Matt Richtel - The Cloud

It’s not particularly helpful. And I’m definitely testing her patience when I ask again if she doesn’t remember seeing the man or can tell me anything about his physical demeanor. I observe that he was clutching his chest as he departed; did she notice? Was he limping?

Finally, I ask her about the piece of paper that fell from the man’s pocket, the one with my name on it and the other name-Sandy Vello. Did she see it fall?

She shrugs. “Maybe it’s yours. Maybe it fell out with all the rest of this stuff.”

“Meaning what?”

“Your backpack droppings were everywhere. You’ve got a mishmash of things. You took a pretty good hit to your head. It can shake your sense of reality.”

She smiles, the same compassionate but sad smile she gave the beggar when I first saw her at the turnstile. A beggar in the shadows. I’m about to ask another question, but she turns to go.

I blurt out: “Please take my card, in case you think of anything about that guy. And can I at least have your info, in case I need to follow up?” I tug two business cards from my wallet.

She takes and studies one. It reads: “Nat Idle: By the Word.” She tucks it into her coat pocket. She scribbles something on the back of the other card and hands it back.

“Can I offer you cab fare?” I ask.

“I’m good. Take care of yourself.”

She walks through the turnstiles and into the darkness.

I look at the ten numbers on the card.

Then I look at the scrap of paper I’ve been clutching this entire time, the one with my name and the other one, Sandy Vello.

I don’t recognize the handwriting. It’s certainly not mine. I know this didn’t come from my backpack. Still, am I making more of this than it is? But, if so, isn’t that my stock-in-trade? I’ve built a business and a life pursuing mysteries-little, medium and occasionally big. Just like Isaac, everything is a curiosity to be examined, touched, tasted, understood. I’m a toddler with a pen.

But there’s something else: real anger. I could’ve died.

I indulge myself in that for a bit, but then my thoughts return to someone else. I’m wondering about this Sandy Vello. What if she’s a target too? What if she has a kid, spouse, partner, or general desire to live?

I walk back to the top of the majestic stairs and pull out my phone. It’s a first-generation iPhone, which in these parts makes me a Luddite, joke fodder, recipient of sad looks on public transportation. I call up an Internet browser and finger in Sandy Vello’s name. In the customary minute it takes for the results to load, I watch a man on a bike pedal by, undaunted in the rain, a dog in his back saddle wearing a yellow slicker. Watching makes my knee ache and I wonder when I’ll get back on a basketball court, my thirty-seven-year-old joints and weather permitting.

Google returns its wisdom, 171,000 related web pages’ worth. Big help, Google.

I run the same search but for recent news. I get a hit. Sandy Vello has been in the news lately. Ten days ago, she was hit by a car in Woodside, a suburb in the hills half an hour south of San Francisco. She was killed.

I’m reading an obituary.

True to my business card, I make my living with words. Ideally getting $1.50 for each one. That’s been easier since I exposed the plot to destroy our brains.

A year ago, I wrote a series of articles about how a venture capitalist with ties to the military was developing technology to store secrets inside fallow memory space in the human mind. The conspirators wanted to use brain capacity like computer disc space. The idea was to allow seemingly harmless humans (like the elderly or even children) to become stealth carriers of data, able to cross borders or military lines. Without knowledge of the carry or the suspicion of enemies. The brilliant conceit: the bad guys might know how to hack a password-protected supercomputer, but they won’t be able to hack the brain of an eighty-five-year-old with dementia.

It’s not nearly as farfetched as it sounds, at least in theory, given the malleability of the hippocampus, the brain’s memory gateway. But in practice, the development of the technology entailed tinkering with and even destroying the memories of human guinea pigs, without their knowledge or permission. By happenstance, one of the guinea pigs was my grandmother, the iconoclastic octogenarian Lane Idle.

Grandma Lane’s memory began fading in and out, failing precipitously, regurgitating memories not her own. I was scared, curious and then angry, and followed some leads. Story of my life.

Long story short: I wrote a story about the scheme, got some notoriety, banged out a string of freelance pieces about the impact of technology on the brain, scored periodic appearances on CNN, experienced the most intense work year of my life, won an award for investigative medical journalism and-trust me that this relates-now need to borrow a tie.

It’s not that I don’t own a tie, but it has big polka dots and probably will be seen as obnoxious at tomorrow’s journalism awards luncheon at a private room at MacArthur Park in Palo Alto.

Sartorially, I remain unevolved, another late-thirtysomething unable to dress his age. But professionally, for the first time, I’m on solid footing. I even get a premium for my blog posts, $50 for some of them, having become something of a go-to journalist for investigations and wide-eyed tips involving neuroscience.

Which brings me to Sandy Vello.

According to her brief obituary in the San Mateo Daily News , the deceased worked as an administrator in the emerging neurotechnology division of a company called PRISM Corporation. She lived west of Burlingame, did regular volunteer work at the learning annex at the Twin Peaks juvenile hall, and enjoyed a modest fame in having been a contestant on an early episode of Last One Standing , a reality show that entails out-surviving other contestants over twelve weeks of humiliation and bug eating. There was no photo.

I haven’t heard of PRISM Corp. I Google it and discover Pacific Rim Integrated Solutions and Management, a nondescript corporate web site, dark blue background with an image in the upper right corner of a ship on the high seas. A close look shows the ship to be constructed of thousands of ones and zeroes.

A section labeled “About PRISM” indicates the company makes software kernels that power “a range of consumer, multimedia and industrial products, from clock radios to home alarm systems.” There’s no mention of a neurotechnology department.

I find a handful of other references to PRISM. There’s one PDF document filed with U.S. Immigration Services indicating that PRISM, a company with fifty-five employees, last year requested seven short-term work visas for foreign-born engineers. It’s not out of the ordinary; virtually every high-tech firm, from Amazon to Yahoo, seeks visas for highly skilled software engineers from India and Turkey.

I’m baffled. I’m wondering what could possibly be the connection between a deceased former reality-TV-show contestant and me. The chief connection I can make is that I sometimes write about the brain and, at least according to her obituary, Sandy Vello worked on neurotechnology. And for a story, I once visited the juvenile hall at Twin Peaks, a salmon-colored prison, administrative building and learning annex for San Francisco’s wayward teens where Sandy volunteered. The connection between she and I is, in a word, tenuous.

This is what preoccupies me so much that I nearly light my foot on fire.

I’m standing at the entrance to my office, having just barely sidestepped a mound of dirt with a candle sticking out of the top that sits just inside the door. I look up to see a handful of other such be-candled dirt mounds around the edges of the small office, forming a circle. In the center of the room sits my office mate, Samantha. She’s got her arms crossed over her chest, her palms resting on her shoulders. She wears a peasant blouse and a patient smile.