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Authors: Matt Richtel
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looking for faces that might be looking at him. Some trickster, someone getting even. That, weirdly, he realizes, is his first impulse at this moment.He doesn’t quite put it together that there’s something else compelling this action: he’s feeling humiliated. This fucking computer, this life’s dream turned nightmare, might just be out-and-out wrong. It’s like the Pentagon all over again. Worse than that; a realization not just that his computer is screwing up, but that someone is messing with it, just like messing with the inside of his own brain.
At least that’s got to be the working assumption, that someone is messing with the computer. Who? How?
He looks at the countdown clock, then below it. At the bottom of the screen, Jeremy sees a query: Would you like to see a list of the variables?
Jeremy clicks yes. Yes, he wants to see which variables have changed such that this computer is predicting the end of the world.
C HAPTER 10
A LITTLE OVER AN hour later, and poorer by eight dollars spent on a ham-and-cheese croissant and coffee and the bus, he looks up from the iPad and watches a raven-haired woman apply makeup to her pale face with help from a pocket mirror. Pale like his mother on that last visit, her head rolled to the side, dry lips, Jeremy wondering whether someone is going to say something, anything, something conciliatory, or maybe one last twinkle-eyed parry on her way to eternity.
The bus slows. It mostly emptied on the circle through downtown. Just two stops now until Jeremy’s condo. To-do list: shower, change clothes, get a backup battery, walk to the office, go deeper into this list of variables.
He looks down at the iPad to see what it’s already given him: a list of 327 parameters that the computer used as a basis for predicting an attack.
A column on the left on his iPad window lists the name of a particular variable; then, in the next column, the variable is quantified, like the number of oil barrels shipped or produced. Next to that, one column shows how much the variable has changed in the last day and another column shows how muchit’s changed in the last week. Finally, a column on the far right shows the extent of the change.
Jeremy scrolls up and down this dense, text-heavy list. Three of the lines of variables are blinking. The blinks signal that the variables in those columns have seen a significant change.
When he first built the program, he’d look every few hours at the variables, looking for changes, like a hopped-up day trader or, Emily once observed, like a psychology student who, a few days into class, starts imagining that he and everyone around him has everything from clinical depression to multiple personality disorder to attention deficit disorder. Jeremy was seeing conflict everywhere.
But he quickly realized that changes to the variables, even the most weighty ones, did not mean imminent war. Much more important is the combination of changing factors, their relative and combined influence in waging war. The precise right amount of sugar and butter and chocolate makes delicious cookies; the wrong amount, combined with arsenic, makes something that tastes like shit and kills you.
What he’s looking at, even if the data is accurate, still is likelier to be a predictor of a hoax than a war. Jeremy looks at the blinking columns. One is Tantalum. The second is Conflict Rhetoric. The third is the Random Event Meter, known as REM.
The bus slows again. Jeremy glances at the countdown clock: 57:40:00.
57:39:59.
57:39:58.
He looks up. The raven-haired woman applying makeup, sitting two rows ahead, is looking at Jeremy in her tiny handheld mirror. Isn’t she? As the bus comes to a stop, she hastilystuffs her makeup kit into an oversize purse and exits out the front.
Jeremy looks down at the variables. Rhetoric. The computer is programmed to see changes in language, to see nuances even in hyperbole. But from the column, Jeremy can’t tell exactly what has changed
At least that’s got to be the working assumption, that someone is messing with the computer. Who? How?
He looks at the countdown clock, then below it. At the bottom of the screen, Jeremy sees a query: Would you like to see a list of the variables?
Jeremy clicks yes. Yes, he wants to see which variables have changed such that this computer is predicting the end of the world.
C HAPTER 10
A LITTLE OVER AN hour later, and poorer by eight dollars spent on a ham-and-cheese croissant and coffee and the bus, he looks up from the iPad and watches a raven-haired woman apply makeup to her pale face with help from a pocket mirror. Pale like his mother on that last visit, her head rolled to the side, dry lips, Jeremy wondering whether someone is going to say something, anything, something conciliatory, or maybe one last twinkle-eyed parry on her way to eternity.
The bus slows. It mostly emptied on the circle through downtown. Just two stops now until Jeremy’s condo. To-do list: shower, change clothes, get a backup battery, walk to the office, go deeper into this list of variables.
He looks down at the iPad to see what it’s already given him: a list of 327 parameters that the computer used as a basis for predicting an attack.
A column on the left on his iPad window lists the name of a particular variable; then, in the next column, the variable is quantified, like the number of oil barrels shipped or produced. Next to that, one column shows how much the variable has changed in the last day and another column shows how muchit’s changed in the last week. Finally, a column on the far right shows the extent of the change.
Jeremy scrolls up and down this dense, text-heavy list. Three of the lines of variables are blinking. The blinks signal that the variables in those columns have seen a significant change.
When he first built the program, he’d look every few hours at the variables, looking for changes, like a hopped-up day trader or, Emily once observed, like a psychology student who, a few days into class, starts imagining that he and everyone around him has everything from clinical depression to multiple personality disorder to attention deficit disorder. Jeremy was seeing conflict everywhere.
But he quickly realized that changes to the variables, even the most weighty ones, did not mean imminent war. Much more important is the combination of changing factors, their relative and combined influence in waging war. The precise right amount of sugar and butter and chocolate makes delicious cookies; the wrong amount, combined with arsenic, makes something that tastes like shit and kills you.
What he’s looking at, even if the data is accurate, still is likelier to be a predictor of a hoax than a war. Jeremy looks at the blinking columns. One is Tantalum. The second is Conflict Rhetoric. The third is the Random Event Meter, known as REM.
The bus slows again. Jeremy glances at the countdown clock: 57:40:00.
57:39:59.
57:39:58.
He looks up. The raven-haired woman applying makeup, sitting two rows ahead, is looking at Jeremy in her tiny handheld mirror. Isn’t she? As the bus comes to a stop, she hastilystuffs her makeup kit into an oversize purse and exits out the front.
Jeremy looks down at the variables. Rhetoric. The computer is programmed to see changes in language, to see nuances even in hyperbole. But from the column, Jeremy can’t tell exactly what has changed
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