There’s music blaring from a set of plastic speakers, a crunchy warbling tune that I suspect no more than thirteen people in the world have ever heard.
“What can I get you guys?” one of the teenagers calls out above the music. Well, he might not actually be a teenager. The staff here inhabits a whiskerless in-between space; they probably go to art school. Our host is wearing a white T-shirt that shows Mickey Mouse grimacing and brandishing an AK-47.
Okay, I’d better get this right: “One Hogwarts Special,” I call back to him. Insurgent Mickey nods once. I add, “But hold the shrooms.” Pause. “The mushrooms, I mean.” Pause. “I think.” But Insurgent Mickey has already turned away from us, consulting with his colleagues.
“Did he hear you?” Neel whispers. “I can’t eat pizza. If we actually end up with a pizza, it’s going to be your responsibility to consume it. Do not let me have any. Even if I ask for some.” He pauses. “I’ll probably ask for some.”
“Tie you to the mast,” I say. “Like Odysseus.”
“Like Captain Bloodboots,” Neel says.
In The Dragon-Song Chronicles, Fernwen the scholarly dwarf convinces the crew of the Starlily to tie Captain Bloodboots to the mast after he tries to cut the singing dragon’s throat. So, yes. Like Captain Bloodboots.
Insurgent Mickey is back with a pizza box. That was fast. “That’ll be sixteen-fifty,” he says. Wait, did I do something wrong? Is this a joke? Did Grumble send us on a wild-goose chase? Neel raises his eyebrows but produces a crisp twenty-dollar bill and hands it over. In return, we receive an extra-large pizza box, with POP-UP PIE stamped across the top in runny blue ink.
The box isn’t hot.
Outside on the sidewalk, I crack it open. Inside, there are tidy stacks of heavy cardboard, all long flat shapes with slots and tabs where they fit together. It’s a GrumbleGear, all in pieces. The edges are burned black. These shapes have been made with a laser cutter.
Written in thick marker strokes on the underside of the box’s lid is a message from Grumble, whether by his own hand or his Brooklyn minion’s, I will never know:
SPECIALIS REVELIO
On the way back, we stop at a gray-market electronics shop and pick out two cheap digital cameras. Then we make our way to the Northbridge through the streets of lower Manhattan, Neel carrying the pizza box, me with the cameras in a plastic bag bouncing against my knee. We have everything we need. MANVTIVS will be ours.
The city is all bright squalls of traffic and commerce. Taxis honk underneath lights turning gold; long lines of shoppers clank up and down Fifth Avenue. There are loose crowds on every street corner, laughing and smoking and selling kebabs. San Francisco is a good city, and beautiful, but it’s never this alive. I take a deep breath — the air is cool and sharp, scented with tobacco and mystery meat — and I think of Corvina’s warning to Penumbra: You can squander what time remains out there. Jeez. Immortality in a book-lined catacomb down beneath the surface of the earth, or death up here, with all this? I’ll take death and a kebab. And what about Penumbra? Somehow he seems more like a man of the world, too. I think of his bookstore, with those wide front windows. I think of his first words to me—“What do you seek in these shelves?”—delivered with a big, welcoming smile.
Corvina and Penumbra were fast friends once; I’ve seen photographic proof. Corvina must have been so different then … really literally a different person. At what point do you make that call? At what point should you just give someone a new name? Sorry, no, you don’t get to be Corvina anymore. Now you’re Corvina 2.0—a dubious upgrade. I think of the young man in the old photo giving a thumbs-up. Is he gone forever?
“It really would be better if the filmmaker was female,” Neel is saying. “Seriously. I need to put more money into that foundation. I’ve only given one grant, and it was to my cousin Sabrina.” He pauses. “I think that might have been illegal.”
I try to imagine Neel forty years from now: bald, suit-wearing, a different person. I try to imagine Neel 2.0 or Neel Shah, business mentor — a Neel with whom I can no longer be friends — but I just can’t do it.
Back at the Northbridge, I’m surprised to find Kat and Penumbra sitting together on the low couches, deep in conversation. Kat is gesturing enthusiastically and Penumbra is smiling, nodding, his blue eyes shining.
When Kat looks up, she’s smiling. “There was another email,” she blurts. Then she pauses, but her face is alive, jumping, like she can’t contain whatever comes next: “They’re expanding the PM to a hundred and twenty-eight, and — I’m one of them.” Her micromuscles are on fire, and she almost shrieks it: “I got picked!”
My mouth hangs open a little bit. She jumps up and hugs me, and I hug her back, and we dance around in a little circle in the ultracool Northbridge lobby.
“What does that even mean?” Neel says, setting down the pizza box.
“I think it means this side project just got some executive support,” I say, and Kat throws her arms up in the air.
To celebrate Kat’s success, all four of us sidle up to the Northbridge lobby bar, which is tiled with tiny matte-black integrated circuits. We sit on tall stools and Neel buys a round of drinks. I sip something called the Blue Screen of Death, which is in fact neon-blue, with a bright LED winking inside one of the ice cubes.
“So let me get this straight — you’re one — one-twenty-eighth of Google’s CEO?” Neel says.
“Not exactly,” Kat says. “We have a CEO, but Google is way too complicated for one person to run alone, so the Product Management helps out. You know … should we enter this market, should we make that acquisition.”
“Dude!” Neel says, leaping up off his stool. “Acquire me!”
Kat laughs. “I’m not sure 3-D boobs—”
“It’s not just boobs!” Neel says. “We do the whole body. Arms, legs, deltoids, you name it.”
Kat just smiles and sips her drink. Penumbra is nursing an inch of golden scotch in a thick-bottomed tumbler. He turns to Kat.
“Dear girl,” he says. “Do you think Google will still exist in a hundred years?”
She’s quiet a moment, then nods sharply. “Yes, I do.”
“You know,” he says, “a rather famous member of the Unbroken Spine was fast friends with a young man who founded a company of similar ambition. And he said exactly the same thing.”
“Which company?” I ask. “Microsoft? Apple?” What if Steve Jobs dabbled in the fellowship? Maybe that’s why Gerritszoon comes preinstalled on every Mac …
“No, no,” Penumbra says, shaking his head. “It was Standard Oil.” He grins; he’s caught us. He swirls his glass and says, “You have found your way into a story that has been unfolding for a very long time. Some of my brothers and sisters would say that your company, dear girl, is no different from all the others that have come before. Some of them would say no one outside the Unbroken Spine has ever had anything to offer us.”
“Some of them, like Corvina,” I say flatly.
“Yes, Corvina.” Penumbra nods. “Others, too.” He looks at the three of us together — Kat and Neel and me — and he says quietly, “But I am glad to have you as my allies. I do not know if you understand how historic this work is going to be. The techniques we have developed over centuries, aided by new tools … I believe we will succeed. I believe it in my bones.”