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" For a long time, Hook made a fine living as a business magician, sailing around in planes and taxis. He hadn&amp;#039;t been on a subway train in ages -- he&amp;#039;d nearly forgotten that Boston had a subway -- and apparently this had caused him to lose touch with humanity. He was shocked to discover what had become of it. He&amp;#039;d taken the train to Cambridge for one full week, and all he&amp;#039;d seen were circus people and mountain folk. He was the only one who seemed surprised that shopgirls now resembled the Tattooed Lady and had boyfriends with bones in their noses. This particular morning, half the people in his car were toothless, not a tooth in their heads, and they were all doing that cud-chewing behavior in perfect sync, the way schools of fish make hairpin turns and women living in groups get their periods together. How did they set the tempo without a conductor, Hook wondered, and what were they all doing here in the first place? The next stop was Mass General. Maybe that explained it: They were on their way to a study of restless-jaw syndrome. The subway rose from underground to cross the Charles River in the open air. He checked his mobile. No one had called, not even his lawyer to say how things were going with Hook&amp;#039;s demise. The doors opened for Charles Street/MGH, and sure enough the toothless ones disembarked to show the doctors their gums. Half the advertisements in the car were for similar opportunities. Today, for example, Hook could get two hundred bucks and free meds if he was left-handed and convinced he had ESP, or right-handed and unable to sleep, or ambidextrous with no recollection of his childhood. If he didn&amp;#039;t book new business soon, he might be signing up. The sleep study was the one he qualified for, having spent the last five nights on a sofa in the heartbreakingly prosperous offices of Conformist Communications, a PR shop founded last year by his old friend Barry from his junior-analyst days. Barry had named the company as a joke, not foreseeing the resonance it would find in the corporate mind. Conformist was now making unbelievable amounts of money. Hook wanted to murder Barry for this, but he had recently read a self-help book that said if he reveled in the successes of others it would bring him success, too.  The train began to taxi again, gliding out over the water. Across the river, the spectacular slab of green glass called the Hancock Building carried the painterly reflection of its predecessor, the old Hancock, just the way it did in the postcards. It was a lovely city for a crushing reversal of fortune. Half asleep, Hook closed his eyes for takeoff, though he was standing upright holding a pole. Thinking he was flying, he panicked for a second when the train tipped downward, not upward, and plunged underground.  He hadn&amp;#039;t been on an airplane in more than a week -- the longest stretch on the ground he could remember. He lived on airplanes. He lived by airplanes. His son had grown up calling him Airplane Man. Commercial pilots didn&amp;#039;t log the miles Hook flew every year. True, the FAA wouldn&amp;#039;t let them, on grounds of reckless endangerment. But now the judge presiding over Hook&amp;#039;s divorce had forbidden him to board any airplanes or otherwise leave town while his wife&amp;#039;s attorneys examined his books and taxes, trying to find the assets she was convinced he was hiding. It was the only time Hook could recall wishing his wife was right. Alas, he was not hiding anything -- or at least, not any money.  He was a business strategist with a deceptively simple strategy for himself: Don&amp;#039;t let them figure out you&amp;#039;re dead. If potential clients think you&amp;#039;re alive, there&amp;#039;s a chance they might hire you. So keep that heartbeat going, baby, even if it&amp;#039;s faint, even if it means jumping up and down on your own chest like a trampoline, because surely this epoch of crawling across the desert is coming to an end. Surely the turnaround is at hand. That was Hook&amp;#039;s mantra, and he vocalized it to himself as he hurtled through the darkness with his tribe. The go-go years are coming back. The turnaround is at hand. His company&amp;#039;s highest-grossing year was $9.5 million, back in the beautiful bubble. When Hook sliced up the Christmas pie that year, even the interns got mind-blowing tax consequences. The current year was $20,000, and that was all from one start-up now seeking protection from its creditors. And yet on this particular day there was a bright spot in Hook&amp;#039;s world -- though a man&amp;#039;s life had come to a strange pass when his bright spot was also the source of fierce stomach contractions. Hook had a complete fluke of a meeting this afternoon with a legend of Boston high tech, a man famous for starting and selling companies the way other people kicked cans. Completely out of the blue, this icon of innovation and prosperity had summoned Hook to a meeting. His name was Vernon DeCloud, and he was famous for something else, too: hating consultants&amp;#039; guts. Hook was no philosopher, but he often ruminated upon the paradox presented by a specific type of information -- the kind that was subversive and forbidden, yet so self-evident and freely available as to be common knowledge. He assumed that examples of this quarklike intelligence would be rare, but in fact they abounded -- &amp;quot;our leaders are idiots,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;the war is insane,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;marriage is stupid,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;nobody knows anything.&amp;quot; Many nights in airport hotels, after the lady from the escort service had departed, Hook paddled himself to sleep on the river of this conundrum: A concept like &amp;quot;our leaders are idiots&amp;quot; ought to unravel the very fabric of society, yet citizens routinely said &amp;quot;our leaders are idiots&amp;quot; and went to pick up their dry cleaning. How could human beings live with such mind-shattering contradiction? One of these paradoxical morsels happened to be a secret about Hook&amp;#039;s own profession. He first heard it long ago from his mentor, and in all the time since, he&amp;#039;d never told it to anyone. His clients all knew it already and regularly told it to him, but that didn&amp;#039;t matter because they didn&amp;#039;t really believe it. Hook really did. His belief had kept him prosperous for many years, and if it hadn&amp;#039;t been for two ill-fated marriages, a certain amount of self-indulgence on his own part (but the powerful have needs that ordinary people can&amp;#039;t understand), and finally a pestilential economic downturn worse than anything anyone had ever seen, Hook wouldn&amp;#039;t be sitting in a roadside ditch today, wondering what had hit him. But he was still breathing, he was still fighting, and he was still keeping that powerful secret. The secret was that business-strategy consulting was a load of bullshit.  He broke free of his fellow mammals to stand alone at street level in Kendall Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U. S. A., Earth. Massive geometry of metal and glass filled the sky, growing like crystals from the dish of magic powder called MIT. Wizards lived in these glittering towers, inventing the next high-tech hysteria behind facades that Hook thought of as giant screens showing movies of the future that were never quite visible from where he was standing. That was why he had cashed his retirement account to rent the storefront here and hire the three kids. To keep the heartbeat going. To be in position. Because the turnaround was at hand, but only if you were there, and not dead. His mobile startled him, buzzing like a large insect. Someone had called since he&amp;#039;d crossed the river. All around him in the square, witch doctors with wireless devices were receiving intelligence from their investment bankers, their brokers, their chief technology officers. Hook had a text from his Rastafarian son. cld i get sum $? It wasn&amp;#039;t yet 6:00 A.M. at Sebastian&amp;#039;s hippie-dippy surfing college in California. Had the boy sent his entreaty the previous evening, before falling into an opium slumber, and the network was burping it up only now? Or was he sending it this moment, still awake after a night of amphetamines and LSD? In this age of supposedly perfect knowledge, there was no way to know. You received your timeless cry from the void, and that was it. The oldest person in his favorite coffee shop looked ten years younger than Hook. The kid ahead of him on line could pass for thirteen despite the shaved head and the multiple personal communicators. No doubt the tyke was a master of networking protocols, or maybe it was subatomic physics or the human genome, but did he understand business strategy? Of course not. Hook wanted to tap him on the shoulder and hand him his card -- Gerhard Hookerdicker, Founder &amp;amp;amp; CEO Hurtling Spear Strategy Group -- and then shake the kid&amp;#039;s hand and say, &amp;quot;People call me &amp;#039;Hook.&amp;#039; It&amp;#039;s a jungle out there. I can help. Call me.&amp;quot; But you couldn&amp;#039;t connect to other professionals that way, just as you couldn&amp;#039;t stop women on the street and ask them to sleep with you. All you could do was stare into their world from a cold and distant orbit of pure yearning. He sipped his cappuccino while strolling the architectonic canyons of Kendall Square. His mantra snaked through his head. The turnaround is at hand. Should he change his management style? It was a question he considered every so often, glancing back at the wreckage of his career. Right after the bubble burst, a young employee bitched about never receiving a dime of bonus or even making his agreed-upon base salary. Rather than being a man and coming to Hook&amp;#039;s office, the kid delivered his complaint in the vast, fluorescent-lit cubicle zone where pimply analysts threw darts to get their market-forecast numbers. Hook dragged him from his cube. &amp;quot;When you&amp;#039;re busting your ass the way I&amp;#039;m busting mine, shithead,&amp;quot; he screamed, &amp;quot;you can hassle me about things you were promised.&amp;quot; Classic Hook, in front of everybody. But the kid couldn&amp;#039;t grasp his place in the ecosystem. &amp;quot;And how exactly would I do that, Hookerfucker,&amp;quot; he had screamed back, &amp;quot;when no one except you is allowed to do anything of consequence?&amp;quot; Naturally, that young Turk was no longer on board. The problem was, neither was almost anyone else. In Hook&amp;#039;s glory years on State Street, a hundred employees occupied the whole nineteenth floor, executing twenty projects at any moment for the biggest corporate citizens on the planet -- brand names your grandmother would recognize. Today, in a crummy storefront behind the gritty ass end of MIT, there was Diane and Cecil and Rock, executing nothing. And there was Hook, sitting at a banged-up desk from the used-furniture outlet. The silent question on every tongue would have been, What in fuck&amp;#039;s name is he doing here? except that every tongue already knew the answer. He was grounded, forbidden to fly. Since Hook had never before sat at this desk, Diane had turned it into a staging area for the mail-merged appeals she was sending to every C-level executive in the big book of corporate officers. Her mailings-in-progress were stacked so high that Hook had to rise from his chair to see over them. Cecil and Rock were at their own dented desks, cold-calling. They were the cheapest young fodder Hook could find -- junior-analysts-in-training who couldn&amp;#039;t sell a consulting engagement if their hamsters&amp;#039; lives depended on it. True, they&amp;#039;d been hired to do research, not to sell, but there was no research to do. He listened to them fail to finesse receptionists at companies all over the world. &amp;quot;The postage meter is empty again,&amp;quot; said Diane. He had promised her a recommendation to business school. She was no doubt getting ready to call it in, unless she had already figured out that she&amp;#039;d be better off getting one from the parking attendant. There were plenty more like her -- beautiful, brainy, ambitious -- but Hook had special feelings for Diane. He was thinking of marrying her, actually, but when he unwound that thought, it led to the day when Diane, too, would get a judge to order him not to leave the city. In lieu of marriage, he would settle for sex, but in his pursuit of the perfect office manager, he had shown excessive zeal by hiring a woman too young, too pretty, and too smart to sleep with a middle-aged married man so broke he hadn&amp;#039;t bonused any employee in more than five years and was now keeping the company alive by burning his own 401(k). &amp;quot;Charge it at the post office,&amp;quot; said Hook. &amp;quot;Our card was declined at the post office.&amp;quot; He fetched his money clip from his trouser pocket. It was like producing red meat on the Donner expedition. The air bristled with eye-shifting and hyperventilation. It was no great trick to read the minds of his staff: He can&amp;#039;t pay us, but he has cash in his pocket? He peeled three twenties and handed them to Diane, then returned to scrolling the buddy list on his phone. He did not wish to converse within earshot of the crew, but IMing might be a nice distraction. He had recently discovered the pleasures of instant messaging on his mobile after avoiding computers during all his years in high tech.  He almost zoomed past the pulsing icon of his therapist. Brenda was online? He had been seeing Brenda, off and on, since his ex-wife found out about his present wife -- a good ten years ago at least. Now there was the present wife and all the things she had found out. Hook felt that he and Brenda had flown through the universe together, galaxies of psyche dust streaming past their faces. He would go long stretches without seeing her, then realize that the invisible protein bands holding him together were gone and he was coming apart like an exploded diagram of a man. He thumbed the message, need u bad to which Brenda instantly replied, gerry. how nice. seen mom? She was the only person outside his family who called him Gerry. In their last session, she had insisted that he pay regular visits to his mother in her new nursing home -- the cheaper and depressing home to which Hook had moved her until his cash-flow situation straightened out. Until he did that, Brenda did not wish to see him again. He sent, i meant to and Brenda replied, when we see mom, we see me and then her icon ceased to glow and pulse. Hook swung his trench coat over his shoulders like Batman&amp;#039;s cape. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m gone for the day. Cecil and Rock, your phone-prospecting is beyond pathetic. Diane, make them stuff envelopes instead. For lunch, I recommend Blimpie.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve been stuffing envelopes and going to Blimpie all week,&amp;quot; said Rock.  &amp;quot;In routine begins transcendence,&amp;quot; Hook replied, stepping from behind his desk with a flourish. He knew they hated it when he wore his coat like a cape. That&amp;#039;s why he did it. In life, it was necessary to appear larger than you actually were. &amp;quot;Tomorrow, things will be different,&amp;quot; he added, just to keep them off balance, not knowing what he meant.  All the airplanes that Hook was not allowed to fly on were taking off without him, two or three every minute, vectoring into the sky like little silver toys and disappearing high above the sea. Each departure was a small heartbreak in the distance, but that made each arrival a large heart attack in the foreground. One after another, as if from a giant pitching machine, aircraft hurtled in over the horizon like uprooted skyscrapers, blotted out the sky, headed straight for the ocean, and then, just before impact, leveled off and roared past Hook&amp;#039;s face like dragons.  Today&amp;#039;s approach to BOS brought them right over Revere Beach, where Hook had traveled to enjoy a drippy roast-beef sandwich and onion rings with the woman who, fifty-three years before, had given him life and then named him Gerhard Hookerdicker. She had been married to a Hookerdicker at the time, so the surname was a foregone conclusion. But couldn&amp;#039;t she have fought the old man on the &amp;quot;Gerhard&amp;quot;? Hook tried to let it go. Another first name might not have made any difference. Would &amp;quot;Jesse James Hookerdicker&amp;quot; really have been that much better? Yes, actually, it would. They ate their lunch in an antique pavilion across the beach road from the nursing home. Hook had parked his mother&amp;#039;s wheelchair to face the water. She could walk just fine but residents were not allowed to leave the home on foot. He ached to get her out of this dump. If the Eastern Seaboard contained a more suicide-provoking collection of bungalows and clam shacks and boarded-up flophouses, he hadn&amp;#039;t seen it. He made a mental note to check a tide chart before visiting again. The sea breeze blowing through their pavilion smelled like the plague. Across the street, old men and women sat on the front porch gaping at a horde of Harley choppers parked at the curb like chromium praying mantises. Frightening people had recently roared in on these mechanical insects, or at least they seemed to be people, and now they were shouting and molesting one another in the street, dressed in garments made from the American flag. &amp;quot;You look nice today, Mother,&amp;quot; said Hook.  &amp;quot;I look like death warmed over,&amp;quot; she replied. Her milky eyes were twice their actual size behind her lenses.  &amp;quot;No, you look lovely. Your only problem is that you deserved a better son.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Always so hard on yourself.&amp;quot; It was true, he was. His name, Gerhard, meant &amp;quot;hard spear.&amp;quot; His mother started to say something about his being just like his father, but a Boeing 747 obliterated it. It wasn&amp;#039;t true anyway. His father, a mechanical engineer, had believed in two basic things: the micron and the necessity of human suffering. Hook was nothing like that. But in the airplane roar, an insight that had been traveling toward him for fifty years arrived in his brain: His parents had named him &amp;quot;Gerhard&amp;quot; because it was a warrior&amp;#039;s name. They thought it would protect him. &amp;quot;Is the bitch getting everything, Gerry?&amp;quot; his mother asked. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s getting a lot less than she thinks.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Good. Marriage is stupid,&amp;quot; said Hook&amp;#039;s mother. Since his father&amp;#039;s death, she had become quite the freethinker. He often wished he had been raised by the mother he had today. Things might have been totally different. &amp;quot;I have a big meeting this afternoon,&amp;quot; said Hook. &amp;quot;With a very important man.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Did you come see me for luck?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Maybe I did. I need this man to hire me.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Tell him if he doesn&amp;#039;t, he&amp;#039;ll regret it till the day he dies.&amp;quot; The motorcyclists now sat on the concrete seawall in their leather vests, drinking beer from plastic cups. Tattooed women wiggled on their laps and laughed lustily. Hook made a mental note: Get a tattooed woman. The beer he could get right now. &amp;quot;Would you like anything else, Mother?&amp;quot; Her eyes were closed. She shook her head and smiled. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m happy.&amp;quot; As far as Hook could see, she was telling the truth. In his brown business suit, he crossed the blazing street full of glistening, flip-flopped beach people reeking of coconut oil. A plastic cup of bad draft beer was the price of a six-pack and overchilled to the point of slush. He drank a third of it in two swallows and got instant brain freeze -- three seconds of pain so blinding he nearly dropped the floppy cup on his shoes.  He started back across the street, then stopped. Rejoining his mother with a beer in his hand was not a good idea. She was already convinced he was a high-functioning alcoholic because she&amp;#039;d seen a TV show about the amazing number of substance abusers in leadership positions around the world. She believed drinking to be at the root of Hook&amp;#039;s marital failures, when in fact the root was that his brain was in his hookerdicker. He was a perfectly normal cocktail-swilling businessman, not an alcoholic. Now, sucking this entire liter of frozen beer in thirty seconds behind his mother&amp;#039;s back and then returning to her side as if he hadn&amp;#039;t done it -- that might qualify as alcoholism. Nonetheless, that&amp;#039;s what he decided to do. He took another brain-whacking gulp. When his vision returned, seagulls were spinning like a cloud of gnats beside his mother&amp;#039;s pavilion. With that spooky animal synchronization, they shot inside en masse. Hook sprinted across the street with his beer cup out like a sword. In the pavilion the gulls were so dense, he couldn&amp;#039;t see his mother. He threw the cup at them. They mocked him with piercing screeches. He jumped onto the bench and flailed his arms. Finally the evil birds took their leave into the sky. When he hopped down, he expected bloody wounds on his mother&amp;#039;s face, but there was nothing at all. She insisted she was fine. &amp;quot;Why didn&amp;#039;t you get up and run away?&amp;quot; he asked. &amp;quot;They just wanted to eat. You were brave, though, chasing them like that.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;That wasn&amp;#039;t bravery, Mother.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;They might have pecked out your eyes.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;They were too busy grabbing our lunch.&amp;quot; The paper plates were flipped over on the bench. &amp;quot;Let me get you another sandwich.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No, I&amp;#039;ve had enough. It&amp;#039;s good they got the food. That way, they&amp;#039;ll remember us.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Remember us when?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;When we come back as seagulls.&amp;quot;  Business-strategy consulting was one of the blackest of black arts, and it was better for all concerned if clients remained unaware of exactly how the dark magic happened. Even in the flush, halcyon days, when Hurtling Spear occupied a full floor of class-A high-rise, Hook avoided client visitations whenever possible. Brenda said it stemmed from his childhood: Hook was not permitted to bring friends to the house. But Vernon DeCloud had insisted upon meeting at Hook&amp;#039;s place of business, so Hook gave him the address of Conformist Communications in a swanky new building that looked like a test tube of green gelatin wrapped in a perforated titanium tortilla. Hook flickered through the revolving glass doors with several ghosts of himself and whooshed to thirty-seven in three seconds. He stumbled from the elevator into an opalescent chamber where Jasmine, the Conformist receptionist, occupied her Jetson-like reception station. The place was starting to feel like home. Hook&amp;#039;s friend Barry, free of injunctions against leaving town, was out of town. Jasmine smiled and waved. The sight of her always went straight to Hook&amp;#039;s crotch, but she lived on a musical youth planet many light-years from his planet. &amp;quot;Espresso?&amp;quot; she offered. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m already wired, Jaz. I have a huge meeting in a minute.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I know. Barry told me. The famous Vernon DeCloud. What does that whack job want with you? He hates your kind.&amp;quot; Hook closed his eyes and breathed deeply. &amp;quot;I know. I mean, I don&amp;#039;t know. He took a bunch of engineers to an undisclosed location. That&amp;#039;s all I can find out. Maybe it&amp;#039;s about that. Hey, how come you know so much about Vernon DeCloud?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Oh, we&amp;#039;ve done a bunch of stuff for him,&amp;quot; said Jasmine. He would kill Barry, Hook decided, no matter what the self-help book said. But then it hit him that Barry had set this up. &amp;quot;I guess he doesn&amp;#039;t hate your kind.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Well, we&amp;#039;re communicators,&amp;quot; said Jasmine, &amp;quot;not . . . consultants.&amp;quot;  The phone rang. It was George, the lobby guard. Hook contrived to give Jasmine&amp;#039;s fingers a squeeze as he took the receiver. George reported that Hook&amp;#039;s visitor refused to sign the book or produce a photo ID, and that he, George, was therefore refusing to let the visitor come up, which was fine with the visitor because he didn&amp;#039;t want to come up. Hook covered the mouthpiece. &amp;quot;George doesn&amp;#039;t know DeCloud?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s never been here. Barry meets him somewhere else.&amp;quot; Then the mythical Vernon DeCloud appeared in Hook&amp;#039;s ear. &amp;quot;Why did you give me this address, Hookerdicker?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re sharing space with Conformist until our penthouse suite is ready,&amp;quot; said Hook. &amp;quot;Come on up. You can skip the ID, I&amp;#039;m vouching for you.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You come down.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Vern -- may I call you &amp;#039;Vern&amp;#039;? -- we have a gorgeous conference room here, all set up. Great espresso machine. What&amp;#039;s the problem? Did the guard offend you?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No, I like the guard. The problem is that I never go above the seventh floor in any building, under any circumstances.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Why the seventh? You won&amp;#039;t survive a jump from there.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Seven&amp;#039;s a special number.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Thirty-seven&amp;#039;s special, too.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yes, but in a different way. You want coffee? Brain Damage has the best. We&amp;#039;ll go there. Get your butt down here, Hookerdicker.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;People call me &amp;#039;Hook,&amp;#039; &amp;quot; said Hook, but DeCloud was gone. &amp;quot;Clients are assholes,&amp;quot; said Jasmine, hanging up the phone. It was a perfect example of forbidden common knowledge, but it stunned Hook to hear it from the lips of this young underwear model. Jasmine would have been all of three or four when he founded Hurtling Spear Strategy Group. How had the girl learned so much so quickly? Maybe she&amp;#039;d like to come work for him. Maybe she&amp;#039;d like to get married. &amp;quot;Maybe I should jump out that window and get it over with,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;No, don&amp;#039;t,&amp;quot; said Jasmine. &amp;quot;That window has a huge overhang one floor below it. You&amp;#039;d break all your limbs and probably your back, but you wouldn&amp;#039;t die, and then you&amp;#039;d lie in agony on hot green glass while hawks pecked out your eyes. We have these unbelievable hawks. They circle the building day and night.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I love the hawks,&amp;quot; said Hook. &amp;quot;They land on the ledge and look in at you like you&amp;#039;re sushi.&amp;quot; He sat on the edge of her desk. &amp;quot;Do you like sushi, Jasmine?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yeah, me and my boyfriend get sushi all the time.&amp;quot; She pointed to a different curved plane of aqua glass. &amp;quot;That window there, on the other hand, would be perfect.&amp;quot; Vernon DeCloud&amp;#039;s personal net worth was in the billions and yet the man&amp;#039;s slip-on skateboarding sneakers appeared to be the very same ones he&amp;#039;d worn decades before in college -- if he&amp;#039;d gone to college at all. Many high-tech overlords had no formal education whatsoever; they just popped out of the womb with their chips and codes, inviting humanity to kiss their asses. The living legend&amp;#039;s footwear made loud sucking and flapping sounds as he and Hook walked together down South Street in Boston. He looked like a giant housefly in his huge mirrored shades. He kept glancing over his shoulder as if he thought the noise from his feet was somebody following him. A block down the sidewalk, a neon sign depicted gray matter with a motorcycle slicing through it. It was Brain Damage, their destination. At the sight of the place, DeCloud slowed down and relaxed. He stopped acting like assassins were after him. When they walked in, the tattooed baristas all greeted him, though surely they had no idea who the man actually was. They had served him before and didn&amp;#039;t care who he was, and that was a refreshing thing for Vernon DeCloud. Actually, it was a refreshing thing for Gerhard Hookerdicker, too. He was the only stiff in a suit and tasseled loafers, and nobody even looked at him. &amp;quot;I called in our order,&amp;quot; said DeCloud. &amp;quot;You never asked me what I wanted,&amp;quot; said Hook, following the great man through loud trance music to a red-vinyl booth where two pint pub glasses of caf\u00E9 au lait steamed on the table in cardboard collars. Brain Damage was dark but DeCloud remained in his shades. He slid into the booth and started playing drums on the table with his fingertips. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s about smart machines, isn&amp;#039;t it?&amp;quot; said Hook, sliding in across from him. &amp;quot;What is?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Your big secret project. I&amp;#039;m guessing it&amp;#039;s about machines that are smarter than people. I&amp;#039;ve been talking about them for years. They&amp;#039;re my specialty, in fact.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t be an ass,&amp;quot; said DeCloud. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s no such thing. We don&amp;#039;t even know what a person is. How would we know if a machine was smarter than one?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;An awful lot of people think smart machines are the next big thing.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;An awful lot of people are idiots. And would you mind not saying &amp;#039;the next big thing&amp;#039;? It&amp;#039;s enough to gag a maggot.&amp;quot; Hook&amp;#039;s mobile went off like a joke handshake buzzer. His son was texting him. cld i may b get a cupple hunnerd? like rite now? &amp;quot;Who&amp;#039;s that, Hookerdicker? A corporate spy telling you what Company A is doing so you can sell it to Company B?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No, Vern, it&amp;#039;s my son. He wants some money.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Tell him to go earn some.&amp;quot; Hook sent, go earn some and holstered his device. &amp;quot;People call me &amp;#039;Hook,&amp;#039; by the way.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I know. Quite a name you have there.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like Smith or Jones in Germany.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t say. But you grew up here. I&amp;#039;ll bet they loved that in school, huh?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;What do you think, Vern?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I think your childhood must have been a freaking nightmare.&amp;quot; When he&amp;#039;d been tormented as a boy, Hook learned the self-preservation trick of rising out of his body to observe the sadness from above, like an angel watching over himself. He hadn&amp;#039;t done it in ages. He did it now, and from up near the ceiling he watched his well-dressed proxy sharing a red-vinyl booth with a bum in sunglasses. Laptops glowed in the concrete dimness like big blue fireflies. Beautiful women were sipping lattes and uploading their diaries to Web sites owned by television networks. He wanted to make love to them all. Could he scrape by as a gigolo? He&amp;#039;d be scraping by as something, that was for sure. This meeting was the end of the line. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re right,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;My childhood was not a happy one.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;And yet you survived,&amp;quot; said DeCloud. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not getting your point.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You must be one tough motherfucker, Hookerdicker.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I am,&amp;quot; said Hook, floating beside a heating duct. &amp;quot;Is that why you called me?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;That was part of it,&amp;quot; said DeCloud. &amp;quot;And then there was this little chat I had with an old friend of mine at Prognosticon.&amp;quot; If Hook had not already astral-projected, he would have done so at the mention of this company. He had known this meeting smelled wrong. What would his therapist tell him now? It would be a slogan, because Brenda loved slogans. &amp;quot;Suck it up,&amp;quot; she might say. Or maybe, &amp;quot;Shine it on.&amp;quot; He repeated those things a few times in his head, and miraculously he drew some strength from the poppycock. &amp;quot;You mean,&amp;quot; said Hook, &amp;quot;that someone at Prognosticon is so close to Vernon DeCloud that the living legend himself has come out to shake down the likes of me? For a stinking little consulting fee?&amp;quot; Prognosticon was started by two MIT kids who got the brilliant idea to collect all the available information about the universe and use it to foretell the future. They approached Hook because everyone else had laughed them out of the conference room. Hook couldn&amp;#039;t understand why. They had actually predicted some amazing stuff. Outbreaks of salmonella and red tide occurred exactly when the kids said they would, and they were only a day off on a bridge collapse and a minor coup d&amp;#039;\u00E9tat. Hook rejiggered their story to look like a B-school case study, and they got a shitload of money. The investors ousted the young founders, but not before Hook convinced the grateful kids to prepay him for five years of future strategy work. Then they were gone, and so was Hook, and the bean counters wanted their money back. Unfortunately, it was gone. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re classic consulting scum,&amp;quot; said Vernon DeCloud. Hook left the ceiling and fluttered back down to the booth. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re right, Vern, I am. And they&amp;#039;re classic investing scum. They fired the kids and brought in the boring M.B.A.&amp;#039;s, who demanded more and more phony charts and reports. No, I didn&amp;#039;t deliver. I had a soft spot for that company, and they were killing it. Why kill a bunch of poor trees, too? Hey, Vern, let me tell you a little secret about business-strategy consulting, okay?&amp;quot; And then, for the first time in his life, Hook told someone the secret. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re telling me that?&amp;quot; said DeCloud. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s my line. I say that, not you.&amp;quot; Hook stood up to leave, but he forgot you can&amp;#039;t stand up in a booth, you have to slide out. His thighs hit the table, and he plopped back down. DeCloud grabbed his shoulder. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t tell you the other thing my friend at Prognosticon said. He said you were the most incredible bullshit artist he&amp;#039;d ever seen. When you did the speech for the bankers, you had voltage coming off you like Nikola Tesla. You were glowing in the dark. They forgot about their stupid pie charts. They forgot about ROI. They felt like rock stars. They wanted to go out and take over the world. They talked about your little pep talk for months.&amp;quot; Hook had never heard this. He wished the kids had told him. &amp;quot; &amp;#039;My little pep talk&amp;#039;? No, Vern. My inspired motivational oratory. My vision. My poetry.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Your mass hypnosis.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Call it what you want. It&amp;#039;s the voodoo I do.&amp;quot; DeCloud slid his nondisclosure agreement across the table. Hook scratched it with his Montblanc and sailed it back. &amp;quot;You didn&amp;#039;t read it.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve read a million of them.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;This one says if you reveal my secrets, I can make you disappear.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Make me disappear right now.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I might have to,&amp;quot; said DeCloud. He took out his personal music player and put his earbuds in. His player was a cheesy homemade thing with black plastic knobs, worse than his sneakers. The man was the cheapest weirdo Hook had ever met, and now he was disconnecting to groove with some tunes.  &amp;quot;No, it&amp;#039;s not about smart machines, smarty pants,&amp;quot; said DeCloud. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s about the fact that there&amp;#039;s a pretty big problem with our model of reality.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Only one?&amp;quot; said Hook, not sure DeCloud could hear him anymore. &amp;quot;More or less.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;What is it? That men have to pay alimony? That you can&amp;#039;t get a liquor license?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No,&amp;quot; said DeCloud. &amp;quot;That the mind doesn&amp;#039;t exist.&amp;quot; It was Hook&amp;#039;s turn to laugh. &amp;quot;The hell it doesn&amp;#039;t,&amp;quot; he said. The mind existed, all right, because into Hook&amp;#039;s mind now sprang his mother&amp;#039;s fixation on substance abusers in leadership positions. He was surprised it hadn&amp;#039;t hit him before. Vern had smoked about a pound of weed before coming to this meeting. That explained everything, right down to the sunglasses. Good for him, but what about Hook? You couldn&amp;#039;t even get a vodka in this indie coffee shop. He was operating with a serious handicap in this conversation. &amp;quot;No,&amp;quot; said DeCloud. &amp;quot;I say the mind does exist. The physicists say it doesn&amp;#039;t.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s because the mind isn&amp;#039;t physical, Vern. It&amp;#039;s metaphysical.&amp;quot; DeCloud giggled like Hook&amp;#039;s son when Hook&amp;#039;s son was stoned. &amp;quot;Priceless,&amp;quot; he said, turning the knobs on his little machine. &amp;quot;How&amp;#039;s your mom by the way?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Odd you should ask. I just saw her an hour ago.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;She must be a really cool lady.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;She is,&amp;quot; said Hook. &amp;quot;I love my mother.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Then you should get her a proper set of dentures. It&amp;#039;s not right, her going around with no teeth like that.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;My mother has plenty of teeth,&amp;quot; said Hook. &amp;quot;She was riding the subway without a tooth in her head.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;That wasn&amp;#039;t my mother.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;And then you took her to an air show and hawks attacked her.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;They were seagulls!&amp;quot; barked Hook. &amp;quot;We were sitting by the beach. How do you know all this? You&amp;#039;ve been spying on me. You have somebody tailing me, you bastard.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I do not,&amp;quot; said DeCloud, twiddling his knobs. &amp;quot;I see you and your mother eating onion rings while airplanes blot out the sky.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Where do you see that?&amp;quot; said Hook, but then he saw his reflection in the silvered lenses of DeCloud&amp;#039;s outsized shades. &amp;quot;Whoops, lost it,&amp;quot; said DeCloud. &amp;quot;This is just a crude prototype. It&amp;#039;s like clawing through drapery to see what&amp;#039;s going on. We&amp;#039;re making great progress at the lab, though.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;On what?&amp;quot; DeCloud rested his chin on his hands and smiled. &amp;quot;Why, the next big thing.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Bullshit.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No, Hookerdicker. Thoughts are energy, same as anything else. Sooner or later somebody was going to get that. It turned out to be me. Actually, I got it when I was a kid -- I just couldn&amp;#039;t prove it.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t do this. It&amp;#039;s against the law.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Really? And what law is that? The law of physics?&amp;quot; He started to giggle again. &amp;quot;No, the law against . . . defiling everything that&amp;#039;s sacred!&amp;quot; DeCloud smacked his hand on the table. &amp;quot;See? You put your finger right on it. Our discoveries have serious perceived negatives. We know that. We need somebody to strategize how to deal with that. We think you might be the guy.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I wouldn&amp;#039;t touch this fairy tale.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Very good, Hookerdicker! That&amp;#039;s what fairy tales were trying to tell us. Thoughts are real. Real! But look at the bad name wish fulfillment already has. We&amp;#039;ve got a public-relations nightmare on our hands.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re insane.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Am I?&amp;quot; said DeCloud. &amp;quot;Your old friend at Conformist might not think so.&amp;quot; He took a loose check from his shirt pocket. &amp;quot;Say a number.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;This is beyond numbers.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You said a mouthful there, big daddy.&amp;quot; Hook&amp;#039;s phone buzzed like a cornered bee. It was his son&amp;#039;s reply. i dont know how Sebastian didn&amp;#039;t know how to earn money. Well, that made two of them. People were not born knowing how to live. They had to learn. Hook&amp;#039;s father had failed to teach Hook, and then right on schedule Hook failed to teach Sebastian. Maybe that explained his belief in smart machines: Human beings were one flop after another, right on down the line. If he sent his kid a few hundred bucks, he couldn&amp;#039;t park his car in the lot this month, and then what would he do about the car? Never mind the car, what would he do about anything? The world was full of helpless creatures, and he was one, and so was his son, and all the people in Brain Damage, Vernon DeCloud included, and someday they were all going to die. Or had that changed, too? &amp;quot;Are we all gonna die?&amp;quot; asked Hook. &amp;quot;Funny you should mention that,&amp;quot; said DeCloud. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re working on it. Say a number, Hookerdicker. Actually, just think a number.&amp;quot; I can&amp;#039;t think a number, Vern, thought Hook, because there is no number. There&amp;#039;s no up-front buyout of Gerhard Hookerdicker. Not this time, not for this. Hookerdicker gets a piece or Hookerdicker doesn&amp;#039;t play. DeCloud&amp;#039;s face changed like a baby with a gas bubble. &amp;quot;Since when do consultants get pieces? You&amp;#039;re fee-for-service guys.&amp;quot; But what if I&amp;#039;m not a consultant per se? thought Hook. What if, for some utterly mysterious reason, I&amp;#039;m the only charlatan in the whole universe who could possibly pull this off? That&amp;#039;s why you called me, right? Because I&amp;#039;m the one and you know it. Give me a piece or you&amp;#039;ll regret it till the day you die. Which is probably forever. DeCloud pushed his dark glasses onto his forehead. He had blue eyes so light they were almost white in the dim caf\u00E9. &amp;quot;How big a piece are we thinking?&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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