When the word correlate puts in its appearance, I know the conversation is about to go into technobabble mode. So I cut to the chase. “You’re saying that if Paul just wanted to run away, ‘next door,’ this could be next door, even though this dimension is different in a lot of ways.”
“Exactly.” The lights go down, and Theo sits up straighter as the crowd’s murmuring dies down and their various hologram calls fade out. “Showtime.”
The screen shifts from the ConTech logo to a promotional video, the usual beaming people of various ages and races all using high-tech products to make their already awesome lives even better. Only the products are different—the self-driving cars along tracks like Romola had, the holographic viewscreens, and other stuff that I hadn’t seen yet, like medical scanners that diagnose at a touch, and some kind of game like laser tag, except with real lasers. A woman approached by the most clean-cut mugger of all time turns confidently and touches her bracelet; the mugger jolts as if electrocuted, then falls to the ground as she strides away.
I glance down at the bangle around my wrist, the one with the inside label that says Defender. Now I get it.
The background music rises to an inspirational high as the images fade out, and the announcer says, “Ladies and gentlemen, the innovator of the age, founder and CEO of ConTech . . . Wyatt Conley.”
Applause, a spotlight, and Wyatt Conley walks on stage.
Despite the fact that he’s been bankrolling my parents’ research for more than a year now, I’ve never actually met Conley before. But I know what he looks like, as does anyone else who’s been online or watched TV during the last decade.
Although he’s about thirty, Conley doesn’t seem to be much older than Theo or Paul; there’s something boyish about him, like he’s never been forced to grow up and doesn’t intend to start now. His face is long and thin, yet handsome in an eccentric sort of way; Josie’s even said she thinks he’s hot. He wears the kind of oh-so-casual jeans and long-sleeved T that you just know cost a thousand dollars apiece. His hair is as curly and uncontrollable as mine, but lighter, almost red, which matches the freckles across his nose and cheeks. Between that and the famous pranks he’s pulled on other celebrities, he’s been described as “a Weasley twin set loose in Silicon Valley.”
“We’re on a journey,” Conley says, a small smile on his face. “You, me, everyone on Planet Earth. And that journey is getting faster by the moment—accelerating every second. I’m talking about the journey into the future, specifically, the future we’re creating through technology.”
As he crosses the stage with a confident swagger, the screen behind him shows an infographic titled “Rates of Technological Change.” Throughout most of human history, it’s a line moving very slowly upward. Then, in the mid-nineteenth century, it spikes up—and in the most recent three decades, goes almost completely vertical.
Conley says, “For all the differences in their eras, Julius Caesar would have fundamentally understood the world of Napoleon Bonaparte, a warrior who lived nearly two thousand years later. Napoleon might have understood Dwight D. Eisenhower, who fought not even a hundred and fifty years after Waterloo. But I don’t think Eisenhower could even begin to wrap his mind around drone warfare, spy satellites, or any of the technology that now defines the security of our world.”
For a history lesson, this is almost interesting. Maybe it’s the way he talks with his hands, like an excited kid. But right when I might actually get drawn in, I see Paul walking swiftly up the side aisle to the exit.
Theo’s hand closes over my forearm, tightly, in warning. He whispers, “You see him too?”
I nod. He rises from his seat—crouching low so we don’t block anyone’s view and create a disturbance—and I do the same as we slip out to the side of the auditorium.
A few people give us annoyed looks, but the only sound in the room remains Conley’s voice. “For generations now, people have dreaded World War Three. But they’re making a huge mistake. They’re expecting war to look the way it looked before.”
Nobody much is milling around in the corridors outside, except for a few harried assistants trying to prep for some kind of follow-up reception. So Theo and I go unnoticed as we try to figure out where, exactly, Paul might have gone. In a building this old, nothing is laid out quite like you’d expect.
“Through here, maybe?” Theo opens a door that leads into a darkened room, one empty of chairs or tables.
I follow him inside; as the door swings shut behind us, darkness seals us in, except for the faint glow of the tech we wear—our holoclips, or my security bracelet. We can hear Conley’s speech again, but muffled. “The next challenges humanity will face are going to be fundamentally different from any we’ve faced before. New threats, yes—but new opportunities, too.”
Then we hear something else. Footsteps.