Foundation

Part I

The Launch

BARRY

My boy says I’m seventy-seven. Can’t remember what my cradle looked like, but I see the pine box coming down the line.

Some of my friends never made it past sixty, poor devils. GM pensions were lottery tickets they never got to cash.

When did I retire? Happened after I voted for a black president, so it musta been some ways back. Never thought I’d see one of us in that chair. Best seat I ever had swung me in and out of a chassis, shift after shift. Days used to run together back then. Now years do. When I wake up to pee at night, I can taste factory air. Bitter, like metal on the tongue.

Lucky to keep that job long as I did. Hung in there even after the Motor City lost its motor. Now I’ve lost just about everything but my mind. Charlie worries I’m gonna lose that.

Keep focused on the here-and-now, he’ll say to me.

Get outta the house least once every day, he says.

I’m doin’ it, son. Why you think I’m taking a walk?

Got across the street to Pleasant Creek Park. Ought to have a signpost with its name on it. Push on the metal gate. Hinges squeak, but it swings open. Plow this damn walker through the weeds. Scoot up to a bench.

Pleasant used to sit here for hours, her plump fingers laced with mine. Yeah, she’s gone. Been too long. Sometimes feels she’ll be back any minute.

Sure enough, the bench feels warm. Maybe she just left to pick up trash.

Middle-aged guy in a Detroit Lions windbreaker jogging down the road. Waves like I know him. Wasn’t too long ago I looked like that. Maybe I was a little heavier and a little shorter, but just as much muscle.

Now I can’t get anywhere without walkin’ in this metal cage. Why’d I put a string bag in its basket? Stupid bag hangs open, all slack-jawed.

What’s that now? Basket’s buzzing.

Give it a poke.

Lady with a British accent is all, Good afternoon, Mr Sanders.

She’s smiling. You can hear when a lady’s smiling.

How are we today?

Who’s we? Is Pleasant here, for real? Or this lady talking about Charlie?

Sir, this is your scheduled call.

She always says it that way—shed-uled. Swear I know her.

Is this, um, Sally?

"Yes, and a good day to you. This morning you phoned our service to remind yourself that you planned a trip to the Safeways to acquire food for a party. You recorded the intention to purchase a Pabst case, two bags of Snyder’s honey mustarded pretzels, and—and a whole roasting chicken?"

Don’t like the tone she took when she said chicken. What’s wrong with chicken?

Hate pretzels. Why would I wanna get pretzels? Lord, I can’t even remember reminding myself to remember anything. What’s this all about?

Wait, maybe... Did I say my boy was coming to this party?

Your message made no mention of Charlie. You did, however, have unkind words for your American president.

Who doesn’t?

Do you want me to read that portion back to you? The part about the President?

"Nah, long as I didn’t invite that devil into my house."

You made no reference to guests. There could have been an error in the automated transcription. I could recheck the audio—

Nah. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

Yes, sir, we will.

Thanks for calling, Sally. Goodbye.

Bye-bye.

Quite a thing, that phone Charlie hooked me up to. Wish I didn’t need it.

CHARLIE

Only after exiting the Detroit Metro Airport did Charlie realize he’d forgotten to pack gloves. A fleece jacket left him shivering in the wind blowing through the cab stand. April doesn’t mean the same thing back in Seattle as it does here.

Charlie shouldered his laptop bag and pulled his carryon suitcase to the curb. He approached a sedan at the front of the line and spoke to the driver through the passenger window. Going near Mack and Elliott.

The taxi’s wheels screeched as it fled the airport without a passenger.

Charlie felt a different kind of chill. His heart pounded. He squinted to guess at the driver’s ethnicity.

There wasn’t an address in Seattle where he couldn’t get a ride. More often than not, the Loop would have a car greet him with a gentle honk before he reached in his pocket.

The future hadn’t reached Charlie’s hometown. Whole neighborhoods remained unofficial no-go zones. Even driverless cars wouldn’t come near his father’s house.

The next cabbie in the queue was a black woman in her mid-twenties—a few years younger than Charlie. She appeared to understand why the next fare would be hers. She tossed a cigarette out the window, fired up her engine, and gave Charlie a guilty shrug.

Before she could pull away, he moved to block her exit.

MLK High, Charlie said to her windshield. It would mean walking a few cold blocks, but she’d take him that far.

The driver jerked her head to motion him inside. Charlie tossed his luggage in the trunk, slid into the backseat, and closed his eyes.

When they arrived at the high school, his mood hadn’t improved. At least she hadn’t told him how dangerous it was to drive in this part of the city. Sparing him that lecture was worth a few bucks, so he tipped her well. She probably needed the money.

Charlie retrieved his luggage and shut the trunk. As the cab sped away, he noticed a familiar bumper sticker. Over a black background, red, white, and blue letters asked, WTF? The question meant more in a state that had voted for Trump.

What the fuck, indeed, Charlie said to himself. He jerked up the handle on his suitcase and headed home.

Charlie rubbed his hands together and knocked on the steel door of his father’s house. The brick bungalow where he’d spent his childhood had appreciated not a dollar since he’d left for college. A three-bedroom house like this in Seattle would have become a goldmine for anyone who held it that long. Charlie could afford to put Pops into something nicer, but Barry refused to consider living in Seattle, or even outside the inner city.

You in there, Dad?

Years ago, Barry hand-crafted and installed this door as a security measure. It provided an excuse to practice new skills while earning an associate’s degree in arc welding. A mishap during that project earned Barry a one-inch scar that still stood in relief on his stubbled cheek. Charlie involuntarily rubbed his own face. He only felt a close-cropped goatee.

Charlie pounded again on the door.

Quit that hammering! Barry barked.

Years ago, Dad tried to give his sons a modicum of skill at welding. He took pride in seeing them doing lines, an idiosyncratic bit of slang that never got corrected. Charlie had shown some aptitude with a torch, but the informal lessons stopped after a few weeks.

The deadbolt slid back, and the door opened. Barry looked more hunched than usual. He barely cleared five-two, a half-foot lower than when he and Charlie used to stand even.

Get in here. You must be freezing in those duds.

Barry reached for his son’s coat, but Charlie waved him off.

Look at you. Barry patted his son’s flat stomach. Skinny boy.

It’s all hikes, bikes, and kayaks in Seattle, Charlie said. He squeezed through the doorway and brushed against the potbelly hanging over Barry’s waistline.

Don’t get full of yourself, boy. Your brother’s the athlete in our family.

Charlie held his breath. Was Dad speaking in the past tense, or the present? At King High, Barry Jr. had been a bona fide three-sport phenom—the star wide receiver on a team that almost won state. But that was before Charlie’s only sibling went to Afghanistan for a war that should have been over. Charlie rubbed his hands across his arms. He felt colder than when he’d walked from the high school.

Barry’s slippers swooshed like skis across the brown carpet that led to his La-Z-Boy in the living room. His feet followed smooth tracks worn from the entryway to the lounge chair, to the kitchen, then back to bathroom and bedroom.

I’ll set myself down in Brown Betty while you do the food, okay?

Charlie poked his head in the refrigerator. Glad to see you’ve got real groceries. Did ya get this chicken for today?

Course I did.

Thanks for avoiding the fried ones.

Charlie snapped open two Pabst Lights and offered one to Barry.

You used the phone service yesterday, right Dad?

Spoke to a Sally. Barry took the beer.

"Right, though her name’s Sailee."

From London or somewhere.

She’s Indian, Charlie said with a laugh. Lives in the state of Gujarat—a long flight from Heathrow. Do you recall any details from your conversation? Remember what I said about replaying recent memories.

I know, I know. Barry scratched the bald patch on his cheek. Can’t say for sure. I was in Pleasant Creek Park.

You mean— Charlie interrupted himself. A year ago, Dad had started calling Green Creek Park by Mom’s name. Sounded more like a memorial than a slip. I’m glad you’re using the service. Software’s working seamlessly with our call centers. We’re launching the phone-mounting hardware this week. I’d stay longer, but I’ve gotta head back tomorrow for a big press event we’re staging.

Barry’s attention wandered to the wafer-thin television Charlie had installed on his previous visit. Its sensors noted Barry’s shifting gaze and activated its screen.

The volume came on just in time for a familiar commercial.

Barry sat up in his chair. Look. It’s that thing you gave me, from before.

On the ground lay the actor Peter Weller, who was enjoying a late-career boom playing a heroin-addled grandfather on HBO. Weller looked up at the sky and raised his arms.

I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up. But don’t worry, kiddo.

The actor rolled to his side and rested on an elbow. He stared into the camera with the confidence of an underwear model. I’m wearing the Forget Me Not bracelet. A playful flick of the wrist displayed the device. I’m too disoriented to know up from down, but pretty soon this sucker will tell me where I am. And where I’m s’posed to be.

Weller stood and brushed off his pants. I’m not waiting for a Boy Scout. All I need is a little boost, from myself. If you ever lose your way, call the number on the screen. The bracelet flashed, and Weller listened to its message before looking up. Write that number down, 1-800-Forget-U. Give yourself a little memo now and then. Your kids’ll thank you.

See that, son? Barry laughed and pointed at the TV. That’s what I’ve got.

Well... Dad was half-right. Long before its public release, Barry had tried on the bracelet. Charlie had replaced it with new tech weeks ago.

Except now, Barry said, you’ve got me using something else?

That’s right, Dad. Charlie set down his beer. You leave Sally instructions, and she relays them to you at the right time and place. Tell me how you use it. Remember the five W’s?

Barry tapped his right index finger on each knuckle of his left hand as he spoke. "Every morning, it’s push the green memo button and say what I’ll be doing, where I’ll do it, when I want to do it, why I’m doin’ it, and with who."

Good job! Charlie cringed on hearing the tone of his own voice. The in-flight magazine was right: The child becomes the parent. An over-eager intonation sounded condescending.

How come that Robocop fella on the TV’s still wearin’ the bracelet?

You’re always gonna be ahead of the pack, Dad, because I work for the company. You’re our most important beta-tester.

You work for General Motors. Barry pointed at the logo on his son’s fleece jacket. It was a welcome gift from Charlie’s boss when he’d joined her startup.

No, Charlie said. This GM stands for Gray Matters. It’s a cheesy name, but it tested well. By way of a toast, Charlie raised his Pabst. At least we’re keeping the acronym in the family.

Barry lifted his beer and took a drink. He turned up the TV volume. Looks like Buffalo gets to go first. Then Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh. Top draft picks all across the Rust Belt means we’re not the only team that stunk last year. When’s our pick in the first round? Don’t tell me we traded it.

Even after he graduated from Drexler and moved to Ann Arbor for graduate school, Charlie tried to take an interest in his father’s favorite sport. He read the Lions news fed to him daily by the Loop. Now, in his moment of need, it came to his rescue again. He felt a familiar buzz in his jacket pocket and saw that the Loop had fed his smart phone draft-day data in a tabular display. Whisper mode was an improvement over how the Loop used to just start chattering, as if it was part of the conversation.

The story of this year’s draft goes like this, Dad. Charlie glanced down at the phone in his palm. Pittsburgh hasn’t really fallen on hard times. A three-way trade got them Arizona’s pick. Now we’ve got theirs, plus our own. Loop says we’re in slots twenty and twenty-five.

"Who’s Lou?" Barry said.

Charlie sighed. He’d explained the advent of the Loop more than once to his father, but it still mystified. In fairness, the forces that absorbed Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of Web 2.0 were not fully understood by many people, including the inner circle of the tech world.

The Loop is just the Internet, Dad. But different.

Different how?

Where to begin? Charlie could describe it easily enough, if he could speak like he did at the office. He’d bust out a whiteboard to explain how corporate network models became rubble after the explosion of millions of free-roaming and self-replicating programs in the public domain. Strange-weavers, charm-links, and fireflies spun out crowd-sourced algorithms. Those interlocked to form a decentralized artificial intelligence, which civilians like Barry experienced through nearly anything that carried electricity.

Charlie imagined his father taking that all in, nodding an approval, and cooing, It’s all in the Loop, son. All in the Loop.

A very real memory replaced the fantasy. At his father’s retirement party, Charlie unselfconsciously used technical jargon and earned a snort in reply. Barry turned to an old friend and said, Truth is, my boy doesn’t make anything useful—not something you could drive down the road or launch on Lake Erie.

Ouch.

Charlie never could explain the work he did—not in graduate school and not at GM. Though he couldn’t convey how much he was changing the world, at least he could help Dad understand how their world was changing.

Remember when Craigslist blew up newspapers by taking away classified ads?

"I still read the Penny Saver," Barry said.

Charlie noted the stack of those papers leaning against a heat register. He would need to haul them to a dumpster before leaving.

Okay, how about Netflix? Remember how it used to recommend new shows for you?

Barry nodded.

The Loop’s nucleus is an infinitely dense mass of free-floating algorithms seeking out all possible connections of like-to-like and exchanging results. Every nanosecond, these programs are learning from each other. They’ve automated the finding, linking, and sorting previously done through proprietary search engines and commercial services. Like Netflix.

Barry turned back to the television. So Netflix says we’ve got the number twenty pick in the draft?

And twenty-five, Charlie said.

There’s only table scraps that late. Johnson, Karras, Sanders—all the greats went at the top of their class.

Charlie raised a finger. Ah, but don’t forget. My own namesake was a third-rounder.

Nonsense. Barry blew a raspberry at his son. You can’t keep all that history straight. You never loved the game, not like your brother. He knew how to play. He knew the value of an honest day’s work.

The words were a shotgun blast to Charlie’s chest, opening not one but two wounds at once. His younger brother had chosen sports, then military service, over college or a factory. Look what it got him.

Mom and Dad had preached education above all else, but neither could grasp the abstract insights that came to Charlie’s mind. He’d learned how to weld concepts to data. Barry couldn’t see his son’s hands at work, even as Charlie’s labors congealed in the form of assistive technology his father could use each day.

The best move in this conversation was a dodge.

A low draft slot, Charlie said, is the price for winning the division. We lost in the playoffs, but still—

Barry closed his eyes, as if calling up a game from long-term memory. Did we lose to Green Bay?

Close. It was—

"Tampa Bay."

Right! Charlie raised his Pabst to honor the successful memory retrieval. Perhaps the Walker Talker was slowing his father’s decline. Let’s eat that chicken now.

Barry frowned. We’ve got chicken?

* * *

As fleeting as Dad’s lucid periods had become, Barry was still better than the day his dementia first manifested. Charlie had completed a dissertation chapter and was packing for a triumphant visit home when he received a call from his father’s cell. After a quick hello, he heard an unfamiliar voice.

Sorry to be rude, the man said, but to whom am I speaking?

Charlie Sanders.

Cute. The man here says you’re his son, but he won’t give us a real name.

Wait, what? Charlie switched out of speaker mode and held his phone close to his ear. Is Dad okay?

"That depends. Your father isn’t really named Barry Sanders, is he?"

That’s his name. What’s this about?

I’ll be damned. I recognize this fella’s face ‘cuz we live in the same neighborhood. Never knew his name.

What’s going on?

I’m Terrence Washington, UAW shop steward. We’re in Lansing. Your Dad’s okay, but he’s had a tiny spell.

A spell?

Your father rode with us on the Labor Train—a bus, really—to join the Capitol protests. You know, the fight against the governor’s union-killing bill?

Dad’s been retired three years, Charlie said, but yeah, that sounds like him. Occupying buildings wasn’t Charlie’s style, but he felt a warm pride picturing Dad there. If Pleasant wasn’t held down by diabetes, she’d have stood with him.

I think it was all too much for the old man, Terrence said. He got separated from us. Wound up blubbering in the arms of some Tea Party hag. She turned him over to a cop, who found me.

Not sure I understand. Dad wouldn’t—

He didn’t know where he was, or why he was here. When he saw the union letters on my hat, he perked up. But I’m still not sure he’s got it figured out.

Charlie pressed a finger against his temple to relieve pressure building inside his skull.

A few of us are just here for the day, Terrence said, so Barry can ride back late tonight. I just wanna make sure someone’ll be there to meet him at the Union Hall when we get back.

I’ll be there. Charlie tried to say something more but couldn’t find words.

Now, I hate to be rude, Terrence said, but the fellas will rib me if I don’t ask. How’d you end up named after the two greatest Lions to ever play the game?

What?

I mean, did he name you after the Hall of Fame tight end?

That’s what he says.

"But his name’s just a coincidence?"

Still in shock, Charlie repeated the family story without emotion. My little brother came along when the other Barry Sanders was at his peak. Dad swore both Barrys would be Hall of Famers someday.

Well, he got half that right. Does your brother play ball? I mean, that’s a helluva name to carry around.

He plays for King High.

I’ll have to check him out one of these days. How ‘bout you?

Charlie tugged at the conversation’s reins. I’ll be there to meet your bus.

Terrence chuckled. "Catch you then, Charlie Sanders."

Before calling his mother and driving down to Detroit, Charlie updated his Facebook status to say he’d be out of town. Then he must have posted something online that hinted at his father’s condition. When the Loop arrived years later, it churned that archived social media data, along with everything else it gleaned about Charlie’s thesis, his family, his aspirations, and the wider world around him. It traced plausible connections that would lead Charlie to a new city, a new job, a new sense of purpose. In the interim, his world went to shit.

ALICE

To reach a public inured to spectacle, Alice knew that her product launches required exceptional creativity. Prospective customers were never a captive audience. Every moment they accessed a torrent of news, or what passed for news, in a digital device within a pocket, on an arm, embedded in eyeglasses, or dangling from a neck, ear, or (yes) nose.

A few years back, these devices all looked alike. They fell into the category of smart phones, which sometimes grew into tablets. The tools that replaced these were even smarter, but they didn’t improve their users’ IQs. That irony necessitated a change in nomenclature. Now, all varieties of phones and tablets were simply called zunes.

A confluence of forces resulted in this linguistic oddity. The e prefix was passé. The i was out, too, thanks to posthumous disillusionment with Steve Jobs. Meanwhile, the steady flow of cheap knockoffs made any new brand names suspect.

For a few months, new technologies were Loop-prefixed. Hence, Loop-pads, Loop-phones, and worse. When the Loop amplified this stylistic error to an extreme that would have repulsed even Smurfs, a rebellious influencer dubbed all portable techs zunes. The cheeky tribute to Microsoft’s failed music player stuck. No longer serving as a proper noun, the term became a Scrabble-legal part of the vernacular.

The zunes of the world would take notice of today’s publicity stunt only if Alice caught the Loop’s attention. Pike Place Market provided the ideal setting because it was crowded every day. Shoppers passing by would record video of the scene that would stream online instantly. If these moving images warranted novel tags, the Loop would redistribute them to appropriate audiences. It might even send a video update to the professional reporters who still had jobs.

Reaching a niche this way was easy, but getting projected onto the whole nation’s eyeballs required a deeper understanding of the Loop, as well as the humans it monitored and nudged. Here, Gray Matters had an unfair advantage. Alice and her colleagues had coaxed a tech blogger to leave a trail of informational bread crumbs. This would attract one of the few people who could out-crazy the celebrities who dominated the Loop.

The New Age crusader Mahatma Golden was the sworn enemy—and inadvertent publicist—of the GM product line. If all went according to plan, the outfit Alice wore to today’s product launch at the Market would set its crowd atwitter. With a bit of luck, Mahatma would crash Alice’s party before her hokey demonstration lost its audience.

Even if Golden didn’t follow the clues and anticipate Alice’s appearance at the Public Market, he’d show up for another reason. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Eleanor Eisenhower was making a campaign stop in advance of the Washington state caucuses. To garner attention for his crusade, Golden stole the candidate’s show more than once as she toured the west coast. In a speech on women’s role in economic innovation, Eisenhower had said a few kind words about GM’s CEO.

That nugget was enough for Golden. He’d hijacked Eisenhower’s rally in Portland the day before by surrounding the Veterans Memorial Coliseum with a crowd larger than the one inside. That evening, he’d been spotted on the Amtrak Cascades heading north to Seattle.

Alice felt uneasy stealing Eisenhower’s audience. The retired general represented the best chance of getting the country back on track. Alice hadn’t poured her hopes into a candidate since Bernie Sanders’ first failed bid for the presidency. At that year’s Democratic Convention, she’d sat only a few rows behind his family. She didn’t give up hope until his concession speech, which she could barely hear through her own sobs. When she returned to Seattle, she quit volunteering for the Democratic Party and left a lucrative job at Microsoft. She resolved to amass a fortune all her own and change the world herself.

She wondered whether the Loop had suggested hiring Charlie partly owing to his surname. It did things like that. Pretty cheeky for an AI.

As she entered the Market, Alice looked for Charlie and caught his eye as he moved into position. None but Alice took notice of him waiting outside the clutch of tourists carrying frozen fish, artisan breads, and bundles of lavender. An equal number of locals, eager to raise their relevance ratings in the Loop, squeezed into the crowd and past reporters to get ready for Eisenhower’s imminent appearance.

The moment had arrived.

To draw attention to the newest GM product, Alice would first have to draw attention to herself. Her reputation as an exceptional coder preceded her celebrity status, and she fused her talents into a unique personal brand: magic pixie badass. Her not-quite-five-foot height fit the bill, as did pale skin with the faintest celery hue, thanks to a tinted moisturizer. Onto her slender frame she hung wild outfits. She wore even wilder hair styles, which some fashionistas swore were wigs. Usually, they were not.

Alice stepped under the neon Public Market sign. She pulled a tan peasant dress over her head to reveal a more striking dress. She swung over her shoulders long black hair that, on closer inspection, was shredded metal cassette tape, woven as seamlessly as high-end extensions.

The hairstyle accented her outfit—a breezy cotton dress with brown-black stripes down its length. Each strip was playable magnetic tape. Credit for the garment went to Jack Thompson, the Strategy and Marketing Director she’d hired without any help from the Loop. He’d bought the dress for her during one of his Vegas junkets. When she first took it out of the box, he rigged a wireless tape head to prove that it played Thomas Dolby’s She Blinded Me with Science. Sort of.

Scanning the crowd, Alice found Jack. He pounded his chest with one fist, which Alice took to mean that he was proud she wore his gift today.

She blew Jack a kiss. This Australian transplant was whip-smart, but Alice had come to realize that he also pleased her embarrassingly hetero-normative taste in men. Beneath his Marine-grade crew cut hung a jawline that could shred cardstock. His torso had the V-shaped frame of a crocodile wrestler. From his traps down to his calves, not a single muscle group showed neglect. He made this plain by wearing an undersized GM polo, snug khaki shorts, and ankle socks inside his sneakers.

Jack raised his eyebrows and titled his head toward the mob encircling Alice. She took the cue.

Take it easy, folks, Alice said. This isn’t a photo-op.

The feigned brush-off had the desired effect. Restless reporters awaiting Eisenhower’s arrival turned their shotgun mics and shoulder-mounted cameras toward her. Alice caught a whiff of the salmon thawing at the fish market behind her. Anything later than a 10am start time and that stink would have been too funky.

While you’re all here waiting, Alice said, let’s do something fun. She motioned for the gathered goslings to follow. Let’s see the Walker Talker in action.

She led the crowd to Charlie, who stood in a closed-off street beside the market. He wore a wig of wild gray hair that made him look like a disheveled Frederick Douglass. Nice touch: A subtlety like that would earn them a bonus tag. Suspenders pulled gray khakis up past Charlie’s navel and pressed down on his father’s flannel shirt. To complete the look, Charlie wore plastic-framed glasses that might have been meant for racquetball.

Alice wheeled around to face the reporters. The gentleman leaning into that shiny aluminum walker is Charles the Elder, our Big Daddy of Big Data. She gave Charlie an approving nod. Nice touch with the tennis balls on the walker’s back legs. Authenticity.

Charlie grunted.

Speaking of which, Alice said, can we be honest, just for a second?

The gathered reporters looked at each other. An explicit claim of veracity usually signaled a lie, but in this context,