The Cipher by John C. Ford Page A

is on a different level. This is
everything
. Do you see how badly people would want this algorithm? You see what terrorists could do with this? People would die for—”
    â€œSlow down, slow down. I get it.”
    Ben was reentering meltdown mode, but Smiles couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t kidding about having a nuclear bomb in that backpack.
    The whole thing reminded him of when he’d gotten kicked out of Kingsley, just because he’d agreed to keep Darby Fisher’s weed in his closet and they happened to find it there. The problem was so huge, there was nothing to do about it.
    Ben was looking at Smiles with a deep sadness in his eyes. “Honestly, I was just trying to think of a solution to the Riemann Hypothesis. I was never trying to do this.” He crushed the page from the stationery and flung it to the dresser. “I’m sorry.”
    â€œSorry?” Smiles didn’t understand the apology until it hit him. “Because your algorithm could make my dad’s whole company irrelevant.”
    â€œYou’re not mad at me?”
    â€œNo,” he said quickly, though he saw the problem clearly enough. He lifted off the bed with a syrupy weight in his legs and shut off the air-conditioning. After that, he didn’t know what to do. Ben took his place on the bed, staring up at the ceiling in a semicatatonic way, and the weighty silence of the room was making Smiles edgy. He felt an urgent desire to play some
Call of Duty
, to shoot some pool, to watch his fish. He could spend hours staring at them, envying their bubbled lives. No intrusions, no pressures, no expectations to meet. Eat your food, play in the rocks, waggle your tail—as far as lifestyles went, it was hard to beat.
    Smiles opened the curtains just to do something. Their fifth-floor room looked out on an impossibly big parking lot, and the sun glanced back at Smiles from a thousand windshields. He would have let some fresh air into the room, but he knew they always rigged the windows shut in casino hotels so gamblers couldn’t commit suicide after a bad night at the tables.
    â€œI had a pretty strange experience myself this morning,” he said suddenly, surprising himself. “You know that big-shot professor? The special guest? That was my mother. She left when I was two.” He spoke slowly, talking to the view. Ben didn’t answer, but it was better that way. He just needed to speak it out loud to someone, and in the silence left by Ben he could imagine Melanie listening to his words. “It was so weird seeing her up there. I thought I’d never see her again in my life. Maybe this morning was the last time, I don’t know.”
    Smiles heard shifting behind him, and when he turned Ben was up on his elbows. “Are you serious? That was your
mom
? My God, Smiles . . .”
    Ben stopped, unsure of what to say, and just as suddenly as he’d started talking about his mother, Smiles wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He couldn’t expect Ben to make it better for him.
    â€œAre you—”
    â€œYeah, fine,” Smiles said. He needed to move. He walked to the door and turned back. “Look, you gonna be okay here for a while?”
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    â€œFor a walk, I guess,” he said. And then Smiles wobbled aimlessly into the hall, wishing he were the kind of person who could deal with big problems.

47
    â€œBLACKJACK.”
    The dealer pushed three more purple chips in front of Smiles.
    The poker room had been too crowded to deal with, so Smiles was playing blackjack at a hundred-dollar minimum table. It was just him, the dealer, and a crotchety Asian woman in a tennis visor at a “high-stakes” table sectioned off from the main casino. A few people hung at the bronze railing, looking on with hungry eyes. Like they were peering into a limousine, wondering if a star was inside.
    His stacks of chips teetered on the