The Shadow of the Algorithm

New York at three in the morning isn't the city

depicted in the guidebooks. It's a crust of spent

neon, a metallic heartbeat echoed in the drawers

of cheap hotels and empty subway entrances. In

Soho, electric blinds lower like eyelids over shop

windows, and the old brick buildings retain the

warmth of the days as if preserving whispers.

Outside it was drizzling-that fine rain that never

cleans anything-and the reflection of a

laundromat sign stretched out in the puddle in front

of the doorway; inside, on an eighth-floor

apartment with a rusty fire escape, there's an

apartment with too many screens and too little

order. Ethan Cross lived there.

The place smelled of stale coffee and electricity. A

swing-arm desk lamp cast a tiny glow that tried to

compete with the main screen: a pale, vivid

rectangle where lines of text moved like fish on the

shore. There were at least five monitors: one for

email, another for old terminals that no one had

named in years, another for the connection

map-that mesh Ethan liked to look at when

nothing physical satisfied him-and two more

where windows were recreated with tabs that

seemed to multiply of their own accord.