The Doomsday Equation Read Online Free PDF

everyone else. And you’ll get it back when you leave. This is a high-security facility and we’re all equally privileged and burdened by the trappings.” It’s one of the oak-leafed majors.
    Jeremy shakes his head. “Prove it. Prove I’m wrong,” he suddenly demands of the man at the head of the table. Everyone tenses at the direct challenge to someone who clearly doesn’t hear such talk except from one-star generals, and higher.
    It’s another of the majors who responds. “Mr. Stillwater, I understand you’re frustrated. You’re obviously very bright. Your technology holds promise but we’re fighting a war and we can’t afford to be your beta test.”
    Could it be more condescending?
    “You want the casualty reports?”
    Jeremy’s eyes widen a tad. It’s a rare utterance from the man at the head of the table. His voice is near a whisper, with a very slight northeastern drawl, the stuff of the Ivy League. Jeremy had failed to find any public information on this lead dog, no official bio, no smattering of personal details; but that might not mean much since he looks to be in his late forties, at least one full generation before people started sharing everything about their lives on the web.
    “They can be doctored,” says Jeremy.
    The lead dog looks at everyone and no one. “Somebody get Mr. Stillwater the casualty reports, ours and theirs; show him the pictures from Patwa, the empty cache, the insurgents’ recruiting figures, everything, all the classified stuff.”
    “Oh, and make it rhyme, like Dr. Seuss.”
    “Jeremy.”
    The lead dog puts up his hand to Andrea, looks at Jeremy.
    “You know Mitchell Stevenson?”
    Jeremy feels immediately defensive. He’s being sucked into a rhetorical trap, being asked to answer questions he doesn’t know the answer to, leading down who knows what path.
    “Is he the guy who came up with the idea to pretend the insurgency is still raging? Or did he write Green Eggs and Ham ?”
    “Maybe you read a feature story about him in the Times a while back. He’s one of the best mop-up guys we ever had.”
    There’s a pause. Jeremy isn’t sure what this means. Everyone can sense the cocksure geek’s lack of comprehension but no one wants to interrupt or correct the lead dog.
    “Had,” the man continues. “A sniper blew off Colonel Stevenson’s face. A sniper from a band of still-raging insurgents owning us in the mountains around Patwa.”
    After a pause, Jeremy says: “I’m not sure what that proves.” He’s lost a touch of his hostility. “I told you the insurgency was fading. I didn’t tell you no one else would die.”
    “Fair point, Mr. Stillwater. We took a calculated risk to send in one of our best men to assess whether you and your computer had been accurate. And he walked into a hornet’s nest. That doesn’t speak particularly well to our own intelligence but then again we’ve never professed to have an Oracle of Delphi.” He pauses. “You’re right, though, that our paperwork proves nothing. It can be doctored, though I doubt the military has the technology to make it rhyme.”
    He half smiles. He’s practiced, unlike Jeremy, in the art of defusing conflict. The others in the room aren’t sure whether to laugh. He continues: “The only way I can prove it to you would be to send you and your computer to the region and let you do a field test. And that’s a good way for you to wind up like Mitch, seriously and truly dead.”
    The man stands. He’s tall in the way of people whocommand power, with slightly slumped shoulders, and he has an emerging belly in the way of people who spend their days looking at monitors. Two of his lieutenants stand too but they stay when the man walks out.
    Just before he hits the door of the big conference room, he turns back to Jeremy.
    “Take the money.”
    “What?”
    “Take Silicon Valley’s money. Use your magic eight ball to do business intelligence, predict the future in some sector where no one gets