Matt Richtel - The Cloud

I kill the fog lights. I don’t know if I want to see what’s out there before it visits me. Come what may.

The defeated woman on the other end of the line starts talking. She takes me back to when Andrew Leviathan started building new charter schools on the Peninsula. His goal, she says, was to give opportunity to at-risk students but also talented teachers who the public school system might not embrace. Alan Parsons, she says, was one such teacher. He was a computer whiz, engaging, bright, and thirsty. A drunk, he wound up dropping from Stanford’s computer science PhD program, where he’d been a favorite among undergrads he taught. There was some chatter that Alan did a bit of corporate espionage and hacking to support his booze habit and that he tended to get playful when wasted. He could be a recreational hacker and a devastatingly good one. There was a rumor that Alan, virtually joyriding on gin, once hacked into Pentagon computers and made it look like a warhead had gone missing.

Andrew, the tech-savvy savior, came to the rescue. Andrew hired Alan to do tech support at one of the first charter schools. And, so long as he remained sober, to teach one class.

“How to multitask?” I ask.

She laughs. “That word barely existed then. But, if it did, Andrew wouldn’t have allowed it in the school.”

“What do you mean?”

“Andrew wouldn’t even let computers into class. I only remember this because it seemed so odd. He said the school could teach the logic of how computers work, programming skills and capabilities, but wouldn’t allow screen time.”

It rings familiar. Polly mentioned at some point in our discussion of future school options for Isaac that some Montessori programs keep technology at a distance. But it doesn’t sound consistent with the Andrew I’ve been learning about. He’s been pushing heavy technology use; it’s in his blood, and maybe that blood is bad. I’m hypothesizing that he’s been simultaneously developing insidious Juggler technology on the sly while creating a public face that limits use of technology in schools. Why?

“Jill, was Andrew involved in the Juggler project?”

“Haven’t heard of it. But I didn’t know Alan all that well.”

She says that, as far as she could recall, Alan couldn’t stop drinking. He was fired. But the two men kept up their ties. She says that she seems to vaguely recall Alan’s name coming up recently; she thinks Andrew might have contacted him again.

“If you’re looking to do a story on Andrew’s generosity, I think you could include the part about Alan.”

“Alan died recently.”

She doesn’t respond. She can’t stand hearing about death.

“I need to go,” I say. I really do. I can’t see for exhaustion. And, I realize as the adrenaline starts to fade, I’m ravenous.

“Get some sleep.”

“Jill?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask you one more thing? It’s about your daughter.”

Silent ascent.

“Did she ever have contact with Mr. Leviathan?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Alarmed.

“Sorry. Terrible turn of phrase. I meant: was he generous with her too, in terms of his time or his commitment to education?”

“Oh.” She pauses. “Not really.” Another pause. “Other than the after-school program.”

“Program, like. .”

“Glorified babysitting, for kids of employees. Board games and computer games. Early ones. The kids got to play with all kinds of toys the big brains in R and D were developing.”

Internal alarm bells, a burst of adrenaline. I let it pass so I don’t betray the zeal of my curiosity and frighten her. She fills in the silence.

“She must’ve gone for near two years. She really craved it, hanging out with the other kids. It was a little wonderland. It brought her alive, in a way.”

“How so?”

“I’m really not comfortable talking about her. Suffice it to say, Mr. Leviathan’s a saint. Now, I’ve got to try to get some sleep myself.”

End of interview.

“Sleep well, Jill.”

Click.

My phone beeps. I look at the screen. There’s a notification: tomorrow afternoon, I’m due at the courthouse to meet with tax authorities.

I turn off the device. I drop it into the center console. I trade it for an energy bar that I devour. Dinner, breakfast, whatever it is at this point.

I recline. I close my eyes, craving sleep, seeing puzzle pieces. I form a picture: Andrew Leviathan, through his partner and intermediary, Gils Simons, has sold or is otherwise exporting to China some technology that entertains kids and professes to help them multitask, turn them into cloud masters. But it actually hurts their brains. Does it hurt development of their frontal lobes by overloading them with data? They’re not mastering the cloud, or successfully juggling it, they’re winding up in one.

I suspect Andrew had been testing the technology for years.

Recently, Alan Parsons stumbled onto their plot and he tried to blackmail Leviathan, his former benefactor. He first tried to reach me by a fake email address for Sandy Vello. I overlooked or ignored or didn’t see it. So he used Faith to help seduce me into his efforts. But why? Why did he need my help? Was he afraid Leviathan would come after him, and is that exactly what happened?

Where does Buzzard Bill fit in, and the stout man with the crooked smile in Chinatown? My guess is that each is acting as muscle but exactly for what and whom?

And what more is there to Faith? Is she safe?

I see a memory fragment. I’ve awakened in the hotel room with her, after a night of feverish sex in a concussed state. I open my eyes to find her staring at me, eyes glistening, real emotion. In my mind’s eye, in the present, her face transforms into Polly, eyes glistening, sitting over an empty fortune cookie. “I have something to tell you,” she says. “Brace yourself.”

I bite the inside of my cheek to shatter the memory fragment. I feel a sob deep inside my chest, rising. I see its origin: a black void inside me, creeping from my head into my body, a fast-spreading emotional malignancy, like a fresh bloodstain.

I fall asleep.

I wake up with a start when I hear the tapping on the window.

My first thought: someone needs an endocrinologist. My second: that someone is a cop.

He stands at the driver’s-side window. Blue and brown uniform, no cap. And no facial hair. Zero. His face looks ice smooth. It’s a relatively rare hormone imbalance, low testosterone, unless he shaves every forty-five minutes.

Nonchalant, he holds a black baton in a beefy right hand that does not lack in testosterone. I open the driver’s-side door. Behind the cop stands his motorcycle, sun bouncing off the black gas tank.

“Not a cool place to sleep one off.” His voice matches the detached coolness in the air. He’s not picking a fight, just giving both my first and last warning. A bird chirps. In the tree above us, a gray gnatcatcher stops on a leafless limb, then darts upward into a crisp, cloudless morning. From the angle of the sun, it might well be ten in the morning.

I swallow hard, tasting foul, lumpy paste.

“I’m sorry, officer. I worked late, got too tired to drive 280.”

He cocks his head. I look at the underside of his nose, a likely spot to see hair growth if his face is capable of it. No little sprouts. He clears his throat, wanting my attention undivided.

“You need to get home to your family.”

“No family, officer.”

He furrows his eyebrows. Those he has. I see him look in the backseat and I turn. He’s eyeing the car seat.

“I could give you a field sobriety test.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sober. One thousand percent. I’m. .” I run out of words. “You’re right. My family needs me.”