Watt had always assumed he would get in. Hell, he’d invented a quantum computer on his own at age fourteen; how could they not take him?
Except that he couldn’t exactly talk about Nadia on his application. And as he looked around at the other students, Watt was forced to confront the very real possibility that he might not get in after all.
Should I ask a question? he thought anxiously to Nadia. Something, anything to get Vivian to notice him.
“This isn’t a Q and A, Watt,” Nadia observed.
Suddenly, far too quickly, the Stanford rep was stepping up and clearing his throat.
Without thinking, Watt shot to his feet, cursing as he stumbled down the row of seats. Seriously? Cynthia mouthed as he climbed over her, but Watt didn’t care; he needed to talk to Vivian, and anyway, Stanford was at best his safety school.
He burst out the double doors at the back of the auditorium, ignoring the eyes that turned accusatorily toward him as he did, and began sprinting around the corner to the school exit.
“Ms. Marsh! Wait!”
She paused, one hand on the door, an eyebrow raised. Well, at the very least he would be memorable.
“I have to say, it’s rare that I’m chased out of a school auditorium. I’m not a celebrity, you know.” Watt thought he heard an edge of wry amusement behind her tone, but couldn’t be sure.
“I’ve been dreaming of going to MIT ever since I can remember, and I just … I really wanted to speak with you.” Your name! Nadia prompted. “Watzahn Bakradi,” he said quickly, holding out a hand. After a moment, Vivian shook it.
“Watzahn Bakradi,” she repeated, her gaze turned inward, and Watt realized she was doing some kind of search of him, through her contacts. She blinked and focused on him again. “I see that you participated in our Young Engineers’ Summer Program, on scholarship. And you weren’t invited back.”
Watt flinched. He knew exactly why he hadn’t been asked to return—because one of his professors had caught him building an illegal quantum computer. She’d promised not to alert the police, but still, the mistake had cost him.
Nadia had pulled Vivian’s CV onto his contacts, but it wasn’t helpful; all it told Watt was that she’d grown up in Ohio and had studied psychology as an undergraduate.
He realized that he needed to answer her. “That program was four years ago. I’ve learned a lot since then, and I’d like the chance to prove it to you.”
Vivian tilted her head, accepting a ping. “I’m speaking with a student,” she said to whoever it was, probably an assistant. “I know, I know. Just one moment.” As she tucked a strand of hair behind one ear, Watt caught a glimpse of an expensive platinum wrist computer. He wondered, suddenly, what she really thought of coming down to speak on the 240th floor, even if it was at a magnet school. No wonder she was in a hurry to leave.
“Mr. Bakradi, why is MIT your top choice?”
Nadia had pulled up the MIT guidelines and mission statement, but Watt didn’t want to give a safe, canned answer. “Microsystems engineering. I want to work with quants,” he said boldly.
“Really.” She looked him up and down, and Watt could tell her interest was piqued. “You know that program receives thousands of applications, but only selects two students per year.”
“I know. It’s still my top choice.” It’s my only choice, Watt thought, giving his best smile, the one he always used on girls when he and Derrick went out. He felt her softening toward him.
“Have you ever seen a quant? Do you know how unbelievably powerful they are?”
An untruth would be optimal here, Nadia told him, but Watt knew he could dance around the question.
“I know there are only a few left,” he said instead. There were quants at NASA, of course, and the Pentagon; though Watt had a feeling there were far more illegal and unregistered quants—like Nadia—than the government would care to admit. “However, I think there should be more. There are so many places we need quantum computers.”
Like in your brain? Watt, be sensible, Nadia urged, but he wasn’t listening. “We need them now more than ever. We could revolutionize global farming to eradicate poverty, we could eliminate fatal accidents, we could terraform Mars—”
Watt’s voice rang overly loud in his ears. He realized that Vivian was looking at him, her eyebrows raised, and he fell silent.
“You sound eerily like the science-fiction writers of the last century. I’m afraid that your opinion is no longer popular these days, Mr. Bakradi,” she said at last.
Watt swallowed. “I just think the AI Incident of 2093 could have been avoided. The quant in question wasn’t responsible. The security hadn’t been properly set, there was an issue with his core programming …”
Back when quants were still legal, they’d all been given the same piece of fundamental core programming: that the quant could take no action to harm a human being, no matter what later commands were given to it.
“His?” Vivian repeated, and Watt realized belatedly that he’d used a gendered pronoun to describe a computer. He said nothing. After a moment, she sighed. “Well, I have to say, I look forward to personally reviewing your application.”
She stepped through the door and into a waiting hover.
Nadia, what on earth do we do now? he thought, hoping she might have a brilliant solution. She usually picked up on situational details that he had missed.
There’s only one thing you can do, Nadia replied, and that is to write the best damn essay Vivian Marsh has ever seen.
“There you are,” Cynthia breathed, when Watt finally made his way to their locker. Technically, it was Cynthia’s locker: Watt had been assigned one, but it was at the end of the arts hallway, and since he never went that direction, and never carried much stuff anyway, he’d gotten in the habit of using Cynthia’s instead. Derrick, Watt’s best friend, stood there too, worry creasing his forehead.
“Yeah, what happened? Cynthia says you skipped out early?”
“I went to try to talk to the MIT admissions officer, before she left.”
“What did you tell her?” Cynthia asked, while Derrick shook his head, muttering something that sounded like “Should’ve thought of that.”
Watt sighed. “I’m not sure it went well.”
Cynthia glanced at Watt in sympathy. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey, at least if I tank, it’ll increase your chances of getting in,” Watt replied, a little too flippant; but sarcasm had always been his defense mechanism.
Cynthia seemed hurt. “I would never think like that. Honestly, I was hoping that we would both end up at MIT. It could be nice, having a friendly face so far from home …”
“And then I’ll come visit you both, and pester you constantly!” Derrick said, throwing his arms jovially around both their shoulders.
“That would be fun,” Watt said cautiously, with a glance at Cynthia. He hadn’t realized that they shared the same dream. She was right: it would be nice—walking across the leaf-strewn campus together on their way to class, working together in the engineering lab late at night, getting lunch in that enormous arched dining hall Watt had seen on the i-Net.
Then again, what would he and Cynthia do if only one of them got in?
It’ll be fine, he told himself, but he couldn’t help thinking that this was just one more thing in his life that could end in disaster.
He seemed to be collecting a lot of those lately.
RYLIN
THAT SAME AFTERNOON, Rylin Myers leaned forward on the checkout scanner, counting down the minutes till her shift at ArrowKid was over. She knew she was lucky to have this job—it paid more than her old one at the monorail, and the hours were better—but every moment here still felt like utter torture.
ArrowKid was a mass retailer of children’s clothing in the mid-Manhattan Mall, up on the 500th floor. Until recently, Rylin had never set foot in a store like this. Arrow was the kind of place where midTower parents came in packs: wearing brightly colored exercise pants and dragging toddlers by the arm, strollers bobbing through the air alongside them, pulled by invisible magnetic tethers.