against Jonathan was over, all their arguments and their competing claims for time. The person she had been with him was gone, and the man she’d hoped he would become was lost, and she was left with the words Jonathan had said, and the things he’d actually done. Her ideas for him, and her future with him would never come to pass. She hated him for that, for rending her world, ruining what might have been.
After waking, she was careful to stay still. No sudden movements or long conversations. No newspapers, no radio. Brimful, she was afraid of tipping.
She slept poorly, and once, she woke crying with bad dreams. Then Jess lay down at the foot of the bed.
“I’ll stay here,” Jess said.
“Are you comfortable?” Emily asked anxiously.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Are you going to sleep here all night?”
“Yes.”
“Jess?” said Emily.
“Stop waking me up.”
“What about the Tree Savers?”
“Don’t worry about them.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re fine without me.”
Emily took this in, and then asked delicately, tentatively, “Are you done with them?”
“Done.”
“Oh, good,” Emily said, but with sleepless, worried interest, she pressed, “What about Yorick’s? Isn’t George wondering where you went?”
Jess hesitated. “He knows.”
“Did you tell him when you’re coming back?”
“I’m not coming back.”
“You quit? You just left?”
“Well …,” said Jess, “I had to stop.”
Emily roused herself a little, as though she wanted to see her sister’s face, and Jess was glad that it was dark. “What do you mean?”
Don’t tell her now, Jess reminded herself. She mustn’t say anything now. “It’s not important.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. Nothing happened.” Jess meant nothing happened compared to what you’re going through. “I got a little bit … involved with him.”
Jess couldn’t help laughing.
“It’s not funny!”
“I know,” said Jess, wiping her eyes. “But it’s so good to hear you sounding like yourself.”
“Did you … did you really …?”
“Well …”
“You slept with him? Jess, how could you?”
Jess confessed, “Actually, it wasn’t all that difficult.”
“I can’t believe you!”
“Please.”
“You know that he’s too old.”
Jess said nothing.
“It would be totally—”
Jess cut her off. “I told him that we can’t see each other. I explained to him that I’m going to be with you.”
“So that’s over too.”
Jess hedged, “We’re still friends and all.”
“You have the strangest idea of friends,” said Emily.
“I love my friends,” protested Jess.
“That’s the problem.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not important,” Jess reassured her sister. “Don’t worry.”
“It’s over,” Emily reassured herself.
She tried out those words, but she did not believe them. Jonathan’s absence weighed on her, his disappearance clouded her mind. How could he vanish so completely? She longed for a body, a clue, a sign.
And yet he persisted in the world. Jonathan still worked his will at ISIS, in ways she never guessed. With share prices hovering at thirty-two cents, the executive committee met in secret in Oskar’s office in the new cheaper building. They dragged in their swivel chairs to speak of Jonathan’s pet project, his magic bullet, the October rollout, the surveillance system based on the secret Emily had told him, the plans she’d whispered for electronic fingerprinting.
“He left us with a revolutionary product,” Dave murmured to Orion, Jake, Aldwin, and Oskar. “We got it built. We got it tested. We’re ready.”
“But is this the time—would anybody notice now?” Orion asked.
“Yes! This is the time,” said Aldwin. “Think like Jonathan.”
“What do you mean, ‘think like Jonathan’?” Orion retorted.
“Think smart,” said smart old Oskar.
Dave nodded. “Exactly. If you think like Jonathan, you seize the moment.”
Aldwin explained, “Our dot-com customers are folding, but government contracts are huge. With the new antiterrorist initiatives, surveillance is the perfect space for us.”
“We’ve got the goods,” Dave said.
“And we’ve got the name from Marketing,” Aldwin announced. Standing at Oskar’s whiteboard, he uncapped a green dry-erase marker. “Operational Security and Internet Surveillance.” Carefully he lettered the new name: OSIRIS.
Hushed, they stared at the new acronym, their new god.
Jake mused, “Osiris was the brother of Isis, right?”
“Right,” said Aldwin. “The brother of Isis and her husband too.”
“I love this,” Oskar said.
“Fantastic,” Dave chimed in.
Orion sat up abruptly, and the back of his swivel chair snapped upright. “Wait.”
“We can’t,” said Aldwin. He was wearing a suit jacket with his tie folded in the pocket. ISIS was holding its memorial service that afternoon.
“Now is the time,” Dave said sonorously. “Thanks to you and your team, we’ve got the firepower we need.”
Orion protested, “We never said the surveillance tools were for government apps.”
“Oh, come on,” Aldwin said.
“What do you mean, ‘come on’? Our new customer is the Bush administration? We’re supposed to be the eyes and ears of the War on Terror?”
“Exactly,” Dave said.
“But you do see what this means. Loss of privacy, loss of civil liberties…. The Feds could access e-mail, and search everyone’s transactions—and we’d be the instrument! This is not what Jonathan was thinking.”
“It’s what he
Orion closed his eyes. He saw Jonathan’s playful smile at the river.
“Take a breath,” Dave advised, and Orion understood what that meant: “We all know you’re from Vermont and you went to Quaker schools.”
Orion did not take a breath. He blurted, “I built Fast-Track.”
“OSIRIS,” Jake corrected.
