[Brackets] (23 page)

Neeson sighed. “I don’t think so.”

“I didn’t think so, either.”

“OK.” Neeson nodded, digesting the information. “OK. I’ll find out what I can and double check the use log for the software. In the mean time, will you let me know if you discover anything about these other guys? If my company was compromised, I want to know.”

Graham turned to look at Neeson directly for the first time,
speaking
with a reptilian whisper. “Do you remember when our paths crossed, and you were so desperate for venture capital that you told me about this secret software that you were deve
loping?
O
ut of the absolute goodness of my heart, I got the loan for you on the condition that you prove that you had what you said you had. Remember that? Now you owe us a significant return on our investment. The people I work for, they don’t care if the company lives or dies; they barely care if you live or die. These people with the other brackets, we aren’t watching them because we want to protect your assets. We’re watching them to find out if they have a system like yours, and if their system happens to be better. If your system is the best, then we’re more than happy to do business. But if not, we go bargain shopping, and you’ll need to find your next safety net elsewhere.”

“But,” Neeson stammered, trying not to
betray
his alarm
, “We made a deal. We
have
a deal.”

“Try to prove that in court,
I dare you.” Graham smiled thinly. “In fact, try to prove that I exist at all. No one else has seen
me. I’ve signed nothing. You’ve accepted our anonymity as the price to pay for our help. And, as part of our verbal agreement, you promised to develop OPUS and to keep it secret, safe,
and
locked away from any other interested parties. Right now, we have little confidence that you’ve upheld your end. The people I work for are not nervous by nature. They are opportunists. I suggest that you don’t give them any reason to cash out early.”

Graham held his gaze to make his point, and Neeson forced his selling smile. “Graham, I can promise you,
guarantee
you, that OPUS can beat any other system out there. And I can promise…”

“Thank you, Neeson, your confidence is noted. I’m going to watch the game now.”

Neeson bit his lip and cast his unfocused gaze out on the field. This was how meetings with Graham always ended. He hated feeling like a fish on a hook. Just once, he wanted to end things on his own terms. But he couldn’t; not while he
owed Graham three million dollars
.

He pulled out his phone to check his messages. After a minute, he smiled faintly. “So we’ll meet again after the championship?” he asked, his phone back in his pocket.

“I’ll let you know,” Graham replied without looking.

“Fine.” Neeson stood up and brushed off his slacks. “If you want some good news sooner than that, I might have some.”

“Yeah?”

“I just got a message from ChangZhang’s corporate advertising division. They want to meet. WindSkin is about to go digital.”

Graham snickered to himself. “Congratulations. Let me know if your fake panels for fake wind are as successful as the real thing.”

Neeson was about to defend himself, but opted against it and began to walk away.

“Hold on,” Graham called. “This thing. You’re doing this in Kaah Mukul?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you doing it through a KM Center?”

“Yes. Why?”

Graham paused to throw peanuts into his mouth, as if literally chewing on his thoughts. “Forget it,” he said finally. Then
he cupped his hands and yelled, “Come on, buddy, eye on the ball. You got it.” Neeson walked back over the grass, away from his oppressive financier who, he was sure, had never been a father in his life.

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

The executive floor of Chlorophyll Valley’s KM Center was far removed from the gaming action. In place of the gaudy Mayan paraphernalia was a business-casual setting that looked much more like the lounge of an airport. Light duets of classical guitar and pan flute masked what little of the yelling came up from the lower floors. Neeson had been sitting and tapping impatiently on his phone for the last six minutes, waiting for the coordinator to let him into one of the private video conference rooms.

“Dr. Faulkner?” an aide poked her head
through a door
. “In here please. Sorry for the delay; there has been a slight change.”

The door closed behind him in the small conference room, and the screen before him came to life.

“Good afternoon,” said the image of an Asian woman in ChangZhang Corp attire, apparently aware of his local time.

“Uh, yes, is everything in order for my meeting with Mr. Huang?”

“Dr. Faulkner, your meeting is not with Mr. Huang today,” said the woman. “You are being transferred now.”

In a moment, Neeson saw the screen filling with grey streaks. Unusual. When an image clarified, Neeson noticed immediately that he was not seeing the real world. Instead, he was looking into a great glass office with walls that slanted down and out. Reddish-orange sunlight was shining in on one side. In the center of the room was a desk, and standing in front of the desk was a digital image that he recognized from the cover of Forbes.

“Dr. Faulkner, I am Myung-Ki Noh,” said the man.

“Mr. Noh, it’s an honor,” Neeson felt himself scrambling mentally. “I wasn’t told that I would be speaking with you today.”

“Yes, I told Mr. Huang that I would handle your case. I have some things to discuss with you.”

“Absolutely. I’ll be happy to answer all of your questions.”

The digital image of Noh nodded. “I was wondering if you
could tell me about your basketball tournament bracket.”

Neeson maintained his professional comportment, but just barely. “You surprise me again, Mr. Noh. I wouldn’t think that you would follow such things.”

“Yo
u would normally be right. But
in this case, I have a special interest in it. I take it from your response that the bracket named ‘WindSkin1’ is truly yours.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Good. I was also wondering if you could claim ownership over one or both of the other two brackets. You can answer me truthfully.”

Neeson shifted in his seat. “I’m sorry?”

“It is no use being evasive. I am the best detective in my city and it was not a difficult puzzle. A member of my staff brought the perfect brackets to my attention because one of the bracket holders is a Tribal Wars general named Studblood—in reality, Perry Lynwood. I have
a
great interest in what happens in the Tribal Wars. I asked my staff to learn more, and I was surprised to find that another bracket holder—you—had recently petitioned us to install a product on a Kaah Mukul building. It would be an unusual coincidence, if there were ever coincidences in Kaah Mukul.”

Noh paused, but Neeson kept his face impassive.

“I inquired into Studblood’s background and the records of his tribe, and I found that one of his most recent recruits, Typhoon150, joined Studblood’s tribe one week before the brackets were to be submitted. Typhoon150 hasn’t returned to the city at all for the past week. I found that Typhoon150’s membership is based in the KM Center of Chlorophyll Valley, Florida, where you sit now. The name on the membership is not yours, but given your efforts to be covert, that is not surprising. I have an advertisement from your company
that came with
your petition,
and it
boasts of your product withstanding hurricane force winds, potentially up to 150 miles per hour. Typhoon, 150. Now tell me, Dr. Faulkner, if my detective skills have failed me.”

Neeson sat in his chair with his palms on his legs, lost in contemplat
ion. After a second, he blinked
and said, “What would you really like to know?”

Noh leaned forward. “You have gone to great lengths, and
very clever lengths, to get my attention.
I can only conclude that you must have a method
, some algorithm for identifying winners that exceeds everything else that has ever been tried, and you want it known
to the ChangZhang corporation
that it is available
, supposing rightly that the company would be interested
. Your plan obviously worked. But now that you have my attention, I want to know if what you have is really worth my time.
You should know that
I will be visiting Mr. Lynwood to evaluate him personally—tomorrow, in fact—and I have already been looking into the young man in Nebraska. Naturally, I will be looking into your own history more carefully.”

“That seems like a lot of extra work, Mr. Noh.”

“Yes. But I have my reasons.
You
may save me some trouble now
, however
. Is there anything else that I should know?”

Neeson cleared his throat. “Actually, yes. I believe you will find that there is one more perfect bracket that you are not aware of yet. In Connecticut. There should be four all together.”

Noh smiled, surprisingly communicative for an avatar. “Very good, Dr. Faulkner. I will make sure to remain in contact with your office.”

“Thank you,” said Neeson. “Uh, I did want to ask if you were moving forward with placing WindSkin in Kaah Mukul.”

“I believe that, should your system prove its potential, our company would be most pleased to include WindSkin on a building somewhere in the Olmec district, as a way of strengthening our working relationship. Have a good afternoon, Dr. Faulkner.”

The image on the screen vanished behind a ChangZhang logo against a white background. Neeson remained in his chair, unmoving, silent, until a knock on the door informed him that his time was up.

When he left the KM Center, h
e found it
cold and
close to raining outside. The winds from the north had finally arrived. Dark clouds had gathered in from the ocean, turning the twilight sky into a churned expanse of black and grey. He looked at his golf cart and thought unenthusiastically about driving back to the office in the rain. Then
he looked at the bar next door
and made an easy choice. He texted his secretary to hold all messag
es and calls until he got back, and he went in.

Rain was now pelting the roof
of the bar
, but it was barely audible over the chatter and music. Neeson sat in a booth, alone, rolling a shot of bourbon between his fingers. He had to
think
. Things had
gotten
too strange, t
oo out of hand. He felt as if he were
in a dream and had become suddenly aware that it didn’t make any sense.

Slowly, methodically, he pieced together the events of the last few weeks. OPUS, a powerful software with unprecedented capacities, had a mysterious, perpetual flaw that caused problems during simple wind tunnel tests, problems that hadn’t shown up in the preliminary trials. Before an important demonstration, someone
with technical prowess
had
deliberately wrecked the electrical system of the fan. A video game player with the very telling name of Typhoon150, based in the KM Center just a half mile from his building, was associated with at least one perfect bracket. There were three other perfect brackets in the world; four total, when there were normally zero. While his own
bracket had been
made to impress Mr. Graham, the othe
rs had drawn the attention of the world’s most influential technology magnate
.
And all Neeson wanted and needed was to sell his company’s product
.
What was going on?

He finished his drink and refilled. Conclusions based on the facts came
relentlessly
. There was, without question, s
omeone within his company that
wanted to destroy, delay
,
or exploit WindSkin
o
r OPUS. Or both. This person was technically skilled. This person knew Kaah Mukul. This person knew OPUS, had access to OPUS, and was poss
ibly advertising OPUS using Nees
on’s own program. The list of candidates who fit that description was short, depressing
,
and infuriating. Once he was sure about who it was, he would have to confront a traitor in his organization. Afterward, he would have to deal with a demoralized staff while keeping everything a secret from potential clients. Every thought sucked him into an ever deeper morass of anger.

A basketball game was on the TV somewhere over his head. Marquette vs. North Dakota—a match-up that had been particularly improbable for almost everyone. Marquette had come all the way back from a slow start to dominate in the second half. During a time-out, one of the commentators began to talk about what it took to
make a come-back
. “Toughness down the stretch,” he said. “Bend but not break! This team has proven once again why you play the whole game!” Neeson smiled a little grimly. He liked those lines. Maybe he could use them on his employees as he saved them from the brink of financial ruin. Maybe he would quote them in some future magazine interview for a piece about his rocky road to success. There would be a hurricane pun in the title, he was sure. “Bend But Not Break” sounded really good. That was WindSkin; that was him.