“I’d be a rich, old, doddering fool.”
“That’s not why. I begged him not to.” It’s his wife.
He looks at her and says: “Don’t you have anyone you love so much that it causes you to stuff down and deny the most obvious truths?”
I feel a terrible weight, Polly and Isaac, my inability to adapt to their absence, and the absence of the life I’d romanticized, a crushing truth in my life.
His wife chokes back a sob, the slipping away of her desperate hold on dignity. Is there little uglier than the most beautiful among us coming apart at the seams?
It dawns on me. He’s not going to shoot me. He’s going to shoot himself.
She falls to her knees.
“He has given so much to the world, not just the technology, but the charity.” She looks at him. “You can’t believe everything you’ve built has been without value. It’s driven an economy, productivity, let grandchildren and their grandmothers talk over the Internet. You’ve built an engine for twenty-first-century communications.”
He takes it in. She senses she’s gotten momentum.
“The Juggler is only one iteration of dozens of devices with dual edges-video-game consoles, phones, all the fast-twitch gadgets. You can’t blame yourself.” She turns to me. “Don’t write about him. Write about the dangers of the technology, in general, to children. Don’t ruin a man who has done so much. Don’t make him the”-she chews on the phrase-“poster child for creating technology that bakes the brains of our babies.”
He dangles the gun in his hand. I have this strange sense that the more she protests the more convinced he becomes of his own failings. I know what he’s thinking: he can’t believe his legacy, and the legacy of a region he helped build, will be a Brave New World. I don’t know if he’s right. I certainly agree with her that the Juggler isn’t the only device. But it is the story.
“Andrew.” She’s pleading.
He shakes his head, and I realize they are having a silent communication more powerful and instant than email, more intense than anything a high-definition Juggler could deliver.
His arms fall to his sides. She looks at him, kneeling. As far as they are concerned, I am no longer in the room.
59
I make out the silhouette of the buzzard, willowy arms crossed over his chest, head cocked in attentiveness, at the ready to swoop, standing against a tree. But he makes no move to stop me as I drag myself to my car.
His inaction prompts my brain to reverberate with Leviathan’s words “no malice.” The phrase practically glowers at me with its beady eyes, challenging me to justify my rabid assumptions over the last few days about the emergence of a grand conspiracy.
Have I been subjected to terrific malice or just unfair play?
My movements have been tracked, and I’ve been followed. A man with a crooked smile clocked me in Chinatown but not in defense of a nefarious neurological plot. He was worried I’d expose his intellectual property and marketing plans. Love for her nephew motivated Faith.
On my part, I plunged into a reportorial frenzy because of the wounds to my head and the ones to my heart.
I climb into my car, Polly’s car, the Audi that belonged to my dead ex-girlfriend and for which I now owe substantial taxes. Is this why, I wonder, I shouldn’t own nice things, or date amazing women, or fall in love with them? You ultimately pay too high of a price.
As I drive Highway 280, I chew questions. Do I believe Leviathan? And do I expose him, or just the technology he helped create?
Forty minutes later, I arrive at my inherited flat. I walk into the living room and stare at the unused baby bouncer. I’m exhausted. I’m wired. I sit. I stare at the bouncer until my eyes glaze over. I pull out my laptop.
I start writing.
Three hours later, I have many pages. I’ve told the tale of the Juggler, its origin, the specific damage it may do to a generation of Chinese children and, the generally dual-edged nature of our technology.
I expose Andrew Leviathan, the white knight of Silicon Valley-itself the white knight of industries-is spawning a new generation of devices that retard development of our brains. I conclude that these ultra-modern devices have taken us backward neurologically. Bits destroy brain cells. The more we use supercomputers to juggle, the more primitive we become.
I put my head back, laptop still on my knees, and I begin to fall into sleep. I picture Leviathan and his wife, two truly connected people, undone by the image of him in shackles, accused of experimenting on children, causing the death of a little girl. Shame and incarceration, Leviathan’s life having come full circle from his near-death experience in a cold war jail. Outside the cell I build for him, his doting wife stands, eyes streaked with tears.
I am not alone when I wake up. I am in an embrace, with my laptop. I’ve somehow started to cuddle it in the night. Convenient. I feel groggy but rested. It’s 7:45.
My story is right where I left it. I read. It is not merely lucid, but gripping. In the push of a plastic button, I can send this to one of a handful of major publications-
I write a short pitch I can send to editors. I choose the
I put my finger on the send button. I start to push. I stop.
I picture Leviathan’s wife, on her knees, pleading with me, connected to him.
I look at the baby bouncer. Protective foam packaging remains attached around the metal bar that encircles the bouncer.
I wipe my eyes. I stand. I walk up the majestic stairs to the bedroom, pausing halfway on the landing to take in a breathtaking view of San Francisco, and a giant neon glare of a Google ad appended to the side of a building.
It’s nearly 8. There might still be time.
I quickly change my clothes, wash my face, and I hustle down to the car.
60
Just like I remember, she walks with the allure of a model but utterly without pretense. Like an apologetic model, wearing a baggy jacket, hands stuffed in the pockets.
She sees my car parked in front of the school. I roll down the passenger-side window. She hesitates, then walks over.
“I just dropped off Timothy.” She clears her throat. “It’s nice to see you.”
“I know a place where we can get a doughnut.”
She blinks. Faith must be wondering whether I am referring to the joint where she used to meet Alan Parsons.
“Not that place. The one I’ve got in mind is seedier. It got a C from the health inspector. Which keeps away the crowds, so it’s usually empty. It’s a nice place for small talk.”
She leans forward and takes the door handle. She looks somewhere distant. “I’m not her.” She looks at me. “I’m not anyone. Not anyone else.”
I swallow. Some kind of acceptance, an effort to swallow my past, parts of it.
My fortune be damned.
