Now we were driving to school. "She's crazy, Dad."
"No, she's not."
"You know that she is. You're just pretending."
"Nicole, she's your mother," I said. "Your mother is not crazy. She's working very hard right now."
"That's what you said last week, after the fight."
"Well, it happens to be true."
"You guys didn't used to fight."
"There's a lot of stress right now."
Nicole snorted, crossed her arms, stared forward. "I don't know why you put up with her."
"And I don't know why you were listening to what is none of your business."
"Dad, why do you pull that crap with me?"
"Nicole…"
"Sor-ry. But why can't you have a real conversation, instead of defending her all the time? It's not normal, what she's doing. I know you think she's crazy."
"I don't," I said.
From the backseat, Eric whacked her on the back of the head. "You're the one who's crazy," he said.
"Shut up, butt breath."
"Shut up yourself, weasel puke."
"I don't want to hear any more from either of you," I said loudly. "I am not in the mood." By then we were pulling into the turnaround in front of the school. The kids piled out. Nicole jumped out of the front seat, turned back to get her backpack, shot me a look, and was gone. I didn't think Julia was crazy, but something had certainly changed, and as I replayed that morning's conversation in my head, I felt uneasy for other reasons. A lot of her comments sounded like she was building a case against me. Laying it out methodically, step by step. You are shutting me out and keeping me away from my children.
I am here, you just don't notice.
I'm a good mother, I balance a very demanding job with the needs of my family.
You are not supportive of me at all. You undercut me, you sabotage me.
You are turning the children against me.
I could easily imagine her lawyer saying these things in court. And I knew why. According to a recent article I had read in Redbook magazine, "alienation of affection" was currently the trendy argument in court. The father is turning the children against the mother. Poisoning their little minds by word and deed. While the Mom is blameless as always. Every father knew the legal system was hopelessly biased in favor of mothers. The courts gave lip service to equality, and then ruled a child needed its mother. Even if she was absent. Even if she smacked them around, or forgot to feed them. As long as she wasn't shooting up, or breaking their bones, she was a fit mother in the eyes of the court. And even if she was shooting up, a father might not win the case. One of my friends at MediaTronics had an ex-wife on heroin who'd been in and out of rehab for years. They'd finally divorced and had joint custody. She was supposedly clean but the kids said she wasn't. My friend was worried. He didn't want his ex driving the kids when she was loaded. He didn't want drug dealers around his kids. So he went to court to ask for full custody, and he lost. The judge said the wife was genuinely trying to overcome her addiction, and that children need their mother. So that was the reality. And now it looked to me as if Julia was starting to lay out that case. It gave me the creeps.
About the time I had worked myself into a fine lather, my cell phone rang. It was Julia. She was calling to apologize.
"I'm really sorry. I said stupid things today. I didn't mean it."
"What?"
"Jack, I know you support me. Of course you do. I couldn't manage without you. You're doing a great job with the kids. I'm just not myself these days. It was stupid, Jack. I'm sorry I said those things."
When I got off the phone I thought, I wish I had recorded that. I had a ten o'clock meeting with my headhunter, Annie Gerard. We met in the sunny courtyard of a coffee shop on Baker. We always met outside, so Annie could smoke. She had her laptop out and her wireless modem plugged in. A cigarette dangled from her lip, and she squinted in the smoke.
"Got anything?" I said, sitting down opposite her.
"Yeah, as a matter of fact I do. Two very good possibilities."
"Great," I said, stirring my latte. "Tell me."
"How about this? Chief research analyst for IBM, working on advanced distributed systems architecture."
"Right up my alley."
"I thought so, too. You're highly qualified for this one, Jack. You'd run a research lab of sixty people. Base pay two-fifty plus options going out five years plus royalties on anything developed in your lab."
"Sounds great. Where?"
"Armonk."
"New York?" I shook my head. "No way, Annie. What else?"
"Head of a team to design multi-agent systems for an insurance company that's doing data mining. It's an excellent opportunity, and-"
"Where?"
"Austin."
I sighed. "Annie. Julia's got a job she likes, she's very devoted to it, and she won't leave it now. My kids are in school, and-"
"People move all the time, Jack. They all have kids in school. Kids adapt."
"But with Julia…"
"Other people have working wives, too. They still move."
"I know, but the thing is with Julia…"
"Have you talked to her about it? Have you broached the subject?"
"Well, no, because I-"
"Jack." Annie stared at me over the laptop screen. "I think you better cut the crap. You're not in a position to be picky. You're starting to have a shelf-life problem."
"Shelf life," I said.
"That's right, Jack. You've been out of work six months now. That's a long time in high tech. Companies figure if it takes you that long to find a job, there must be something wrong with you. They don't know what, they just assume you've been rejected too many times, by too many other companies. Pretty soon, they won't even interview. Not in San Jose, not in Armonk, not in Austin, not in Cambridge. The boat's sailed. Are you hearing me? Am I getting through here?"
"Yes, but-"
"No buts, Jack. You've got to talk to your wife. You've got to figure out a way to get yourself off the shelf."
"But I can't leave the Valley. I have to stay here."
"Here is not so good." She flipped the screen up again. "Whenever I bring up your name, I keep getting-listen, what's going on at MediaTronics, anyway? Is Don Gross going to be indicted?"
"I don't know."
"I've been hearing that rumor for months now, but it never seems to happen. For your sake, I hope it happens soon."
"I don't get it," I said. "I'm perfectly positioned in a hot field, multi-agent distributed processing, and-"
"Hot?" she said, squinting at me. "Distributed processing's not hot, Jack. It's fucking radioactive. Everybody in the Valley figures that the breakthroughs in artificial life are going to come from distributed processing."
"They are," I said, nodding.
In the last few years, artificial life had replaced artificial intelligence as a long-term computing goal. The idea was to write programs that had the attributes of living creatures-the ability to adapt, cooperate, learn, adjust to change. Many of those qualities were especially important in robotics, and they were starting to be realized with distributed processing. Distributed processing meant that you divided your work among several processors, or among a network of virtual agents that you created in the computer. There were several basic ways this was done. One way was to create a large population of fairly dumb agents that worked together to accomplish a goal-just like a colony of ants worked together to accomplish a goal. My own team had done a lot of that work.
Another method was to make a so-called neural network that mimicked the network of neurons in the human brain. It turned out that even simple neural nets had surprising power. These networks could learn. They could build on past experience. We'd done some of that, too. A third technique was to create virtual genes in the computer, and let them evolve in a virtual world until some goal was attained.