The Cloud

59

I make out the silhouette of the buzzard, willowy arms crossed over his chest, head cocked in attentiveness, at the ready to swoop, standing against a tree. But he makes no move to stop me as I drag myself to my car.

His inaction prompts my brain to reverberate with Leviathan’s words “no malice.” The phrase practically glowers at me with its beady eyes, challenging me to justify my rabid assumptions over the last few days about the emergence of a grand conspiracy.

Have I been subjected to terrific malice or just unfair play?

My movements have been tracked, and I’ve been followed. A man with a crooked smile clocked me in Chinatown but not in defense of a nefarious neurological plot. He was worried I’d expose his intellectual property and marketing plans. Love for her nephew motivated Faith.

On my part, I plunged into a reportorial frenzy because of the wounds to my head and the ones to my heart.

I climb into my car, Polly’s car, the Audi that belonged to my dead ex-girlfriend and for which I now owe substantial taxes. Is this why, I wonder, I shouldn’t own nice things, or date amazing women, or fall in love with them? You ultimately pay too high of a price.

As I drive Highway 280, I chew questions. Do I believe Leviathan? And do I expose him, or just the technology he helped create?

Forty minutes later, I arrive at my inherited flat. I walk into the living room and stare at the unused baby bouncer. I’m exhausted. I’m wired. I sit. I stare at the bouncer until my eyes glaze over. I pull out my laptop.

I start writing.

Three hours later, I have many pages. I’ve told the tale of the Juggler, its origin, the specific damage it may do to a generation of Chinese children and, the generally dual-edged nature of our technology.

I expose Andrew Leviathan, the white knight of Silicon Valley-itself the white knight of industries-is spawning a new generation of devices that retard development of our brains. I conclude that these ultra-modern devices have taken us backward neurologically. Bits destroy brain cells. The more we use supercomputers to juggle, the more primitive we become.

I put my head back, laptop still on my knees, and I begin to fall into sleep. I picture Leviathan and his wife, two truly connected people, undone by the image of him in shackles, accused of experimenting on children, causing the death of a little girl. Shame and incarceration, Leviathan’s life having come full circle from his near-death experience in a cold war jail. Outside the cell I build for him, his doting wife stands, eyes streaked with tears.

I am not alone when I wake up. I am in an embrace, with my laptop. I’ve somehow started to cuddle it in the night. Convenient. I feel groggy but rested. It’s 7:45.

My story is right where I left it. I read. It is not merely lucid, but gripping. In the push of a plastic button, I can send this to one of a handful of major publications-Wired or the New York Times Magazine. Maybe at last leap to the New Yorker or Atlantic.

I write a short pitch I can send to editors. I choose the New Yorker. The pinnacle. I fashion an email to an editor I know there in passing. I paste the pitch into the email. In the summary line, I write “No malice.”

I put my finger on the send button. I start to push. I stop.

I picture Leviathan’s wife, on her knees, pleading with me, connected to him.

I look at the baby bouncer. Protective foam packaging remains attached around the metal bar that encircles the bouncer.

I wipe my eyes. I stand. I walk up the majestic stairs to the bedroom, pausing halfway on the landing to take in a breathtaking view of San Francisco, and a giant neon glare of a Google ad appended to the side of a building.

It’s nearly 8. There might still be time.

I quickly change my clothes, wash my face, and I hustle down to the car.