THE SHRILL UPDATE-BEEP is one of those features that Evan had insisted on including in the product. The feature announces any changes to major data points, the key parameters that affect the timing or gravity of impending conflict, like weather or troop movements or major leadership changes.
“Think of it as our version of IM,” Evan would say to prospective customers over lunch at One Market or some other trendy downtown restaurant. Often, he’d be speaking not to prospective buyers in military or government procurement but to executives from the private sector, like the insurance or wireless industries. They were interested in the business applications of the digital oracle but they couldn’t help being sucked in by the sexy lure of the conflict algorithm. And that was the point, really, Evan would tell a chagrined Jeremy: the conflict machine is our brochure but business intelligence is what will make us rich.
“IM?” one of the lunching executives would invariably ask Evan. “Instant messaging?”
“Instant Menace,” Evan would say. “It tells you when there’s been a change to a variable that could change the world.”
They’d laugh, invariably.
“Of course, I shouldn’t joke,” Evan would continue. “Not when it comes to predicting global conflict. And not even when it comes to your business. You’ve got to know when a market is moving, or might move, or a competitor is transforming. It’s a cliché, but business is war and you can’t afford to be a second behind, not a millisecond behind, or you wind up on the defensive, maybe in an irreversible position.”
Jeremy looks at the bottom right of the screen. He sees four little flags, all red, meaning four key parameters have changed. Four of the 327 variables have shifted. More data, or more lies.
A voice comes over the train loudspeaker. “City Center. Transfer to San Francisco.”
The train slows, wheels screeching on the track. Outside Jeremy’s window, the passing of blurry walls at the station entrance. He shoves his iPad into his backpack and puts the rain slicker over the top.
The train whines to a stop. Jeremy stands, looks out the window, sees the cop. She’s descended the stairs at the far end of the platform. Then he loses sight of her as the train lurches ahead to its next destination.
Jeremy’s pectoral aches, pounds. Just to the left of the key fob hanging on the silver chain. He looks down at his flip-flops, calculating. Is this a cop-cop, or a subway cop checking to make sure passengers have their passes—a routine measure at the first of the month? He pictures the conflict map. Red, red, red. The first of the month. Just a few days away. April 1. Armageddon or system bug or joke. He looks up. It’s a cop-cop.
The subway doors open. Across the platform, a train, Jeremy’s train, right there, spitting distance, sprinting distance. Its doors open too. He has to get on that train.
He pokes his head out the door. The portly cop, only fifteen feet away, has her back turned, looking at a handful of commuters making their way from one train to the other. She turns in his direction. He recoils.
A horn sounds. The other train set to go. He sucks in his breath. He peers out the doors. The cop is one car down, entering his train.
He runs.
Seconds later, he slips into the closing doors of the westbound train. He feels like he’s got a scarlet letter, telltale flip-flops and a bright red slicker. But none of the half dozen commuters seems to take notice.
He sits in an empty row, yanks out his iPad. He clicks on the first flag. A dialogue box pops up. “Mover-shaker update re: Russia. Click for details.”
“Mover-shaker.” That’s the program’s vernacular for news involving a leader, someone with enough clout or importance to potentially have a material impact on the timing and nature of conflict. To move markets or shake up geopolitics. It could mean something as extreme as an assassination, or the change of a lesser ingredient, like an outspoken hawk in some inflamed area losing an election, or winning one.
Before he clicks for details, he runs his cursor over the second flag. A dialogue box pops up: “Rhetoric. Decline. Re: Fertile Crescent. Click for details.”
A fall in hostile language. A further decline in the semantics in the Fertile Crescent. That’s only good news. Would that all the world’s conflict rhetoric would decline.
He clicks on the third flag: “Weather update. Click for details.”
Jeremy tastes bile. Weather, a major factor in the onset of conflict; better weather can allow troop movements or beach landings; clear skies can permit air attacks. He clicks on the box for details.
There is a link to a web site called AccuWeather. The page is for the Hawaii weather forecast. On top of the page is a satellite image, clouds swirling above the Hawaiian Islands. Below that, radar images showing incoming weather and short forecasts for the individual islands, Maui, Oahu, Kauai, and so on.
In the middle of the page, he finds what looks to be an update. It reads: “Tropical Storm Serena downgraded. Westernmost islands, Pacific fisheries spared heavy rains as low-pressure system dissipates.”
That’s it. On this page of links and charts and graphs, a single sentence that might or might not be pertinent.
So what? What could the computer be inferring from this? He scrutinizes the page again, unable to make any clear associations or inferences.
He clicks on the fourth flag. Inside the dialogue box: “Update, Random Event Meter.” And he mutters: lemme guess, more lions. A Washington Post headline pops up: “Three More Lions Set Loose.”
Kooks have freed lions from zoos in Seattle and Portland and one from a traveling circus act stationed in Reno, serving a casino there. The article says police continue to investigate the acts as potentially involving animal rights activists. The article notes that the vigilante acts have left one person dead, an older man in San Diego who apparently was responsible for the freeing of the lion there. An unnamed official from San Diego said the man had on his back a curious tattoo: a lion standing on its hind legs, its tail up in the air.
“Thanks, computer,” Jeremy mutters under his breath. “Let me know every time someone in San Francisco takes their dog for a walk.”
But he can’t help wondering. Something about the image pulls at him.
Harry, is this what you want me to ask it? About lions?
He moves his cursor onto the other flag, the one about movers and shakers, clicks for details. A new window pops up. In it materializes a link to an Associated Press story with the headline “Russian Arms Exec Arrested in Paris.”
Marat Vladine, a billionaire who was former chairman of Russia’s state-controlled arms dealership, was detained in Paris today by French state police. The French said that he’d been held at the request of the Russian government investigating charges of tax evasion and money laundering.
However, one French authority said that Mr. Vladine’s detainment was instead related to an intensifying domestic political squabble inside Russia.
In recent days, Russian politicians at the highest levels of government have been in a public spat about the heavy foreign-policy influence played by the state-backed munitions dealer, Rosoboronexport State Corporation. Mr. Vladine was the longtime chairman of Rosoboronexport until earlier this year but is still thought to be heavily involved in the company’s strategic direction.
Opponents of the current government say the multibillion-dollar munitions corporation has encouraged policies that are in the interest of its shareholders and political backers, not the nation at large.
These opponents have seized on rumors that Rosoboronexport allowed nuclear-grade bomb materials to escape in recent years into terrorist hands—or sold such materials to rogue elements. Rosoboronexport vigorously denies the charges and dismisses them as political misdirection and, thus far, there has been no independent verification that such dangerous materials ever were sold or wound up in the wrong hands.
Erik Soliere, a Paris-based attorney retained by Mr. Vladine, declined to comment on the detainment of his client.
Jeremy scrolls down but discovers that he’s read the full article. He reads it again, feels a pinprick of disappointment at the lack of direct or helpful evidence. Where’s the smoking gun—an assassination or an attack on a capital city or something. Something that would make sense of the dire predictions. Something that would explain what’s happening—to him, to Harry. To his computer.
Looking at the AP news story, he’s wondering why the computer bothered to update him about such minutiae. Then he remembers. It is designed to report any new information, small or large, related to the larger variables that may be contributing to impending conflict.
Previously, the computer had reported changes to the level of conflict rhetoric in Russia and related to Rosoboronexport. So, Jeremy reasons, the computer is sending what it determines to be a related update, however tangential. The feature was Jeremy’s brainchild; the algorithm uses artificial intelligence to make decisions about whether two ideas are sufficiently related to send an update. But now Jeremy is mourning an update about one more seemingly meaningless data point.
“Say something useful,” he mutters to his iPad.
The computer, as if in response, beeps. Another different sound, or, rather three beeps, in quick succession, brief and shrill. And, at the same time, a box materializes in the middle of the window on his iPad. In the box, big letters, “Conflict Clock Reset. Click for details.”
It’s a feature that, as much as he chided Evan for demanding it, he quietly relishes. It provides an alert that the computer’s basic prediction has changed. It could mean that conflict is less likely, or more likely, or, if conflict is already ongoing, that the computer now predicts it will last longer or be more quickly resolved.
As Jeremy clicks on the dialogue box, he feels an eerie calm. He’s sure that the computer will rescind its dire prediction, the jig will be up, the dire prophecy revoked or revealed as a hoax.
A new box appears.
“CONFLICT TIMETABLE ACCELERATED. 27 HOURS, 17 MINUTES.”
Without moving his head, he glances at a woman in a Giants cap chewing her nails, looks down and taps his index finger against the screen, on the warning in the dialogue box. He puts his finger on “27 HOURS.” Some part of him wants to feel that this is real, not just some virtual, ethereal thing, the digital ranting of a box that Jeremy helped create, his cyber-subconscious taunting him.
He does the math. Previously, the computer had projected the outbreak of conflict in less than three days. As little as ten minutes ago, that was the prediction. Now, suddenly, it’s down to little more than one.
He taps the edge of the countdown box, bringing up another infobox. It shows the longitude and latitude of the project attack, the ostensible project attack. Still San Francisco. Right here, Jeremy thinks, tomorrow night, just after 7 p.m.
Then he realizes what’s bothering him. It’s no longer projecting April 1. If this is an April Fools’ joke, someone has mixed up the dates.
“What can it answer?” he mutters.
“Are you talking to yourself?”
The voice belongs to a boy in the aisle, little more than four years old, jacket zipped up to the bottom of his lip, holding his mother’s hand, staring intently at Jeremy. The woman looks at Jeremy with a sheepish smile, as if to say: from the mouths of babes. Jeremy looks down at his iPad but all he sees is the face of Kent. Dissolving into bullet points:
A computer warning about the end of the world. Here, in a few hours.
Log cabin: a rustic and homey setting for a final clash of wills between him and Harry
A message from Harry, symbols and numbers
A break-in at his apartment, at his office. Everything strewn.
Someone, more than someone, following him. Setting him up?
AskIt
In sum, clues left by an inscrutable computer and a geniusally turned foe. Can it add up the clues for him? What can he ask the computer that it can answer?
The train screeches into San Francisco. It’s 4:20. Should be crowded on the platform, thick with commuters, but easy enough for a cop to stand at the top of the escalator. Jeremy stuffs his iPad into the backpack. He looks at the mom, holding hands with the child, absent a wedding ring, in her early thirties. A New York Times tucked under her arm, the right audience.
“Caught in the act,” Jeremy says to the woman. “Talking to myself. I promise it’s not habitual. Something I only do in public places.”
She laughs.