Jackie sat next to the bed in a chair.
“Ahem,” she said.
Denny squirmed and turned. In the red light of the clock’s digital numbers, she made out the outlines of a small pill bottle. Benadryl, she surmised, the over-the-counter nightcap of champions. It was dulling Denny’s senses. Jackie tapped on his bulky shoulder. He stirred, made our her foreign shape, bolted up.
“Jesus!”
“Nope, just Jackie,” she said.
He swallowed, trying to make sense of it.
“Jackie of Nazareth,” she said. “I like the sound of it.”
“What are you—”
“Savior complex.”
“Jackie, what time is it?” He knew, he could see, but he was trying to make sense of this. “Turn on the light.”
“Let’s leave it like this,” Jackie said. “Darkens the mood.”
She knew the darkness left open the possibility in his mind that she was armed or something. Clearly he wasn’t all that concerned: he reached over to the nightstand and clicked on a lamp. Dim light took over the small, square room. Denny studied her. She wore a gray sweatshirt, zipped up high, and a Giants cap.
“Is everything okay, Jackie?”
“More or less. I’ve come to talk about Lantern.”
“I don’t mean to be glib but can it wait until morning?”
“It’s waited long enough.”
He ran his hand over his hair, pushing the sleeping mask off, then blew air out, a kind of silent concession. “I’ll make us some coffee.”
They sat at a dark, round wood-laminate table off the kitchen and drank from “Google” mugs. Low sounds of a melodic symphony performance leaked from the Google Home device on the near end of the kitchen counter. They sat quietly for a few minutes, Jackie happy to let Denny figure out how to express himself, content that she held a lot of cards and he knew it.
“You could’ve asked me during daylight hours,” he finally said.
“I’ve asked you on multiple occasions. You’ve bobbed and weaved.”
He sipped his coffee. “I’ve told you the truth.”
He saw her ball her fists, open them, ball again. Anger, tension.
“Just not all of it,” he conceded. “There are a bunch of different applications that we’re toying with.”
“Bullshit, Denny. You’re holding people in a stasis state.”
He let the words settle over them.
“It doesn’t have to do with memory or attention, or advertising, any of our usual business,” she continued.
“It does, Jackie.”
“Maybe I should just tell Kara Swisher, or Wired.”
“Jackie, I’m really not allowed—”
“What? Not allowed to tell me? Or to use me without telling me what I’m being used for? Or experiment on innocent Walmart employees trying to make an extra buck signing up for a test that freezes their brains? Lantern.”
“Calm down.”
She laughed.
“We’re not hurting anyone, Jackie. We’re exploring the idea of doing just the opposite—keeping them from getting hurt. Honestly, I’ve been largely frank with you but for a few details. If it’s this important to you”—he saw how ticked she was starting to look and withdrew his passive-aggressive language—“I’ll indulge you with the fuller theory of Lantern. But you have to bear in mind it is just a theory. It is embryonic. And it is well intended and will likely come to nothing.”
He told her the story.
Several years earlier, Denny was tasked by higher-ups at Google with exploring the way in which heavy use of devices was impacting the brain. Much work was already being done at academic centers in subjects like attention and addiction. But an executive at Google became curious about the hypnotic power of the device, the way it seemed to pull people into a kind of alternative universe, essentially robbing them of the reality around them.
“I got to set up a small team and it wasn’t long before I brought you on, Jackie.”
“So far you’ve told me almost nothing I don’t already know.”
“I’m getting there. With your help, we discovered that certain radio waves, sent in certain combinations—staccato bursts at different frequencies—could elicit a seizurelike response. This wasn’t deliberate, in the sense we didn’t want to hurt anyone. It is science, though, and it does inform a”—he considered his next words—“higher purpose.”
“What could be a higher purpose than giving people seizures?”
“That’s neither the end, nor the point. Look, Jackie, believe it or not, Google and…” He paused.
“And the companies you’ve partnered with on Lantern, all the big boys; yes, I know about that.”
Denny raised his eyebrows. She knew a lot. More than that, he noticed the twitch in her left eye. It was more than exhaustion; the twitch revealed her feeling of being betrayed, and crimson intensity, the tendency that made her valuable but also gave Denny pause.
“Jackie, it’s no secret that this country, the world, stands on the brink. We’re barreling into conflict and it’s closer than anyone realizes.” He sipped his coffee. “It’s worse than anyone realizes.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Look, we’ve analyzed a ton of data, social media, buying habits, changes to political leanings and demographics. We’ve looked at the patterns of explosive rhetoric on the Internet. We’ve seen the…” He wasn’t sure whether to add the next phrase, then went ahead with it. “We’ve seen data from the military, too, about hostile communications, profoundly concerning statements from foreign leaders, militant groups, and so forth.”
“This is government blessed?”
“No. Not officially, anyway. The truth is, the real truth is, I have no idea. But you’re a fool if you don’t think that Google, Facebook, et cetera, have very close relationships with the spy agencies. I’m not telling you anything, or alleging, anything. I just suspect data sharing is much, much closer than anyone fully knows. It’s in the interest of all parties.”
“But you digress.”
“Maybe. You want more coffee?”
“Please. So what you’re telling me is that Lantern has something to do with people being at each other’s throats, a world bordering on hostilities, and…” Suddenly, she closed her eyes, tightened her jaw, lightly shook her head. She’d been struck by a thought, even revelation. Denny turned around from the coffeemaker.
“Things are adding up for you. Do tell,” he said.
“I’d rather hear you tell it.”
He topped off her coffee, put the Mr. Coffee carafe on a hot pad on the table, sat.
“You haven’t made the connection between a hostile world and Lantern,” she said.
“It’s not that direct a connection. I’m giving you background. There’s one more important piece. Look, Jackie, the tech industry is in no small part to blame for the… intensity in the world today. We’re not idiots. We can see that the pace of media, the onslaught of conflict-centric communications, stokes the flames of hostility. Hell, we elected a demagogue last election in this country. People made some comparisons to Hitler. There are many differences. But a key one is the fact that when Hitler rose to power, there was a deep, deep economic crisis in Germany. By contrast, we’ve had economic challenges in this country but nothing like hyperinflation and massive unemployment. It’s just the media could make it feel that way. The hammering of negative messages, sensationalism, coupled with people feeling keyed up by their interaction with devices, leads to a world fertile for conflict. Then add in a lot of high-powered, easily accessible weapons and—”