“Yeah.”
“Nepal.” She gritted her teeth. Almost didn’t come back.
“You grew up in…”
“Ohio.”
“Really?”
“No, but why’d you ask if you already knew?”
“Trying not to be presumptuous.”
“Salt Lake,” she said. How much did he actually know? Who was she kidding; Google knew everything.
“Family?”
“Sister.”
“Oh, yeah, what’s her name?”
Jackie gripped the leather seat next to her right leg. “Marissa.”
“Beautiful name. What’s she up—”
“I’d rather not talk about it, Denny.”
He nodded. “Were you trekking—when you went to Nepal?”
She wondered if he knew about that, too.
“Finding myself, I guess.”
“What did you find?”
“A near-death experience—rabies.”
“Say what again.”
“I got scratched by a monkey. Not that common, the monkey part. But there are lots of rabies attacks there, mostly from dogs’ bites. You know much about rabies?”
“I know you don’t want it.”
“We’ve got a winner. It is a hundred percent fatal once the symptoms set in. The good news is, it’s also preventable during the incubation period if you get the vaccine. The trick is getting it in time.”
“Which you obviously did or you’d be salivating even more than you already are.”
She laughed. “The vaccine is available there, if you get to a clinic. And I was on my way to one when there was an earthquake.”
His eyebrows raised, like Holy shit.
“Flights canceled, trains down, chaos. Long story short, I was in deep trouble when I was essentially rescued by an American doctor who was over there dealing with a cholera outbreak. He saw me waiting at an airstrip that had ground to a halt due to the earthquake. I’d never have gotten to Kathmandu in time. If not for him, I’m not here to experience”—she focused out the window—“lovely Hawthorne.”
The town now loomed, just three miles across the border. It was the kind of small highway town where the low-slung building with the red word “Motel” stood out like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And it seemed even to lean. Another business sign read classic car, which probably meant “Old.” And another, which made Jackie laugh, said wash and referred to a Laundromat but the sign was encrusted in filth.
“That’s a remarkable story,” Denny said. “Does it explain your interest in infectious disease—that class you’re taking?”
The insightful nature of the question startled her. She hadn’t even told the whole of it to Denny, and how it really had been the turning point in her life. Truth is, had it not been for the heroism of Dr. Martin—Lyle—she well might’ve let herself just die. Sitting on the ground outside the airstrip, she had actually gotten peaceful with the idea. After so much bullshit in her life, so little faith in herself and people around her, it felt in the moment like a blessing to curl up there on the ground and let the hot wind carry her away.
“The guy who teaches it is a genius,” Jackie said.
“High praise coming from you.”
“I mean the real McCoy, Denny. You ever really want someone to figure something out, Dr. Lyle Martin is the guy…”
“I’m starting to feel jealous,” Denny said, as he slowed at a stoplight. “Okay, it’s decision time. I figured we’d stop at the restaurant, unless you want to go straight to the shop.”
“The restaurant?”
“I guess there’s more than one. I’ve never tested the theory.”
They got turkey sandwiches with canned cranberry chunks on white bread to go and Denny drove them a half mile east of town and down a dirt road. Jackie noticed the preponderance of army trucks driving both directions. The army base here was a large munitions storage facility, located outside of town, and essentially was this place’s raison d’être. The Rocky Mountains loomed to the east. Two miles down a dirt road, and then a few serpentine turns later Denny parked his Tesla in front of a place that looked, appropriately, like a scientific outpost but one you might find in a frozen tundra. Two corrugated metal buildings with a generator by the side and a horizontal unit Jackie recognized as housing cooling equipment.
“Not much to look at,” Jackie said.
And, simultaneously, she and Denny said, “I guess that’s the idea.” The idea being: don’t draw attention to this operation.
Denny smiled. “Great minds…”
“What about that?” Jackie said. She was looking out the left side of the Tesla window, noticing that farther down the road sat another building, this one concrete, almost bunker-looking. Next to it a long stretch of paved road, like a runway. And looming over the whole thing a giant metal dish, very clearly a powerful antenna.
“Have you ever seen anything so subtle?” Denny said, and laughed. “The supersecret Google space project. Not so supersecret, right?”
It was well known that Google was playing around with low-cost ways to get into space. They weren’t alone in this respect. Amazon, too, was getting into the act, and Facebook, Elon Musk, Richard Branson. The stated reason was that these companies wanted to explore the future of space travel, even for tourists. But Jackie was no dope; she and others who liked to read tea leaves suspected it had more to do with the future of much more immediate businesses, like telecommunications and even Internet commerce. If the companies could get low-cost, high-power satellites into orbit, they could become hubs to control Internet access, information, drones, who knew what else.
“Are they launching rockets?” she asked Denny.
“Satellites, I suspect,” he said. “Most of that is done in Florida.”
“But you’re not sure.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Keep it between us. That’s not my area; this is, and I try to keep my nose out of stuff that could fuck with my ability to cash in my stock options.”
She felt relieved again. She’d asked about the rockets as a test, hoping he’d be frank with her. Opening the car door, she brushed bread crumbs off her lap onto the dusty ground and felt a wave of satisfaction. She was getting let into the inner sanctum at Google, though that was secondary to the bond she was solidifying with Denny.
She stepped out of the car and felt a gust of desert wind and she shivered. She hated wind. It reminded her of uncertainty, self-doubt, the feeling that little things could throw you off if you weren’t anchored. She pictured an invasive memory: her mother shouting at her father, her father shouting back, the pair nose to nose on the balcony, little Jackie sitting on the couch, looking over its back, feeling the breeze through the sliding door. Marissa sucking on a bottle Jackie had made for her. Wind brought memories, guilt. Wind smelled like sweat and shampoo, it sounded like anger. Jackie put her hand to her face and wiped.
For an instant, she thought about the fateful day in Nepal, nearly dying, being saved, becoming determined to live a more directed life, to not just do the right thing but figure out how to do the right thing. She thought of these moments as the yin and yang of her life: her terror, paralysis, impotence in dealing with her parents, years of self-doubt, and then a salvation and a determination to figure it out.
“Everything okay?” Denny asked.
“Bad cranberry burp.”
“Let’s go inside.”
Denny used a card key to gain them entrance to the larger of the two metal-framed buildings. Cool air greeted them, the refrigerated feel of a server farm. Inside, not racks of powerful computers. Just a few desks and a Ping-Pong table. A dartboard hung against a far wall. To Jackie’s right, a kitchenette. An industrial-size case of Red Bull still in the Costco shrink wrap sat on top of the refrigerator. It all looked like Silicon Valley lite.