Hari Kunzru - Transmission

As he left the room Arjun’s mouth was dry. He took a soda from the chiller cabinet and drank it down in three large gulps. There had been an error. But it was fixable. All he had to do was treat this situation like any other technical challenge. Parse the problem. Find the bug and deal with it. Because this was not how his story went. He was doing well in America. He was a big success.

His head felt as if it were clamped in a vice. They couldn’t force him to leave, not like this. What if he could make them see how efficient he was? Then they would change their minds and fire someone else. He sat down at his desk and tried to focus on his monitor. Two weeks? The view from his bedroom window. The mountains floating on a sea of fog. Only two more weeks of those mountains, then back to California. Hard white sun baking the concrete. And what about Chris? He couldn’t leave her now. Even after months of working he had no savings. He wouldn’t be able to last more than a few weeks on the bench. After that he would have to go back to India.

Then everyone would know the truth.

He blamed the phone. It made it too easy. In the early days, when he had just arrived in the US, he had done it to reassure his parents. They would have been worried if they thought he was having difficulties. And then Priti had been so impressed, so proud of her big brother in America. Aamir also. The thing had taken on a life of its own. Yes, Maa, I’m doing fine…

The way his mother talked, she had probably told everyone in Noida by now. His story. His version. Maa, something good happened today … How her son had been on the fast-track to success from the moment he stepped off the plane. How at world-famous Oracle Computers her beta had solved technical problem worrying Larry Ellison for years, but turned down partnership to go to Virugenix and run computer-virus department. How her little boy now socialized with businessmen and politicians. How he had sat next to David Hasselhoff at dinner.

There was no way he could go back to India. He would bring shame on his family.

The air in the office was stifling. His colleagues were pretending not to watch him, peering slyly round their cubicle walls. He had to think. He had to find the bug. At the back of the Michelangelo Building was a wooden deck scattered with white metal cafeteria tables, the type with a hole in the middle for a sunshade to poke through. People came here to eat lunch or hold informal meetings. He swiped himself out of the office and went down into the open air. Sitting at one of the tables, he watched a crow pecking at a plastic yogurt pot, the remains of a lunch which, contrary to policy, had not been cleared away into the receptacle provided.

It was a magnificent crow. Its black button eye glittered with malice. Each feather seemed to be individually present, discrete. He found himself counting them: one, two, five, ten, until he was distracted by the light streaming between the needles of the tall conifers lining the campus perimeter. According to a sign screwed on to the wall by the fire door, Virugenix has landscaped this zone using native Washington State plants to encourage a land ethic that celebrates our natural heritage. Yes, he thought. Yes, that’s right. Everything seemed precious and perfect, the way things ought to be. The sun marched down correctly through the dense green branches of the trees and the ground sloped away in an ordered mat of native Washington turf grasses. On impulse he stepped off the deck and kneeled down. He ran his hands over the grass. It was fine and soft and thick, like hair. The sunlight was blinding. The world seemed to have dissolved, to be coming to him through a series of prisms. His face was wet. He realized he was crying.

‘Are you OK?’ The voice was concerned, hesitant. Turning round, Arjun recognized a Singaporean guy who worked on the diagnostics product team. He raised an arm in a weak fine-thanks wave. The Singaporean guy waved too and backed away still watching. Finally convinced that there was no immediate problem, he turned and went inside. Arjun remained kneeling for a while, smoothing his hands over the grass. Then he got up and returned to his desk.

There were two emails waiting in his inbox.

To: arjunm@virugenix.com

From: darrylg@virugenix.com

Subject: Blame

Blame is MEANINGLESS. You must understand it is NOBODY’S FAULT. Looked at from a cosmological perspective this has VERY LITTLE SIGNIFICANCE. Be aware I have in place COMPREHENSIVE personal security measures. Dsrr{l

To: arjunm@virugenix.com

From: chriss@virugenix.com

Subject: are you all right?

Heard the news. So sorry. Meet me after work? Xc

‘That bastard.’ She meant it. She had always thought Darryl was a shit. ‘He couldn’t even face you on his own. But it doesn’t surprise me. You know how he is with people.’

They were parked by the lake, at the end of a private road belonging to a sailing club. Ahead of them a slipway ran down into the water. A little way out, people who could afford to take Wednesday off were messing about in catamarans. Chris had brought Arjun here because she thought the view might calm him down. She was trying to face up to her responsibilities. He was not making it easy.

‘At least I have you,’ he said with determination.

‘Sure.’ She nodded warily. He was not in good shape. His eyes were red. Earlier he had been picking at his clothing and muttering to himself in a fractured mixture of English and what was probably Hindi. Chris was worried. She had been avoiding him all week and was intending to go on doing so for as long as possible, but when she heard he had lost his job, guilt told her she ought to check on him. Karmically speaking, it was the proper thing to do.

He kept talking about going back. She supposed he meant to India, but it wasn’t clear. They were trying to make him go back, but it was impossible. He would show Them. He would make Them see sense.

‘I think,’ she ventured, choosing her words carefully, ‘it’s kind of a done deal.’

He scowled and said, ‘That’s not true.’ Just that. Final and definite. Which worried her even more.

Since the weekend she had been doing a lot of thinking. Not about Arjun particularly. About her and Nicolai. She and Nic had always tried to be each other’s fantasy. That was their bargain, the thing that held them together. No compromises, anything possible, anything permitted. It sometimes made for a strain, especially when other people got involved, but it had always felt like a brave choice. They were making their lives up as they went along, playing by their own rules. And often it worked, which was more than you could say for most people’s relationships.

It was just that lately she seemed to be pushing Nic’s buttons. He was pissed at her, and he was probably justified. She felt as if she was losing him. Arjun was a symptom, but there had been more significant attachments for her and, she suspected, for him too. A while back she had had a thing with someone which threatened to get serious. Nic knew about it, or at least guessed something was up between her and this other guy, a studio engineer. He said nothing, rode it out.

He was a calm one, Nic, almost too laid-back sometimes, but he had problems and she was supposed to be part of the solution. For a long time she had been kind of shitty to him; now it was time to step up. That’s what she had decided. To commit. So when she heard Arjun had been fired, it was, among other things, a relief. That was one more night she would be able to forget about. Arjun would disappear and it would be easier to put things right. It was cold of her; she knew it. She also knew whatever had happened was her fault. She did owe Arjun something. A shoulder. He had been a friend, after all. So she came and scraped him up and put him in her car. She had expected him to be upset, but not like this. He seemed to think he could persuade the company to take him back.