Lexicon

his mouth, screamed words, well, that was not the same.
    “Don’t worry about me,” said the kid. “I’m good to go.”
    “Don’t take any risks. Anything looks wrong, don’t investigate. Just walk away. We don’t have to do everything today.”
    The kid adjusted his DOWN UNDER cap. He thought Eliot was crazy, of course. “Well, I’m going to do this.”
    Eliot nodded. “Good luck.”
    “Heh,” said the kid. “Thanks.” He stepped around the razor wire and began to walk up the road.
    • • •
    With distance, the kid’s body shimmered in the heat haze rising out of the blacktop. Soon he was hard to make out at all, just another twisting current of air. Eliot stood with a hand shielding his face from the sun, watching.
    His cell phone rang.
    “Thanks for the cap,” said the kid. “Glad I’ve got it now.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    “I have seriously never been this hot.”
    “Can you see the town’s outskirts?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Should be close.”
    “Yeah, I know. I have the maps by heart.”
    They fell silent. The sun beat down on Eliot’s head. He should retreat to the car. In a few minutes. He would wait until the kid reached the town.
    “You used to teach her at the Academy. Virginia Woolf. That’s what I heard. Is that true?” The kid was panting a little. “We have to spend an hour on the phone, Eliot; we may as well talk. Jesus.” He blew air. “This is so ridiculously hot.” Eliot heard him take a swig from the water bottle.
    “Yes, I taught Woolf.”
    “Did you see it coming? At all, I mean? Did you ever get the sense she might . . .”
    “Might what?”
    “Go ballistic,” said the kid. “Kill a whole town. I don’t mean to insult your observation skills, which are, clearly, very good. I just wonder how you can miss something like that. You know? It wasn’t just you. It was everyone. We’re supposed to know people.”
    “There’s a risk in training anyone. In Woolf’s case, her potential seemed to justify it.” He shrugged, although there was no one to see him. “We were wrong.”
    “I never met her. She’d left by the time I started.” He coughed. “She’d been kicked out, I mean. Banished. Whatever. It’s really dusty. The wind . . . I think I can see the refinery.”
    “Keep your eyes open.”
    The kid laughed, which turned into another cough. “Seriously, you’re making me nervous for no reason. There’s nobody in here.”
    Eliot said nothing.
    “Do you know what I do? In the organization? I’m in Digital. Web services. You know?”
    “Not really.”
    “You should. This is where everything is going. Let me tell you about it. Bring you up to speed.”
    “Fine,” he said.
    “Well, don’t humor me. I don’t care. I’m just offering you an inside look at what Yeats himself has called, quote, the greatest attack vector since print, end quote.”
    “Fine.”
    “The organization is changing, Eliot. It’s not newspapers and TV anymore. That stuff is old school. Obsolete. And you older guys, if you don’t watch out, you’ll be obsolete with it. You don’t want to be obsolete, do you?”
    “No.”
    “No. So let me help you out.” The kid panted awhile. “The key to the Web is it’s interactive. That’s the difference. Online, someone visits your site, you can have a little poll there. It says, ‘Hey, what do you think about the tax cuts?’ And people click and segment themselves. First advantage right there. You’re not just proselytizing, speaking into the void. You’re getting data back. But here’s the really clever part. Your site isn’t static. It’s dynamically generated. Do you know what that means?”
    “No.”
    “It means the site looks different to different people. Let’s say you chose the poll option that said you’re in favor of tax cuts. Well there’s a cookie on your machine now, and when you look at the site again, the articles are about how the government is wasting your money. The site is dynamically selecting content based on what you want. I mean, not what you
want
. What will piss you off. What will engage your attention and reinforce your beliefs, make you trust the site. And if you said you were
against
tax cuts, we’ll show you stories of Republicans blocking social programs or whatever. It works every which way. Your site is made of mirrors, reflecting everyone’s thoughts back at them. That’s pretty great, right?”
    “It’s great.”
    “And we haven’t even started talking about