Scored (12 page)

“Forget about the stupid homework assignment,” she said. “Tell me about your mother.”

Suspicion flickered across the planes of his face. “My
mother
?” he asked.

Imani tried to remain poker-faced but was forced to turn away. She took a few deep salty breaths and reminded herself that she was on home turf here, that
Diego
was the outsider. Then she faced him with the most innocent expression she could muster under the circumstances. “Yeah,” she said, “maybe I’ll write my paper on
her
.”

Diego’s eyes narrowed.

Imani forced a note of light flirtation into her tone. “I hear she knows even more about this anti-score stuff than you do.”

Diego’s blue eyes flashed with something like hostility. Then he turned away. “Sure,” he said lightheartedly. “But if I were you, I’d look into Sherry Potter first.”

“I can do that,” Imani said, matching his lightness.

Then she too faced the ocean. She wanted to draw strength from it, but it offered none. The ocean was many things, but it was never sneaky, never dishonest. When it changed tacks, it was direct and merciless. When it placed you within its sights, it did so with a swagger Imani envied. She was on her own in this game. She’d have to find the strength to play it from within.

IMANI DIDN’T BELIEVE
in Sherry Potter’s disappearance. It was impossible to disappear; there were cameras everywhere. Even if the press didn’t know where Sherry Potter was, Imani was sure that Score Corp did, which meant her husband, Nathan Klein, did. Imani was also sure that the so-called lost interview was a conspiracy theory, hatched by creepers in lieu of a defensible argument for their cause. In any case, she decided not to debate the issue with Diego. She had a higher objective, and needed to draw him out to succeed. Even if she didn’t end up writing her paper on Diego’s mother, she had promised Ms. Wheeler and, more importantly, that eyeball that she’d uncover something useful.

So on Friday during study period, she claimed a tablet at the school library to search the lost interview, hoping to find
just enough to show interest, butter Diego up, and then elicit some real information. Her search led her down blind alley after blind alley, with no actual “lost interview” appearing. The closest she got was a video of some girl who claimed to be Sherry Potter’s assistant listening to a recording of it while describing what she heard. Before she could finish, someone barged into her dingy apartment and yanked her away. It looked amateurishly staged, which Imani found disappointing. She’d thought Diego was smarter than that and began to wonder if she’d mistaken his confidence for intelligence.

The search was not a complete loss for Imani, however. While there was no plausible evidence for the interview, there was an abundance of material about the Potter-Kleins themselves, and Imani quickly found herself spiraling down a search rabbit hole, consuming article after article about this oddball pair of geniuses. Her favorite bit was a ten-year-old interview with veteran reporter Martin Belzer. He was a star of news feeds and someone she knew her mother had a crush on. But he looked different in this interview—younger, thinner, more aggressive.

The video featured footage of the Potter-Kleins’ Cape Cod beach house, where they were shown riding horses while Martin Belzer provided a brief voice-over about the “reclusive couple” and their “world-changing software program.” It explained how the Potter-Kleins had dropped out of MIT, cycled through a handful of startup companies, earned and lost a few million, and then finally designed the software at the heart of the score.

Their home was a sleek wooden deckhouse with eyeballs
everywhere. After a short tour, Martin sat with them in front of a digital fireplace to begin the inquisition.

The Potter-Kleins came across as friendly and open to Imani. Sherry was pretty and serious, with salt-and-pepper hair cut into a soft bob. Nathan was tall and gaunt with heavy black eyebrows and restless eyes. Despite being in their forties, they were both scored. They got a monthly report just like Imani did. Nathan’s lowest score was 52, he admitted. Sherry had never scored below 80.

When Martin asked them why they invented the software, the Potter-Kleins looked at each other with a trace of trepidation.

Then Nathan answered: “We saw the inability of social programs, including public education, to eradicate poverty, and we decided it was a failure of technology.”

“A failure of
technology
?” Martin asked.

“Of course,” Nathan answered. “Here we had this incredible tool at our disposal with the Internet. We had search. We had wikis. We had all the social networking tools. We had micro-lending and personalized charity. But poverty wasn’t going away. If anything, the Internet was widening the gap between rich and poor.”

“The digital divide,” Martin interjected.

“Sure, that,” Nathan answered, “but also the fact that certain societal structures were being reinforced rather than challenged by the Internet. You know, poverty is not merely a question of resources. It’s also a collection of behaviors.”

“And that’s not to blame the victim,” Sherry interrupted. “Structural economic issues certainly have their role.”

“Yes,” Nathan conceded. “But behavioral patterns reinforce inequities because people tend to behave according to the dictates of whatever value system they’re born into. And the value systems of the poor tend to reinforce poverty. High birth rates, high drop-out rates, short-term versus delayed gratification.”

“All excellent replicators,” Sherry added.

“It’s a runaway feedback loop,” Nathan continued. “A self-replicating pattern. And no one found a way to stop it.
No one.
”

“Okay,” Martin said, “so you’re telling me you were looking for a way to …”

“To interrupt the pattern,” Nathan said.

“But first,” Sherry added, “we had to understand it.”

“Exactly,” Nathan said. “So we created a software program that could crunch huge quantities of data in search of the nonobvious patterns.”

“We already knew the obvious ones,” Sherry said.

“Exactly,” Nathan agreed. “And it’s really just blind luck that this all happened around the same time that surveillance cameras were cropping up everywhere.”

The way they spoke seemed to Imani like a duet between a guitar and a piano, overlapping at times but always complementing.

“Our software could identify subjects through biometric markers,” Sherry said. “Like face and gait recognition. But now we could link that data with things like Web usage and direct address.”

“Direct address?” Martin asked.

“That’s when people speak directly to the cameras,” she said.

“Of course,” Martin said. “That’s one of the aspects of the score that makes people—especially people of our generation—very uncomfortable.”

“Yes, I know,” Sherry said. “It makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Luckily, we found a juvenile detention facility in New Hampshire that wasn’t uncomfortable with it.”

“At
all,
” Nathan interjected.

“Exborough,” Martin said, nodding.

Sherry and Nathan looked at each other for a grim moment, until Martin prodded them. “Things didn’t exactly go as planned at Exborough,” he said. “Did they?”

“There were some bumps along the way,” Nathan offered.

“Bumps?” Martin waited for them to expand, but they did not. “The records from Exborough are all sealed,” he said finally. “Along with your research notes.”

“Our subjects were minors,” Sherry explained gently. “They have certain legal protections.”

“They’re not minors anymore,” Martin pushed. “What can you tell us?”

In the silence that followed, the camera zoomed in, first on Nathan, who remained impassive, then on Sherry, whose jaw tensed.

This seemed to stiffen Martin’s resolve. “Why won’t you tell us what happened at Exborough?”

Nathan turned to Sherry, and it seemed to Imani that something transpired between them, an agreement of some kind.

“Look,” Sherry said. “You have to remember, these were troubled kids. Long before we came along, there was drug use,
violence, theft. There was
organized
crime and prostitution.
At
the facility. The authorities were at their wits’ end. So were the parents, in most cases. I think that’s how they justified it.”

“Is that how
you
justified it?” Martin asked.

“We were invited,” Nathan said.

“You were invited to put those kids under twenty-four-hour surveillance?” Martin challenged.

Sherry smiled patiently. “They were already under surveillance,” she said.

“Look,” Nathan continued, “we were just looking for a way to feed massive amounts of data into our software. Exborough was perfectly set up
already
for that purpose. We were going to toss all the data afterward.”

“It was the kids themselves who changed our minds,” Sherry said. “I remember the day the warden called to tell us they were confessing to the cameras.” She turned to her husband, laughing. “Do you remember that?”

Nathan nodded.

“Confessing?” Martin asked, incredulous.

Sherry nodded. “It was so strange. We never anticipated it. We hoped the kids would get used to the cameras and maybe ignore them after a while. But something else happened. The kids loved the cameras; they loved being watched! I remember thinking it was probably because it was a kind of micro-celebrity. You know, like the old reality TV.”

Martin wrinkled his nose in distaste.

“That was my reaction too,” Sherry said. “But you have to remember, these kids were already used to being watched.”

“All kids are,” Nathan said. “That’s the salient point here. That was our lightbulb moment.”

“What do you mean by that?” Martin asked.

“Even before the score,” Nathan said. “Before Exborough, before the first closed-circuit camera was installed in the first convenience store, being a kid has always been about being watched. They’re watched by their parents, by their teachers, by each other. Look at a baby. All it
wants
is to be watched. It cries when you look away. Look at little kids on the playground: ‘Mommy, Mommy, look at me.’ ”

“But the older we get,” Sherry continued, “the less we look at each other. Watch commuters on a train. Nobody makes eye contact. The checkout girl at the supermarket? Do you ever look her in the eye?”

Martin laughed in a self-deprecating manner.

“And, on a macro scale, look at what’s happened to our communities,” Nathan said. “We used to live in small clusters, in tiny villages. Do you think there was any privacy there? There were no fenced-off backyards. There were no locks on the doors. Everyone knew everyone else’s business.”

“Right,” Sherry said. “For thousands of years, that’s how we lived. That’s our natural heritage. Our human nature, if you will.”

“But as communities grew in size,” Nathan said, “so did the fetishization of privacy.”

“The
fetishization
of privacy,” Martin said, clearly disturbed by the phrase.

“Privacy is a modern invention,” Nathan said. “There’s no hardwired need for it. If anything, the opposite is true.”

“Yes,” Sherry continued, “and, interestingly, this cultural evolution toward privacy is precisely mirrored on an individual scale. The baby who craves attention becomes the adult who doesn’t know her own neighbors. The child who begged his mommy to look at him on the playground becomes the sullen teenager who locks his bedroom door and puts up a
KEEP OUT
sign. Where does he learn this?” She paused to let the question hang, before answering: “From his parents.”

“And from society,” Nathan added.

“But the kids at Exborough were different,” Sherry said with a warm smile, leaning in toward Martin. “They were alienated from their parents and from society. Not to mention, because of where they were, privacy was already dead for them.” She leaned farther forward, as if to share a secret. “We had no way of knowing this beforehand, but these kids were primed for this experiment. The cameras tapped into something primal for them. I think it reawakened something.”

“What do you think it awakened?” Martin asked.

Sherry stared into the camera for a long moment, then said: “Faith.”

“Faith in what?”

“Fair play,” Sherry said.

Martin cocked his head to the side, awaiting clarification.

“They knew they were being judged,” she explained. “I mean, to be honest, we didn’t know if the software would work
in the beginning. But the kids knew their behavior was being evaluated somehow. It didn’t bother them. They were used to being judged. Only now, instead of being judged by a frustrated teacher, or a potentially abusive guard, or by a disapproving parent, they were being judged by something rational, something fair. Something not human.”

“Exactly,” Nathan said with great satisfaction.

“And they liked this?” Martin asked. “The nonhuman aspect?” Martin’s tone was pinched, as if he found the concept profoundly offensive.

“Humans had failed these kids time and time again,” Sherry said. “I think for a lot of them, this was the first time they’d ever been judged fairly.”

“By a software program.” Martin’s face again betrayed his discomfort with the idea.

“By the most intelligent software program ever created,” Nathan said.

Sherry gave her husband a sidelong glance.

But Nathan was uncowed. “Hey, you can’t argue with the results. On every measurable parameter—income, health, marital stability, educational level, quality of life—the score’s predictive capacity is off the charts.”

Sherry grew quiet in the face of her husband’s grandstanding.

“A more perfect humanity through technology,” Martin said, quoting Score Corp’s well-known slogan.

“That’s right,” Nathan said. “Where sociology, criminology,
psychology, and, to be quite frank, all of the humanities have failed, the score has finally succeeded.”

“But is that a worthy goal?” Martin asked.

“What?” Nathan said. “Perfection?”

“Exactly,” Martin said. “To a lot of people, that sounds frighteningly utopian.”