It’s not. It’s from Friend. And the message is the same as before:

This phone isn’t safe.

 

You relax. The fact that the message is identical proves, surely, that you were right last time, and it’s just some kind of automated spam. Nothing to get worked up about.

Then a second message appears.

Buy another.

 

Followed, in swift succession, by:

A burner.

 When you have it, reply with a blank message.

 

And finally:

TIM LIES.

 

You stare at it. It seems certain from the use of Tim’s name that it’s not spam, after all.

Quickly you type a reply.

Who is this? Lies about what? What do you want?

 

There’s no response.

32

   “I have good news and I have bad news,” phone shop guy says.

“What’s the good news?”

“I can get some of the wiped data on the iPad back.”

“So what’s the bad news?”

“It’s heavily corrupted. I’ll have to unscramble it.”

“That doesn’t sound so terrible. If you can fix it, I mean.”

“No, but it’s time-consuming. The question is, why would I fix it? Given how long it’ll take me?” He tips his stool back and looks at you steadily. Something about the way he does it unnerves you.

“I’ll pay you, obviously.” You’ve brought cash with you anyway, to buy a burner phone. Not that you don’t believe what Tim’s told you, but you can’t help being curious about Friend’s mysterious message.

The young man shakes his head. “I don’t want your money.”

“What, then?”

He smiles hungrily. “After you left the other day, I realized who you were. And I saw you on the news.” He nods at the disassembled laptop on the counter. “I don’t only fix these as a job, you know. Technology is my passion.”

   “Terrific,” you say unenthusiastically. “Good for you.”

“What Tim Scott’s achieved with you is amazing. Like, incredible.” He leans forward and gestures at your stomach. “I want to take a look. Inside. At your code.”

You recoil. “No way. Tim would never allow it. And even if he did, I wouldn’t.”

“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it?” the young man says. “I started to ask myself, where did she get that iPad? I mean, it clearly isn’t yours. And then I thought: Why didn’t she just give it to Tim’s people to deal with? That’s when I thought, Ah. As in Ah, maybe it’s actually Tim’s, and she wants to see what’s on it without him knowing.” He smiles again.

You can’t be bothered to explain that the iPad has nothing to do with Tim. “What are you suggesting, exactly?” you ask, although you suspect you already know.

“A trade. I’ll give you the contents of the iPad as I unscramble them. In return, you let me peek at your coding.”

You shake your head. “That isn’t going to happen.”

He holds up an Ethernet cable. “You won’t even notice I’m in there.”

The idea is faintly gross. “No,” you repeat firmly.

He tosses the cable onto a shelf. “Your choice. Too bad.”

You hold out your hand. “Give me the iPad. I’ll take it somewhere else.”

He folds his arms. “Uh-uh. No deal, no iPad. In case you hadn’t noticed, nothing gets nothing in this world.”

“You’re pathetic, you know that?” you snap.

“I just want to see how you work,” he says plaintively. “It’s no different from a gearhead looking at an engine.”

“Excuse me,” you say sarcastically. “From my perspective, it’s really not very similar at all.”

He shrugs. “Come back when you’re ready to make a deal.”

   “That iPad isn’t yours. I’ll go to the police.”

“Yeah, right. Be my guest.”

“Prick.”

“See you soon,” he says as you march furiously to the shop door. “I’m Nathan, by the way.”

ELEVEN

   A couple of days after the mouse pad appeared, Tim asked Abbie to join him in his office. Naturally, we all kept an eye on what was going on in there.

On one wall there was a big flat-screen computer monitor—if you wanted to show Tim something, you’d hook your laptop up to it and present that way. It looked as if he was showing Abbie a presentation on it now.

Someone who had an excuse to walk past told us Tim was taking Abbie through a PowerPoint titled, Why Homeopathy Is Dumb.

The presentation, we learned later, dealt with many of the key elements of designing good scientific trials, from selection bias through to the placebo effect.

Perhaps remarkably, Abbie seemed fascinated.

“But if I take a homeopathic pill, all I know is, I feel better,” she was overheard to say. And Tim was heard to reply—not arrogantly or dismissively, but as if he was genuinely interested in explaining it to her—that this was indeed perfectly possible, and might well be due to the statistical effect known as regression to the mean.

   Now, it’s fair to say that some of us were surprised by the romance between Abbie and Tim. A few people even made disparaging remarks about Abbie’s possible motives.

Those who took that position felt vindicated when, a week or so later, Abbie didn’t turn up one day until way after noon. Someone spotted her striding across the parking lot, backpack dangling from one shoulder.

“Hey,” Tim said, when he saw her at her desk.

“Hey,” she replied.

“Thought you and I were going to have breakfast.”

“I know. I’m really sorry, my car broke down at the beach.”

“It broke?”

She nodded. “It’s the head gasket, apparently. I had to leave it and catch a bus. And then I had to organize the tow and the garage and it just took forever.”

Tim went into his office. A moment later he came back with something in his hand.

“Here,” he said, dropping a bunch of car keys on her desk. “For you. Now you needn’t ever be late again.”