BACK IN THE office, Jeremy sits. He checks the two phones, the iPhone and the other one. Same old story. Nothing, as it has been for more than two weeks, excepting unrequited badgers from the law firm of Pierce & Sullivan, and a call from a debt collector with a wrong number looking for Song Yung Li. With that one, Jeremy played along for three minutes until, just for fun, he duped the caller into revealing the debtor’s Social Security number and then let her have it with both barrels.
After the paper came out in the Journal of Dispute Settlement, Jeremy worked briefly on a contract for the Pentagon and the Department of Defense, took in a mountain of their data about the conditions in Afghanistan and Iraq and made two decidedly horrific projections.
While working for the DoD, he predicted an insurgency in the Al Anbar province that never happened. And, separately, he had a 98 percent certainty that guerrilla movements in a particular mountain range near the Afghan-Russian border would subside within three months. They went on for two years, the unsettling and unconvincing back-and-forth with the military.
The initial paper had provided ironclad proof of the validity of the method. But then when it came time, when the opportunity came to do it for someone other than academics, it flopped. It didn’t add up. None of it added up.
Jeremy looks around the room. Academic papers and newspapers and trade journals and a Wired and a Maxim on the rack of servers to his left, power cords jumbled on the floor and, everywhere, that smell. Emily, you can take a bite out of my ass if you think it’s because I fear order that I don’t want to clean up. It takes more than a bachelor’s degree and single-motherhood experience to play armchair analyst.
The office was supposed to be Jeremy’s think pad away from the main office down in Silicon Valley—walking distance from the ballpark and the swanky condo Jeremy bought at the peak of the market. A perk afforded a genius that has turned lease waiting to expire.
He rubs the inside of his shoulder, then his pectoral.
The fourth monitor shows the Scrabble board where he spends his hours playing people he’s never met at the highest levels of the virtual Scrabble world.
He almost never wins. Because he never finishes a game. He’s usually ahead but then he makes some suggestions to his opponents about the word they probably should have played, and they disappear. Many just won’t play him anymore, even though, at Emily’s counsel, which he took in this case, he prefaces his suggestions to opponents by asking if it’s okay if he offers up an idea.
Jeremy catches his reflection in the Scrabble monitor. Something in the dull image reminds him that his monthly haircut is forthcoming. That’s forty-five dollars that is not currently falling off the trees, but is also nonnegotiable. When it comes to his hair and other personal grooming, Jeremy subscribes only to the strictest ergonomics. He still doesn’t understand that, even without a great haircut, he’d get the girls. He’s muscular with long, toned runner’s legs, and a sturdy, full face that hints more at the handsome qualities of a rugby player than an actor, having long since shed the slump-shouldered geeky kid who formed a chunk of his self-image.
He closes his eyes.
It’s something between a catnap, daydream and slide presentation. His mom is there, bony and wispy and still totally in control of her emotions. There’s Kent, just the opposite, childlike, a child, smiling and asking Jeremy to come over to build a fort. There’s Peckerhead waving a pen, and there’s Emily. Her eyes are red but dry.
Then Harry. Not alone, with Andrea. Both of them, together, laughing. Laughing and laughing. He strains to hear what they’re saying but he can’t. He can just feel their laughter rippling through him.
The three chirps startle Jeremy.
He clears his throat and opens his eyes. He blinks.
The computer beeps again. Three beeps. Those three distinctive beeps.
He looks at the monitors, starting with the one that is second to his right. Data, scrolling. Then the next one with the map.
His first impulse is less curiosity than disappointment. “Monkey junk.”
Red. Bright red. The red he’s never actually seen, not this bright. And never heard these chirps, not these three. Not since he programmed the computer to make such a sound.
Three beeps that mean something very dire is about to happen. Three beeps with all this red means it’s nothing short of apocalyptic, the apocalypse.
Jeremy twirls around in his desk chair. He looks at the server, and up in the corners of the walls. He sees the door is closed.
He looks at his phone, checks the clock. He’s been asleep, or daydreaming, for just a few minutes, less than an hour. It’s a bit after eight.
“I’ll humor you.”
Jeremy scoots in, cocks his head like a bird. Looks at the map. Then begins tapping on the keyboard. On the monitor to the far right, the Scrabble board disappears.
In its place appears the web site of the New York Times. The lead headline is about a press conference in which the president is asked about the latest job figures. Below that, in the middle of the page, there’s a picture of a man wearing a robe and sitting in a wheelchair, a feature about a judge in Brooklyn who is trying out for the Paralympics. There’s something masquerading as breaking news that looks to be a roundup of technology company earnings.
Nothing to explain what’s happening on the map. Nothing to explain why his computer is predicting there is going to be a massive global conflict, engulfing the world in death and destruction—and that the calamity is imminent.
Jeremy clicks and the New York Times disappears.
He clears his throat. Taps his fingers absently on the edge of the keyboard. After a full minute, he moves his cursor onto the first monitor, the one most to his left, the one with all the scrawling data points, and, with a few keystrokes, causes the flurry of data to appear also on the fourth monitor, where the New York Times had just been.
He moves his cursor onto the fourth monitor and starts moving up and down through the data with his cursor. The data is moving too, updating with every second, the inputs changing in real time: gas prices, stock market indices, weather. It comes in so fast from around the world that even Jeremy—for as much time as he’s spent with these programs—can’t quite grasp and make sense of it. He scrolls up, looking at the various measures, looking at time stamps.
Is there some needle in this haystack? Something that changed or stands out, or explains the map?
Nothing stands out. Of course not. No way for the human brain to make sense of this flurry of data. That’s what the algorithm is for. And it speaks through the map. That’s where the predictions show up in the nice accessible way, just as Evan envisioned.
Now it’s mostly pulsing red—North America, for sure, Latin America, Europe. Even the Southern Hemisphere shows hardly a spot neither red or orange, and a few bits of yellow.
He puts his cursor onto the map. He clicks on a gauge, a cross between an odometer and a clock. He clicks on it. He reads the prediction. He clenches his teeth.
He pushes back from the desk. He stands and looks up at the corners of the room. He peers alongside the metal shelf holding the servers. No cameras. No overt signs someone is setting him up for the YouTube humiliation of the century when, finally on the verge of giving up on his creation and tossing it into the sea, he freaks and screams, “I told you so!” because the app is reporting that the world is going to end.
No signs someone has tapped into or tampered with the computer. Who could do that? Few, if any. They don’t have the password to get inside the machine. No one does. Who might want to? Start a fucking list of the let’s-turn-Jeremy-into-a-marionette. Evan the Peckerhead, Professor Harry Ives, the disgruntled investors.
How long was he gone outside at the water? Did someone get in?
Jeremy pulls out two middle fingers and shares them with the room.
He eyes the envelopes on the floor under the door. He kicks them over and confirms they are both, as he suspected, from the lawyers at Pierce & Sullivan, representing Evan, who is suing for access to the conflict algorithm so he can predict the future of mobile communications or fast food. Jeremy grinds the envelopes with his shoe.
He picks up his iPad, scrambles around the mess on the desk for the white cord. He plugs the iPad into his desktop and clicks a few keys.
While he’s waiting for it, he walks out to Nik’s cubicle. He pauses before the violation, then shuffles through Nik’s papers. Sees late-payment notifications, legal correspondence, bureaucracy.
He bends over and reaches for Nik’s computer mouse. Fiddles with it. The screen comes to life. He sees a black backdrop and a few windows open at the bottom. Jeremy clicks them. One is an email folder, left open, with mostly spam. Another is World of Warcraft, Nik’s guilty pleasure, an innocuous enough time sink, his connection to a community of shut-ins and night owls.
Emily says Nik and Jeremy are like photo negatives of one another: Nik, a quiet and deferential loner who, on the Internet, commands armies and plays war; Jeremy, aggressive and confrontational, who uses the Internet to make peace.
Taped to Nik’s desk, Jeremy finds a list of phone numbers and emails—contact info for all the big players, like Andrea, Harry and Evan. Even Emily. Nik is Jeremy’s shadow, secretary, baggage handler, designated driver, still holding out hope.
Jeremy walks back into his office.
The iPad has finished doing its thing. He stuffs it into a briefcase, snags his phones, shuts out the light and closes the door.