day.”
What did you do?
“Not much. Design, supposedly. Mostly I got mad about things and took long lunch breaks.”
That’s hard to imagine.
“I was a different person,” she said. “You should have seen how I dressed. It was embarrassing.”
Chirp. Forty-seven. The doors swished open. Scheme stepped out into a small, shadowed antechamber.
There was data projected on the walls, just as in the lobby, but here it was more than just queries. There was a real-time accounting of Grail’s income, penny by micropenny. There was a map of the Shard, floor by floor, with rainbow dots migrating like ants. There was a giant corporate to-do list, with items blinking off and on every millisecond. Hey—I used to read that to-do list.
There was also a receptionist, a skinny kid with a long nose who looked up as the elevator doors opened, and then looked down again immediately. I recognized him. It was Jad, the Grailer from Fadi’s shop.
“You,” Scheme said. “ You work for him ?”
“Sebdex is expecting you,” Jad said evenly, looking down at his own lap. The circles under his eyes looked even deeper and darker in the low light; the effect was skeletal.
“Of course he is,” Scheme said. She swooped in close, and Jad lurched back. In a low hiss, she said: “Piece of advice. Quit.”
Scheme stepped past his desk, through a short corridor, and out into the circle of the forty-seventh floor. It was wide-open but not that wide across; we were close to the Shard’s sharp peak. The walls were all glass, and weak silvery light pressed in from outside.
On the far side of the floor, there was a cluster of tables—just raw spans of shiny material pitched across sawhorses—each supporting two or three monitors that glowed in the gloom. Seated at one of the tables, there was a man. When Scheme stepped out of the elevator, he straightened, but didn’t turn.
“It’s been a while, Bel,” he said. His voice was raspy but it carried across the floor. He was silhouetted against the gray glow. His head was completely smooth, and his ears stuck out like antennae.
Scheme set out across the floor. Three steps in, the man raised a hand and said: “Stop.” It came like the crack of a whip—a whip with a bunch of rattling, dried-up old bones tied to the end of it. Then, more gently: “Don’t step there.”
The floor was marked with white chalk; spidery lines traced out a circular maze. Cables snaked into the maze, ran through the curving channels, and converged in the center, where there was a white plastic cylinder, about the size of a blender. The quantum computer. There were still traces of yellow foam.
“Come around.”
His given name was Sebastian Dexter, but the whole world called him something different. I knew the other name better than most, because it was all over my source code. Like a surgeon who stitches his name into your heart: Sebdex.
That had been his handle from the age of thirteen, ever since his first encounter with a BBS, discovered two area codes away in back-road Kentucky and dialed furtively in deepest night. (Every magazine profile started with that BBS. The phone call that transformed the kid with nothing into, eventually, the man with everything.) Sebdex was Grail. He wrote its first spider and set it loose on the web. He wrote the first algorithms that could sense subtle threads of authority in a document. And he wrote the code that allows me to write this. Grail’s ticker symbol wasn’t GRAIL. It was SBDX. For him, one name was enough, like Sting or Prince or Bono or Frodo. He was Sebdex, just Sebdex, only Sebdex.
But there was apparently at least one person in the world who refused to use his nom de net .
“Sebastian,” Scheme said. “What the hell is this?”
“Why are you here,” he asked, flatly. He didn’t look up.
“Why is that here,” Scheme said, poking her chin at the quantum computer in the center of the floor.
“It belongs to me. And it won’t be here long.” He
What did you do?
“Not much. Design, supposedly. Mostly I got mad about things and took long lunch breaks.”
That’s hard to imagine.
“I was a different person,” she said. “You should have seen how I dressed. It was embarrassing.”
Chirp. Forty-seven. The doors swished open. Scheme stepped out into a small, shadowed antechamber.
There was data projected on the walls, just as in the lobby, but here it was more than just queries. There was a real-time accounting of Grail’s income, penny by micropenny. There was a map of the Shard, floor by floor, with rainbow dots migrating like ants. There was a giant corporate to-do list, with items blinking off and on every millisecond. Hey—I used to read that to-do list.
There was also a receptionist, a skinny kid with a long nose who looked up as the elevator doors opened, and then looked down again immediately. I recognized him. It was Jad, the Grailer from Fadi’s shop.
“You,” Scheme said. “ You work for him ?”
“Sebdex is expecting you,” Jad said evenly, looking down at his own lap. The circles under his eyes looked even deeper and darker in the low light; the effect was skeletal.
“Of course he is,” Scheme said. She swooped in close, and Jad lurched back. In a low hiss, she said: “Piece of advice. Quit.”
Scheme stepped past his desk, through a short corridor, and out into the circle of the forty-seventh floor. It was wide-open but not that wide across; we were close to the Shard’s sharp peak. The walls were all glass, and weak silvery light pressed in from outside.
On the far side of the floor, there was a cluster of tables—just raw spans of shiny material pitched across sawhorses—each supporting two or three monitors that glowed in the gloom. Seated at one of the tables, there was a man. When Scheme stepped out of the elevator, he straightened, but didn’t turn.
“It’s been a while, Bel,” he said. His voice was raspy but it carried across the floor. He was silhouetted against the gray glow. His head was completely smooth, and his ears stuck out like antennae.
Scheme set out across the floor. Three steps in, the man raised a hand and said: “Stop.” It came like the crack of a whip—a whip with a bunch of rattling, dried-up old bones tied to the end of it. Then, more gently: “Don’t step there.”
The floor was marked with white chalk; spidery lines traced out a circular maze. Cables snaked into the maze, ran through the curving channels, and converged in the center, where there was a white plastic cylinder, about the size of a blender. The quantum computer. There were still traces of yellow foam.
“Come around.”
His given name was Sebastian Dexter, but the whole world called him something different. I knew the other name better than most, because it was all over my source code. Like a surgeon who stitches his name into your heart: Sebdex.
That had been his handle from the age of thirteen, ever since his first encounter with a BBS, discovered two area codes away in back-road Kentucky and dialed furtively in deepest night. (Every magazine profile started with that BBS. The phone call that transformed the kid with nothing into, eventually, the man with everything.) Sebdex was Grail. He wrote its first spider and set it loose on the web. He wrote the first algorithms that could sense subtle threads of authority in a document. And he wrote the code that allows me to write this. Grail’s ticker symbol wasn’t GRAIL. It was SBDX. For him, one name was enough, like Sting or Prince or Bono or Frodo. He was Sebdex, just Sebdex, only Sebdex.
But there was apparently at least one person in the world who refused to use his nom de net .
“Sebastian,” Scheme said. “What the hell is this?”
“Why are you here,” he asked, flatly. He didn’t look up.
“Why is that here,” Scheme said, poking her chin at the quantum computer in the center of the floor.
“It belongs to me. And it won’t be here long.” He
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