WHAT IF YOU compose the first draft, then I tweak it to sound like me? Watt begged Nadia for at least the tenth time.
“May I remind you that last fall, you gave me firm orders never to write anything for you again. These are instructions from your past self.”
Last fall Watt had been called into the school office for plagiarism, because Nadia’s essay had come out a little too perfect. He’d been more careful since then. These are extenuating circumstances, he thought huffily.
“I’m just the messenger. Take up the fight with your past self.”
“Nadia—”
“That’s it. Per your past instructions, I’m turning off. Wake me up when you have a draft,” Nadia replied, and beeped into silence.
Watt stared at the blank monitor uncertainly. It was true; he had definitely told Nadia to turn herself off if he kept begging her to write his papers. Past Watt was too damned clever for Present Watt to want to deal with right now.
He began speaking aloud, his dictation-screen picking up the words as he said them.
“The reason I want to work with quantum computers is …”
He paused. There were a million things he could discuss in this essay: that quants were faster and smarter than people, even though people had made them, of course; that they could solve problems that humans never dreamed of. God, just a hundred years ago, it took a digital computer several hours to factor a twenty-digit number. Nadia could do it in four seconds flat. Watt couldn’t even imagine what she would be capable of if she were linked to other quants—and put in charge of international trade, or the stock market, or even just the operations of the U.S. food bank. Nothing would go to waste anymore. Human error would be virtually eliminated.
But none of that had to do with Watt on a personal level, or why the program should choose him over the other thousands of applicants.
If only he could write about Nadia, about how unerringly good she was. She can’t be good; she’s a machine, he corrected himself. But Watt knew that at his core, he believed in Nadia’s good intentions as if she had a human conscience.
He thought of what Vivian Marsh had said, that she wanted to personally read his application essay, and felt his heart sink.
“Watzahn!” His mom knocked at his door. “Your friend is here. For your group project.”
“Cynthia?” They had a video to make for English class. He wondered why Cynthia hadn’t warned him that she was coming over. “You should have pinged, we could have met at the library,” he added, opening the door—only to see Leda Cole standing there, wearing pink floral yoga pants and a self-satisfied smirk.
“We could’ve,” she said smoothly, “but I wanted to use your computer. It’s so much better than the ones at the library, you know?”
“Of course. Watzahn is so proud of his computer. He works on it all the time!” Watt’s mom pronounced, beaming.
Quant on, Watt thought frantically, feeling disoriented and blindsided. What the hell was Leda Cole doing here?
“Thank you, Mrs. Bakradi,” Leda said sweetly, her eyes wide and innocent. She stepped into Watt’s room and swung a tote bag onto the floor, kneeling as if to get out the fictional homework assignment. Watt stared in shock at his mother. He couldn’t believe she was even letting a girl into his bedroom. But Shirin just nodded and smiled at Leda, reminding them to let her know if they needed anything. “Don’t work too hard!” she said, and shut the door quietly behind her.
“Sorry I’m not Cynthia,” Leda purred. “Though I’m glad to hear that one of us has moved on from the Fuller siblings.”
“She’s just a friend,” Watt shot back, then felt ashamed that he’d risen to her bait.
“Too bad.” Leda’s fingers kept tapping against the floor. He didn’t think she was on anything—her eyes were too clear, her gaze steady—yet there was a taut, thrumming nervousness to her movements.
He knelt next to Leda and took her bag from her hands. “Seriously, you need to go.”
“Come on, Watt. Be nice,” she admonished. “I came all the way down here to talk to you.”
“What the hell do you want?” he demanded. Watt, be careful, Nadia cautioned. He let his hands fall uselessly to his sides, clenching them into fists, and sat back on his heels.
“I thought you knew everything, with your little supercomputer tracking all of us all the time,” Leda said acerbically.
Nadia, if you hadn’t turned yourself off, I wouldn’t have been caught like this!
Perhaps you shouldn’t have violated the guidelines you set for yourself, Nadia replied, with ruthless logic.
“What did you tell my mom, for her to let you in?” he asked Leda, to buy time—and because she was right, she shouldn’t be able to sneak up on him like this. He wanted to make sure it never happened again.
Leda rolled her eyes. “I was nice to her, Watt. You should try it sometime. It often works on people.” She stretched her legs out and leaned against his bed, glancing up at the tangle of clothes floating near the ceiling on cheap, disposable hoverbeams.
“I don’t have a closet in here. It’s the best I could think of,” Watt said, following her gaze, not sure why he was explaining himself.
“Actually, I’m impressed.” Leda’s eyes were still darting around the room. “You’ve really maximized the space in here. What was this originally, a nursery?”
“No, the twins got the bigger room when they were born.” He shifted, suddenly seeing the room through Leda’s eyes: the rumpled navy bedcovers, the cheap halogen lighting along the ceiling, the narrow desk littered with secondhand virtual reality gear.
“Twins?” Leda asked, as if she was genuinely curious.
Nadia, what’s she doing?
I believe this is the rhetorical tactic of koinonia, whereby the speaker gets the opponent to talk about himself instead of tackling the subject of the debate.
No, I mean, what does she want?
Watt stood up, losing patience. “You didn’t come over here to make small talk about my family. What’s going on?”
Leda unfolded herself in a slow, graceful movement to stand next to him. She took a step closer, tipping her face up to look at him directly. Her eyes were darker than he remembered, her lids dusted with a smoky powder. “You aren’t even going to offer me a drink before I go? Last time you gave me whiskey,” Leda murmured.
“Last time you seduced and drugged me!”
She smiled. “That was fun, wasn’t it? Well, Watt”—she reached up to tuck a stray hair behind his ear and he yanked his head angrily away; he was starting to feel very confused—“if you must know, I need you to monitor some people for me.”
“Forget it, Leda. I told you, I’m done with all that.”
“That’s too bad, because I’m not done with you.” She’d dropped the playful tone, her voice cold with the veiled threat. She had him cornered, and they both knew it.
“Who do you want me to monitor?” Watt asked warily.
“Avery and Rylin, for starters,” Leda said. There was a new energy to her voice, as if bossing Watt around somehow lent her strength. “I want to make sure they stay in line, that neither of them is talking to anyone about what happened that night.”
He realized she was wearing the same pearl studs that she’d had on the last time she came over here, and the memory caused his anger to bubble up even hotter. “You want me to spy on both of them and report anything unusual?” Watt asked. “Two full-time monitoring tasks. That’ll cost you.”
Leda burst out laughing. “Watt! Of course I won’t be paying you! Your payment is my silence.”
Watt didn’t need Nadia to tell him he’d better not respond to that. Anything he said would only dig him in deeper. He just nodded once, jerkily, hating her.
“You see, Rylin started at my school today,” Leda mused aloud. She’d started circling through his room like a predator, opening various drawers and glancing at the contents, then shutting them again. “It really caught me off guard. I hate that feeling. The whole reason I pay you is to never feel that way, ever again.”
“I believe we just established that you don’t pay me,” he replied evenly.
Leda slammed another drawer shut and lifted her eyes to look directly at Watt. “Where is it?” she demanded. “Your computer.”
Nadia. Can you pretend to be an external? he thought, and made a show of pushing a useless button on his monitor. “Right here. Look, I’m turning it on,” he said. “And now it’s starting up.”
“I don’t need a running commentary.” Leda took a seat on Watt’s bed without being invited. Some strange part of Watt realized that was the first time a girl had ever been on his bed. He’d hooked up with plenty of girls before, of course, but he always went back to their places. He shook his head, a little irritated; why was he thinking about sex right now?
“Let’s start with Avery,” Leda began.
“What? Right now?”
“No time like the present,” she said with false cheerfulness. “Come on, pull up her room comp.”
“No,” Watt said automatically.
“Too painful a memory?” Leda laughed, but it rang hollow to Watt’s ears. He wondered what had happened tonight, to send her down here. “Fine, then. Her flickers.”
“Still no.”
“Oh my god, move over,” she snapped, pushing him impatiently from his chair. Their legs brushed, sending a strange row of sparks up Watt’s body. He quickly edged away from her.
“How do you input commands?” She leaned forward and gazed expectantly at the monitor.
“Nadia, say hello to Leda,” Watt instructed, very loudly and slowly. Use the speakers, Watt thought, but Nadia was already doing so—using every speaker in the room, including the ones on his old VR gear.
“Hello to Leda,” Nadia boomed. Watt barely choked back a laugh. She was using a robotic, monotonous voice, like in old science fiction movies.
Leda practically jumped. “Nice to meet you,” she said cautiously.
“Wish I could say the same,” Nadia replied.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Leda smiled.
Great, go ahead and antagonize her, Watt thought, rolling his eyes.
I’m just following your lead. “You think you can blackmail Watt because you’ve got something on him? Do you even know what I have on you? I see everything you do,” Nadia warned, as ominously as she could.
Leda shoved back the chair in a show of anger, but Watt could tell Nadia’s proclamation had shaken her.
“You watch it. Both of you.” Leda pulled her bag onto one shoulder and stormed out without another word.
Watt waited until he heard the front door close behind her before collapsing backward onto his bed, rubbing his hands over his temples. His bedcovers still smelled like Leda’s rose perfume, which pissed him off to no end. “Nadia, we’re screwed,” he said aloud. “Is she going to keep blackmailing us for all eternity?”
“You won’t be safe unless she’s in jail,” Nadia told him, which he already knew.
“I agree. But we’ve been through this already. How could I send her there?”
He and Nadia had tried everything they could think of. There was no video of Leda pushing Eris: there weren’t any cameras on the roof, and no one had been recording on their contacts when it happened, not even Leda, not even Nadia—who deeply regretted it, but then, no way could she have predicted that outcome. Hell, Nadia had even hacked all the satellite cams within a thousand-kilometer vicinity, but none of them had picked up anything in the darkness.
There was, unfortunately, no way to prove what had happened on the roof. It was Watt’s word against Leda’s. And the moment he said anything, he and Nadia were toast.
Nadia was quiet for a moment. “What if you recorded her confessing to her actions?”
“Can we deal in reality and not hypotheticals? Even if she did say the truth aloud, no way would she say it to me.”
“I disagree,” Nadia said levelly. “She would say it if she trusted you.”
For a moment Watt didn’t understand what Nadia was implying. When he did, he laughed aloud. “Do I need to reprogram your logic functions? Why would Leda Cole trust me, when she so clearly hates me?”
“I’m just trying to explore all possible options. Remember, you programmed me to protect you above everything else. And statistics would suggest that the more time you spend with Leda, the greater your chances of winning her trust,” Nadia replied.
“Statistics are useless when your chances of success increase from one-billionth of a percent to one-millionth.” Watt pulled up the covers, closing his eyes. “Did you know about Rylin going to school with them?” he asked, changing the subject.
“I did. You never asked me about her, though.”
“Have you hacked their school?” An idea was forming in his mind. “What if we messed with Leda a little—put Rylin in all her classes, so Leda can never escape her?”
“Like I haven’t already done that. You underestimate me,” Nadia said, sounding self-satisfied.
Watt couldn’t help smiling into the darkness. “I think the more time you spend in my brain, the more my personality has grafted itself onto you,” he mused aloud.
“Yes. I’d venture to say I know you better than you know yourself.”
Now there was a terrifying notion, Watt thought in amusement.
“Nadia?” he added as he started to drift off. “Please don’t ever turn off around Leda again, no matter what commands I’ve given in the past. I need you, around her.”
“That you do,” Nadia agreed.