The Towering Sky

Here goes nothing, he thought now, and walked up the steps of the admissions building into an anonymous waiting room. Half a dozen sets of eyes immediately darted toward him, sizing him up.

The other applicants looked just like him, Watt noted in sudden panic, except that they were all wearing suits, even the girls. Watt glanced down at his own interview ensemble, a wool-blend blazer and button-down paired with khakis, and felt instantly self-conscious.

I’m the only guy here not in a tie! he thought frantically to Nadia. He should have asked Leda what to wear. Except, of course, Leda wasn’t talking to him anymore. Might not ever talk to him again, after what he’d accused her of.

Leda will forgive me again, won’t she?

I don’t know, Watt, Nadia replied. I don’t exactly have a data set for this.

Watt nodded—realizing a beat too late that he probably looked as if he was bobbing his head for no reason. He’d promised himself that he wouldn’t think about Leda. It would only make him even more unsettled and anxious than he already felt.

The tension in the room was stretched impossibly tight, like a cord about to snap at any moment. Watt perched on an unoccupied corner of the couch and cast a surreptitious glance around the room at his competition. The other students were all hungry and beady-eyed, exuding that ruthless confidence that comes from being the top of your class—from being the biggest fish in your own personal pond, from always winning.

Watt didn’t feel quite so confident anymore.

He waited while a few other names were called—Anastasia Litkova, Robert Meister—shifting his weight nervously, plucking at the threads of the couch. Nadia offered to run a few questions with him, but Watt thought it would only make things worse. Finally a young man in a maroon sweater vest peered in and announced, “Watzahn Bakradi?”

“That’s me!” Watt said quickly, stumbling in his eagerness to get up. A girl in a tailored navy pantsuit rolled her eyes at him and went back to muttering some kind of focusing mantra under her breath.

Watt followed sweater-vest guy down a dim hallway, his footfalls absorbed by the thick carpet, and emerged into an austere, brightly lit room. He was relieved to see a single wooden table with two chairs. At least this wasn’t a panel interview, with multiple admissions officers grilling him at once.

“Watzahn. I must admit, I’ve been looking forward to this interview,” said Vivian Marsh, the head of admissions at MIT. She had deep-set eyes and straight chestnut hair that just brushed her shoulders. Watt had met her once, last year, after an information session at his high school.

The door behind them clicked as the admissions assistant stepped out of the room, leaving Watt and Vivian alone.

Watt pulled out his chair and took a seat. The surface of the table was empty, except for a pencil and paper arranged by his chair—was he expected to take notes?—and a funny instrument near Vivian, a container that was fat on both sides but narrow in the middle, and filled with sand.

That’s an hourglass. An old-fashioned way of marking the passage of time, Nadia informed him, just as Vivian reached for the hourglass and tipped it over. The sand began to stream back through, to spill into the other side. “Just to make sure I don’t run over our half hour,” she explained, but Watt recognized the hourglass for what it was—an intimidation technique.

He sat up a little straighter, trying his best not to be intimidated.

“Your grades are very impressive,” Vivian began without preamble. Watt was about to say thank you, but before he could she had steamrolled onward. “You wouldn’t be here if they weren’t, of course. So what else?”

“What else?” Watt repeated dumbly. Nadia! Help! He and Nadia hadn’t practiced anything vague or open-ended like this. He was ready to rattle off answers to all the usual questions, like Why do you want to go to MIT? or What are your greatest strengths? But What else?

Vivian leaned forward a little. “Watzahn, there are thousands of applicants with GPAs like yours. And most of those applicants are leaders of, or at least participators in, multiple extracurricular activities—which means they have experience delegating tasks, working with teams to create a final product. But all I see here is that you joined the math club last year,” she said, her eyes glazing over a little as she reviewed his file. “What do you do in your spare time? What makes you tick?”

Oh, you know, the usual. Operating an illegal computer, taking on some hacking jobs for extra cash, investigating the death of a girl I barely knew. Trying to win back the girl I love.

“I’m really interested in computer engineering,” he attempted.

“Yes, you wrote about that in your essay,” Vivian said impatiently. “But why you? What makes you especially qualified to build a quantum computer?”

Watt glanced at his contacts, where Nadia was helpfully listing all his strengths. “I’m able to get deep into the code without losing sight of the big picture. I’m creative but also analytical. I’m patient, but I know when to be quick on my feet, and spontaneous.”

“Why don’t we see some of that quick thinking at work. I’m going to give you a little mental-math problem,” Vivian decided. “Are you ready?”

Watt nodded, and she continued. “A standard golf ball is forty-eight millimeters in diameter. A New York elevator car measures twenty meters high by three meters wide by four meters tall. How many golf balls—Don’t you want to write these numbers down?” she broke off, gesturing to the paper and pencil.