“So what do you think,” Jin asked, “that there will never be anything new because it hasn’t existed before?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying cold fusion will never be new because it hasn’t existed before. The impossible and the inevitable are not the same.”
“I hope this doesn’t offend you,” she said, wrapping a blood pressure monitor snugly around my arm, “because you seem like an aware person and Vadis speaks highly of you—”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“—but it’s crazy to me how you think you’re smarter than Clive.”
“I don’t, actually.”
“You question everything, you argue with everything, when everything you see here is for you.”
“Not everything,” I said, pointing through the wall, at the meditation room. “And maybe I have questions because we’re sitting in a temple for a religion founded on debate. Why don’t you question it?”
“I already did,” she said, tightening the hug of the Velcro. “And I understand that you need to go on your own journey. But all these people, coming to this place, it’s because of Clive. Clive is the answer. Your package is working. Come on, you don’t see why people will pay for this? Clive has created a chance for them to fix their lives.”
“Jin, what’s your day job? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I founded an online payment-processing company but I sold it.”
“Like a big company?”
“Depends on your definition of big,” she said, shrugging.
“You ran it?”
“Sure.”
“And you quit to do this?”
“This data isn’t gonna map itself,” she said, stroking her monitor with a trace of the maternal. “Errol quit his job, too. He used to do advance for a senator. He’s very organized. But it sounded off-the-charts soulless. I think everyone here had hit a wall with how we were using our skills, but we didn’t know it until Clive. Until Clive found me. Like what’s the point in doing research for global markets when you can do it for human emotion?”
“Money?”
“Sure, but follow the trail. People want money so they feel in control, and they want to feel in control so they feel happy. Love makes people happy.”
From CEO to “love makes people happy.” This man needed to be jailed.
“So Clive, he’s paying you guys?”
“No,” she said, as if the notion were a bug to be flicked.
“But you’re in on the ground floor, then? Like stock options?”
“Oh, no, Lola. This work will change the world. I’d do this for free.”
“But you do do this for free.”
“That’s what I said.”
* * *
Clive was standing in the middle of the atrium when I left the interrogation room, talking on the phone, sipping coffee, speaking rapidly but trying to keep his voice down. He sounded agitated, maybe not for a mogul but certainly for a guiding light. Not to mention the fact that an atrium seemed like a profoundly stupid place for a private call. He must have been caught off guard by it.
I hid behind the garden so that neither he nor the baristas would see me. Was this what it had come to, me hiding behind potted palms? I picked up a few words: transfer, funding, projection, scalable, astral projection. The woman who looked like a kindergarten teacher passed and gave Clive a little bow as she did. So did a man in clear Lucite glasses. He was wearing a fleece vest even though it was summer, as well as an expensive-looking watch. This must have been the single-digit tech company employee. When they were all gone, I emerged, casually, as if having stopped to smell the moss.
“Problem?” I asked, approaching Clive with exaggerated stealth.
He tucked his phone into his pocket like he was getting rid of evidence.
“No, not really. How’s it going, Lola?”
“Umm, fine, I guess? You know, standard. You’re asking me this like I started a new diet.”
“Maybe I’m just calm, knowing you’re benefiting already, accessing the depths of your romantic consciousness…”
“You know…”
“What? Speak.”
“We spent the better part of a decade telling people the only way to get over anything was to put in elbow grease, that medication alone would never work without therapy. You hated the quick fixes. At least drugs have science behind them.”
“You’re our drug,” he said, as if making a mental note to jot that one down.