit the metadata bubbles.

“That’s not funny,” Uncle Abe says when he sees the bubble she changed above my head. She replaced “Mike Cohen” with Russian text that roughly translates to, “Dear self. If you ever need this reminder and can no longer recognize Misha, your only son, it’s best for everyone if you arrange for yourself to be euthanized.”

Above Uncle Abe’s head is something similar.

After I read JC’s bubble, which says, “Interesting young man,” I realize we’re literally intruding on Mom’s private thoughts.

“When will you turn on the encryption?” I ask Ada.

“Now, actually,” Ada says and presses a few keys. When the feed from Mom’s vision goes static, she adds, “The data going to Einstein and other servers was already encrypted, so there’s nothing to do there.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Mom says. “If I need to sacrifice my privacy to help with the study, I’m more than happy to do so.”

JC and Ada exchange looks. I strong-armed everyone into letting Mom into the study because she’s my mom, but I also knew she’d make an outstanding participant—as her willingness to let us spy on her demonstrates. Not that I would’ve done anything differently had she been the worst patient in the world; when it comes to Mom, filial loyalty trumps all.

“You don’t have to do that, Mom,” I tell her. “We have a protocol. After the initial setup is complete, we want to make sure the participants enjoy the privacy they deserve.”

“Are you ready to work on the BCI?” Ada asks, looking eager to change the subject.

Mom glances at me questioningly, so I decipher the Ada-speak for her. “She means learn how to use your new Brainocytes as a computer interface.”

“Right,” Ada says. “Though I think Nina understood me.” Facing Mom, she says, “To be more specific, you’ll work on learning how to type with just your mind. It’ll be easy. First, we need the Brainocytes to observe you typing for real for a few hours. Afterwards, you’ll learn to type mentally, using your imagination. If all works as planned, my team’s algorithm will catch your imaginary keystrokes, since mental actions light up the same parts of the brain as physical actions.”

The door opens, and a big, dark-skinned man in scrubs walks in, pushing a wheelchair along.

“I’m here for Nina Cohen,” he says.

“That’s me,” Mom says.

“You’re scheduled for an MRI,” the guy explains and steers the chair toward her.

Mom leans away and says, “I’m not getting into that.”

The guy looks confused.

“She can walk to the MRI,” I tell him. “You can leave the chair here. Will that be a problem?”

“No,” the guy says, “but Dr. Carter said—”

“Such an overly litigious country,” Mom cuts in. “These doctors like to cover their asses to the point of insanity.” She stubbornly folds her arms and gets up. “I won’t be a part of this foolishness. Please lead the way, young man.”

The guy folds the wheelchair and leaves it by the wall. Under his breath, he mutters, “Okay, but the doc said to use the chair.”

“When will she be back?” I ask the guy.

“In about an hour and a half,” he says.

“Do you want anything to eat afterwards?” I ask Mom.

“A turkey sandwich,” she responds, “with extra mayo.”

“You got it,” I say and suppress a smile at the look on Ada’s face. I could’ve predicted she’d cringe at Mom’s food choice.

Mom and her disgruntled guide exit into the corridor.

“A sandwich sounds good,” my uncle says. “Especially one with extra mayo.”

Ada takes this one in stride. I guess she’s more invested in my mom’s health.

“Anyone else hungry?” I ask, looking around the room. “I’m buying.”

Pretty much everyone takes me up on the offer, supporting my theory that most people—even if they’re fasting or on a strict diet—will gladly gobble down free food.

When we get to the cafeteria, I realize the staff in Mom’s room must’ve texted or emailed the majority of the other Techno employees, because most of them are here. Grinning, I extend my offer of a free lunch to them as well.

Grabbing a tray, I pull my uncle along and stand behind Ada.

She loads her tray with a salad, an apple, two bananas, and a heap of steamed vegetables.

Uncle Abe gives her tray a dubious onceover. “What about meat and bread?”

JC chuckles, and I fight a smile of my own. For the second time today, my uncle is about to regret his question.

To Ada’s credit, this particular optimum nutrition lecture is the shortest one I’ve heard her deliver. It only takes her a couple of minutes.

“So the easiest formula,” Ada concludes, “is to maximize your micronutrient intake while eating as few calories as possible. The best route to that is whole, unprocessed, plant-based foods.”

My uncle demonstrates how little Ada’s spiel influenced him by getting a very processed and not very plant-based ham sandwich. He believes in the Russian proverb that states, “Bread is the head of everything,” and worships meat to the point that ham is probably enshrined in his kitchen.

As I make my own selections, I wonder why Ada decided to trim down her pitch. Is she finally learning to adjust to her audience? She didn’t even go into her reasons for eating this way—reasons that have little to do with vanity. She wants to maximize her lifespan so she can, and I quote from having heard this a dozen times, “catch as many transformative paradigm shifts in technology as possible and, hopefully, live long enough to catch mind uploading.”

Ada’s nutrient logic must’ve rubbed off on me, because my meal contains half the calories I might’ve chosen otherwise. I also get Mom’s extra mayo in packets instead of slathered on the bread. This way, Mom can decide for herself how junky she wants her meal, leaving my conscience somewhat clean.

We sit down and start eating. Inevitably, the conversation returns to the topic of Brainocytes, and Ada says, “As much as I try, the implications of this technology are difficult to wrap my head around.”

“If it’s hard for you, imagine what it’s like for us mere mortals,” I say.

“We can help so many people,” JC says, his green eyes shining fervently in his freckled face. “We can restore vision to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and memory to those who’ve lost it.”

“All wonderful, but just scratching the surface of what’s possible,” Ada says. “Eventually, we’ll be able to take a regular person and enhance the very thing that makes us human—intelligence, memory, empathy. Can you imagine the impact on the world if much smarter human beings populated the planet?”

JC bites into his burger, Twix-commercial style. Like me, he knows and understands Ada’s transhumanist views. I agree with some of them, as do three quarters of Techno employees. JC probably also agrees, but he doesn’t like these ideas bandied around in front of laymen. According to him, talking about human enhancements is bad for business, thanks largely to Hollywood’s obsession with cautionary tales about human hubris.

“Fine, if you want to keep things prosaic,” Ada says, “just the virtual and augmented realities alone could revolutionize the entertainment and educational systems. Once people start seeing the internet in their minds and watching movies and playing video games in their heads, the daily life of the average person will be unlike anything in history.”

“Right,” JC says. “We’ll turn into a completely self-centered society. I can’t wait.”

“You’re wrong,” Ada says, though she knows JC likes to play devil’s advocate. “When text and email will be done in people’s heads, we’ll end up with technology that’s indistinguishable from telepathy. Being able to communicate through thought will connect the human race more than ever before. Though all that is short term. Having this unprecedented look inside the brain will lead to—”

“—brain simulations,” I say, imitating her voice. “Which will lead to better AI and brain uploading.”

“Which will also lead to fear,” JC picks up, though his voice sounds like Yoda’s instead of Ada’s. “Which will lead to anger, which will lead to hate, which will lead to suffering, and all this leads to the dark side of the Force.”

“That’s not the exact quote,” Ada says, and I have no doubt she’s right. She has an eidetic memory when it comes to pop culture references.

Everyone except my uncle laughs at JC’s joke, but it’s nervous laughter. They all know this work really is scary to some people. This is why JC wants to keep the focus on correcting debilitating conditions for the time being. Even the worst luddites wouldn’t deny Alzheimer’s patients the chance at living a normal life, or quadriplegics the ability to control their environment, or blind people their vision. But as soon as the topic veers into Ada’s favorite territory, improvement of normal function, things get thornier.

My uncle’s pocket rings.

He gives us an apologetic look before taking out his phone and glancing at the screen. Whatever he sees there makes him frown. Getting up, he explains, “It’s my son. I have to take it. Misha, I’ll meet you in Nina’s room.”

With that, he walks away from our table. As someone who knows his son, I shudder and mentally wish Uncle Abe good luck.

The rest of us talk shop for the remainder of the meal, and I learn that Mrs. Sanchez is the next person scheduled to get Phase One enabled. We all know how little this first phase will help her, so the plan is to expedite her treatment and see if the phase that simulates missing brain function will help her more. Ada says she wants to oversee the beginning stages of this, so I volunteer to join her, in part to prove that I do care about the other participants, but also because I don’t have to fake it. Given Mrs. Sanchez’s situation, I genuinely do care about her.

Like Mom, the reason she’s in this study is because of me. In fact, her life was affected by the same event as my mom’s—that fateful car accident. Mom doesn’t remember what happened, so I had to read about the crash online and in police reports. That’s how I learned that a mentally unstable man was waltzing across the Belt Parkway highway. Mom hit the brakes in an effort to spare his life, and she succeeded in that. Unfortunately, she traded hitting the man for hitting the metal curb. What’s even worse is that an SUV swerved to avoid colliding with Mom’s car.

It was Mrs. Sanchez’s son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren in the SUV. Instead of hitting the guardrail on the left, their car went down the hill on the right side and flipped multiple times. They all died, but the poor woman, Mrs. Sanchez, still doesn’t truly know this. Her Alzheimer’s was already in full swing by that time, and the tragic news about her family doesn’t register when someone informs her of what happened. The problem with not informing her, however, is that she repeatedly asks for her son and his family. She’s a widow, so after the accident, the only family she had left was an older brother who passed away a few months ago. I’ve been paying her bills ever since, and when I got the chance, I convinced JC to include her in the study despite her poor health.

“Let’s get Mrs. Sanchez something that’s safe for her diabetes,” I suggest.

Ada gives me an evaluating look. “She likes her junk food, so that’ll be tricky.”

“We’ll get something healthy and something fried, but only show her the healthy choices first,” I say. “We used to do this with Grandpa.”

“Sounds like a great plan,” JC says. “You two go do that, and the rest of us will run ahead.”

I get up, and Ada follows.

“It is a good idea,” Ada says. “Why don’t I get the healthy choices and you get the rest?”

“Sure,” I say.

“Just don’t get her anything with too many carbs,” Ada warns. “She could go into a coma.”

“Deal,” I say and walk back over to the tray line. “We’ll drop off Mom’s sandwich in her room on the way.”

“This tastes like hospital food,” Mrs. Sanchez complains as she eats Ada’s healthier choices.

It is hospital food, but since Mrs. Sanchez doesn’t recall where she is and hates hospitals on top of that, I see no need to remind her. She’ll realize she’s in a hospital when she looks in the mirror and sees her outfit, which is the same white hospital gown Mom was wearing earlier today.

Making a face, Mrs. Sanchez looks at Ada. “Are you sure they didn’t have ice cream?”

“I’m sure,” I lie. “But they did have Jell-O.”

If I left the answer up to Ada, she might’ve blurted out the truth. She’s almost pathologically honest, a bit like young George Washington, though I have my doubts about him. In Russia, we have an identical story about a young kid never telling a lie, only in that version, it was Lenin, the communist revolutionary leader.

“Is the Jell-O sugar-free?” Mrs. Sanchez’s kind, chubby face twists in disgust at the very idea of sugar substitutes.

“No,” I lie again. “So don’t eat too much of it.”

The real reason I said she shouldn’t have too much Jell-O is because Ada might have an aneurism from watching Mrs. Sanchez eat something chock-full of aspartame, or whatever the name of the “evil” artificial sweetener is in Jell-O.

When Mrs. Sanchez tastes her gelatinous treat, she rubs her lips questioningly, and I’m ready for her to catch me in another lie, the way she did with the soda earlier. In that case, she got suspicious because Ada had peeled off the label; misleading someone doesn’t count as lying in Ada’s book. Fortunately, Mrs. Sanchez doesn’t say anything this time and continues consuming her Jell-O.

I study Mrs. Sanchez as she eats, and worry overcomes me again. She and Mom are the same height and age and have similar apple-shaped body types. According to Ada, this increases my mom’s risk of diabetes. Sure enough, Mom’s sugar has been creeping up. Sooner or later, I might have to unleash the full wrath of Ada’s dietary philosophy on her in the hopes that she starts eating healthier—unless the Brainocytes can be used to curb cravings?

While I’m pondering that, a nurse comes in carrying a syringe and a tray of food.

“Didn’t Mrs. Sanchez already get her Brainocytes injection?” I whisper to Ada, then realize the syringe is too small.

“She did,” Ada replies. “This is probably her insulin.”

“Oh, good. You’re already eating,” the nurse says to the older woman and nods gratefully at Ada. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to give you your insulin.”

Mrs. Sanchez looks as excited at the prospect of getting a shot as a toddler would. She nervously twists her giant emerald ring, a treasured gift from her older brother, who, shortly before his death, gave her a much better gift in the form of his consent for her participation in this study. I hope the ring doesn’t make her ask about her brother again—a topic as painful for her as the inquiries about the rest of her family.

My phone vibrates, and I see it’s a text from Uncle Abe telling me my mom is back from her MRI. I want to hurry back, but I decide to stick around a little longer.

“If it’s your mom, you should go,” Ada says, and to my shock, she gently brushes her fingers against my elbow. “My minions are working on the BCI with her, and it’ll be useful if someone with a brain is there.”

Ada is a Team Lead for the software developers at Techno, and she refers to them as minions, even to their faces. Contrary to Ada’s statement, they have more than enough brains and are paid triple what they’d earn at a hedge fund, the usual path for New York experts of their caliber.

“Good luck, Mrs. Sanchez,” I say. “I hope this treatment helps you in the long run.”

Mrs. Sanchez nods, and I head over to Mom’s room.

As I walk through the white corridors, I pass the rooms occupied by the other participants. I continue to Mom’s room without stopping because I want to catch her before she finishes her lunch.

“Hi, kitten,” Mom says in English. Though her English is good, sometimes she overlooks certain subtleties, like the fact that this literal translation of what sounds cute in Russian comes off as fairly emasculating in English.

David, one of Ada’s brightest minions and a second-generation Russian immigrant himself, gives me a sympathetic smirk.

Mom is sitting on the couch with a keyboard on her lap, so it looks like she’s done with lunch after all.

“Your uncle left,” she says, “and you should go too. David tells me I’ll be typing for hours and learning how to control an imaginary dot for the rest of the day after that.”

“That’s nonsense, Mom. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Surely you have some important business to deal with? Or a girl to take out?”

“If you insist, I’ll check in with my secretary and maybe read up on some companies on my phone later,” I say, knowing if I don’t give in to this Jewish mom business of “don’t worry about me” at least a little, she’ll keep it up for a while. Besides, my mom is right. A multibillion-dollar fund doesn’t run itself. As good as my analysts are, I still have to vet all investment ideas, not to mention deal with the investors. I cleared my schedule to be with my mom for this treatment, but there’s always work to be done.

“Good,” she says and picks up her keyboard. “So, David, what do you need me to do?”

The rest of the day passes the way Mom said it would. Under David’s tutelage, she masters the art of typing with her mind. Sometimes, her fingers twitch as though she’s really typing, but most of the time, it looks pretty eerie as text shows up on the screen without any outward action. She simply has to imagine herself typing the words.

The “mental mouse” portion of BCI training is a lot trickier for her, but David assures her she’s doing well and that she’ll have it down in a day or so.

“Why do I have to sleep here?” Mom asks after everyone’s done eating dinner.

“Just in case,” David says. “Dr. Carter agreed to assist our research on the condition that we take every safety precaution.”

“I haven’t even met this Dr. Carter,” Mom says, “but when I do, I’ll give him a piece of my mind.”

She has met him, and I know because I was there. She actually gave him more than a piece of her mind, which is probably why he stayed away today.

“It’ll be fine, Mom. I’ll be around if you need me. Everything will be fine.”

“You’re not staying in the hospital.” Mom takes her ultimatum stance, planting her hands on her hips. “If you stay here, I’ll leave, Dr. Carter or not.”

“I won’t stay in the hospital,” I say, knowing this is a fight I can’t win. “But I’ll be here first thing in the morning.”

Mom considers this for a moment, then shows her approval by removing her hands from her hips.

What I left unsaid is that I’ll be nearby. I booked a room at the HGU Hotel so I’ll be within walking distance, just in case something goes wrong tonight. If Mom knew this, she’d be upset, especially since I booked the six-hundred-dollars per night King Suite, the only room they had available on short notice. Though she knows I make insanely large sums of money, she can’t turn off her legitimate concern over finances, a response she developed when we first moved to the United States. Since I was thirteen then, I didn’t internalize the situation as much as she did. I understand her feelings on the matter, though. We came to the US as refugees with a few hundred dollars in savings, if that. Between the help from Uncle Abe, who let us stay with his family in the beginning, the special immigrant-aid program called NYANA, and the very generous help from the American welfare system, we had just enough to survive while we got settled. Eventually, though, Mom felt uneasy about receiving “government charity” and found a home attendant job on Brighton Beach. Juggling English lessons and a Bachelor’s degree with her grueling job must’ve been a nightmare. I still can’t believe she went through it all. To me, the idea of picking up my stuff and moving to a place where I don’t speak the language and don’t know anyone or anything—say, Spain or Japan—is unthinkably frightening.

What’s even more impressive is that Mom essentially did it for me. Besides the possibility of new pogroms, Mom’s biggest fear was the looming prospect of me getting drafted into the nightmarish institution that was the army in the former USSR. It was a place where being Jewish would’ve made the already horrific hazing practices borderline deadly. I’m glad I didn’t have to go through that. The NYC public school system isn’t the army, but the bullying I experienced there has led me to believe I have very little tolerance for humiliation and pain.

My reminiscing is interrupted by a pair of guys who wheel in a bed for Mom to sleep in. David and the rest of the Techno peeps take this as their cue to leave for the day.

I stay for a bit to chat with Mom about anything she might’ve been embarrassed to bring up in front of strangers. When she demonstratively yawns for the fifth time, I get up, kiss her cheek, and say in Russian, “Bye, Mom. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yes,” she responds with a yawn. “Morning is wiser than evening.”

“Indeed it is.” I smile at her and leave.

When I make my way down to the first floor of the hospital, I consider moving my car from the hospital parking lot to the hotel. I decide against it, since the hotel probably has valet service, meaning I’d have to wait to get my car if I needed it in a hurry. Besides, I’m just three measly blocks away, and the hospital has better security.

It’s a new development, me worrying about a car. I was never into cars, and I’m still not, but I’ve grown to love mine, even though it started off as a joke. My car’s nickname is Zapo, short for Zaporozhets, in honor of a horrific Soviet-era car my grandpa was constantly lying under and repairing when I was growing up.

Zapo isn’t an authentic recreation of that ugly car, of course. In terms of energy efficiency, they’re actually polar opposites. I’d say they’re spiritually connected by their fugly exterior designs. Zapo is a Prius, but the inside is modified so drastically that it cost me almost as much as an entry-level Bentley. Additionally, Zapo has a beta prototype of the Einstein navigational system that Poisk, Mitya’s company, is working on, plus other mods and an engine that would make the cars from The Fast and the Furious jealous. I half-jokingly call Zapo my “super-expensive gold-digger repellent.”

Exiting the large automated doors, I turn onto 30th Street and spot Ada trying to hail a cab without any success.

Now I’m truly glad I didn’t decide to drive. I rarely get a chance to talk to Ada outside of work.

When she sees me, she lowers her arm and says, “David emailed me about Nina’s day so far. She looks to be the furthest along. I’m very pleased we’re making such swift progress.”

“You can take most of the credit for this,” I say. “You and your minions wrote such an intuitive user interface that even my grandpa would’ve mastered it—and he had trouble working the VCR.”

“Everyone had trouble with those clunky VCRs,” she says, but I can tell she likes the praise. I think she’s even blushing, and I’ve never seen her blush.

“Do you want to stay at the hotel with me?” I ask. Her eyes widen, and I realize what I just said. “I mean, in the same hotel as me. In a separate room.”

“Right.” Her shock turns into a grin so wide her eyes almost close. “I’m sure that wasn’t a Freudian slip.”

My face feels hot enough to cook an egg on. Trying to lessen how foolish I look, I say, “I just pictured you schlepping all the way back to Williamsburg and wanted to offer a better alternative.”

“I get that, and thank you, but I can’t,” she says. “I have to feed my rats.”

“Your what?” I ask, wondering if it’s possible to mistake the c in cats for the r in rats.

“I adopted a bunch of rats once they weren’t needed for experiments anymore,” Ada explains. “A lot of the Techno folks did. My cuties aren’t as needy as a bunch of dogs, but I can’t not show up without notice or setting up a long-term feeder for them. Plus, it’s bath day today, and they love it so much. Rain check?”

“Sure,” I say. Would it be impolite to ask her how many rats she actually owns and how many it would take for her to qualify as a rat lady? “I’ll put you up in a hotel room of my choice some other day then.”

We look at each other and laugh.

Ada sees a cab in the distance and waves at it. The cabby stops in front of us, and I hold the yellow car door open for her. “I’ll see you tomorrow at nine, right?”

“Yeah,” she says, getting inside the cab. “I’ll check on Mrs. Sanchez first, and then go to your mom’s room. I’m sure we’ll get to Phase Two with her, and I’m excited.”

“Yeah, me too,” I say and shut the door.

On the way to my hotel room, I wonder if it was just my imagination, or if Ada was a little friendlier toward me. For a few months now, Ada’s been acting a bit distant around me. Since the start of this behavior coincided with when my ex dumped me, I figure Ada is just dreading the uncomfortable conversation where I ask her out and she has to turn me down. Since our working relationship is hard to define—as a major investor in Techno, I’m someone her boss, JC, answers to—I’ve been wary about pursuing anything. Not only am I sensitive about the issue of workplace sexual harassment, but Ada is the most irreplaceable person on the Brainocytes project. I knew she was bright when she first joined Techno, but around the time she started growing distant, I noticed how much of a genius she truly is. Maybe it’s my infatuation goggles at work, but the leaps she’s singlehandedly made with the Brainocytes software shaved off at least six months of work from the project.

I think about Ada on and off for the rest of the evening. As I fall asleep, I decide that once the study is complete, I will ask her out, consequences be damned.