A few minutes into getting ready for bed in my little hotel room, though, someone knocked on my door.
There was no peephole, so I hastily re-dressed myself and opened the door to find Peter Petrawicki.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
“Um,” I said, not wanting to say yes, but also not sure I could say no.
“It’s fine, no, I was wrong to come.” And then he turned around and walked away.
I closed the door.
Thirty seconds later, there was another knock. At this point, I was feeling completely depleted.
Paxton and Sid stood at the door wide-eyed and silent.
“Hi, guys,” I said, resigned, walking away from the open door in tacit invitation.
“What the hell! Why was Peter Petrawicki just knocking on your door?!” Sid asked.
“I honestly don’t know. He didn’t tell me.” I sat down on the bed. “I guess he wanted to continue our discussion from my interview.”
“He was in your interview?” Paxton asked, a little quietly, leaning on the room’s desk.
I surprised myself by asking, “Do you guys know who I am?”
“You’re Miranda? You work in materials?” Sid volunteered.
“Also, I’m Miranda, one of April May’s best friends and founder and former CEO of the Som.”
It was quiet for a while before Sid said, “Fuuuuuuuck,” and sat down in the desk chair.
“Why would you even want to work here?” Paxton asked.
“Why do you want to work here?” It came out accusatory.
Sid stepped in, understanding me. “This place is going to change the world. You want to be a part of it. I get that. I’m sure that was a tough call for you, deciding to apply.”
“What did you say to Peter in your interview?” Paxton asked.
“He asked me how much I hated him,” I said, replaying the conversation in my head.
“And?”
“And I told him I pitied him. I told him I thought he was sad, and that I found his ideology not so much odious as boring.”
Their eyes got big.
“I didn’t expect to see him! I didn’t prepare for it, he just popped in. I have . . . emotions about that guy, OK!” I was getting loud. “I don’t know if I hate him. Maybe I do! I feel like I hate him right now because he shut this all down just by poking his fucking shark nose in it. Why did it have to be him? This is my research, this was how I was going to change the world. Why did it have to be him?”
Paxton and Sid were lovely guys, but they did not know what to do with a suddenly furious young woman they had known for less than twenty-four hours. That was the truth of it, though. I never really hated Peter Petrawicki until he got into my world. I was always separate from the ideological arguments. I saw what he did to April, but it never made me hate him because I imagined him as a force of nature. You don’t hate a storm when it cancels your rocket launch.
Peter Petrawicki was bad weather. He wasn’t even a person to me. But Altus made him real, not only because he’d just knocked on my door before coyly walking away, but also because he was tromping all over my vision of my future. And as much as I wanted to think that industrial espionage was the only reason I was at Altus, I was also there because this was supposed to be my story, and the only reason it wasn’t going to be was because, out of billions of humans, Altus was being led by that one.
—
Eventually I convinced the guys that I was fine, and that I still had a lab waiting for me at Berkeley, and thanked them for being with me during my meltdown. We had a hug and then I shuffled them out of the room. In the few moments before I fell completely unconscious, I thought to fish the prepaid phone out of my bag. I wanted to text an update to Professor Lundgren. Maybe I could even call her. It turned out I couldn’t do either. There was no cell signal in middle-of-nowhere Val Verde.
CORPORATE DEFAULTS SURGE TO RECORD HIGH
Associated Press
Defaults on corporate bonds rose to a record high this year, leaving regulators struggling to assess how to manage what are coming to be seen as the early warning signs of a recession. “Issuance of corporate debt has risen in the past ten years as low interest rates and pressure to raise stock prices have resulted in unprecedented share buybacks,” said Susan Gordan, senior economist at Goldman Sachs. “That has been healthy for many companies, but for others, those bills are coming due.”
Fed chair Arthur Pai has indicated that rate cuts were likely in the face of lower consumer confidence and a slowing economy.
MAYA
How did I spend the longest three weeks of my life?
Well, I tried to take the book’s advice and bring my nose up from off the ground, but I mostly failed. I did have dinner with Derek’s family. Their house was a beautiful split-level from the fifties. His wife and daughter were perfect and made me ache for family, and for a future in which I might have a family.
I’d like to tell you I spent the time off doing sit-ups and reading novels, but I mostly spent it on the Som and researching Fish. The book had said I was safe now, and I had decided to trust the book, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t still terrified by my Cowtown experience. None of my Som friends wanted to talk to me about Fish, though. The Som was still trying to track down where April was, and that’s all people wanted to discuss. That made sense. Before I had solid leads, that’s basically all I talked about with my Som friends. But I was absolutely
