[Brackets] (8 page)

“Now, for introductions.” She pointed to each of them,
starting with the one closest to her podiu
m.
“W
e have
here
Dr. Neeson Faulkner of Miami, Florida. Next to him,” she motioned to the heavy-set man, who was scratching at his cheek, “Mr. Perry Lynwood of Seattle, Washington. Next to him, Mr. Cole Kaman of South Windsor, Connecticut.” Cole gave a little wave. “Finally, Mr. Tucker Barnes, a junior at the University of Nebraska. Truly, a group that is as diverse and representative of the nation as the teams playing in this year’s tournament. We wish all of them luck, and they will now take questions. I ask that you please restrict the subjects of your questions to the games and their brackets.” Cole was relieved at the last part; it might keep them from asking about Ichabod.

An older reporter raised her hand. “Did any of you have a system for choosing your teams?”

All four shook their heads, but Neeson Faulkner spoke. “As you may know, some of the greatest minds in mathematics and statistics have attempted to create a fool-proof
prediction system, but none were ever able to overcome the realities of probability
.
It has never worked.
So the four of us up here would stand to make a lot of money if any of us had some sort of system that could accurately predict outcomes in March Madness, let alone other, more complicated scenarios. I don’t doubt that someone will
create
one eventually, but I think I speak for all of us when I say that we are extremely lucky.” The other three kind of nodded, though they weren’t sure if he really spoke for all of them.

Next question. “Is the team that you chose to win your favorite team, or did you have a particular reason to like them?”

Tucker Barnes jumped on that one. “I don’t know about these guys, but Nebraska is going to dominate the next two rounds. I knew it from day one. Like my man at the other end there said, we’re really lucky and fortunate to be here, but my team is here because they’re the best, and I feel like I’m just running with them today.” Cole noticed some grins as reporters typed notes and looked up for more. The two older men were inspecting their hands, so Cole felt the burden of answering next fall to him.

“Yeah, uh, I think
UCLA is a great team, which is
why, you know, I picked them. I know some people were mad that I didn’t go with UCONN, but, like, and I’m not saying they aren’t a good team, but…”
Shut up right now
, he thought. “I’m just saying that I chose
UCLA this year.
” He finished, trailing off into a silent room. No one really knew what to write. Someone in the room cleared a throat.
Please don’t let Nera be watching this
, Cole prayed as he, too, inspected his hands.

Next. “Who among you four is the most confident that you’re going to win?” Tucker’s hand shot up immediately, but Neeson also volunteered. Cole shrugged and Perry remained very quiet. “Mr. Lynwood, you don’t think that you’re going to win? Is that because you don’t have much faith in your bracket, or is that a vote of no confidence for Georgia?”

Perry mumbled low and had to be told to speak into the microphone. “No, they’re a great team and school and I have… but I just think that it’s kind of weird for me to get all the ones right that I did so I don’t see how I can really feel like I can just keep on winning forever.” It was a depressing enough answer that they just moved on.

The next question was directed at Cole. It was Deborah Cheney, and she violated the disclaimer. “Mr. Kaman, local station WHAR in Connecticut has been tracking the fallout from the bombing of the Player Pier in Hartford, which was apparently a targeted attack at you by the Wall Street bomber, now known as Ichabod. Would you care to comment about what that incident means to you now? Are you concerned for your safety?” The other three men turned to listen, as curious as the reporters. It had been on the news that whole week.

You were there, you give a comment
, Cole thought, trying not to glare at Deborah. “No, I mean, nothing happened after that. There was this crazy guy, he just threw a metal ball at us and started a fire. We haven’t seen him since then, and nothing really weird happened all this week. The cops are still looking into it. I’m fine, I don’t have much more to say than that.”

Deborah followed up. “And your girlfriend?” Cole went red.
Thanks for that, you…

“Uh, I’d rather not comment on that.” Carol quickly moved to someone else, for which Cole was grateful.

It hadn’t escaped one reporter’s notice that, even though they were offered tickets for a guest, none of them had brought one. None of the four had a reason that they wanted to share, so the issue was
dropped.

A few more questions were raised. Yes, all of them would accept the money and had big plans for it. Of the three, Tucker was the only one who actually played basketball, although Neeson had been following the game for a while. They were all aware of the nicknames being given to them by the media but had not decided among themselves which one they liked m
ost
, though Neeson was partial to the “Fourseers” and Tucker liked the “Four Bracketeers”. Finally, they confirmed that none of them had a stake in the games outside of the prize money from the contest. It was all luck, and all in good fun.

“Well, if there are no more questions,” said Carol Clemente, “I think we’ll wrap things up. We’d like to thank these four men for being willing to come today, and again, we wish them luck. Next at this table, in fifteen minutes, will be some of the coaching staff for Boston College. Thank you.” Carol dismissed the four, who exited to the left and found themselves in the hallway.

All around them, the chaos of media coverage at th
e Final Four closed in. An intern
from ESPN was trying to give them instructions. They had a photo shoot in ten minutes,
followed by
filming
of
individual interviews to be used as potential fillers during the long time-outs. They had to hurry; there wasn’t much time. Tip off was in just four hours.

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

When it was almost game time, Cole, Neeson, Perry, and Tucker were escorted up a long escalator to the second level of the newly renovated Verizon Center. Long banners were stretched over the escalators in both directions, and anxious crowds surrounded them on all sides. It was a festival atmosphere. On th
e way up, they saw the entrance
to the brand new private luxury suites that had been added during recent renovations, and Neeson wondered aloud why they didn’t get one of those.
The intern just shrugged.

T
hey walked along the curved concourse,
then
through a short cement tunnel into the arena itself.

It was the first time Cole had ever been in a
n arena to watch a game
. A giant jumbotron greeted them with frenetic basketball highlights and advertisements. The two teams of the first game, Georgia and Nebraska, were out on the floor running their shoot-
around. Media workers were pacing the sideline and checking wires. Music blared out over the aggregated hum of the crowd. Cole was almost convinced that this was supposed to be fun.

Their seats were on the second row of
the upper tier, facing the long end of the court behind the players’ benches. They were so high that Cole couldn’t make out the faces of people on the floor very well. He’d overheard an earlier discussion about the media wanting them to sit on the lower level so it would be easier to do quick cuts to them during time-outs, but they couldn’t get it done. Still, the four men had an impressive view of the court and the crowd, and the television cameras on the floor could zoom in when needed.

Their escort wanted Perry, who had Georgia going all the way, to sit next to Tucker so that they could be more easily isolated in close camera shots. Tucker took the aisle seat on
the right
and Neeson grabbed the seat on Cole’s left, so Cole and Perry
were obligated to sit next
to each other in the middle. As soon as they had been seated and the escort had departed, both Neeson and Tucker immediately retrieved their phones from their pockets and left. Cole felt awkwardly compelled to converse
with the glum man next to him.

“So, Perry, right? You like living in Seattle? A lot of great bands up there,” he half-heartedly attempted.

“Yeah, it’s fine.” Perry kept his arms folded and looked around nervously, a
disconcerting stance that he
had maintained since they had first met at the hotel.

“So, can I ask, you really feel like you’re going to lose, huh? You have some kind of intuition about it?”

Perry snorted, but didn’t answer right away. Cole shrugged and began to dig around for his own phone.

“Listen,” Perry said, speaking as quietly as pos
sible for no apparent reason. “L
et me ask
you
something. What kind of luck have you been having since you filled out the bracket?”

“Kind of a mixed bag, I guess,” Cole said evasively.

But Perry was unsatisfied. “Aren’t you the guy who almost got blown up last week by a serial arsonist stalker?”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“And from what I remember in the press conference, you
have a girlfriend that you don’t want to talk about. Things aren’t going well?”

Cole frowned. “That’s personal.”

“What about work. You like your work? Things going well there?”

“What’s your point?”

Perry shuffled his feet. “All of your bad luck really started with the bracket, didn’t it?”

Cole thought a moment. “Maybe, but isn’t having this bracket thing
also
really lucky?”

Perry pointed his finger. “That’s my point. Don’t you see how wrong it is that we’re here? Do you know what the odds are of making it this far? For just one, it’s like one in nine million trillion, or something. It’s the odds of flipping a coin sixty times and having it come up heads each time.
Four
of us did it. And I didn’t even look at the teams I was choosing. Did you?”

Cole thought about that morning that now seemed forever ago. He remembered thinking about Nera, but not much else. “Um, no.”

“You see!” he cried, then hushed. “Since I filled out this bracket, everything in my life has blown up. I’m convinced, I
know
that something else is going on here. There is some force at work here, some greater power that has drawn us in. It’s bigger than just the bracket. It’s…
it’s…” Perry died down as he struggled to define what it really was. Cole just looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“Sooo… what’s going to happen?”

Perry nodded opaquely. “I have a hunch.”

“Is it a good hunch?”

Perry shook his head slowly. Then he asked, as if suddenly hopeful, “
H
ave you ever been to Kaah Mukul?”

“No. Never tried it.”

Perry sighed. “That’s too bad. That would have helped us know.”

Cole was about to ask what a
game in a
virtual city had to do with a real
-life
basketball tournament, but Tucker came back just then, stepping over their knees with his eyes trained to the court below. Behind him was Neeson. The players had cleared the floor, and the music was queuing up for the pre-game introductions.
Tucker looked down at the three men beside him.

“You guys ready for this?” he yelled, clapping his hands energetically. “It’s game time!”

-[West Division]-

[
West Division
: Play-in Game]

[
Wednesday
, March 17]

The office of Myung-Ki Noh had been designed with the ostensible purpose of providing a private place to work. Though he would never admit it, most of his time was spent looking out of the window. The office walls, black, shining, and opaque from the outside, were completely clear from inside, allowing him the singular pleasure of pacing around the best vista in the entire city. This was his Olympus, his Cosmic Mountain, and he relished the opportunity to view the manifestation of his vision and the spectacl
e of his numerous subjects in
panorama. The small desk in the center of the room,
empty
except for a video monitor, was rarely touched. There was no chair, no bathroom, no door, and no need for them. After all, he wasn’t really there.

Much as he enjoyed it, Noh never allowed himself to come down unless he had a reason. This time, he had come to think. A
meeting four days ago
between himself and certain heads of state from China had provided an intriguing opportunity which he had accepted. With the help of
some of his best programmers
, he had developed
a plan and set it in motion. Since that time, however
, Noh had
felt some
doubts. He wonde
red if their plan was too simplistic, or not relevant
enough. As he did w
henever he needed to think, he de
scended to his office, stood before the window, and gazed.