The Doomsday Equation by Matt Richtel

ex-partner. He pushes a button to dial. It rings and rings. Voice mail picks up. Jeremy hangs up.
    His eyes are glazing over. He closes the browser, pulls the iPad to his chest.
    He thinks back to what Evan had said in their last conversation at the office: “Your machine can be more powerful than you ever imagined.”
    What had he meant by that? Something Jeremy didn’t realize?
    The words and ideas blur and jumble together as Jeremy falls asleep.

C HAPTER 8
    T WINKLE, TWINKLE.”
    He feels someone kick his foot. “Twinkle, twinkle.”
    Jeremy cracks open his eyes. “Twinkle, twinkle little fart,” Jeremy manages.
    “How I wonder where you fart.”
    Standing before him, a boy with light brown hair, spilling out unkempt from the sides of his red wool hat with earflaps. He’s got black rain boots and the trendy puffy blue ski jacket that Jeremy had given him at the beginning of the school year. Kent bobs his head and torso side to side, herky-jerky, as if moving to some unheard music, the rhythm of an energetic boy.
    “You look like a collage,” Jeremy says. He’s getting his bearings. He’s sitting in a beanbag, arms wrapped around an iPad.
    “Did you sleep here? You seriously smell like a fart. Seriously.”
    Jeremy inhales. Boy’s got a point. Kent and Emily must be here on the way to school and work. How many times has Jeremy told Emily to make coffee at home to save the money;and pastries aren’t good for the boy: even the raisin bran muffin brims with sugar.
    Still, he smiles. His last interaction with Kent was the worst they’d ever had. Some stupid disagreement as they sat on the living room floor, trying to make sense of the strewn pieces of a rocket ship puzzle. Jeremy suggested looking for the corners first.
    “I have a better idea,” said Kent. He was sorting the pieces by color, looking for the ones that might go together.
    “Only if you want to be here all day,” Jeremy said.
    “Get your own puzzle.” Kent said it absently, something from the mouth of a babe. But Jeremy laughed haughtily. Something cruel. But he at least was able to check the counterattack that nearly spilled from his mouth, even though the bad taste didn’t leave Jeremy for days.
    Kent turns and Jeremy follows his gaze to the counter. With a modest smile, Emily orders coffee. She’s got high black boots and a long black skirt and a light purple blouse, her shoulders covered by her near-black hair, and Jeremy can practically taste the pheromones across the café. He thinks: Emily, something bad is happening. Someone’s messing with me.
    And, then: But just in case no one’s messing with me, just in case something really bad is happening, get away from here. Take Kent to your brother’s house in Reno.
    Emily tilts her head toward the guy standing next to her at the counter, listening to him. She laughs.
    The guy is tall and wiry—built not unlike Jeremy, fuller brown hair suggesting he’s younger. Brownish skin, one of those hybrid ethnicities, half something and half something else. Is he seriously wearing a stone-washed jean jacket?
    He puts a hand on Emily’s shoulder, friendly, close to intimate, maybe not quite there.
    Kent says: “Ready?”
    Jeremy looks at the boy.
    “Old McDonald Had a Fart.”
    Part of their ritual, turning Mother Goose rhymes and songs into potty humor. Relief washes over Jeremy; whatever tension is long since past.
    “Eee-eye, eee-eye-oh. And on that farm he had a cow,” the boy continues, off pitch, a little self-conscious. “With a poo-poo here and a poo-poo there.”
    Emily looks over. Jeremy watches the cascade of analysis and emotion: why is my son talking to this strange man unfurled on the beanbag chair; oh shit, that’s not a strange man. Her face turns to puzzle pieces. One looks like anger, one like pity, and one like fear, not from the threat of a stranger but of the familiar.
    She turns and says something to the guy she’s with—the guy she spent the night with?—then