The Doomsday Equation by Matt Richtel Read Free Book Online Page B

businessperson in Silicon Valley is like the do-gooders from college who go to Washington, D.C., and it becomes impossible to tell the difference between their ambitions for the world and for themselves.
    Jeremy clicks back to the home page. Sees an infobox that catches his eye. “Sign up for SEER 2013, an initiative for the future.” A conference, the typical way to jump-start a new business, a networking opportunity. He clicks for more information. None comes up, other than a list of current conference partners. It’s impressive, Google, Intel, Sun Microsystems, Apple, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard. The very biggest tech companies. Slick Peckerhead.
    And there’s an email: [email protected].
    Jeremy closes his eyes, pictures one of his last meetings with Evan, at least the last one with any pretense of civility. Downin the Valley offices, where Jeremy visited with increasing infrequency, he ducked into Evan’s glass-walled office to find his partner playing around on the conflict map. At first Jeremy blanched, but then he realized Evan wasn’t actually inside the guts of the algorithm, not changing it or able to, just running various scenarios: what if this business were located here, or this one located there; what if flat-panel television manufacturing plants continued to decline in profit margins, blah, blah.
    “What happens if Walmart gets into the widget business? I hear that’s going to be huge,” Jeremy said. “Get that one right and you can move to Atherton.”
    Evan managed a smile. He always could. Nothing seemed to ruffle him, something he’d point out in speeches was owed to his upbringing in northern Minnesota, where twenty below was balmy. He’d say that his quaint upbringing in Moorhead, population forty thousand, was like the Internet: if you tried you could connect to everyone, live a more intertwined life.
    “This is the future.”
    “Business applications are my passion.”
    “It’s so much more than that, Jeremy.” A slight hint of edge in his voice. “Look what happened when they developed Ireland and rural China. Huge economic prosperity. What if your machine could be more powerful than you ever even imagined?”
    “Whatever, Peckerhead.”
    “Don’t take my word for it. Ask Harry.”
    This one stopped Jeremy in his tracks, a rare comment for which Jeremy didn’t have a quick retort.
    “You’ve been talking to Harry?”
    “It’s impolite to have lunch with someone and not talk.”
    It was the moment that Jeremy learned that Evan, the business partner he was learning to loathe, had cozied up to Harry. Jeremy became instantly convinced the pair were conspiring behind his back. Maybe they were just two people interested in the world, Emily said, and she tried to broker a peace.
    She arranged a picnic, held at the log cabin, a beautiful setting in San Francisco’s Presidio, in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge. The setting was also intended as symbolic; the Presidio was a former military base turned gorgeous public sanctuary. A place where the machinery of war, its essence, turned decidedly tranquil. And a favorite place of Harry’s to come think big thoughts about peace and conflict.
    But so much for symbolism: no sooner had Harry and Jeremy arrived than they went right to war, each firing rhetorical ICBMs turbo-powered by his immense ego, each accusing the other of disloyalty and stupidity. After all Harry’s generosity over the years, Jeremy spat the ultimate insult—all the while, Harry was seeking to discredit Jeremy and his computer so that Harry, and Harry alone, would be the ultimate authority on conflict and its causes. Harry, Jeremy was saying, was little more than a power-hungry conflict-monger himself.
    And here Jeremy sits now, in the café, ties severed from Harry, and Evan—and wondering if the two are somehow in league against him.
    He stares at Evan’s new web site. He pulls up his phone and scrolls through old emails until he finds a phone number for his