“Maybe not,” he said.
I watched as Crow’s satellite or whatever it was completed its task. It turns out it hadn’t been zooming into Seattle, but rather Olympia. We were looking directly down at the house I’d grown up in. I had no idea where this conversation was going. Why the hell was he showing me my childhood home?
Suddenly, a numbing buzz started moving through my stomach and up into my chest. I could feel my lungs tightening and my throat constricting. I did my best to concentrate, to try to slow my breathing, as Crow continued speaking.
“What if there were equations and computations connected to these numbers—effective ways to figure out not only how to calculate these things, but also influence and perhaps even change the outcomes of certain events?”
“Sorry, but that sounds unlikely.”
“The world is run on systems, K—traffic, sanitation, electricity, the Internet…even children’s elementary school admissions. Influencing and adjusting these systems for the better is one of the things we’re working on here.”
This guy was clear and confident as he spoke, but what he was saying was crazy. Kidnapped people in a trunk being taken to another location? Elementary school admissions? What the fuck?
“Okay, so how are you…influencing and adjusting these events, exactly?” I asked.
Crow did something on his phone and the room grew darker still （definitely the high-tech neutral density filters）。
Suddenly the gigantic screen was split into dozens of smaller squares, each displaying something completely different.
“That’s the Nikkei, the Toronto Stock Exchange, and the Dow Jones Industrial,” he said, pointing to distinct sections of the screen. “Over there: Sports Scores and Salaries; that’s Social Structures and Education Systems; those two screens are Rare Earth Elements and Industrial Minerals. And down in the bottom-right corner: Music, Art, and Weather.”
“What’s all of this for?”
“For doing what we do here.”
“Which is?”
“Making adjustments, in order to change the things that need to be changed. Cause and effect.”
He performed another motion with his hand and suddenly the screen was filled with hundreds of people’s faces. Another wave and those hundreds became thousands. A series of brief movements and there was audio—thousands of voices talking at once.
“What are they doing?”
“They’re working.”
“What kind of work?”
He didn’t answer my question, just zoomed in to one section of the screen. “This person is the head of international development for a Beijing-based company that’s working on a very promising clean energy alternative.”
The screen was suddenly filled with an image of an older Chinese man walking down a hallway. “He’s going to be late for work today, and that’s going to set off a series of events culminating in his being arrested for solicitation.”
He waved his hand again, and we were looking at an attractive Japanese woman in her midthirties. She appeared to be running some kind of meeting in a large boardroom somewhere.
“This woman’s name is Nuri Tamaka. She’s next in line as the head of international development for the company. The biggest difference between Nuri Tamaka and the man she will be replacing is that Ms. Tamaka isn’t in the pocket of a large American oil and gas corporation.”
He waved again and another woman’s profile filled the screen. She looked very similar to Nuri Tamaka, but a bit younger. “This is Ms. Tamaka’s sister. What if, two nights from today, Nuri Tamaka—after sneaking into her sister’s apartment to prepare a surprise birthday party—walks in on her fiancé and her sister having sex? Based on our research, we believe this would effectively end Ms. Tamaka’s engagement, which would be significant because Nuri Tamaka and her fiancé have been trying to get pregnant. If Nuri Tamaka remains oblivious of this affair, it’s possible she might plan to have a child and turn down the job, opening the door for another man in the pocket of big oil and gas to step in.”
“Isn’t it also possible,” I said, “and perhaps even more likely, that this woman has a baby and balances her family and career? It happens all the time.”
“Of course,” he said, “but based on a significant number of recorded conversations and recent behavioral trends related to Ms. Tamaka and her fiancé, that outcome is statistically very unlikely. We wouldn’t be employing this level of attention if we weren’t fairly certain about the outcome.”