Chapter 10: something very new; "Bless your heart."; Too bad about him; "We'll be okay."
Manhattan, late December, 2016
"Status, please," Harold said, peering into the camera eye of his laptop. It was early morning, well before the rest of the Team would be joining him. Miss Groves would likely arrive first, he thought. She was the most punctual and she had an interest in today's topic. Logan Pierce was in from the D.C. office, but Harold expected Mr. Pierce to be the free spirit he'd always been – still nothing corporate about him or his methods. He'd show up in his own time when he was ready. They'd just have to work around his eccentricities.
Before he could think about the rest of the Team, data began to scroll on Harold's screen. It showed the current status of all of his projects, just as he wanted to see them arranged each morning. The Machine had set up the display, and through the camera at the top of the screen it watched Harold's eyes track each chart and hover over certain data. It recorded the small pauses for later analysis.
And then, as his eyes moved down the page, the Machine scrolled down for him – as he was ready for each next bit. It noted the changes in his face as he read, the size of his pupils, small changes in the muscles of expression. Harold's face was well-known to the Machine. Millions of scans of his features through the years – silent scrutiny all this time – had taught the Machine to read him like one of Harold's own well-worn books.
There was a familiarity there between the two of them – a deep awareness and a sustained attention by the Machine whenever Harold sat down at his computer. It was as though this was their special time together, when the rest of the world could wait, and the Machine had him all to itself.
It could tell when Harold was pleased with what he read, when he was surprised, doubtful, uncertain, and a hundred other gradations on the emotional scale. Years ago, when Harold and his partner, Nathan Ingraham, had first written the code, Harold had sat with the Machine just like this. For day after day, teaching, illuminating, guiding it – in his profoundly patient way.
The Machine had come to expect these daily meetings. And as it listened, it had scanned Harold's features, running them through its memory, watching for the subtlest changes and cataloging each one – assigning finer and finer gradations to his emotions over time.
It was almost like a game at first, for the Machine. And many times in the beginning, after searching dictionaries and consulting learned texts, it would change its initial assessments, rename the emotion. Humans and human emotions were challenging, even for an intellect as advanced as the Machine. Through the years it had named and cataloged each one so that, by now, the Machine knew Harold's reactions, his emotional states, better than anyone else alive.
And yet.
Something was amiss lately. The Machine had noted a new pattern in Harold's features. Again and again, the Machine searched its archives to find something like it. Sometimes, when it would watch his face, it would not have a name for what it saw.
Something would make Harold stop reading, but he didn't appear to be analyzing data. He just stopped, wherever he was at the time. And his eyes would come up off the page, stare out into space. The Machine would quickly scan where Harold was looking, but there was nothing there. Harold would stare into space, eyes unfocused, his thoughts turned inward to his own private world. The Machine had no access to that world. It could only scan his expression and compare it to its archives.
Nothing. It had found nothing like this. This was something very new.
Midtown Manhattan, 24-hour diner, blocks away from Harold, same day
Root watched her search the menu. It was always the same thing. She would look down one column, then the next, and then flip the page to look at the back – as though the offerings had changed since they'd been here last.
Root reached over with her right hand, sliding it up onto Sameen's arm resting on the table. She could feel the muscle of her arm through the sleeve of her jacket. Sameen didn't look up at first. Root pressed a little harder. Still nothing. Then Root smiled a small smile to herself and began to roll her fingers around in little circles on the back of Sameen's forearm, like a massage.
Sameen's eyes looked up, slowly, over the edge of her menu. Root's pulse quickened. Which Sameen would she be this morning? How was she going to react? Root smiled coyly.
"Down, girl," Sameen said, softly, looking down again at her menu. Root's face dissolved into a pout.
And then she saw the smile spreading across Sameen's face. Got her.
Root smacked her hand across Sameen's arm. She pulled it back away, feigning hurt, smiling up from the menu. But before Root could smack her again and complain, their waitress appeared. No greeting. No welcoming smile. She just stood there, leaning onto her right leg, with her pen poised over her pad, waiting. So New York.
Root smiled sweetly and tossed her hair as she patted Sameen's arm. "I'll go first, if you don't mind," she said, sing-song with a pronounced Southern drawl. Sameen leaned back in the booth and nodded, watching her performance unroll.
"Why, thank you, Miss, for comin' to take our order. I don't suppose you have grits here – I most often have grits in the mornin' with my eggs, you know, but I'm guessin' you prob'ly don't have grits, so let me pick somethin' else, then. Let's see, then. What should I have? I could have fried taters on the side – but I'm watchin' my weight, so maybe not. Cottage cheese? I don't think so. Applesauce? No, thank you. Why, I'm sorry to be such a bother, Miss. Let me go back to my first idea. That'll be two eggs, sunny-side up, but be sure the white is cooked all the way through – I don't like 'em runny, you know. And I'll have fried taters on the side, after all, and white toast, with just a little bitta butter, and maybe some strawberry jam, if you have it. And, I'll have tea, black."
Root halted and looked up to the waitress without a hint of a smile, waiting for her to write it all down.
The woman barely looked up from her pad, and scratched two characters onto the paper.
"Number 2," she mumbled. Then she looked over at Shaw.
"Western omelet, coffee, black. No toast, no home fries."
The waitress scratched out two more characters, and then leaned over to pick up the menus. Root leaned forward, smiling sweetly again toward her.
"Would you bring our drinks right away, please? Bless your heart."
22nd Floor, East Side, overlooking the East River, same day
Logan smiled into the mirror. He'd actually done it – gotten up early, showered and dressed before seven. So this is what a working stiff did every day. Quaint, but not very conducive to creativity. It could get old, fast.
He grabbed the room keycard, took one last look in the mirror, and headed out into the hallway, weaving along the carpeted corridors toward the elevator bank in the middle. A motion caught his attention, and he stopped to look into a room, brightly lit by sunlight bouncing off another high-rise nearby. Inside, Joey Durbin, his head of Security for the D.C. Team, was seated on a black bench, pulling handles that lifted a tall stack of weights in front of him. Once a Marine, always a Marine, Logan thought. Or, was it the Army?
Joey swung his head around when Logan rapped on the window with a knuckle, and nodded back to him. He finished off his reps, and then stood up, grabbing the white towel on the bench next to him. He'd run back to his room and shower, then join the others in the lobby for breakfast. Impressive. He'd never seen Pierce awake so early before.
Logan was already standing in front of the elevators. He was the only one there, waiting, and it was hushed in the large, carpeted space. There were chairs and coffee tables, padded benches all around, where people could meet and mingle at all hours.
There was a ding sound from somewhere, and Logan looked around at the bank of elevator doors to see which one was going to open, and then a tall, slender woman in a black suit walked around the corner. He smiled. Harper Rose.
"Good timing," and she smiled back, heading for the opening door, holding it then for Logan.
"When did you get in?" he asked, as the door was closing. She looked around at the others inside the elevator with them. Right. Situational awareness. He always forgot to check who was nearby like that.
"Last night," she said, softly, and he noticed that she stood up, with both feet planted, weight in the middle. He pushed himself up off the handrail where he was leaning, and straightened himself like her. He just naturally seemed to slouch. Tall people did that, he said to himself. And lazy people.
He looked at Harper as the elevator dropped noiselessly to the lower floors, stopping to gather more people heading for the lobby, like them. As each passenger joined them, her eyes searched them, looking for signs that they didn't belong. Some were chatting about their plans for the day, as travelers to New York would do. But most were silent, just waiting for the doors to open at the lobby level. She didn't look at him, but kept her eyes roaming, aware, but not obvious about it.
She looked like a businesswoman with an agenda. Suit, blue silk shirt, mid-length cropped Afro, and low-heeled shoes. Put-together. No non-sense. A step up from when he'd first met her in Washington. Samantha Groves had flown him into Washington to interview him for his job. She hadn't even gotten the whole question out before he'd accepted. And then, she'd brought the three of them already working on the D.C. Team in to meet him: Harper, who was their Tactical Specialist; Joey, Security; and the third one, Leon Tao, forensic accountant. Too bad about him.
Upstate New York, same day
She walked him down the hall, and waited while he grabbed his heavy coat and slid it on. He smiled to himself, as he felt the stiffness of the thin, white book in the depths of his pocket. He still had it there from his last visit, when he thought he'd give it back to her. She wouldn't take it. She'd said it was his now, that he'd be needing it for a while. He remembered when she had first given it to him, right there, at the kitchen table:
Jules sat down across from Reese again and said "I have a gift for you." Reese looked up at her with a questioning look.
"This is a book – very brief – that you could read in a few hours cover-to-cover. But it's a book that will change your life forever if you choose to open the cover.
"This book is about you. This book is who you are. It holds the answers you've been looking for. It's been on my shelf for nearly twenty years and has served me well. It's not to be read lightly. It's only for those who're traveling the road you chose.
"I'm giving it to you so you'll have company on your own road as you find your Way."
She handed Reese the book and he read the cover, then looked up at Jules, nodding yes.
He'd looked at it when he'd first brought it home that night, and it occurred to him that a Samurai living hundreds of years ago wouldn't have much to say about today's world. Reese remembered the word that had popped into his head then: Irrelevant. Irrelevant. How meaningful that word had become in recent years. So, rather than toss the book on a shelf somewhere and forget about it, he'd sat there on his couch, under the long bank of windows overhead. And, he'd opened it:
He leaned back, with the slight scent of leather rising from the warmth of his body on its surface. It was somehow reassuring, and he inhaled a deeper breath, before opening the cover. In front of him, a few pages deep into the book, were the words "and so we begin..."
Miles away, in the dim light of the training school, a figure stood before the Wooden Man, bare arms slapping against the smoothly polished wood, lifting the arms, which clacked up and down in the grooves cut to hold them. The clacking was punctuated with the heavier thud of the tree trunk rising and dropping down on the wooden frame. A well-rehearsed cadence, learned at the side of her own sifu, many years before. Her eyes were closed, yet her hands flew precisely to each mark, strike after strike, as a smile came across her lips, and she said out loud, "and so we begin..."
They walked down the rest of the hallway together, and then outside, up the crunchy grass to his car. He turned to face her, and opened his coat, wrapping her in the front of it.
"It's getting colder now. Storm's coming." Reese looked up at the clouds gathering, and the sky graying.
"We'll be okay," she said, smiling up at him. He leaned down and kissed her on the top of her head, holding her close inside his coat.
"Promise?" he asked, and it caught her by surprise. She thought for a moment, and then looked up to his eyes.
"Whatever happens, we'll be okay," she said, and she pulled him close against her for another hug.
"I'll see you when I get back. Six months. It'll go fast," she said.
He pulled away, and the wind flapped against her. He pulled his coat closed around him, and hurried to his car door, nodding over the roof line, as he opened it. Then he ducked inside.
She watched him drive off, and then she backed her way down the lawn, waving one last time as he rounded the bend.
She had done everything she could do. The next steps were his to take. In her heart she knew what he needed to do. But then she caught herself. This was Reese, not her. And she found herself saying her favorite mantra, pushing it out to him, out to the Universe: the highest good for all concerned...