Devil's Plaything - Matt Richtel [60]
“Are you still with Lane?” she asks.
“Yep.”
“Is there any way around that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I dreamed about you last night. The two of you were standing in the parking lot at Disneyland. You were trying to take her inside, and she wanted to stay in the car,” she says. “It’s a message.”
“I get it.”
“You’re like a brother to me, Nathaniel.”
“Okay.”
“So please don’t take this wrong. I just wish you wouldn’t drag your grandmother around on one of your treks. Take her home—to her retirement home.”
“I gotta go, Sam. Grandma’s doing just fine.”
We hang up.
We’ve arrived at an industrial building located in a desolate cul-de-sac a few blocks off Highway 101—the thoroughfare that connects San Francisco to everything south of it.
The single-story beige building has a corrugated roof and tinted windows with bars on them. No signs on the building. No signs of life. Feels like industrial storage. We park in back in an empty lot.
Grandma’s fiddling with her cell phone. Not playing, just looking at the screen and pushing on the buttons.
“Do you want to wait here?”
“I’d like to see Harry,” she responds, without looking up.
“Soon enough,” I say. “I’m back in five.”
In front, I pull on the cool handle of the thick metal door. It’s locked. Next to the door is a keypad. Into the keypad, I type: “Newt0n123.” I hear a click. I pull down on the door handle. It opens.
The first thing I notice is the low noise and the cool air; it’s the hum and lower temperature emitted by an air-conditioning system used to cool a gaggle of servers.
My eyes adjust to low light. I look across a relatively small room—perhaps four times the size of my apartment. It has a high ceiling and a smooth concrete floor. In its center are rows of metal racks holding uniform square boxes. It’s a dazzling array of computing power.
Along the wall where I’ve entered stands another set of racks. On them sit two dozen monitors. Page after page of text scrolls rapidly down the screens.
These servers and monitors form some sort of nerve center.
But it’s the human that is of the most interest to me.
He sits across the room at a metal desk, his back to me. He wears a gray hooded sweatshirt. He fiddles with a small square object.
“Hello, Mr. Idle,” he says without turning around.
“You drive a Prius,” I say.
He starts to turn. “Our dependence on foreign oil is bad for our sovereignty. Besides, gas is expensive. And the Prius has nice trunk space to store rifles.”
Staring at me is a ruddy face, a few years older than me, or aged poorly or baked by years in the sun, thick jaw, big shoulders, doughy nose that’s been broken more than once. He’s got an edgy toughness men instantly respect and some women wouldn’t appreciate.
“What’s your title at Biogen? Chief Mauling Officer?”
“Guess again.”
He’s got a mild accent. English? Australian?
I divert my eyes from him so that I can look at the servers. On the side of the racks there is a sign with initials: “HMC.” I’ve seen the initials before—on the piece of paper I took from Adrianna’s office.
“I get it,” I say.
“I doubt that.”
“Human Memory Crusade.”
He cocks his head to the side.
“You’re recording people’s memories. You’re recording my grandmother’s memories. You’re storing them here. Why?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Would it be easier if I asked true/false questions?”
“Sure.”
“You’re studying the pace at which people lose their memories.”
“True.”
“You are?” I surprise myself sometimes.
“Sounds very sinister, doesn’t it? Recording people’s stories. Alert the Marines.”
“Vince is involved? And the nursing home?”
He stops tinkering with his box
“You’re getting warmer.”
I pull out my phone.
“I’m calling the police.”
“I wouldn’t. Listen. We made a mistake. We were wrong.”
“We?”
He’s got my attention. He goes back to tinkering.
“We want to get the truth out of her as much as you do. We need the truth. Without sounding too dramatic, it has major national security implications,” he says. “We thought you were going to be able to help us get the information out of her head.
“Adrianna?”
“But you didn’t