2
Las Vegas, Nevada
USA
JON SMITH MADE HIS WAY through the cavernous Las Vegas Convention Center toward a dense knot of people at its heart. The air-conditioning was already drying the sweat that had soaked through the back of his shirt while he was stuck standing in the desert sun. It had never occurred to him that security for the function would be so tight—metal detectors, multiple ID checks, bomb-sniffing dogs. By comparison, the TSA and Secret Service were downright easygoing.
When he reached the crowd, the reason for the over-the-top scrutiny became apparent. It seemed to consist of a Who’s Who of the tech industry. He spotted familiar faces from Amazon and Facebook right away. The new CEO of Apple was also there, embroiled in a heated discussion with two gangly young men he didn’t recognize but whose presence and spectacular basketball shoes suggested they were probably worth a billion dollars each.
Feeling more than a little out of place, Smith skirted the crowd’s edge, examining the hundred or so chairs lined up in front of a stage framed by a twenty-meter-high video monitor. Finally, he reached his objective: an enormous table straining under the weight of an impressive ice sculpture and an even more impressive spread of exotic food items.
His first sample turned out to be a deeply unfortunate combination of dates and caviar, so he headed toward the bar to get something to wash the taste from his mouth.
“Beer,” he said to one of the men handling a line of taps that must have been ten meters long.
“My pleasure. We have Fat Tire, Snake River Lager, Sam Adams, Corona—”
Smith held a hand up, certain the man could recite them all but concerned that the flavor of those dates was starting to gain a permanent foothold. “I’ll trust your judgment.”
The voice of a woman behind him rose above the drone of the crowd. “You look like a Budweiser man to me.”
He turned and she planted herself in front of him, red lips crossing pale skin in a broad grin. Mid-twenties, thin but shapely, with a pixie haircut and bangs that she pushed from her eyes to get a better look at him. Her name tag read “Janine Redford/Wired Magazine.” His, as she had undoubtedly noticed, just read “Jon Smith.”
“I’ve been watching you.”
“Me?” he said, accepting the beer and then pushing back through the people mobbing the bar with her in his wake. “Why? I’m not anybody.”
She pointed at his name tag. “And you’re not afraid to put it in writing.”
“Family name. Could have been worse. My father had a falling-out with my uncle Gomer right before I was born.”
She seemed unconvinced. “I either know or recognize everyone here. You don’t seem to fit.”
“No?”
“No. You’ve got your geeks, your scary business powerhouses, and your skinny, middle-aged Internet gazillionaires…” Her voice trailed off for a moment. “Then there’s you.”
There was no denying it. His shoulders were a bit too broad, his black hair a little too utilitarian, and his dark skin starting to show damage from sun, wind, ice, and the occasional unavoidable explosion.
“Maybe they sent my invitation by accident?” he said honestly. At this point, it was actually his most credible theory. But why look a gift horse in the mouth? A good quarter of the world would have cut off their pinkie toe to be here. And he was firmly in that twenty-five percent.
She gave him a suspicious little smile and took a sip from her martini glass. “Christian Dresner doesn’t make mistakes.”
“Okay. Then you tell me why I’m here.”
“You’re military.”
“I’m a doctor,” he said evasively. “Microbiology. But these days I work with the physically impaired.”
“Okay. I’ll buy that. But you’re a military doctor and the impaired people you work with are injured soldiers. No point in denying it. I’m a prodigy at this.”
He considered his options for a moment but then just stuck out his hand. “Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith.”
“So does the military know something?” she said, demonstrating a surprisingly firm grip. “Like, for instance, what Dresner’s going to roll out today?”
“Not a clue.”
Her pouting frown combined with the sagging of her shoulders made it clear she wasn’t buying a word he said. When she spoke again, he wasn’t sure if it was to him or if she was just thinking out loud. “Dresner’s more of a save-the-world kind of guy than a blow-up-the-world guy…”
“And I don’t work with weapons, Janine. I really am a doctor. If I’m not here by mistake, my best guess is it’s another medical breakthrough. His antibiotics have been really important to us on the battlefield, and retired soldiers are a huge market for his hearing system.”
She crinkled up her nose. “My grandpa was an artillery guy in Vietnam and he has one of those hearing aids.”
“It’s an amazing technology.”
“Yeah. I used to shout ‘Hi, Gramps!’ right in his face and he’d say, ‘Oh, about eleven o’clock.’ Now he can hear a pin drop in the next room.”
People often made the mistake of comparing Dresner’s system to Cochlears, but the technology was an order of magnitude more advanced. Dresner had figured out a way to bypass the ear entirely, using a magnetic field to communicate directly with the brain. Children being born today would never even understand the concept of hearing impairment.
She pointed to the left side of her head. “The problem is that he’s bald and he’s got these two shiny silver receivers screwed right into his wrinkly old skull. I love the guy, but it’s disgusting.”
“You know the VA will pay to have those painted to match his skin.”
“He says the government has better things to do with its money than try to make him look pretty.”
Smith raised his glass to the old soldier and took a long pull.
“I think we can both agree that it’s not going to be better hearing aids,” she continued. “So what then?”
“I can’t tell you what it is, but I can tell you what I hope it is. I’ve been working on developing prosthetics for injured troops and we’ve made some strides toward allowing people to control them mentally, but the technology is really basic. If there’s anyone in the world who could crack that nut, it would be Christian Dresner.”
Her eyes crinkled up as she considered the possibility. “We did a story a while back on a monkey that controls this huge mechanical arm with his brain. Doesn’t seem to understand it’s not his. Creepy.”
“I’ve actually met that monkey,” Smith said. “And it is kind of creepy.”
She shook her head. “It’s not going to be that.”
“No? Why not?”
“First of all, because you’re the only doctor here—everyone else is straight-up technology. And second, because a few years back Dresner overpaid for a Spanish search start-up that was doing augmented reality for cell phones.”
“Like the astronomy app I have on my iPhone? You just hold it up to the sky at night and it shows you the stars behind it with their names. I love that.”
She seemed less impressed. “Dresner didn’t want the company. He wanted their technology guru. An old hacker named Javier de Galdiano.”
“And what’s de Galdiano do now?”
“No one really knows. What I do know, though, is that Dresner’s bought up more than a few hardware companies and patents that would be complementary to what Javier was trying to accomplish at his start-up.”
“You know a lot.”
“Keeping tabs on what Dresner is doing is pretty much my job. And I’m saying he’s getting into computing.”
“Seems like a pretty saturated market. These days everything is just a bigger, smaller, or lighter version of something that already exists. Steve Jobs was amazing at taking existing technology and making it useful, but I see Dresner more as someone who’s looking to blow people away with something they’ve never even thought about before. I mean, the guy’s completely changed our understanding of how the mind and body communicate. His work in immunology has saved hundreds of thousands of lives and headed off a health disaster that I guarantee was coming. I can’t help thinking this is going to be something…amazing.”
She hooked an arm through his and tugged him toward the people moving to the seating in front of the stage. “Then let’s push through all these geeks and get you into the front row. Maybe we could sit together? I’d feel safer having a military man close. You know, in case the Russians invade.”
He grinned and responded in that language as they tried to do an end run around one of Google’s founders.
“I’m intrigued. What did you say?”
In fact, it was an old proverb about the benefits of beautiful young women, but he decided to equivocate a bit.
“I said, ‘Can you give me directions to the bathroom?’ It’s the only Russian I know.”
“Still, you sold it. And that’s what’s important.”