by A. G. Riddle
Peyton asked the question she knew the younger woman wanted to. “Where did Millen go?”
“Home. To Atlanta. He called someone—Elliott, I believe was his name. His colleague arranged transport. He departed several days ago, with the two children from the village. He was taking them to the CDC, in hopes they might find clues to a cure.”
Peyton’s mind raced. Millen taking the survivors to the CDC was a break.
To Hannah, Elim said, “Millen was quite worried about everyone he had traveled here with—but he was especially worried about you.”
Peyton felt Hannah squeeze her hand.
Elim gave Peyton some supplies for the trip: food, water, and—just in case, he said—medicine. Peyton had been coughing, and the physician had obviously realized she was infected with the Mandera virus. The antibiotics he provided would treat any secondary infections.
As Elim led her down the corridor, he said, “There’s something I’ve wanted to ask since you arrived.”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“The young American I cared for, Lucas Turner. Did he make it?”
Peyton shook her head. “No. I’m very sorry.”
“So am I. He was a fine young man. And brave.”
They were both silent for a moment.
“Well, thank you for everything,” Peyton said at last.
“Good luck to you, Dr. Shaw.”
“And to you.”
In the makeshift hospital room, Hannah dried the tears from her face and closed her eyes. She had never been so tired in all her life. She knew the fever was advancing, that the days ahead would determine whether she lived or died. She was ready. Because now she would face it with a very valuable thing, a thing she didn’t have the day before.
Hope.
In another patient room, Elim Kibet injected a vial of antibiotics into the IV.
“You’re wasting that on me,” the woman said.
Despite her deteriorating condition, her tone was firm, insistent. Elim had to agree with Dr. Shaw: Nia Okeke was a very convincing woman when she wanted to be.
“You know,” he said, “for your sake, it’s a good thing you are not the physician in charge here.”
The plane was similar to the Air Force transport Peyton had come to Kenya on, except a bit smaller. The crew cabin held six high-backed chairs and an open space where Peyton found Desmond stretched out on a sleeping bag. He wore only boxers and a T-shirt, which had sweat spots coming through.
He was still in great shape, with broad shoulders and the build of someone who did kickboxing or weight training, not yoga or endurance running. The burn scars that covered his feet and stretched up his legs caught her eye, and she remembered the first time she saw them, almost twenty years ago, that morning in her dorm room. That felt like a lifetime ago, yet here and now, he was somehow more like that happy nineteen-year-old kid than he was like the troubled adult he had become after. Just like that night at the Halloween party, she felt herself irresistibly drawn to him, like a black hole that was pulling her in with no hope of escape.
She had felt the first spark when she heard his voice the previous Saturday night. And again when Lucas Turner had said his name. And when she had seen his name written on the wall of the barn stall. It had been Desmond who had rescued her from the ship and likely saved Hannah’s life in the process. At each point, a little more of her had come alive, like she was waking up from a long sleep. But she couldn’t allow that to happen. They had work to do. Lives were at stake—things far more important than her and Desmond.
She settled into a sleeping bag beside him, and they lay in silence. She could feel him looking at her. She wondered what he was thinking, when he would remember—if he would remember. And what she would do then.
Five minutes later, the plane lifted off, en route to Shetland.
Despite the noise and turbulence, Desmond fell asleep quickly. He must be exhausted, Peyton thought. The temperature in the cabin dropped as the plane climbed. The engines roared; Avery was pushing the craft to its limits.
Peyton tucked a few pillows between Desmond and the wall, cushioning him in case they hit more turbulence. Then she slid back into her own sleeping bag and pulled in close beside his, trapping the heat between them.
Slowly, she became more aware of her fever. Perhaps it was the chill in the cabin or the solitude, but the heat engulfed her face. Her head ached. Her chest felt heavy. She really hoped they found some clue on the island. For her sake, and many others.
Desmond mumbled, but Peyton couldn’t hear what he said over the roar of the engines.
She turned. His eyes were still closed. He spoke again.
She leaned in, her ear inches from his lips.
“I’ve figured it out.” He paused, then mumbled, “The X factor.”
Peyton remembered the memory. She had been there. And she knew what came next. She dreaded it for him.
She drew out the phone he had given her. A dialog read:
Download complete.
Day 10
4,600,000,000 infected
1,000,000 dead
Chapter 72
By the time the Red Cross plane leveled out, sweat was pouring off of Desmond. Peyton had unzipped his sleeping bag, but it was little help.
Every few seconds, he tossed his head from side to side.
Peyton tried to wake him for five minutes straight, but it was no use. It was as if he were in a coma.
She heard footsteps behind her, turned, and found Avery towering above her, squinting at Desmond wincing on the floor.
The slender woman squatted, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and cupped his face in her hands. She leaned close, listening to the words he mumbled.
It struck Peyton as a lover’s embrace, not a clinical inspection. She wondered if it was an act—or something Avery had actually done before.
Without turning to Peyton, Avery said, “Should we land?”
“I don’t know. Where are we?”
“Over Ethiopia.”
“He’s stable for now. I favor waiting until we reach Europe.”
Avery left without another word. As soon as the door to the cockpit closed, Peyton wiped a new layer of sweat from Desmond’s face and placed her hands where Avery’s had been, feeling the stubble on his lean, glistening face.
All she could do now was wait.
Two days after Christmas, in Peyton’s apartment, Desmond presented his theory to her.
“I’ve figured it out.”
“What? The meaning of life?”
“Better. Why companies fail.”
“Oh.” She was reading People magazine and watching reruns of Friends.
“It’s the X factor.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Think about it. First the company has to address a large market opportunity.” He was pacing in the small apartment now, cutting off her view of Ross and Rachel. “xTV got that right. But success requires two components: operational proficiency and the X factor. For all these web startups, the operational part is actually the easiest. You make sure your code works and the product scales, you pay your rent, et cetera, et cetera. The X factor is the issue.
“For web companies, the X factor is consumer adoption. Every one of them is disrupting the world in some way—they’re trying to change customer behavior. Think about it. Amazon wants to change the way we buy books. Instead of walking into a Barnes and Noble, you order it online and it arrives at your door. Who knows, maybe they’ll deliver all kinds of stuff one day. Webvan wants to deliver groceries in the same way. No more driving to the store. WebCrawler wants to change the way we find information. Forget going to a library and looking it up—simply search for it on WebCrawler. Need to find a business? Don’t dial four-one-one, forget the yellow pages, just search for it on WebCrawler. They’re all trying to change the way we as consumers behave—and funnel attention and money to them.”
“Makes sense.”
“The mystery is how man
y consumers will change and when. That’s what xTV got wrong. They overestimated consumer adoption. They ran out of money before the consumers adopted their product.”
“Okay. I’ll buy that.” She was peeking around him. Monica had just inherited a dollhouse. How this show was so popular was a mystery to Desmond.
“It comes down to the founders,” he said. “Companies that succeed have a founder or a leadership team that fundamentally understands their customers, sometimes even better than customers know themselves. They imagine what the customer wants before they know they want it, and they package it in a way that is irresistible. And, they manage well. xTV had the vision, but not the discipline. They didn’t watch their bank account close enough.”
“Uh-huh. So what are you going to do about this grand revelation?”
“Tomorrow, I’m going for three job interviews.”
“Really?” She sat up, tossed the magazine aside. “Where?”
He told her, and she nodded.
“You going to wear the steel-toed boots?”
“Very funny. And yes. I am. Because I keep it real.”
On New Year’s Eve, he accepted a job offer. When he told Peyton which company, she looked surprised.
“SciNet?”
“SciNet.”
“I didn’t see that coming.”
The company was boring. It was early stage and developing an e-commerce platform to sell scientific equipment and products.
“It’s a home run,” Desmond said. “Low X factor. Very little waiting for consumer adoption. Their customers are scientists and office admins—very rational people, easy to target. Very easy to predict their behavior patterns.”
“Don’t be so sure. I was raised by a scientist.”
“Well, you know what I mean. They’ll hit it out of the park. Won’t be a multi-billion-dollar company, but it’ll succeed and do what I need it to do.”
“Which is?”
“Provide financial security. The job offer is solid. Tons of options and a good salary. I can start buying options in other companies again.”
“So you haven’t given up on that?”
“Not by a long shot.”
They went to a New Year’s Eve house party that night. It was like no New Year’s Desmond could remember. The whole world felt new again. He felt hopeful about everything: the new job, and his relationship with Peyton especially.
The vibe at SciNet was very different from xTV. Where xTV had an almost Hollywood feel, SciNet felt like a university or a lab. Everyone was pretty uptight. Well, everyone except for a few of the developers, Desmond included. They couldn’t help but make a few pranks to lighten the mood. Most were related to the movie The Terminator, in which an artificial intelligence called SkyNet becomes self-aware and tries to wipe out humanity with a robotic Arnold Schwarzenegger. Whenever the database or website was acting weird, someone would say, “Oh God, I think SciNet’s becoming self-aware.”
The site’s error page featured a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger wearing dark sunglasses and holding a shotgun, with a caption that read, This page has been TERMINATED.
The CEO finally sent an email banning all jokes related to The Terminator.
Desmond replied:
Just to confirm, these jokes are terminated?
Despite their faux fears that SciNet would become self-aware, the platform did launch in the spring of 1998 and quickly became a hit. Across the country, labs and research facilities signed up, took inventory of the old equipment collecting dust, and posted it for sale. Some used the money to buy more equipment they actually needed—much of it from SciNet.
Desmond was the lead developer. He could have taken the role of Chief Technology Officer, but he’d rated that job as more risky. He would have had a higher salary with fewer technical responsibilities. If the company ran low on cash or needed to refocus, he figured managers with higher pay would be laid off more quickly than the programmers who would be needed to right the ship.
For the time being, however, the ship was sailing quite well. Their first clients were in the Bay Area: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, NASA’s Ames Research Center, Stanford, and SRI International. Word spread among scientists and procurement departments. Signups and transactions soared.
Desmond periodically ran database reports for management, identifying their largest clients—organizations they should call on and keep happy. Some were companies he’d never heard of: Rapture Therapeutics, Rook Quantum Sciences, and Prometheus Technologies.
“These three companies are each buying more than Livermore. Stanford even,” he said. “And it’s all kinds of stuff. They’re either just stocking up, or they’re running the largest-scale experiments in the world.”
SciNet’s CEO was in his early thirties, had an MBA from Harvard, and was all business.
“I fail to see a problem with any of that.”
“Well,” Desmond said, “the issue is that Rapture and Rook, in particular, aren’t paying for their equipment. I can see the credit card transactions on the back end. They’re using cards and bank accounts tied to two companies: Citium Holdings and Invisible Sun Securities.”
The CEO was getting annoyed. “So?”
“So, we have two third-party companies buying massive amounts of scientific equipment and shipping it to these legitimate private research firms.”
“Again, how is that a problem?”
“I’m not sure it is, but I think we ought to look into it. We’ve created something new here. What if someone’s taking advantage of it? What if SciNet is being used to launder money somehow? Like Mexican drug cartels, the Mafia—”
“Okay, Desmond. I think you’ve been watching too much TV. We’ve got what we need here.”
Management was in no hurry to question their best clients. The company needed the transaction volume, and Citium Holdings and Invisible Sun Securities were providing plenty of it.
But Desmond couldn’t contain his curiosity. He looked the companies up. Both were dead ends. They didn’t seem to exist beyond a few corporate records. There were no offices, no websites, not even phone numbers. They were like shells with seemingly endless amounts of cash.
Another mystery, closer to home, did get solved: Peyton was going to attend Stanford Medical School. She told him at her apartment one night, over dinner—lasagna she had cooked that was the best meal he had eaten in some time.
“That’s great,” he said. “It’s nearly impossible to get in.”
“I was worried, honestly.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
“I know you will. It’s why I wanted to stay here in the area. I don’t want us to be apart. We have to start thinking about the future.”
The words we and us hung there in the air, present but unacknowledged.
Peyton used those words more often after that. She talked about the future more frequently. She asked whether he wanted to have kids. Where he wanted to live: in the city, a suburb, or the country, as he had done growing up. What sort of life he wanted his children to have. What he thought work-life balance should be for people with kids. Whether he wanted to travel if they had the chance.
Desmond found himself utterly unable to answer her questions. As the months went by, she began to apply more pressure, subtle at first, then more directly. Desmond’s answer was always the same: that he was so focused on work at the moment that it was hard for him to imagine these scenarios.
“It’s like a train in a tunnel. You don’t know what’s on the other side. How can you say what you’ll do when you come out?”
That set her off. “You’re not a train in a tunnel, Desmond! We’re real people. It’s not hard to imagine.”
But for Desmond it was impossible. Throughout his entire life he’d always been at the mercy of someone, or something, else. The fire. Orville. Silicon Valley. And now he wanted independence. Freedom. That meant money, and once he had it he believed he could sort his life out. Then he could answer Pey
ton’s questions, which haunted him more and more.
With each month, he saw the prospect of financial freedom slipping away. Four more companies he owned options in folded. SciNet’s rate of growth slowed. The initial rush was over; those storage closets full of old equipment had been cleaned out, and now the users were spending less per month. Management came up with several ideas: expanding to Europe and using the platform to help industrial companies buy and sell equipment. Both presented new challenges.
Then, in the summer of ’98, everything changed. A company Desmond owned options in went public. He only held 13,400 options, but they were worth $21 at the IPO price—which meant all told, they were worth a quarter of a million dollars.
He checked the stock price about a thousand times the day it debuted, fearing the worst—a crash or some freak accident. But just the opposite happened: the stock soared. By the end of the first day of trading, his options were worth $38.23 each. $512,282. The sum was nearly unimaginable to him. A fortune. Freedom.
He raced to Wallace’s office. The attorney connected him with an investment bank that would help him unload the options, ensuring the profits were taxed at long-term capital gains rates.
“Are you sure you want to sell all of it, Desmond?”
“I’m sure.”
Desmond had come up with a rubric for deciding whether to keep or sell a stock: if he was willing to buy the stock at its current price, he would keep it. Otherwise, he would sell. He wanted the cash.
The transaction went through the next day, netting him just over four hundred thousand dollars after taxes and fees.
He again sat in Wallace’s office.
“I need you to draw up some other agreements. Personal contracts.”
He told the man exactly what he wanted.
