End of Secrets (36 page)

FIFTY-FIVE

News came in the early afternoon that ONE had acquired Alegría North America. An elaborate press conference had been planned to announce the multibillion-dollar deal, but it was scrapped hastily after Rafael Bolívar was first reported dead—reports that were revised throughout the day until the final consensus was that he, like the others, had gone missing. ONE executives, fearing for the compan
y’s
valuation on the NYSE, rushed to assure investors that the deal had been finalized the day before Bolíva
r’s
disappearance and that, though they were hopeful for Bolíva
r’s
safe return, Bolíva
r’s
absence would not present any lasting complications.

Given Bolíva
r’s
recent behavior, news of the acquisition did not come as a surprise to Kera. But it still did
n’t
make sense. Selling out to ONE seemed to contradict everything else she knew about Bolívar.

In any case, the Alegría acquisition seemed destined to be overshadowed. By the end of the day, no one was paying attention to anything other than Gnos.is.

Theories had developed throughout the day that the clock would
n’t
last to the end, that in the final minutes too many people would be watching, too many browsers would be burdening the servers, and the site would crash under the weight of anticipation. But the sit
e’s
infrastructure held.

At six
PM
Eastern Standard Time, the city was gripped in its predictable commuter chaos. Trains thundered underground at full capacity, people fought over cabs that inched through gridlock, sidewalks clogged with crisscrossing pedestrians. But the people of New York were
n’t
so far from a phone or computer or television that, at precisely the top of the hour, they could not spare a few seconds to cast an eye on the nearest screen. And it seemed that any screen capable of connecting to the Internet was tuned to Gnos.is.

When the final few seconds slipped away, all the digits came to rest at zero. And then, as if after a breath, the Gnos.is home page was restored.

“I
t’s
back,” Director Branagh said, his head tilted back so that he could look up at the wall screens. “What are we looking at?”

Everyone at a console went to work. Jones, who had been standing next to Kera near their workstations, sat down in front of his monitors. Kera had no official duty in that moment, so she lingered where she stood, watching the display on the main wall.

The new Gnos.is home page was a clean, simple design. There were only three words on the entire page. At the top was the word Gnos.is, the letters slanting in their recognizable font. The other two words opposed each other in the middle of the screen. On one side was the word /
FACT
. On the other,
/TRUTH
.

The analyst in control of the big screen selected
/FACT
, and the page slid to the left, revealing a large cloud made up of bubble-like spheres floating in a clump. The sizes of the spheres varied widely. Each sphere was wrapped in a skin of transparent, rotating graphics that included a headline, photo and video images, and descriptive text highlighting the content of the story within.

“I
t’s
news, sir,” an analyst said. “Like before, bu
t . . .
” he trailed off, unable to articulate yet what about the site was so different. Kera scanned the most prominent headlines:
F
AMINE
F
EARED
W
ITHIN A
D
ECADE,
C
LIMATE
C
HANGE
A
CCELERATING,
P
ROGRESS
S
EEN ON
AIDS V
ACCINE.

After a few more minutes, a different analyst spoke up. “Sir, it looks like the
y’v
e altered their sorting algorithms.”

“Their what?” Gabby said.

“The way each news story is prioritized. Before, on the previous incarnation of Gnos.is, headlines were more or less ranked based on how many people clicked on them. Tha
t’s
how most news sites work.”

Kera had been studying the spheres as she listened, and suddenly she understood what the analyst was about to say before he said it.

“Now, though, the stories are prioritized according to their real global impact. See the larger bubbles there? They are news stories that affect a greater number of people than the smaller bubbles. Well, tha
t’s
an oversimplification. It has to do with more than just the number of people affected. I
t’s
a little early to say, but it looks like the algorithm is factoring in several other variables too. Things like financial impact, health implications, and historical significance. Basically, i
t’s
calling out the stories that have the most tangible impact on the populatio
n’s
quality of life.”

What was not factored in, Kera noted, was each news stor
y’s
entertainment value. That, more than anything, differentiated it from other news sites.

“What about the bar on top?” the director asked. Above the cloud of spheres was a small bar with the word
G
LOBAL
in it. “Does that change?”

The analyst tapped the bar, and it expanded to offer two other options:
N
ATIONAL AND
L
OCAL
. He selected them one at a time. Each time he tapped a new region, the cloud vanished and then reappeared with a different set of spheres. Similar to the
G
LOBAL
cloud, the size of each sphere was proportionate to the stor
y’s
respective impact on the lives of people in that region. As such, while famine, violence caused by religious conflict, and climate change stood out in the
G
LOBAL
cloud, things like subway and sewer failures, tax and zoning laws, and severe weather patterns dominated the local cloud. Neither featured any headline about a politicia
n’s
extramarital affair, a roller coaster disaster at a distant county fair, or an acto
r’s
exhibitionist video.

Kera felt the gentle pulse of her smartphone as it received an incoming e-mail. She slipped it out of her pocket and looked at the screen. The e-mail had been sent to her
TGR
account. It was from Professor Carl Tierney.

S
UBJECT:
T
HESIS

H
E’S
A DECADE PAST THE DEADLINE, BUT
I
THINK H
E’S
JUST COMPLETED MY ASSIGNMENT.
P
LEASE SEE ATTACHED.

Kera reread the message three times.
What was he talking about?

She put her phone back in her pocket and looked down at the activity in the pit. Tha
t’s
when she saw it.

“What is that?” she said aloud, pointing to one of the analys
t’s
screens below her as she descended the stairs into the pit. A few people looked in her direction, including Gabby, whose first reaction was a territorial glance, as if to warn Kera against butting into a case that was
n’t
hers. But what she saw in Ker
a’s
eyes stopped her. “That!” Kera said. “Wha
t’s
that?” She was directly behind the analyst now, hovering over his shoulders.

“This is the
/TRUTH
side of the site,” he said.

In the background across the top of his screen were the words
H
AVE
Y
OU
F
IGURED
I
T
O
UT
Y
ET?
The letters were red on a black background, stylized like graffiti. Below them a video played of a singer, a young woman, performing alone on a stage. At first Kera had only noticed the familiar phrase, but now she studied the singer.

“Put that up on the big screen. Do we have audio?” Kera said.

The analyst had never met Kera before, but since Gabby was
n’t
objecting to Ker
a’s
demands, he did as he was told. The audio came over the speakers as the image appeared on the wall display. Kera froze at the sound of the first notes. She had never heard the song before, but she recognized the voice immediately.

“Is that—?” Gabby said.

“Rowena Pete,” Kera whispered. Then she looked down at the analyst. “This is coming from the new Gnos.is?”

“Yes. This is basically what the
/TRUTH
side of the site contains. Here, look.” He swiped the video away, and it seemed to fold itself into a sphere and recede back into a cloud, just like the spheres did on the
/FACT
side. In this cloud, though, all of the spheres were wrapped in images of performing musicians, artwork, and text from books. “I
t’s
just a bunch of entertainment and art stuff, see?” the analyst started to explain.

But Kera was walking away from him. She moved toward the big screen, gazing up at the spheres. They were all there—all of the missing subjects from the
A
TLANTIS
case: Rowena Pete and Background Noise Pollution, the musicians; Cole Emerson and Natalie Smith, the filmmakers; Craig Shea and Lazlo Timms, the novelists; and Caroline Mullen, the estate attorney.

And there was a new one. The largest sphere of all featured the art of It.

Gabby turned from the screen and looked at Kera. “Alive and well, indeed,” she said. “It looks like your theory came pretty close.”

Kera nodded, acknowledging the compliment, but she was thinking the same thing as Director Branagh, who voiced the question aloud.

“Where
are
they?” None of the analysts had an answer for that. “The
y’r
e on here, publishing all this content—but where did they go?
Why?
”

Kera reached suddenly for her pocket and pulled out her phone to read Professor Tierne
y’s
e-mail again. This time she thought she was starting to understand what he was talking about.
Was it possible?
She climbed up out of the pit and sat down at her workstation, but instead of logging into the computer, she reached for her tablet. She pulled up the e-mail Professor Tierney had just sent to her and opened the attachment. It was a sixty-three-page Word document titled
Fact and Truth: The Link between Knowledge and Meaning
. The author was Rafael Bolívar.

She read it through in a half hour. By the time she reached the end, she had forgotten about everything else that was happening in the room around her.

“What did you say?” Jones said, looking over at her. Sh
e’d
been unaware that sh
e’d
said something aloud.

“He did it,” Kera repeated.

“Who did what? Why are you smiling?”

She looked over at Jones. Then she whispered so that only he could hear her, “Meet me back in the kitchen in five minutes.”

Jones stalled for a minute or two, and then, after an innocent-looking detour to the me
n’s
room, he slipped into the Control Room kitchen and filled a paper cup with coffee. Kera made her move to join him when she could see that Gabby was tied up with the director.

“Read this,” she said, keeping her voice low despite Jone
s’s
previous assurances that the kitchen was free of eavesdropping devices. She extended the tablet toward him, already cued up to the key page.

“What is it?”

“I
t’s
something Bolívar wrote.”

Jones shut his eyes. “Kera, this is
n’t
the time—”

“Trust me. Go on, read it. Just this one page.”

Jones looked over his shoulder at the passage to the Control Room. His face did
n’t
even try to disguise the fact that he thought she was crazy. But because arguing would have taken longer than reading a page of text, he took hold of the tablet. At first his eyes scanned quickly, as though he was merely going through the motions to appease her. She smiled when she saw his eyes catch and then sweep back to the beginning to read it more closely.