The Fold: A Novel Part 30

Jamie marched back to her workstation. She kicked one of the power connectors on the way and swore at it. She checked the monitor.

"Tanks the same?"

"Yes," she sighed. "This makes no sense."

"Yeah," Mike said, "that's what we all said yesterday while you were being checked out."

Jamie walked past her station to his, elbowed him out of the way, and leaned over the terminal to double-check something. Her shirt drooped open to reveal a wide swath of cleavage. Mike was suddenly aware of how few b.u.t.tons were done on her shirt.

She met his eyes and followed his glance down to her chest. "Don't get any ideas."

"What?"

"We're not here for a nooner."

He coughed. "I beg your pardon?"

She pulled the sides of the shirt together and fastened a b.u.t.ton one-handed. "Don't lie. You were thinking it."

"I couldn't've been. You told me the other night how unattractive you are."

She gave him a thin smile. "All that brainpower and you can't figure out when a girl's playing hard to get?"

"No, usually I can. I can also tell when she's close to demanding a restraining order. That's more what I was leaning toward."

She laughed.

"Since you brought it up, though," he said. "About the other night. You mentioned something at the bar."

"Ahhh," she said. She walked back to the other station and dropped into her chair. "I was wondering when that was going to come up again."

"You said you'd gone over all the lines of code looking for an error that could've caused Bob's accident."

She blinked. "What?"

"The code for the Door." He gestured at the rings. "D'you remember saying that?"

"That's what you want to talk about?"

"Was there something else?"

Her brow settled over her eyes. "I guess not."

"So you'd gone over all the code at that point?"

"Yeah. That's why I went to get a drink."

"How?"

"I got in my car, drove to the bar-"

"How'd you go over two-million-plus lines of code in thirty-six hours?"

Jamie opened her mouth, then closed it and shook her head. "You must've heard me wrong," she said.

"So you didn't finish going over the code?"

"Of course I did."

"When? Because I couldn't've done it in that time, and I can pretty much guarantee my reading speed's faster than anyone you know."

She smirked. "Now you're just trying to get me turned on."

"Don't dodge the question."

"Seriously, all the things we talked about that night, and this is what sticks in your mind?"

"What are we supposed to talk about? Why you named your cat Spock when you were little?"

Jamie shook her head. "See, that's how drunk I was. My cat's name was Isis. My parents made fun of me because he was a boy cat and Isis was a girl's name."

"You're still avoiding the question. Did you go through all the code or not?"

"You're being a pain and you're asking about things you're not allowed to know about."

"Technically, I'm just asking about your job performance."

"That doesn't mean you're not being a pain."

He put his hands up. "Just a guy trying to do his job."

She leaned back in her chair and tapped her foot on the floor, swinging it side to side. "Okay," she said. "What's your deal?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why do you keep up this whole 'just a normal guy' thing? Between your memory and your IQ, you're probably one of the most intelligent people on the planet."

"Well, that's up for debate."

"See?" Jamie kicked at the floor and her chair rolled away from the workstation. She pointed at him. "That's what I mean. You know you're in the top point-zero-zero-one percent of humanity, but you laugh it off and try to ignore it. You've got more potential than anyone I've ever known, and you're a small-town schoolteacher. Why haven't you been working for Magnus all along? h.e.l.l, why aren't you his boss or running NASA or JPL or something?"

He shrugged. "I'm not interested."

"That's not a real answer."

"It's real enough."

She smirked. "Do you want real answers from me or answers that are real enough?"

Mike sighed. He turned away and made a point of studying the rings. The red lights on either side of the Door were still out of sync. He kept the monitor in his peripheral vision, but none of the numbers or readings even flickered.

"Okay," she said. She tugged her chair back to the station and turned to her own terminal. "Just remember, I offered."

"You ever met any high-IQ people, the ones with insanely high IQs? Or read interviews or articles about them?"

"My question first."

"I'm trying to answer your question."

She shrugged without looking up. "Counting you?"

"Sure."

Jamie spun her chair toward him and swung one foot up onto her knee. "Four or five, I think. Olaf's 165 or something like that."

"What's the one thing they all have in common?"

"Besides being really smart?"

Mike shook his head. "When I was thirteen," he said, "when we got the results back from the IQ tests, I was excited as h.e.l.l. It's every kid's dream, right? To find out you're special? It's Harry Potter and Spider-Man all wrapped up in one."

"So what happened?"

"Everyone started treating me different. All the other kids already thought I was some kind of brainiac, and now they had proof I was strange. All my teachers were either second guessing themselves around me or giving me extra work and getting annoyed that it didn't slow me down."

He looked through the rings at Site B. The red light flashed by again, like a fast wave of blood washing in across the beach. He remembered what Sasha said about a wound.

"I did my own study," he said. "I reached out and found other high-IQ people online. It was just basic stuff back then. Bulletin boards. CompuServe."

"I remember."

"But I was smart and I found people. Little proto-web online communities. The Mega Society. I talked to people, asked questions, basically studied every person I could find with an IQ over 150. And you know what I found out?"

She shrugged.

"Almost all of them have some kind of social problems. Relationship issues, emotional issues, superiority complexes. The more I looked, the worse it got. Most of them are isolated and lonely. The divorce rate looks good until you realize how few of them ever get married. Pound for pound, it's one of the unhappiest subsets of people you can find."

"Why?"

"Because they know they're different. They know they're smarter than everyone around them, everyone in the building, usually everyone in a thirty- or forty-mile radius. It's like spending your whole life as a doctoral student stuck in a kindergarten cla.s.s, forced to do single-digit addition and writing the alphabet every day."

She sat back and digested the idea.

"I already knew my memory made me different. Now I had pretty solid evidence I was going to be miserable for the rest of my life, and I wasn't even old enough to shave yet. So I decided to be normal."

"How?"

"By not feeding it. Until then, I'd read everything I could get my hands on. I watched tons of shows about history and science. And at thirteen I stopped. I didn't give my brain more to work with.

"That's why I never had another IQ test. It's why I didn't study physics or astrophysics or biochemistry or anything like that in college. It's why I didn't want to work for Reggie. I don't want to know how much smarter I am than everyone around me. I didn't want to 'expand my potential' or use 'the full scope of my phenomenal intellect.' I wanted to teach high school English, help kids get into college, direct the fall musical, and live a normal, happy life like everyone else."

Jamie's lips curled into a smile. "So, basically, you're telling me ignorance is bliss?"

"You have no idea."

"There are just all kinds of levels to you, aren't there?"

"Not by choice."

"What's the musical?"

"Little Mary Sunshine."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"Is that a real thing or did you make it up?"

"It's real and it's cheap," he said. "I wanted The King and I, but it's crazy expensive."

"I was in West Side Story when I was a soph.o.m.ore. My mom thought it'd be good for me to try something new."

"How'd that go over?"

"I hated it. I'm not good at pretending to be someone else." She looked at him for a moment. "You've learned a lot here, haven't you?"

He made a point of focusing on the rings again. "Yeah."

"Lots of physics. Programming. Electronics."

"Yep."

Her smile dimmed. "You're not going to be able to go back, are you? Back to being a teacher?"

Mike looked at the monitor. "I sent them my resignation two days ago. My contract was up for renewal anyway."

"Just like that?"

"Feeding the ants is a one-way street. I can't forget any of it, so I can't stop myself from thinking about it. That's why I kept turning Reggie down for years."

"But you signed up for this."

"He kind of tricked me into it, but how could I pa.s.s it up? Like you all said, it's going to change the world."

"So where do you go from here?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. "Maybe I'll try running NASA or JPL or something."