The track record of Valley venture capitalists showed the pattern. A new, sexy tech idea would come along, and then every dollar would be chasing the same thing. Staffers from the original firm would be poached to launch rival firms—until the market became glutted with variations of the same craze. Valuations would skyrocket, and finally, the bubble would burst—the market plummeting. Then a fallow season. Then the cycle began all over again.

And for what? The development of the railroad blew away the Internet when it came to disruptive innovation. Interchangeable parts? Likewise. No, mainstream tech innovation was no threat to the status quo.

Kulkarni’s organization didn’t follow that model at all. It was one reason their investments were seldom near the tech hubs. They wanted the geniuses they identified to remain uninfluenced. It resulted in lots of failures, but then truly useful knowledge was often pried from the cold dead fingers of failure. It made those once-in-a-generation breakthroughs all the more valuable. The breakthroughs that would one day change the course of the human species.

On a day like today, for example.

Kulkarni slowed as he noticed whiteboards in the conference room. They were slathered with complex mathematical equations. He stood in the doorway as he studied the notations, nodding as he followed their logic—but then was lost. Grady had gone somewhere Kulkarni could not follow.

“Very clever, Mr. Grady.” Kulkarni realized Grady’s insights would never have occurred to him. Not in a million years. And neither had it occurred to other great minds of the age—biological or synthetic. Grady’s innovation was one of the rare “virgin births”—never conceived of before.

Kulkarni sat on the edge of the conference table near a desk phone. He just stared at the whiteboards and contemplated how differently Grady must see the universe from most people. And how beautiful that must be.

He sighed. It pained him to do this. It really did. But it was necessary. Deep down he knew it was. But doubt came with the job. After a moment Kulkarni clasped his hands together and spoke to the empty room as if in prayer. “Varuna, I need you now.”

A calm, disembodied female voice answered inside his head. “Yes, Tirthayatri. How may I assist you?”

“I am at incubator sixty-three.”

“I see you.”

“What is the status of this facility?”

“Simulations of incubator sixty-three experimental designs are inconclusive.”

“And if those designs were validated?”

“Successful implementation of incubator sixty-three designs would result in a tier-one branch event.”

Kulkarni took another deep breath. “A tier-one.”

“Correct.”

“I see.” He paused for a moment. “What is the ETA for a harvester team at my location?”

“Harvester assets are already standing by.”

Kulkarni was taken aback. “Then you were expecting this?”

“If validated, the disruption risk is high. What are your findings, Tirthayatri?”

He steeled his resolve. “I can confirm that a tier-one branch event has occurred at incubator sixty-three. Incident imagery and supporting measurements submitted at eleven, three-nine, GMT.”

“Stand by for confirmation.” A brief pause. “Submitted materials confirm that a tier-one incident has occurred.”

“Have there been any communication leaks from this location in the past seventy-two hours?”

“Checking.” A pause. “There have been forty-seven emails and eight voice messages intercepted—along with fourteen submissions to social media. All were contained or rerouted to the Decoy Net, with simulated responses from recipients.”

“Has word of this discovery escaped this facility?”

“No data concerning the tier-one event has escaped incubator sixty-three’s IP enclosure.”

Then it was still his to decide. “Recommended course of action?”

The response was nearly instantaneous. “Intellectual containment. Deploy harvester assets.”

Kulkarni nodded to himself. “I concur. Initiate containment. Record the time.”

“Time noted. Harvester assets inbound. Nonoperations personnel, please clear the area . . .”

CHAPTER 2

The Winnowers

Jon Grady watched a collection of billiard balls revolving around one another in wild orbits within the gravity modification field. It looked like a tiny solar system, except that the orbits slowly eroded in the drag of air. He laughed as the young lab techs, Raharjo Perkasa and Michael Lum, tossed more billiard balls into the gravity well created by the towering apparatus in the center of Grady’s lab.

Leaning on his cane, Bertrand Alcot stood next to Grady. “Well, it looks like the universe is as crazy as you are, Jon.”

“That’s a frightening thought.”

“Agreed. And yet you succeeded.”

“You mean we succeeded. You know I couldn’t have done this without you.”

Alcot waved this aside. “I spent years trying to convince you why your ideas would never work.” He gazed at the orbiting spheres. “And I was wrong. As I was wrong about most things in my life.”

Grady turned with concern. “What you did was challenge me, Bert. Force me to refine my theory. To change it. And change it again. And then change it again.” He laughed as he gripped Alcot’s shoulder. “There’s no way I could have done this without you. Don’t you realize that?”

Alcot pondered this. After a few moments of silently observing the orbiting billiard balls he said, “The truth is I had nothing else to do. My own work has come to nothing. Greta and I . . . all our lives we looked forward to my retirement. Now with her gone . . .”

“You’re definitely needed. I need you.”

Alcot seemed to be grappling with complex emotions. Eventually he looked up. “Your parents will be very proud of you.”

“And I’m sure your children will be proud of you. You should reach out to them.”

“I barely know them.” Alcot squeezed the handle of his cane. “Listen to me. You have to promise me something, Jon.”

“Okay. What?”

“Don’t do what I did.”

“I love my work, too, Bert. There’s nothing wrong with that.” He gestured to the gravity mirror. “That’s why we succeeded.”

“You need to love more than work. You need to have people who care about you—otherwise what’s the point?” He stared without seeing. “That girl of yours—what’s her name?”

“Well . . . Libby.”

“What happened to her?”

“She met someone at yoga class. She’s already pregnant. They’re happy.”

Alcot nodded to himself.

Grady took another glance at the wondrous gravity mirror on display before them. “This is not the conversation I thought we’d be having right now, Bert. This is a historic discovery. We should enjoy it.”

Alcot turned to face Grady. “Life waits for no one.”

“Is this not life?”

“Just promise me you’ll live outside your head as well as you live inside it.” Alcot gripped his shoulder hard. “Promise me.”

Grady could tell his mentor was serious. He finally looked Alcot in the eye and nodded. “I promise, Bert. Now would you shut up and start thinking about your Nobel acceptance speech, please?”

Alcot grimaced and then gave Grady a slap on the back. “This ridiculous hair. You know, the first time I met you, I told Greta that a dirty hippie was stalking me.”

Grady laughed. “Hey, hair is nature’s calendar.”

Just then Grady noticed forms moving out of the shadows at the back of the darkened lab. He straightened up. “Who the hell is this?”

Alcot turned as well. Perkasa and Lum looked up from their miniature solar system. Close by, the visiting investment advisers, Albert Marrano and Sloan Johnson, stopped trying to dry their suit jackets over a space heater and with curious looks came to join Grady and his team.