The Cloud (2 page)

3

T
rue to my business card, I make my living with words. Ideally getting $1.50 for each one. That’s been easier since I exposed the plot to destroy our brains.

A year ago, I wrote a series of articles about how a venture capitalist with ties to the military was developing technology to store secrets inside fallow memory space in the human mind. The conspirators wanted to use brain capacity like computer disc space. The idea was to allow seemingly harmless humans (like the elderly or even children) to become stealth carriers of data, able to cross borders or military lines. Without knowledge of the carry or the suspicion of enemies. The brilliant conceit: the bad guys might know how to hack a password-protected supercomputer, but they won’t be able to hack the brain of an eighty-five-year-old with dementia.

It’s not nearly as farfetched as it sounds, at least in theory, given the malleability of the hippocampus, the brain’s memory gateway. But in practice, the development of the technology entailed tinkering with and even destroying the memories of human guinea pigs, without their knowledge or permission. By happenstance, one of the guinea pigs was my grandmother, the iconoclastic octogenarian Lane Idle.

Grandma Lane’s memory began fading in and out, failing precipitously, regurgitating memories not her own. I was scared, curious and then angry, and followed some leads. Story of my life.

Long story short: I wrote a story about the scheme, got some notoriety, banged out a string of freelance pieces about the impact of technology on the brain, scored periodic appearances on CNN, experienced the most intense work year of my life, won an award for investigative medical journalism and—trust me that this relates—now need to borrow a tie.

It’s not that I don’t own a tie, but it has big polka dots and probably will be seen as obnoxious at tomorrow’s journalism awards luncheon at a private room at MacArthur Park in Palo Alto.

Sartorially, I remain unevolved, another late-thirtysomething unable to dress his age. But professionally, for the first time, I’m on solid footing. I even get a premium for my blog posts, $50 for some of them, having become something of a go-to journalist for investigations and wide-eyed tips involving neuroscience.

Which brings me to Sandy Vello.

According to her brief obituary in the
San Mateo Daily News
, the deceased worked as an administrator in the emerging neurotechnology division of a company called PRISM Corporation. She lived west of Burlingame, did regular volunteer work at the learning annex at the Twin Peaks juvenile hall, and enjoyed a modest fame in having been a contestant on an early episode of
Last One Standing
, a reality show that entails out-surviving other contestants over twelve weeks of humiliation and bug eating. There was no photo.

I haven’t heard of PRISM Corp. I Google it and discover Pacific Rim Integrated Solutions and Management, a nondescript corporate web site, dark blue background with an image in the upper right corner of a ship on the high seas. A close look shows the ship to be constructed of thousands of ones and zeroes.

A section labeled “About PRISM” indicates the company makes software kernels that power “a range of consumer, multimedia and industrial products, from clock radios to home alarm systems.” There’s no mention of a neurotechnology department.

I find a handful of other references to PRISM. There’s one PDF document filed with U.S. Immigration Services indicating that PRISM, a company with fifty-five employees, last year requested seven short-term work visas for foreign-born engineers. It’s not out of the ordinary; virtually every high-tech firm, from Amazon to Yahoo, seeks visas for highly skilled software engineers from India and Turkey.

I’m baffled. I’m wondering what could possibly be the connection between a deceased former reality-TV-show contestant and me. The chief connection I can make is that I sometimes write about the brain and, at least according to her obituary, Sandy Vello worked on neurotechnology. And for a story, I once visited the juvenile hall at Twin Peaks, a salmon-colored prison, administrative building and learning annex for San Francisco’s wayward teens where Sandy volunteered. The connection between she and I is, in a word, tenuous.

This is what preoccupies me so much that I nearly light my foot on fire.

I’m standing at the entrance to my office, having just barely sidestepped a mound of dirt with a candle sticking out of the top that sits just inside the door. I look up to see a handful of other such be-candled dirt mounds around the edges of the small office, forming a circle. In the center of the room sits my office mate, Samantha. She’s got her arms crossed over her chest, her palms resting on her shoulders. She wears a peasant blouse and a patient smile.

“You almost made Mamma angry,” she says.

“Whose mamma? Or should I say: who is Mamma?”

“Mamma Earth. She’s helping drive away the negative detritus and the painful memories.”

I look down at the mound of dirt. “You’re allowed to stick candles in Mamma, but I’m not allowed to lovingly brush her with the bottom of my high-tops?”

She pulls herself to her feet. She smiles bemusedly, clearly dealing with a less-evolved creature. Then her full lips turn in, a slight frown. Slight. Sam can command a thousand complex emotions but for the sake of being straightforward with the universe, she tries to reduce them to three: mild displeasure, peacefulness, mild joy. She blinks.

“Whoa.” She studies me. “Yellow with bits of orange.”

To anyone who hasn’t met Sam, this makes no sense. But I’ve spent years having her read my aura, or Karmic glow, or whatever it is.

“Serious unresolved tension.” She states the not-so-mysterious. She stands up, walks over to me, flips on the light by the door. “And green. Gross.”

“What’s green? My aura?”

“The throw-up stain on your shoulder.”

“Isaac. Serious unresolved dinner.”

She shakes her head, looks at me quizzically. “It’s nearly ten.” Maybe meaning: Why are you here and not at home?

I shrug. Half smile. She knows I can take refuge here since the breakup.

She leans in and kisses my cheek, tenderly, like a mom or big sister, which she is, in a way. She pulls back and holds my gaze, betraying sympathy in the wrinkles around her soft brown eyes. She’s got a round face that I sometimes think of as a distant, wondrous planet.

Samantha Leary and her husband, Dennis, ten years my senior, are great friends, limitless sounding boards, and my veritable family, despite being two of the kookiest people in a city filled with their like-minded, soulful ilk. Sam is a masseuse, spiritual healer, and uncannily accurate reader of moods who has freed herself of all conventional wisdom in a search to feel peaceful and help others do the same. Recently, she spent two weeks taking natural hallucinogens in marathon sessions in a rain forest in Chile and claiming to get wisdom by talking to ancient plants. She is known to those of us who love her as “the Witch.”

Dennis goes by “Bullseye,” thanks to the time he hit a bar waitress with a dart, ostensibly by accident. He’s the Witch’s polar opposite, a clinical, coldly logical thinker, and borderline autistic in his focus on math and all things computers. He says little, preferring to spend his time perched on a stool sipping an Anchor Steam at the Pastime Bar, which has long been our hangout. For the last six months, the Witch and I have spent more time at our joint office, which we decided to get when I started making money from journalism and she said she decided to treat her healing efforts more like a business.

She’s got a way to go. Her business card is blank. She says people will find her when they need her.

It makes me wonder if she has different motives. She’s been keeping a close eye on me. She says I’m working too much, am more likely than ever to see conspiracies and look for great stories, and then pursue them to obsessive end.

She avoids putting too fine a point on it but I know what she thinks: when things ended with Polly, the vivacious entrepreneur who birthed Isaac, I moved ever closer to the fine line between journalism and madness.

The Witch puts her hands on my chest and closes her eyes. Her palms are not just warm, but hot. She’d say that’s because we’re exchanging energy. Maybe. A different explanation for the heat, the clinical medical explanation, is that the hands act as veritable temperature controls for the body, the heavy blood flow to and from the palms allowing for feelings of hot and cold disproportionate to the rest of the body.

Samantha inhales deeply. I know she’s trying to shake something loose inside me, but I’m resistant, partly a skeptic, mostly a still racing mind. I look around our ratty one-room office, 120 square feet of yin and yang. On the right, my desk, a study in scrap heap: strewn papers and magazines, my laptop asleep in the midst; my only decoration a grainy picture of an embryo—Isaac at just a few seconds old, the first time I saw him—taped to the wall above my faux-wood pop-together desk of Scandinavian design.

To my left, Samantha’s oak desk, with a single sheet of paper aligned in the middle. No computer. Her chair is a wooden stool, which she says forces her to focus on her posture, allowing energy to flow more easily in and out of her body.

Samantha’s hair smells clean but flat, fragrance-free, and she’s got a ton of it. I’ve never seen anything grow so quickly: thick, wild and relentless, a veritable bird’s nest. One month, she shaves it to the scalp, the next it’s a whirlwind of brown. I’ve wondered if she’s got a variation of hirsutism, abnormal hair growth, all of it serendipitously placed on top of her head.

“Faith.” The word pops out of my mouth.

“That’s right. Have faith.”

“No.” I step back.

“Faith. The brunette from the subway.”

For just an instant, the Witch grits her teeth, betraying frustration at the failed trance. But maybe it had its impact after all, and shaken loose a valuable revelation.

“I’m being played.”

4

I
close my eyes and picture the subway station. When I’d first entered the train station, I’d seen Faith, the brunette do-gooder, give money to a beggar.

I look into Samantha’s wise eyes. “The beggar was the same man who knocked me over.”

“What are you talking about, Nathaniel?”

“Maybe the beggar wasn’t a beggar at all,” I venture. “Maybe Faith wasn’t giving him money, but just talking to him. Were they coordinating something?”

Samantha shakes her head. She’s heard me do this before, begin stories in the middle, or the end.

“Let me get unloaded and I’ll explain.”

I take the short walk to my desk, dodging candles. I remove my backpack, noticing with a slight grimace the likely mortal tear to the black fabric. I’ve taken pride in its longevity, maybe like a construction worker gets worn into boots. I put the bag down. I look at the picture of Isaac, pink and crinkly. What a gift.

I gesture for Sam to join me on the blue futon that lies near a far wall and that she uses to give massages when I’m not around and to meditate even when I am. I tell her what happened at the train station, leaving out the part about the blow to the head. I imagine that Sam, hostile as she generally is to Western medicine, would pile me immediately into the hair on top of her head and fly me to the emergency room.

When I finish, she says: “May I risk upsetting you?”

“How so?”

“I’m going to tell you what the plants told me.”

I gather she’s referring to her Chilean visit and communing with the ancient vegetation. “The plants told you about what happened at the train station, or what was going to happen?”

“They told me that obsessing about mystery is a neurosis, a kind of pathology. Worrying about the unknown or anticipating an outcome is the biggest test to our true happiness.”

“Getting run over by a train would be a true test of my happiness?”

“You weren’t run over.”

“So you’re saying let it go?”

“Of course not. Call this Faith, or ask some questions about that poor woman who got hit by a car. But don’t spin yourself into conspiracy theories. That’s your way of—”

I finish her thought. “Uncovering vast international conspiracies.” I smile.

“Of not dealing with your personal life. I should go.” She stands. She’s made her point. “Go home. Skip the late-night conspiracy spinning.”

I notice she doesn’t ask about Isaac. She seems increasingly reticent about doing so. I would never ask her but I think she regrets never having had children. She’s professionally maternal, without her own offspring.

I drag myself to the hallway, where there is a full bathroom, replete with shower, accessible by keypad. We, the office tenants of the second floor, keep it locked to dissuade vagrants and the patrons of the retail shop that resides on the floor below us. It’s a sex shop called Green Love that sells sex toys and paraphernalia that are made using sustainable and eco-friendly manufacturing processes and natural resources. Their tagline: Guilt-free ’gasms.

At the bathroom door, I key in Isaac’s birthday, essential numbers, eminently hackable, my stand against an overly complicated world. I open the door and inhale mildew not fully overcome by the floral-scented candle the Witch set on the toilet.

In the mirror, I see the product of a long day, followed by a very bad night, mitigated by a decent haircut. At Samantha’s prompting, I managed to get to a barber earlier this week, in time for tomorrow’s magazine award luncheon. I look my age, give or take. I wonder what Faith saw when she looked at me; I’ve got symmetrical features and a prominent nose, looks that, I’m told, resemble some actor who regularly plays the ethnic-looking detective. I never had problems getting the girl. Just keeping her.

In the recessed medicine cabinet, I find Tylenol and take three tablets. I wash them down with tap water I drink from a plastic San Francisco Giants cup.

I twist my head in a variety of directions so that I can see the back of my skull in the cabinet mirror. This proves (obviously) impossible and absolutely comical, enough so that I actually laugh out loud when I nearly fall over trying to reflect the image of the cut on the back of my head off of an aerosol can so that I can see it in the mirror.

I return to my desk and snag my laptop. It’s brushed stainless steel with the Apple insignia on the cover, a model that once was far outside my price range, but it’s a cast-off from Polly, the ex in the astronomical tax bracket. I carry the computer to the futon, sit, and Google the symptoms for concussion. I know the answer before the Internet spits forth its wisdom—sharp impact, brief loss of consciousness, headache, nausea. But I also know the treatment: rest, fluids, watch for dizziness, changes in vision and, above all, get checked by a doctor.

I should do so but I can’t stand the idea of spending hours in the emergency room to be told what Dr. Internet already told me. Besides, I’m almost an actual doctor myself. Almost, not quite. And I’m so tired. I’ll just close my eyes for a second.

I dream of Isaac. He’s sitting in a red train at the playground. He’s got bouncy brown curls that he didn’t seem to inherit from me or Polly and that I’m aching to run my fingers through.

“This train is bound for glory,” I say, arms wide, aping to elicit a reaction. He grins a grin that could cure all ills.

I lean down and whisper with mock seriousness, “Little Man, I’m going to tell you a secret. Do you want to hear a secret?”

He nods, expectant. I lean in to tell him the secret, when I hear a woman’s voice. “Time to go, lambkins.”

It’s Polly. She’s standing in front of the train, prim in a blue business suit but with her straight brown hair cut at shoulder length, casual, irresistible. Suddenly, I’m filled with dread.

“Be careful of the train, Little Man!” I scream. “The train!”

Terrified, I jerk awake. Gray daylight floods the office, a horn blares from the street below, my mouth tastes of flour paste, my head thick. I’ve closed my eyes and slept all night. And I think: the train. Of course. So obvious. Just as my concussion doesn’t require diagnosis by an MD, so my dreams don’t require expert interpretation by Dr. Freud. I’ve nearly been run over by a subway and I dream of a train taking Isaac, his mother acting as conductor, or something like that. I can only hope my journalism is clearer and less clichéd.

I pick up my phone. I pull up Polly’s number on the phone. I hold my finger over the touch pad. My digit trembles. I scowl and reach for my wallet, which sits on the floor. From it, I pull the piece of paper with Faith’s contact info. Just my luck: the phone number is smeared from last night’s rain but is sufficiently legible to allow me to make out four of seven numbers and have reasonable guesses at another two. I try several permutations, getting three wrong numbers, a couple of disconnected lines and one voice mail that asks me to leave my message at the beep but doesn’t say who the number belongs to. Maybe it’s Faith. I leave a short message asking her to get back to me, explaining that I’m the guy from the train station and that I hope I have the right number.

I am able to read Faith’s email address, which is not as rain-smeared, and send her a note asking her to get in touch.

I also leave a message with a friend at the San Francisco Police Department. In the past, my stories have often put me at odds with the cops, but I’ve had a much warmer relationship with them in recent months. I attribute that to my career notoriety or, perhaps, career legitimacy. In my voice mail, I tell Sergeant Everly that I’ve had a run-in with a mountain dressed up as a man and would love to run it by him.

I feel the dull ache from the back of my head and finger the sticky wound, reasonably healing. I open my laptop, struck by an impulse: maybe somewhere along the line I’ve got a connection to the dead woman, Sandy Vello, that would make sense of last night’s attack.

I find something odd. Two weeks ago, my anti-spam program filtered out an email from [email protected]. It reads: “Please contact me regarding a private matter.” Then another, eleven days ago. Same sender. “Mr. Idle, contact me please regarding a private journalistic matter. This is serious. We have one month to stop the launch.”

Launch?

Was Sandy Vello trying to reach me, and then she got killed? I do the math. The second note came the very day she was killed. Was someone trying to prevent us from connecting?

A quick double-check of her obituary reminds me that she lived west of Burlingame, probably in the hills somewhere, and volunteered regularly at the learning annex of the Twin Peaks Youth Guidance Center. It’s actually a jail for San Francisco’s underage have-nots, pranksters in a minimum security wing as well as young men guilty of extreme violence far before their time, locked in cages that many in the city would be stunned to know share their pricey real estate. Next door is the annex, which I visited a few years ago for a story about the small organic farm the adolescent prisoners were tending in the yard.

I register the time, 10:30. I slept forever, I think, as an alarm bell rings inside my head. I’ve got an hour to be in Palo Alto, a forty-minute drive at least, to shake hands before the magazine award. I have to shower, find the tie and a clean shirt before composing my acceptance speech as I speed down Highway 101.

Then maybe a visit to the learning annex to see if I can justify the award.