Chimpanzee (26 page)

I've had it backwards. Outdoors, we are nothing but what we aren't here. It is better, inside. We can be all ages at once on the sofa, or in the kitchen, or standing in the shower. We can be each of those things, those moments, that made us—that I keep losing to Cynthia. Our history doesn't need me to give it meaning.

She finishes with the washcloth. “When is your next session with Cynthia?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“215 S
ANDWAY
, 4021 O
LD
B
REVARD
,
AND
100 N
ORTH
M
AIN
,” the kid says, “are all empty homes. They were foreclosed upon between fourteen and three months ago.”

One of my students is giving his presentation on the sidewalk outside my bar. Two of his classmates sit out of the way, on the bench that once marked a municipal bus stop. They are wearing sunglasses and holding folded sheets of paper in their laps. Grading their classmate, as I instructed.

Or so I assume.

He sees me, but he does not break his presentation.

“Each mortgage was held by a different company—two local, one national. The local companies moved forty percent slower through the foreclosure proceedings, allowing the residents—Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton and their two daughters, at Sandway, and Mr. Vaughn at Old Brevard—to occupy the residence for between sixty and ninety additional days.”

There are holes in his information, but I couldn't get much more out of the records office myself, when I compiled the list.

Three or four passersby have stopped to listen. They look up at him, standing with his legs askew on the supports of an enameled bike rack. The people wear plain shirts and pants they've stitched themselves from swathes of discount fabric. At one time, these fabrics would have made window treatments or pillowcases. Now they are clothes.

Their low-top sneakers are clean against the pavement. Sharp and washed.

“At my best estimate, thirty-eight percent of the homes, apartments, condos, and townhomes in the city are vacant.

“And where are those people now?” he says.

The watching people smoke cigarettes. One scratches at the tattoos sleeving his arms.

“What should we do with what they've left behind?” the kid says.

What, indeed.

He hops down and whispers to his classmates. They disappear at a jog down the hill, into my neighborhood. The bystanders walk away, un-entertained.

I turn to see: a police cruiser trolls slowly down the avenue. I step inside the bar.

I select
PARANOIA
from the goggles' menu. The caption claims that the sim offers varying levels of a sense of causality. Of meaning between disparate stimuli. Something to believe in.

I think only briefly about the
SHARES
in my pocket. About spending them on something other than alcohol. I'm getting better at not thinking about it.

As soon as the paranoia sim begins, I get it. I realize how fortunate I am that the squad car drove down the street. Who knows what other sim I might have chosen instead, given even a slight delay in my decision-making process? Causation.

This is important.

She finds me within minutes. I can't help but wonder: the students outside
this
bar, the police car, Zoe's custom chimping goggles. Everything in its coincidental place. I feel like everyone's behind this but me.

She chirps right into my ear phones—in the middle of something.

“—/(n - 1)]*Σ{[(x
_i
-x
^-
)/s
_x
]*[(y
_i
-y
^-
)/s
_y
]},” she says.

“The fuck is that?” I say.

“You took Statistics,” she says. There is a golf game on one of the TVs behind the bar. I am impressed people still play golf. Who
plays golf? What agreements, deals do they make on that grass? Military, financial. Legal.

I hate golf.

“That was a long time ago,” I say. “And how do you know?”

“It's public record, Ben,” she says. “What you studied. It belongs to the state. And anyway, that isn't important. You've got what it takes.”

“What?”

A stack of file directories appears in my field of vision—ever so slightly transparent. The directories list disorders—cognitive, social, etc. I have accessed these before. Each time I load a simulation.

“What's this?” I say.

“I'm sending you a simulation,” she says. “Sit tight.”

Directories scroll away, their names so immediately vanished and replaced by the interface's animation that I cannot make them out.

She must be Zoe. It makes sense. She's been doing this all along. Gaining access to how I think. I should tear the goggles off.

“Sit tight,” she says, blurring through directories.

They're getting smaller, deeper. They flash and reload new file names in an instant. In less time than it takes my eye to track them, so I am not sure it is happening.

But it is, I'm sure. There's a term for it.

“What is it?” I say.

“It's new. A private simulation.”

“Zoe . . .” I don't know if I can revisit that type of sim, like in her warehouse. If I should.

“My name is not Zoe,” she says.

But everything adds up. There are causal relations between what I've seen and what's going on here. She's lying.

“Whatever,” I say.

The directories disappear.
PARANOIA
ceases.

“But you can call me whatever you want,” she says.

Is this the right timeline? Who else could she be? Is she even really female?

“That's better,” she says. “You should stay away from paranoia.”

“Why?” I say. She must have loaded the sim, but it doesn't feel like anything. I don't feel anything.

“It's difficult to manage, and it's addictive.”

“So what is this one?”

“Correlation r equals one divided by the number of observations in the sample minus one multiplied by the summation of the x value for observation counter variable minus the sample mean of the x value for observation divided by the sample standard deviation of the x value for observation multiplied by the y value for observation counter variable minus the sample mean of the y value for observation divided by the sample standard deviation of the y value for observation.”

“The equation,” I say.

“Same as before. Only now, you get it.”

“You told me it's statistics.”

“So you're semantically primed. Put it together.”

She's speaking my language. Something. The idea is gone as soon as it arrives.

“My wife would know,” I say.

“You want to call and ask her to do your homework?”

“Cute.”

“How much does she know about all this?” she says.

“It's about correlation,” I say.

“Yes.”

Now I'm feeling it. “This sim isn't a disorder.”

“No.”

“What is it?”

“It's just a way to think. What else do you know about the equation?”

“It correlates coefficients,” I say. “In statistical samples. Where did you get this sim?”

“Does it matter?”

“I haven't thought about this kind of thing in years. Not like this, anyway.”

“But you get the general ideas,” she says. “That's all that matters. The sim helps you put the pieces together. The associations aren't yours. It's in the code.”

“Now what?” I say.

“Do the math,” she says.

“Cute.”

“Think about it. Samples. Correlations. Why would I apply this to you?”

She waits.

“What are your students up to?”

“Giving presentations,” I say.

“All of them?”

The simulation thinks me: “Wait. I don't know.”

I realize.

“I don't know them all.”

It hadn't occurred to me that they might have branched out. That, statistically speaking, the likelihood of whatever they're doing, in circumstances they share with others of their own age and ability across the country, would be an isolated system.

Except, the whole thing, the network of them, would be.

The sim knows.

“An isolated system,” I say. “Entropy.
S
=
-k
Σ [P
_i
log (P
_i
)].”

“Entropy of what?” she says.

“Information.”

“Meaning?”

“The ideas are breaking down. My ideas.”

“But you knew this would happen,” she says. “You knew you wouldn't be able to finish what you started. It's why you started it, isn't it?”

“I was honest,” I say. “I told them it was an introductory course.”

“Which means they can do whatever they want with the principles. They have to fill in the blanks somehow.”

“It's not about writing,” I say. “Anymore.”

Neither am I.

“Everything means everything else, Ben. Academic disciplines don't determine interpretation. The students have applied your ideas to other things, and they don't know you didn't intend that.”

That makes me think. Free
SHARES
, cigarettes.

“How do you know these things?” I say. “We shouldn't even be talking about this. I could be arrested.”

“Is there anyone around you?” she says.

“No,” I say.

“Then don't worry about it,” she says. “We're networking through a private server.”

“Okay.”

“For a cognitive scientist, you don't know much about communication technology,” she says.

“I wasn't a cognitive scientist,” I say. “Not really. I just studied the ideas. It was more like philosophy.”

“And what were you going to do with that?” she says.

“Understand things.”

“Let me ask you,” she says, “how do you feel about the therapy? What's it like?”

“You want to chat,” I say. “Again.”

“Do you mind?”

I think about our past. The simulations, the anger and the compulsion and the mysterious information. She is like a college girlfriend. Fucked up and beautiful. She keeps me company. Someone I can talk to, about what I haven't told Sireen.

“It's not painful,” I say.

“Do you feel different?”

“You mean less educated,” I say.

She doesn't say anything.

“Only sometimes. Now and then things come to me when I'm not thinking about them. Otherwise, I don't know what's missing.”

“I get it,” she says. “Things still make sense.”

“Some things, I guess. Important things.”

“You should probably cancel your classes,” she says.

“Probably.”

“But you won't.”

“Probably not.”

“Why?”

“People are counting on me,” I say.

“For what?”

“I'm not sure.”

“People drag each other down,” she says, “when they begin to drown.”

“Who's drowning?”

“If you can't tell me, then it isn't you, is it?”

“I suppose not.”

“It's nice to talk, isn't it?”