on?”
Nik shakes his head, like he’s gotten hit with a light jab, smacked in the nose with a rolled-up paper. “I thought you always turn it off.” He pauses for a second. “Lately.”
From someone else, a jab back. Not from Nik.
“I didn’t leave it on,” Jeremy says. “And you didn’t turn it on?”
Nik shakes his head. He swivels in the chair. A few books have been tossed on the short gray carpet; the Pepsi can is overturned on the desk, dribbling out the bottom of its contents. Someone spent some time looking around in here.
“How did they get in?”
“Maybe the same guy,” Nik says.
“Same guy as who?”
“My place, last night. Got home late and some cat was banging on the window from the fire escape.”
“Cat?”
“Burglar.” Nik has bags under his already puffy eyes, and a question mark in them. Would Jeremy like to explain what’s going on?
“Rosa just sat there.”
Takes Jeremy a second to make sense of Nik’s reference to his dog, big and lumbering like Nik. Rosa. In full: Doggy Dolorosa. Worthless orphan Nik picked up from a Spanish exchange student back in the day. Nik seems to connect more with animals than with people.
“The usual suspects taking a nail gun to our coffin, trying to,” Jeremy says, pauses, then continues. “What’s up with Evan? Can you find out about his company, some conference he’s holding? I thought Evan was trying to sue for my ideas, not push me away.”
“You don’t read your mail.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I can bring the mail to water . . .”
“But you can’t make me drink. You know I don’t read that stuff unless you tell me to.”
Nik looks down, clears his throat. “With everything going on, I didn’t think it was worth—”
“Never mind.” Jeremy cuts him off. “Find me Evan. Fuck his lawyers. I need to talk to him. Let’s use the Yahoo email account to communicate, the old one. And Harry I’ll take care of myself.”
Nik shakes his head. “Harry?” As in: Harry did this?
“I’m going to find out.”
“You’re going to talk to Harry?”
Jeremy half nods. He wonders whether he even trusts Nik. Where did he come from, this abjectly loyal hangdog? Half British, half American, he appeared one day at Oxford, referred by a professor of conflict studies. He stood at the doorway to the lab, wearing a secondhand black sport coat—looking like a cast-off waiter—staring at the earliest version of the conflict map, a prototype, blinking on the wall. A child of sorts but with a talent for making things orderly, so Jeremy gave him a minimum-wage administrative job he’d gotten grant funding to fill. A few weeks later, one of the graduate assistants saw Nik playing around with the conflict program, messing with the columns, and dragged him in to Jeremy to get fired.
Jeremy asked what Nik was doing.
“This predicts war,” Nik said of the algorithm. “So I wondered if it could predict peace.”
Jeremy laughed. So innocent. Nik. PeaceNik. The son of missionaries, who had traveled the world humbly preaching the word. Nik. First and last guy ever to survive an unauthorized intrusion into the software. The son of well-traveled missionaries, monkish in his own right, devoted to Jeremy the way some people are to a monotheistic God.
“What did he look like?” Jeremy asks.
“Who?”
“The cat.”
Nik shrugs. “Scampered away.”
Jeremy glances at the computer monitors, lit up, but blank, showing only the log-in screens. Whoever had been here, whatever they wanted, they couldn’t find it without the key fob and the password buried inside Jeremy’s brain.
“Sure it wasn’t a lion?”
Nik blinks. “What?”
“Not a cat burglar. A lion. Escaped from the zoo.”
Nik shakes his head, looks hurt. “It’s ridiculous.”
“What is?”
“Opening a lion’s cage. That’s just courting disaster.”
It’s Nik at his most animated. Jeremy laughs. “Not everyone shares your sense of decorum,
Nik shakes his head, like he’s gotten hit with a light jab, smacked in the nose with a rolled-up paper. “I thought you always turn it off.” He pauses for a second. “Lately.”
From someone else, a jab back. Not from Nik.
“I didn’t leave it on,” Jeremy says. “And you didn’t turn it on?”
Nik shakes his head. He swivels in the chair. A few books have been tossed on the short gray carpet; the Pepsi can is overturned on the desk, dribbling out the bottom of its contents. Someone spent some time looking around in here.
“How did they get in?”
“Maybe the same guy,” Nik says.
“Same guy as who?”
“My place, last night. Got home late and some cat was banging on the window from the fire escape.”
“Cat?”
“Burglar.” Nik has bags under his already puffy eyes, and a question mark in them. Would Jeremy like to explain what’s going on?
“Rosa just sat there.”
Takes Jeremy a second to make sense of Nik’s reference to his dog, big and lumbering like Nik. Rosa. In full: Doggy Dolorosa. Worthless orphan Nik picked up from a Spanish exchange student back in the day. Nik seems to connect more with animals than with people.
“The usual suspects taking a nail gun to our coffin, trying to,” Jeremy says, pauses, then continues. “What’s up with Evan? Can you find out about his company, some conference he’s holding? I thought Evan was trying to sue for my ideas, not push me away.”
“You don’t read your mail.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I can bring the mail to water . . .”
“But you can’t make me drink. You know I don’t read that stuff unless you tell me to.”
Nik looks down, clears his throat. “With everything going on, I didn’t think it was worth—”
“Never mind.” Jeremy cuts him off. “Find me Evan. Fuck his lawyers. I need to talk to him. Let’s use the Yahoo email account to communicate, the old one. And Harry I’ll take care of myself.”
Nik shakes his head. “Harry?” As in: Harry did this?
“I’m going to find out.”
“You’re going to talk to Harry?”
Jeremy half nods. He wonders whether he even trusts Nik. Where did he come from, this abjectly loyal hangdog? Half British, half American, he appeared one day at Oxford, referred by a professor of conflict studies. He stood at the doorway to the lab, wearing a secondhand black sport coat—looking like a cast-off waiter—staring at the earliest version of the conflict map, a prototype, blinking on the wall. A child of sorts but with a talent for making things orderly, so Jeremy gave him a minimum-wage administrative job he’d gotten grant funding to fill. A few weeks later, one of the graduate assistants saw Nik playing around with the conflict program, messing with the columns, and dragged him in to Jeremy to get fired.
Jeremy asked what Nik was doing.
“This predicts war,” Nik said of the algorithm. “So I wondered if it could predict peace.”
Jeremy laughed. So innocent. Nik. PeaceNik. The son of missionaries, who had traveled the world humbly preaching the word. Nik. First and last guy ever to survive an unauthorized intrusion into the software. The son of well-traveled missionaries, monkish in his own right, devoted to Jeremy the way some people are to a monotheistic God.
“What did he look like?” Jeremy asks.
“Who?”
“The cat.”
Nik shrugs. “Scampered away.”
Jeremy glances at the computer monitors, lit up, but blank, showing only the log-in screens. Whoever had been here, whatever they wanted, they couldn’t find it without the key fob and the password buried inside Jeremy’s brain.
“Sure it wasn’t a lion?”
Nik blinks. “What?”
“Not a cat burglar. A lion. Escaped from the zoo.”
Nik shakes his head, looks hurt. “It’s ridiculous.”
“What is?”
“Opening a lion’s cage. That’s just courting disaster.”
It’s Nik at his most animated. Jeremy laughs. “Not everyone shares your sense of decorum,
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