Adam Johnson - Fortune Smiles - Stories

SJ has long lashes and big, manga brown eyes. He hits me with them now.

“I’ve gotta tell you,” he says, “the president is a work of art, a seamlessly integrated data interface. I’m in real admiration. This is a game changer. You know what I envision?”

I notice his flashy glasses. “Are those Android?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“Can I have them?”

He hands them over, and I search the frames for their IP address.

SJ gestures large. “I envision your algorithm running on Reputation Curator. Average people could bring their personalities to life, to speak for themselves, to customize and personalize how they’re seen by the world. Your program is like Google, Wikipedia and Facebook all in one. Everyone on the planet with a reputation would pay to have you animate them, to make them articulate, vigilant…eternal.”

“You can have it,” I tell SJ. “The algorithm’s core is open-source — I used a freeware protocol.”

SJ flashes a brittle smile. “We’ve actually looked into that,” he says, “and, well, it seems like you coded it with seven-layer encryption.”

“Yeah, I guess I did, didn’t I? You’re the one with the hash reader. Just crack it.”

“I don’t want it to be like that,” SJ says. “Let’s be partners. Your concept is brilliant — an algorithm that scrubs the Web and compiles the results into a personal animation. The president is the proof, but it’s also given away the idea. If we move now, we can protect it, it will be ours. In a few weeks, though, everyone will have their own.”

I don’t point out the irony of SJ wanting to protect a business model.

“Is the president just an animation to you?” I ask. “Have you spoken with him? Have you listened to what he has to say?”

“I’m offering stock,” SJ says. “Wheelbarrows of it.”

The drone offers up its firewall like a seductress her throat. I deploy the hash reader, whose processor hums and flashes red. We sit on folding chairs while it works.

“I need your opinion,” I tell him.

“Right on,” he says, and removes a bag of weed. He starts rolling a joint, then passes me the rest. He’s been hooking me up the last couple months, no questions.

“What do you think of Kurt Cobain?” I ask.

“Kurt Cobain,” he repeats as he works the paper between his fingers. “The man was pure,” he says, and licks the edge. “Too pure for this world. Have you heard Patti Smith’s cover of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’? Unassailable, man.”

He lights the joint and passes it my way, but I wave it off. He sits there, staring out the open mouth of my garage into the Kirkland plumage of Palo Alto. Apple, Oracle, PayPal and Hewlett-Packard were all started in garages within a mile of here. About once a month, SJ gets homesick and cooks litti chokha for everyone at work. He plays Sharda Sinha songs and gets this look in his eyes like he’s back in Bihar, land of peepal trees and roller birds. He has the look now. He says, “You know, my family downloaded the president. They have no idea what I do out here, as if I could make them understand that I help bad sushi chefs ward off Twitter trolls. But the American president, that they understand.”

The mayor, barefoot, jogs past us. Moments later, a billboard drives by.

“Hey, can you make the president speak Hindi?” SJ asks. “If you could get the American president to say ‘I could go for a Pepsi’ in Hindi, I’d make you the richest man on earth.”

The hash reader’s light turns green. Just like that, the drone is mine. I disconnect the leads and begin to sync the Android glasses. The drone uses its moment of freedom to rise and study SJ.

SJ returns the drone’s intense scrutiny.

“Who do you think sent it after you?” he asks. “Mozilla? Craigslist?”

“We’ll know in a moment.”

“Silent. Black. Radar deflecting,” SJ says. “I bet this is Microsoft’s dark magic.”

The new OS suddenly initiates, the drone responds, and using retinal commands, I send it on a lap around the garage. “Lo and behold,” I say. “Turns out our little friend speaks Google.”

“Wow,” SJ says. “Don’t be evil, huh?”

When the drone returns, it targets SJ in the temple with a green laser.

“What the fuck,” SJ says.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “It’s just taking your pulse and temperature.”

“What for?”

“Probably trying to read your emotions,” I say. “I bet it’s a leftover subroutine.”

“You sure you’re in charge of that thing?”

I roll my eyes and the drone does a backflip.

“My emotion is simple,” SJ tells me. “It’s time to come back to work.”

“I will,” I tell him. “I’ve just got some things to deal with.”

SJ looks at me. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about your wife. But you don’t have to be so alone about things. Everyone at work, we’re all worried about you.”

—

Inside, Charlotte is suspended in a sling from the Hoyer Lift, which has been rolled to the window so she can see outside. She’s wearing old yoga tights, which are slack on her, and she smells of the cedar oil her massage therapist rubs her with. I go to her and open the window.

“You read my mind,” she says, and breathes the fresh air.

I put the glasses on her, and it takes her eyes a minute of flashing around before the drone lifts from my hands. A grand smile crosses her face as she puts it through its paces — hovering, rotating, swiveling the camera’s servos. And then the drone is off. I watch it cross the lawn, veer around the compost piles, and head for the community garden. It floats down the rows, and though I don’t have the view Charlotte does in her glasses, I can see the drone inspecting the blossoms of summer squash, the fat bottoms of Roma tomatoes. It rises along the bean trellises and tracks watermelons by their umbilical stems. When she makes it to her plot, she gasps.

“My roses,” she says. “They’re still there. Someone’s been taking care of them.”

“I wouldn’t let your roses die,” I tell her.

She has the drone inspect every bloom. Carefully, she maneuvers it through the bright petals, brushing against the blossoms, then shuttles it home again. When it’s hovering before us, Charlotte leans slightly forward and sniffs the drone. “I never thought I’d smell my roses again,” she says, her face flushed with hope and amazement. The tears begin streaming.

I remove her glasses, and we leave the drone hovering there.

She regards me. “I want to have a baby,” she says.

“A baby?”

“It’s been nine months. I could have had one already. I could’ve been doing something useful this whole time.”

“But your illness,” I say. “We don’t know what’s ahead.”

She closes her eyes like she’s hugging something, like she’s holding some dear truth.

“With a baby, I’d have something to show for all this. I’d have a reason. At the least, I’d have something to leave behind.”

“You can’t talk like that,” I tell her. “We’ve talked about you not talking like this.”

But she won’t listen to me, she won’t open her eyes.

All she says is “And I want to start tonight.”

—

Later, I carry the iProjector out back to the gardening shed. Here, in the gold of afternoon light, the president rises and comes to life. He adjusts his collar and cuffs, runs his thumb down a black lapel as if he exists only in the moment before a camera will broadcast him live to the world.

“Mr. President,” I say. “I’m sorry to bother you again.”

“Nonsense,” he tells me. “I serve at the pleasure of the people.”

“Do you remember me?” I ask. “Do you remember the problems I’ve been talking to you about?”