Watt stared at the blank monitor uncertainly. It was true; he had definitely told Nadia to turn herself off if he kept begging her to write his papers. Past Watt was too damned clever for Present Watt to want to deal with right now.
He began speaking aloud, his dictation-screen picking up the words as he said them.
“The reason I want to work with quantum computers is …”
He paused. There were a million things he could discuss in this essay: that quants were faster and smarter than people, even though people had made them, of course; that they could solve problems that humans never dreamed of. God, just a hundred years ago, it took a digital computer several hours to factor a twenty-digit number. Nadia could do it in four seconds flat. Watt couldn’t even imagine what she would be capable of if she were linked to other quants—and put in charge of international trade, or the stock market, or even just the operations of the U.S. food bank. Nothing would go to waste anymore. Human error would be virtually eliminated.
But none of that had to do with Watt on a personal level, or why the program should choose him over the other thousands of applicants.
If only he could write about Nadia, about how unerringly good she was. She can’t be good; she’s a machine, he corrected himself. But Watt knew that at his core, he believed in Nadia’s good intentions as if she had a human conscience.
He thought of what Vivian Marsh had said, that she wanted to personally read his application essay, and felt his heart sink.
“Watzahn!” His mom knocked at his door. “Your friend is here. For your group project.”
“Cynthia?” They had a video to make for English class. He wondered why Cynthia hadn’t warned him that she was coming over. “You should have pinged, we could have met at the library,” he added, opening the door—only to see Leda Cole standing there, wearing pink floral yoga pants and a self-satisfied smirk.
“We could’ve,” she said smoothly, “but I wanted to use your computer. It’s so much better than the ones at the library, you know?”
“Of course. Watzahn is so proud of his computer. He works on it all the time!” Watt’s mom pronounced, beaming.
Quant on, Watt thought frantically, feeling disoriented and blindsided. What the hell was Leda Cole doing here?
“Thank you, Mrs. Bakradi,” Leda said sweetly, her eyes wide and innocent. She stepped into Watt’s room and swung a tote bag onto the floor, kneeling as if to get out the fictional homework assignment. Watt stared in shock at his mother. He couldn’t believe she was even letting a girl into his bedroom. But Shirin just nodded and smiled at Leda, reminding them to let her know if they needed anything. “Don’t work too hard!” she said, and shut the door quietly behind her.
“Sorry I’m not Cynthia,” Leda purred. “Though I’m glad to hear that one of us has moved on from the Fuller siblings.”
“She’s just a friend,” Watt shot back, then felt ashamed that he’d risen to her bait.
“Too bad.” Leda’s fingers kept tapping against the floor. He didn’t think she was on anything—her eyes were too clear, her gaze steady—yet there was a taut, thrumming nervousness to her movements.
He knelt next to Leda and took her bag from her hands. “Seriously, you need to go.”
“Come on, Watt. Be nice,” she admonished. “I came all the way down here to talk to you.”
“What the hell do you want?” he demanded. Watt, be careful, Nadia cautioned. He let his hands fall uselessly to his sides, clenching them into fists, and sat back on his heels.
“I thought you knew everything, with your little supercomputer tracking all of us all the time,” Leda said acerbically.
Nadia, if you hadn’t turned yourself off, I wouldn’t have been caught like this!
Perhaps you shouldn’t have violated the guidelines you set for yourself, Nadia replied, with ruthless logic.
“What did you tell my mom, for her to let you in?” he asked Leda, to buy time—and because she was right, she shouldn’t be able to sneak up on him like this. He wanted to make sure it never happened again.
Leda rolled her eyes. “I was nice to her, Watt. You should try it sometime. It often works on people.” She stretched her legs out and leaned against his bed, glancing up at the tangle of clothes floating near the ceiling on cheap, disposable hoverbeams.
“I don’t have a closet in here. It’s the best I could think of,” Watt said, following her gaze, not sure why he was explaining himself.
“Actually, I’m impressed.” Leda’s eyes were still darting around the room. “You’ve really maximized the space in here. What was this originally, a nursery?”
“No, the twins got the bigger room when they were born.” He shifted, suddenly seeing the room through Leda’s eyes: the rumpled navy bedcovers, the cheap halogen lighting along the ceiling, the narrow desk littered with secondhand virtual reality gear.
“Twins?” Leda asked, as if she was genuinely curious.
Nadia, what’s she doing?
I believe this is the rhetorical tactic of koinonia, whereby the speaker gets the opponent to talk about himself instead of tackling the subject of the debate.
No, I mean, what does she want?
Watt stood up, losing patience. “You didn’t come over here to make small talk about my family. What’s going on?”
Leda unfolded herself in a slow, graceful movement to stand next to him. She took a step closer, tipping her face up to look at him directly. Her eyes were darker than he remembered, her lids dusted with a smoky powder. “You aren’t even going to offer me a drink before I go? Last time you gave me whiskey,” Leda murmured.
“Last time you seduced and drugged me!”
She smiled. “That was fun, wasn’t it? Well, Watt”—she reached up to tuck a stray hair behind his ear and he yanked his head angrily away; he was starting to feel very confused—“if you must know, I need you to monitor some people for me.”
“Forget it, Leda. I told you, I’m done with all that.”
“That’s too bad, because I’m not done with you.” She’d dropped the playful tone, her voice cold with the veiled threat. She had him cornered, and they both knew it.
“Who do you want me to monitor?” Watt asked warily.
“Avery and Rylin, for starters,” Leda said. There was a new energy to her voice, as if bossing Watt around somehow lent her strength. “I want to make sure they stay in line, that neither of them is talking to anyone about what happened that night.”
He realized she was wearing the same pearl studs that she’d had on the last time she came over here, and the memory caused his anger to bubble up even hotter. “You want me to spy on both of them and report anything unusual?” Watt asked. “Two full-time monitoring tasks. That’ll cost you.”
Leda burst out laughing. “Watt! Of course I won’t be paying you! Your payment is my silence.”