Book of Numbers: A Novel (5 page)

But then, a break.

A site was about to launch—a bright blue text/bright white
background site that if it wasn’t defunct would be ridiculous now, but it
wasn’t then—in NY urls were still being typed and discussed with their
wwws. It was amply backed by old media, amply staffed by new media, and was to be given
away for free—its publication was its
publicity—www.itseemedimportantatthetime.com, believe me.

They emailed with a Q: Would I like to interview Joshua Cohen?

My A: Why not?

But not this type of Q&A—instead, a profile, though they
wanted only 2,000 words. They had infinite room, eternal room, margins beyond any
binding or mind, and yet: they wanted only 2,000 words (still, @ $1/word).

It was a gimmick—everything is, and if it isn’t,
that’s its gimmick—and yet, I accepted, I had to, I had to meet
myself.

Joshua Cohen—Principal, but not yet mine—would be in NY for
only a minimized window. I was instructed to meet him at Tetration’s HQ, at some
strange time, some psychoanalyst’s 10 or so intersessionary minutes before or
after the hour. In the lobby, in a waterfront fringe of Chelsea being rezoned for
lobbies. They’d just gone public, at $80/share, for a market
capitalization in excess of $22B.

My first reaction was, this was a railshed of reshunted
freight that coincidentally included office furniture—Tetration was still moving
in. I entered as the gratis vendingmachines were being installed, empty, gratis but
empty. They’d purchased the railshed before Cohen had even toured it, apparently.
This would be a first for us both.

The meet & greeter’s badge wasn’t brass but a
brasscolored sticker on his vneck, below which were black slacker jeans, holstered
taser. He smirked at my license, summoned an elongated attenuated marfanoid flunky to
take me up, but instead of elevators or escalators or stairs, we took the ladders, rope
ladders, rigging. An obstacle course of rainbowbanded enmeshments. We scuttled past
androids fumbling to hook up their workstations, arraying plushtoys, wire/string
disentanglement puzzles, tangrams, rubikses, möbiuses, slinkies.

The conference room was massive and vacant and carpet interrupted by
tapemarks. The flunky left and rolled back with a chair and positioned its casters over
the tapemarks and to keep the chair from rolling away chocked the casters with
lunchboxsized laptops, left finally.

The ceiling panels were black and white, a chessboard defying gravity with
magnetized pieces in an opening gambit of
f3 d5, g3
g4,
b3
d7,
b2 e6. The
wallpaper, a cohelixing of the DNA of Tetration’s founders, a physical model of
their alliance—or, just design.

Portals, portholes, had a vista over a plaza whose rubberized T tiles were
proof of the four color map theorem, and stacked cargo containers and bollards being
retrofit for a children’s playground. The pier of my bookparty was just beyond,
but which it was, I wasn’t sure, as all the piers were becoming trussed in steel
or repurposed into monocoques of electrochromic smartglass, available for weddings, and
bar and bat mitzvot.

Our fleshtime: Principal entered, and the one chair was for him because he
sat in it and I was still standing but all was otherwise similar between us.

“How’s it treating you, NY?” I said.

“Banging, slamming,” yawning.

“Not tubular?”

“Whatever the thing to say is, write it.”

“I take it you don’t have a great opinion of the
press?”

“The same questions are always asked: Power color? HTML White,
#FFFFFF. Favorite food? Antioxidants. Favorite drink? Yuen yeung,
kefir, feni lassi, kombucha. Preferred way to relax? Going around NY lying to
journalists about ever having time to relax. They have become unavoidable. The
questions, the answers, the journalists. But it is not the lying we hate. We hate
anything unavoidable.”

“We? Meaning you or Tetration itself?”

“No difference. We are the business and the business is us.
Selfsame. Our mission is our mission.”

“Which is?”

“The end of search—”

“—the beginning of find: yes, I got the memo. Change the
world. Be the change. Tetrate the world in your image.”

“If the moguls of the old generation talked that way, it was only
to the media. But the moguls of the new generation talk that way to themselves. We,
though, are from the middle. Unable to deceive or be deceived.”

In the script of this, a pause would have to be indicated.

“I want to get serious for a moment,” I said.
“It’s 2004, four years after everything burst, and I want to know what
you’re thinking. Is this reinvestment we’re getting back in NY just
another bubble rising? Why does Silicon Valley even need a Silicon
Alley—isn’t bicoastalism or whatever just the analog economy?”

Principal blinked, openshut mouth, nosebreathed.

“You—what attracted us to NY was you, was access. Also the
tax breaks, utility incentives. Multiple offices are the analog economy, but the office
itself is a dead economy. Its only function might be social, though whatever benefits
result when employees compete in person are doubled in costs when employees fuck, get
pregnant, infect everyone with viruses, sending everyone home on leave and fucking with
the deliverables.”

“Do the people who work for you know your feelings on this? If not,
how do you think they’d react?”

“Do not ask us—ask NY. This office will be tasked with
Adverks sales, personnel ops/recruitment, policy/advocacy, media relations. Divisions
requiring minimal intelligence. Minimal skill. Not techs but recs. Rectards. Lusers.
Loser users. Ad people. All staff will be hired locally.”

“You realize this is for
publication—you’re sure you want to go on the record?”

“We want the scalp of the head of the team responsible for this
wallpaper.”

I had a scoop, then, as Principal kept scooping himself deeper—and
deeper—digging into his users, his backers, anyone who happened to get on the
wrong side of his pronoun: that firstperson plural deployed without contraction (not
“all that bullshit we got for having Dutch auctioned the offering, we
could’ve thrown it in their faces but didn’t,” rather
“
we could have
thrown it in their faces
but did
not
”).