They couldn’t see how little they saw. It was the mistake I’d made in my practicum exam. Thinking I had all the facts. All at once I wanted to tell him about it.
“So every Theden student has to take something called the Plato Practicum,” I said, forgetting my sandwich. “It’s supposed to improve our practical reasoning skills through these simulated experiences. Kind of like virtual reality, I guess. We sit in these little pods, and the scenarios play out in 3D on a three-sixty screen.”
“Cool,” he said, and hopped up on the stool next to me. “What are the scenarios like?”
“Well, usually we’re given a set of actors whose actions we’re supposed to manipulate, and we’re graded on our choices. For our midterm on Friday, we had to choose who to evacuate off a crowded dock before it blew up.”
“What’s the goal?” North asked.
“Net positive impact,” I replied. “On society as a whole. The person who gets the best outcome relative to the rest of the class sets the curve.”
North nodded as if this made perfect sense. “So you’re playing Lux.”
I looked at him. “What?”
“What you just described—that’s exactly what Lux does,” North explained. “It manipulates individual users to achieve a net positive impact across all users.”
“How do you know so much about Lux? From hacking?”
“I know a lot about Lux from hacking, yes, but I know what I just told you from reading the terms of use. Which, I’m guessing from the look on your face, you still haven’t read.”
“It really says all that?”
“In arcane, impossibly hard to decipher legalese, yes.”
“So how does it work, exactly?”
“Well, Gnosis doesn’t share its algorithm, obviously, and I can’t see it because it’s on the back end of their server. But presumably they’ve come up with their version of a net positive impact function. They store user data in something called a ‘SWOT matrix’—basically it’s this little four-box grid cataloging a person’s strengths, weaknesses, op—
I finished his sentence. “Opportunities and threats.” North’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “That’s what we’re given in our practicum sims,” I explained. “I thought SWOT was something our teacher made up.”
“Nah, it’s a business term that’s been around for a while,” North replied. “But Gnosis has taken it to a whole new level. They use it to promote equilibrium—their word for lives that run smoothly. You should see some of their user profiles. The level of detail is insane. They have to be, I guess, for Lux to work the way it does. Every recommendation Lux makes comes from that grid.”
All of a sudden I couldn’t stop thinking about the moment when I’d chosen my cog psych research topic. Why had Lux put APD at the very bottom of its recommendation list? My mom’s diagnosis was in her medical file, so Lux had to know that I had a predisposition for it. So why wasn’t it at the top?
“I need to see mine.”
North started to shake his head.
“Please, just show it to me. I won’t tell anyone.”
North hesitated for another minute then sighed. “Okay,” he said finally. He balled up his cellophane wrapper and dropped it in the incinerator beneath his sink. “But only because you said please.” I expected him to pick up the tablet on the kitchen table, but instead he came around the island and walked toward the closet by his bed. “You coming?” he called before disappearing inside. I hopped off my stool and hurried in after him. He was standing in front of a life-size poster of Five O’Clock Flood, quite possibly the worst band in the entire history of the world.
“Uh, you have a poster of Five O’Clock Flood,” I said. “In your closet. I’m not sure where to start with that one.”
“Oh, Norvin is a big F.O.F. fan,” North deadpanned. He squatted on his heels, pulling out the tacks from the bottom corners of the poster, and the paper immediately rolled up, like a window shade. Where the poster had been was a narrow door in the wall with a finger sensor lock. “Welcome to my office,” he said, rising to his feet. He slid the tacks into his pocket and touched his thumb to the lock. There was a beep as it deactivated.
“Holy hi-tech.”
“Not really,” North said, pushing the door open. “The closet was huge, so I partitioned some of it off and put up a cheap fiberglass wall. If someone wanted in, they could knock through it with their fist. Hey, grab the closet door, would you? And lock it.”
I pulled the door shut and turned the knob lock, then followed North into the secret room. It was tiny, just big enough for a desk and ergo chair and two wallscreens. There was a stack of old laptops in the opposite corner, each on its own narrow shelf. North pulled out the chair for me to sit on then reached for the keyboard on his desk.
“You use a keyboard,” I said.
“I do. When you have to type fast, touchpads are a bitch.” He pressed the enter key and the wallscreens lit up. North reached for the black mouse next to the keyboard. It was big and bulky and hardly what I’d expect a hacker to use. North saw me looking at it and grinned. “What can I say? I’m old-fashioned.”
I rolled the chair closer to the screen, eager to see real hacking in action. But North just clicked on a folder on his desktop then selected the file at the top of the list. “You ready for this?”
“Wait, my profile is on your desktop? So you’ve already—”
North looked sheepish. “I downloaded it the day I met you.”
“Stalk much?”
“Okay, so maybe it’s borderline creepy—”
“Borderline?”
“You gave me no choice!” he protested. “You were impossible to read. And I’m an excellent reader.”
“A modest stalker,” I retorted. But I was smiling. “How refreshing.” My smile faded as North clicked open the document. There were four quadrants, like he’d said, and within each one was a list, the entries in type so tiny you’d need a magnifying glass to read it.
“From what I can tell, they rank the entries within each category, which means the stuff at the top is weighted heavier in the algorithm. Although I’m sure there are nuances, at a very basic level the app appears to be designed to move people away from their threats and toward their opportunities, taking into account their strengths and weaknesses. So, for example, if an opportunity would expose a highly ranked weakness, the opportunity would probably become a threat. Does that make sense?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t really focus on anything you’re saying because I’m trying to read my threats list. Can we zoom in?”
North clicked on the T quadrant and a new document opened. This one looked like a spreadsheet. At the top was my social security number and date of birth. Below that was a list. My eyes went to the entry at the top: Knowledge of her blood type.
“I don’t understand,” I said slowly, staring at the screen. “I know my blood type. I’m A positive.”
He pointed at the next entry on my threats list. “Do you know who that is?” It was a ten-digit string in a 3/2/4 pattern, obviously a social security number: 033-75-9595.
I shook my head. “I don’t understand,” I said again. “There’s some person out there who’s been identified as a ‘threat’ for me?”
“Not one person,” North corrected. “Half a dozen.” He pointed at the next five entries on the list. All social security numbers. The sandwich I’d just eaten felt like lead in my stomach.
“Who are these people?” I asked him. “Is there any way to find out?”
“Not without a Forum handle. The way Gnosis has encrypted its data, there’s no way to search across all user profiles. It’s a weird idiosyncrasy I haven’t been able to crack. I can click through random profiles, but I can’t pull up a particular one without knowing the user’s handle.”