I looked up and there was Austin, smiling at me over his laptop monitor. He glanced at his screen, back at me. “Trinity,” he said, naming my handle. “Really?”

  Ten seconds. This guy was good. He’d gotten through my firewall like a Mr. Fatty at a buffet and found my handle in no-time flat. Granted, my guard was down and I’d disabled my best firewall to tap into the local Wi-Fi, but still . . .

  “Impressive,” I said.

  “I like it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Trinity. Three in one, one in three. There’s a story behind that, I’m sure. Either that or you’re a fan of The Matrix and couldn’t come up with a better idea.”

  “Maybe I just like the sound of it.”

  “Or maybe you have multiple personalities.”

  “Possible. I am sitting in a brain doctor’s office, after all. For all you know, I’m crazy.”

  “Isn’t everyone?”

  “No,” I said with a wry smile.

  “Well, my advice, Trinity, is this: don’t wear your mask too long or you might start to forget who’s beneath it. Masks are funny that way.”

  “Too late.”

  “I’ll bet not.”

  We became friends that day. For the next few months, we’d see each other in Dr. Benton’s waiting room and talk like ladies at the beauty parlor until he had to go into the office or I had to leave. Our first date—my word; I don’t think he ever thought of us as dating—was to a gallery exhibit of computer art by the surrealist Christos Magganas, whom we both admired. After that, we went to movies, had picnics in Golden Gate Park, strolled through Chinatown and Fisherman’s Wharf. But mostly, we chatted online—never on the phone because he didn’t own one. He said the electromagnetic waves irradiate brain tissue, which was a problem considering he had a tumor.

  He had moved from Boston to California to be treated by Dr. Benton about the time my family had been smashed into early graves. Austin rarely talked about his medical condition, and when he did it was only in passing. His tumor was rare, I knew that much. He said that over time it had become inoperable and when he lived in Boston he’d had some kind of delusional episode that prompted his search for better treatment.

  He was two years older than I was—twenty-three months, actually—but intellectually he was on a higher plane altogether. He was a genius in every sense of the word. Something had happened to him when he was younger that made him that way, but he couldn’t remember what. In fact, he couldn’t remember anything before age thirteen.

  I just think he was a freak of nature in the right sense.

  Sometimes he’d tell me about his latest projects. If you haven’t already guessed it, he was a hacker too, but if I was Pikes Peak, he was Everest. While I was cracking server firewalls, he was developing data-mining algorithms for the NSA and CIA. Those were his weekend projects, side money so he could work on other, more important, things. Passion projects, he called them.

  One of those was an application he’d worked on for years. He called it MetacogNet, an artificial intelligence program that attempted to replicate the complex “left” and “right” brain capabilities of the human mind. It had the potential to revolutionize the way data becomes usable information.

  Austin’s findings drew the attention of a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who bankrolled the program’s development. But immediately after launching the company, Austin cashed out. A larger tech company had given him ten million reasons to walk away, so he had. He’d never wanted to run a company; he had other things in mind.

  That was almost a year ago. Soon after that he’d faded from my life: there one day, gone the next. The jerk. He’d stopped answering my e-mails, stopped logging into the online chat services we used, stopped showing up at the doctor’s office. I’d gone by his apartment once to find out what I’d done wrong, but he’d never come to the door. I’d spent most of my life being ignored and had gotten used to it, but this . . . this hurt.

  Soon I stopped trying. If he didn’t want to see me anymore, that was his loss. I hadn’t realized how much I thought of him until he wasn’t there. If that sounds lame and pathetic, you’ve never been in love, or even in a close friendship.

  Just wait, it’ll happen.

  The morning after BlakBox, I rode my motorcycle, a beat-up Yamaha I’d bought online, over to Austin’s apartment. It was in a warehouse by the Bay that a real estate developer had converted to an upscale apartment complex. I was the only person who knew where he lived. He’d always wanted to stay anonymous to the rest of the world, which I understood.

  Looking at the building from where I parked on the street out front brought back painful memories of the last time I’d spoken to him, how he’d said he had important things to do—things I wouldn’t understand. He was throwing away our relationship.

  That was the only time I’d ever yelled at him. It was the only way I could handle the pain and betrayal I’d felt. Anger is so much more manageable than grief. I hadn’t known it would be the last time I’d see him.

  But now I was there for Mom. I needed money and Austin was the only person I knew who could help. A hundred fifty grand was pocket change to him.

  I followed a cobblestone walkway to a set of black double doors. A steel callbox with the word Sentex etched into it was bolted to the brick wall. It had a keypad and digital touchscreen that normally would’ve had a long list of the building’s tenants and their unit numbers. But here, there was only one.

  K. Os—Unit 500.

  K-OS. Austin’s handle. Chaos.

  I dialed his unit on the keypad and waited. The call system rang a dozen times then automatically disconnected after no answer. Maybe he wasn’t home. More likely, he just never answered the buzzer.

  Guess I’d just let myself in. I’d brought along a decryption application I’d coded to bypass the door’s security protocol. Using a pocket tool, I worked the metal box’s back panel free, spliced a cable with an adaptor I’d brought, and plugged the other end into my iPhone. In less than twenty seconds, the door latch disengaged with a click, and I went in.

  The building was all but abandoned. Austin was the only person who lived there because the developer’s plans had been bigger than his bank account, and he’d gone bankrupt before anyone else could buy a unit. Everything was half finished and covered in drywall dust, including the elevator, an open freight lift with a gated door.

  I got in, pulled the gate closed, and it lurched slowly toward to the top floor.

  The elevator stopped and I stepped out. Twin steel doors, black and formidable, were set in the opposite wall. A thick metal plate with the numbers 111110100 was welded to the door. Only Austin would convert his unit number to binary code.

  There was no doorbell, no knocker of any kind so I pounded on the door with my fist. It barely made a sound, like punching a gravestone.

  “Austin! It’s Nyah!” My voice echoed around me.

  I listened: only silence beyond the doors. I’d come this far and I wasn’t going to leave until I’d spoken to him. No, forget that. I wasn’t leaving without the money.

  I tried the silver door lever. It turned easily under my hand and the latch clicked. Unlocked. What good was a having a front door like Fort Knox if you left it wide open? But I suppose it made sense when you’re the only one in the building.

  I eased the door open and went in.

  “Austin?”

  The loft was cavernous, with pitted hardwood floors, exposed brick walls, and ceilings twenty feet overhead. Daylight spilled through huge windows rising high on the walls.

  “Hello?” My voice disappeared into the large space.

  There was none of the furniture you’d expect—no couches or chairs, no coffee tables or bookshelves. Instead, the space was filled with organized clusters of high-tech lab equipment, panels of large-screen monitors and computers, and row upon row of blinking, humming server racks. And above it all, large rumbling ductwork that dumped cold air into the space, no doubt to cool the equipment.

  Over the thrum of the ventilation, a sound pulsed—a droning whum whum whum that moved through the apartment like an electrical current. It was too thick and resonant to be coming from the servers.

  “Austin?” I called louder. “It’s Nyah. You here?”

  I walked deeper into the loft, passing equipment that belonged in a hospital, not a computer lab: light boards plastered with skull X-rays taken from various angles, large stainless-steel tables meticulously organized with chemistry equipment, microscopes, centrifuges, electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) machines. All of it was dwarfed by an enormous, shrink-wrapped machine strapped to large pallets. The label stamped on the side read SignaTech NeuroImaging Solutions.

  Neuroimaging? What was he doing with that?

  I rounded the last server rack, and the far side of the apartment came into view. I froze and my breath caught. There he was, standing barefoot in a grey hoodie and black jeans. He wore a black knit beanie, pulled tight over his head, and large red headphones.

  He hadn’t spotted me yet.

  Austin was leaning over a tyrannosaurus-sized control panel that reminded me of a mixing board I’d seen once in a music studio, only bigger. He seemed lost in his own world, frenetically dialing knobs, pushing buttons, sliding controllers, all of it punctuated by quick glances up at an array of screens mounted to the panel. As he tweaked the controls, the sound reverberating through the room changed subtly.

  He looked past the screens and I realized the noise was coming from a sound booth of some kind beyond the control panel—a room within the room with a glass observation window set into the wall facing the control panel.

  I took a step toward him and my motion drew his attention.

  He jerked upright and turned. His face was drawn and thinner than the last time I’d seen him. Paler. His eyes went wide like someone shaken from a deep dream.

  Without taking his gaze off me, he pushed a button, killing the sound, and slipped the headphones off.

  He stood motionless for several long breaths. I was probably the last person he’d expect to show up in his apartment.

  “Hey.” I smiled, gave him a little wave.

  He didn’t so much as blink.

  “Been a while, huh?” I said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You know . . .” I raised one shoulder. “Just in the neighborhood and I thought—”

  “How’d you get in?” His attention flicked past me, as if expecting a SWAT team. He was twitchy, with dark rings under his eyes. He had the appearance of someone on an obsessive mission—heck, I’d been there myself: living on candy bars, coffee, and as little sleep as humanly possible.

  “Seriously? I’ve had lunchboxes with better security than this place.” I walked toward him and stopped a few yards away. “Can we talk?”

  “I’m in the middle of something right now.” He glanced at the control board.

  “It’s nice to see you too.”

  He sighed, turned his attention back to the control panel, and began adjusting knobs again as if I weren’t there. “I’m serious,” he said. “Now’s not a good time. It’ll have to wait.”

  “No.” I stepped closer. “It’s important.”

  He continued fiddling with the controls, put the headphones on again, but this time with one pushed back off his ear. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m listening.”

  “You stopped going to Dr. Benton.”

  “There was nothing else he could do for me.”

  “So you gave up?”

  “I didn’t say that.” His hands moved over the control board “This is what you wanted to talk about? Why I stopped going to Benton’s?”

  “No. It’s not,” I said. “I’m in some trouble. Things have gotten complicated.”

  He looked at me. His eyes were puffy. Tiny veins etched them like red roadmaps. “Things are always complicated with you.”

  You should talk, I wanted to say, but it wouldn’t help my cause. I wasn’t there for me or for Austin or for the idea of us. I was there for Mom. Period.

  I reached out and touched one of his constantly moving arms. “Austin, please. I have nowhere else to go. You’re the only one who can help me. When I say I’m in trouble, I’m serious. Very serious.”

  He turned toward me slowly, this time a look of concern crinkling his brow. “What’s going on? What kind of trouble?” His voice was softer.

  I swallowed. “I need to borrow some money. I’ll pay you back, I promise.”

  “Sure, okay. How much?”

  “One fifty.”

  “That’s it?” He reached around toward a rear pocket.

  “Thousand,” I said. “A hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Okay . . .” His hand came back empty. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “I know. It’s for my mom. There’s a chance to get her into an experimental trial, a neural prosthesis that can rebuild brain functionality from the inside out.” My words were rushing out now. “It’s her only chance, but they want us to pay for it. They’ve had really good success so far and—”

  “You’re talking about the PREMIND trials.”

  That stopped me. “You’ve heard of it?”

  “Enough to know it’s a long shot, though it’s a step in the right direction.” His face became puzzled. “That’s a military program. DARPA’s got their hands all over it. Why would they let your mom in? She’s not military.”

  I pulled a wad of folded up paperwork from my pocket and held it out. “They’re making a rare exception since her injuries are consistent with the case-study profiles.”

  He took the documents and scanned them quickly. “That you could get her into this is pretty impressive. No one makes exceptions like that. You must’ve been really persuasive.”

  “Yeah, but the problem is, we now have to front the cost. Austin, it’s her only hope. I’ll pay you back, I promise.”

  “Listen, if I had it, I’d give it to you.” He glanced at me. “You know I would.”

  “What do you mean, if you had it? You’re a millionaire.”

  His face was impossible to read as he stood there.

  “Right?” I said. “Austin . . . ?”

  “Was. I was a millionaire. I plowed it all into my own research, every dime and then some. I have maybe five grand in cash.”

  I felt punched in the stomach—again.

  “Besides,” he said, handing the paper back. “PREMIND’s more sizzle than steak. I hate to be the one to tell you that, but I’ve read the data. I’m not impressed with the promises they’re making. They’re attempting to mimic the hippocampus’s neural signal processing via nonlinear transformations of multisignal input dynamics into output signals translatable to storable code.”

  “In English, please.”

  “They’re creating a prosthetic that receives sensory data then processes, encodes, and stores it as a memory. Nothing more. Despite the progress they’ve made, their prosthetic can’t heal the biological mind.”

  I lowered my head. “It’s the best program I’ve found. Maybe the only one that can help Mom.”

  “The best program, yes, but an ineffective one at the moment. Generally speaking, I agree with one aspect of their thesis, that the physical brain is merely biological hardware running software programmed into us through nature and nurture. The PREMIND project is focused on patching the hardware so the software can run more efficiently. Seems straightforward and, for what it’s worth, logical. But that’s only half of the equation. They’re attempting to resolve a nonlinear problem by linear means.”

  I scrunched a brow at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “Brain prosthetics hold limited promise in the near term, but there’s another way that bypasses the very need for them altogether.”

  “What way?”

  “By hacking the brain just like you would any other computer. Hacking it and modifying the operating system itself in a way that changes the hardware. They won’t figure that out, though, until they’re willing to take bigger risks, and I don’t see that happening any time soon.”

  “Wait . . . what? Hack your brain? Like retraining it, the way they do with stroke victims?”

  “No.” A smile bent his lips. “Not retraining, rewiring.”

  “The brain? Physically? That’s . . . not possible.”

  He reached up and peeled back the knit cap from his head. Underneath, his scalp was a dome of shiny hairlessness. He looked like a chemotherapy patient or a crash-test dummy.

  “Actually, I know it’s possible because I’ve done it.”

  1.8

  “AUSTIN, WHAT have you done?” I raised my hand to touch his scalp, but he leaned away. It was then that I noticed the small, gleaming steel studs. They looked like tiny thumbtacks that had been pushed into his skull. “Did you drill holes in your head?”

  “I had help, of course.” He said it matter-of-factly. “It’s amazing what surgical technicians will do for an extra five grand in cash.”

  “Why would you . . .” I stared at the studs on his scalp and covered my mouth. “Why would you do that?”

  “It was the best way to insert fiber optics through my skull.”

  I leaned closer to examine the shining dots. There were four: each one was embedded almost flush with his skin and had a pinhole, nearly imperceptible, in the center. If the top of his head were a clock, they would’ve been at two, four, eight, and ten o’clock.

  My mind was reeling. He really had gone over the edge. I watched his eyes jitter about, his gaze catching me, then flittering away.

  “This is crazy,” I said.

  “Neurosurgeons have been using this technology for decades. I’ve simply modified it for my purposes,” he said.

  “What purpose would that be? ”

  “Hacking.” A faint smile crossed his face.

 

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