The Humanist Read online

  “Well, right now you’re pissing me off.”

  “I’m getting there, Grant.” I pause and look at him intently. “What about you, Grant? What’s your origin story?”

  He begins to fold his arms, but the restraints stop his movement. He blinks slowly and takes a deep breath. It’s fascinating to watch someone who’s been on death row for years to become institutionalized and have all hopes dashed. Then to see them forget all that, to think they are just like everyone else—free. Free to do whatever he wants. But by far the most interesting moment, the one I’m waiting for, is when he remembers where he is and why he’s here.

  “I don’t have an origin story, Atlas.”

  “Sure you do,” I reply. “You were born in New Hampshire to Tom and Betty, right? Two of the most middle-class people I’ve ever researched. You did all right, though. School captain, top of the class. You broke the mold. Went to college, graduated with honors. Started your own business. Happily married Melanie, had kids. Business was doing well, really well. So well, in fact, that you moved up a few pegs on the social pecking order. Then you decided you wanted to make a difference. So, you run for mayor. Everything’s great. You’re a star on the rise. Does that sound about right? Public office. Senator. How am I doing?”

  “Yeah, it sounds about right,” he says, nodding slightly. “So what?”

  “Well, it’s important. Your success is important—was important. Doesn’t really matter now, I guess.”

  He shrugs.

  “See, we all have origin stories. All those things we’ve done, all those experiences that make us who we are. I mean, I skipped a lot of the mushy emotion bullshit stuff because, let’s face it, who really cares, right? The fact you started a charity to help disadvantaged children? Or that you used to volunteer at your kids’ schools talking to the students about resilience? Blah! Who cares? The jury certainly didn’t care about that stuff when they handed down the death sentence.”

  Grant stares at me, or maybe through me. He says nothing, so I keep going.

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it? All those good things. Everything to ensure your success and progress through life. To increase your personal value. And yet, when you were put on the stand and pummeled by the prosecution, your stocks fell quicker than a virgin’s panties on prom night. Man, you should’ve seen the look on your face. I bet you were hanging out for reasonable doubt. Am I right? Of course, I’m right—of course you were. But there was this nagging thing in the back of your mind. You thought no jury of twelve would believe all the evidence laid out before them. That all you needed was one person. One person who didn’t believe the prosecution.”

  He clenches his jaw. I keep talking.

  “And yet, a murderer who does their time with no trouble gets an early release. Finds themselves on a program. Improves themselves, or at least makes others believe they have. Gives their time to charity. Helps others avoid the same mistakes so they can have a brighter future. Helping disadvantaged youth find another outlet instead of gangs and drugs. This person, well, they are bloody saints. People look at them and go, ‘Poor soul, trapped in his upbringing. Did the wrong thing, but at least now he’s trying? Give him a gold star.’ And then? Boom. Personal value through the roof. Hardly seems fair, does it?”

  “Please, stop talking,” he says, closing his eyes.

  So, I keep talking.

  “I mean, which is better? Which is worse? The one who’s good but does wrong? Or the one who’s bad but does good? In reality, for me, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is being able to predict it. Actually, what really matters is knowing when something—a stock, for instance—is at its best and about to plummet, or vice versa. That’s where real money is made, when real value is delivered. Take that sustainability stock, for example. Sometimes you just need to look beyond the numbers. And sometimes you just need to help those numbers along a bit.”

  “You’re giving me a headache,” Grant sighs.

  “I’d give you some drugs I have in my pocket, but the guard made it pretty clear I wasn’t allowed to pass anything to you.”

  I look to my door as I say this, the one I used to enter the room. I took a step back when I saw there was no door, but a wall a few feet closer than it should have been. I shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Grant huffed.

  “Nothing,” I say, and slowly open my eyes. When I look up, the door is there, back where it should be. Deep breath. Slow release.

  “Is there anything else? Anything important for you to tell me?”

  I walk to the far wall before responding.

  “Grant, it’s all important. Let me continue.”

  Chapter 8

  Look, I’m not going to lie—I spent a lot of time researching poker. I’d stay up from sunrise to sunset studying it. You know, strategies. Even tried finding out about Talon’s version of the game, but not even Google had anything on it. So, I resorted to basic, generic tactics. Seeing as I’d be playing with seasoned veterans, I figured I’d take it easy the first few games until I got the hang of it. Let’s face it. There’s no skill in poker in the short term; it’s predominantly luck. However, the long term is a different question. This is where skill comes into its own right, where the better players make mathematically superior decisions than the people next to them.

  Between fantasies of rolling around in a bed of money, my week consisted almost entirely of work. Oh, but I did get a date with that Olivia gal. Nice enough of her to show up on my doorstep unannounced. I came home one evening to find her camping out at my door. Which made sense, I guess. She did ask me to call her, and I never did. And yet, she returned. Insert something about setting them free here, if you’re into that kind of thing.

  Apparently, she was in the area and enjoyed last time, so she wanted to see me again. To be completely honest, it took me a couple of minutes to remember who the hell she was. How she got into the building in the first place, I have no idea. Maybe that’s why I was attracted to her—the fact she could use some smarts to get around obstacles that got in her way.

  Ha ha ha! Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. It was her boobs! That’s what attracted me. Now, don’t get me wrong. Pretty face, very pretty face. And damn smart to boot. I’m not a shallow guy, but damn, am I right? Anyway, we went on a date, like a real one. Shitty coffee at a shittier joint around the corner. We spoke about everything: her family, the studies she loved, the job she hated, all that shit. I listened to some of it, pretended to listen to the rest. I got the gist of the conversation. We both drank coffee and shared a glazed doughnut. Not romantic or nutritious, but, hey, we laughed. We shared stories (mine were made up, of course). I was witty, and she smiled at me in a way no one ever had. But please, believe me, this isn’t one of those stories. I’m not going to tell you she changed me, I became reformed, or she set me on some path to greatness. The reality couldn’t be further from that.

  You see, I don’t have many friends. Come to think of it, I don’t have any friends. But the reason for that is simple—I don’t need friends. I don’t need the complication that comes from them. I don’t want to rely on anyone, and I don’t want anyone relying on me.

  I do have acquaintances, people I frequent certain establishments with. Some from the office, high-strung fuckers looking for a line of coke to snort and a hooker to suck on a pacifier.

  Now, I’m sure some Harvard study is going to tell you friends are good for physical and mental health, that they help you deal with stress and make better life choices, but I think that’s a load of shit. I believe friends are good for three things.

  One: to stay connected to reality. But who the fuck wants that? Reality is either boring or painful. There’s little good in the here and now. There are only the present and the future, and our views on that dictate what is real, so why should I place that in someone else’s hands?

  Two: to get help when you need something. Think love, money, or support. I need none of those things. I�
��ve been able to get by just fine on my own. When I needed money, I worked my ass off to get a job and get through. I’ve rolled up the sleeves and worked through it. Christ, it really isn’t hard. All these pansy kids today with their expectations and entitlements. I tell you, life’s going to kick them in the balls the first chance it gets, and then they’ll go running to Mommy, or Daddy, or the government, asking for a handout, an explanation, revenge, or money.

  And three: to be there when they need something. Let me just refer you back to point two.

  The best part of the date was when she lingered at my stoop for just a second too long, and we kissed. Of course, we had done more than that other night—way more—and she had come back, so maybe that was expected. Anyway, I took her upstairs, and we ended up in bed.

  So, in summary, I don’t need anyone, but I do need them to do things for me. And I will put in as many coffees and doughnuts as I need to, if it ends up in sexual promiscuity. I know what you’re thinking. Asshole, right? But we all do things to get things. That’s just how the world works. I’m just making my intentions extremely clear. Wouldn’t you rather know someone’s intentions, however blunt they are, rather than making assumptions based on your perception of the truth? Christ, I’m the last damn boy scout.

  After I saw her into a taxi at two the next morning, I couldn’t sleep. So damn wired. How had things picked up so rapidly? From junior associate to a corner office, an invitation to a club I couldn’t tell anyone about, and a girl who made my sexual fantasies come true. It felt like a black swan event, one that would have been a surprise to anyone, let alone myself. It reminded me of when Porsche declared they owned Volkswagen in ’08, and VW shares went up over ninety percent in a single day’s trading.

  But the real breakthrough, and the bit that should interest you, came two days later. I was making myself at home in my new office. It was Elton’s old office, which has some kind of symmetry or poeticism about it or something. I had a corner office bigger than my whole apartment, room enough for a couch and a bookcase—which was empty, by the way. I mean, what the hell was I going to put in there? It came with views of Central Park, so, go me.

  Anyway, on that particular day, old man Tealson came in and took a seat in my office. Now, let me tell you how interesting this is, because Tealson never goes to anyone’s office. People go to see him, not the other way around. Which means he had something very important to tell me, something that just couldn’t wait.

  Regardless, there he was, sitting in my steel and fabric chairs on the other side of my desk. A far cry from the luxurious, handcrafted, calf leather armchairs that occupied his own world several stories above us. I felt honored he bothered to drag his scrawny ass down to my neck of the woods to set the record straight.

  “You know what people want?” he asked, stretching his arms over the length of the chair, his bony long fingers clutching the ends.

  I always wondered how someone like Tealson could score a lingerie model as a piece on the side to a wife who was an ex-lingerie model. Then I thought about his boat, his car, his four holiday homes, his executive apartment in the city. There’s a lot to be said for materialized wealth. People can talk about love all they want. Money is key here.

  Lennon and McCartney famously said, “You can’t buy me love.” Bitch, please.

  And believe me, I realize how contradictory that sounds. I mean, Olivia wasn’t after my money, because when we met, I didn’t have much of it. Maybe it was an investment of her time. Perhaps she saw bigger things in me. The parallels to my world were not lost on me.

  I leaned back in my chair, bringing my hands together, pretending to be deep in thought. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Results, Atlas. Results.”

  I pointed to my desk. “I made four hundred million this week for this company.”

  “Oh, it’s not about that. No one is questioning your ability to get a result...any old result.”

  “Then what’s this about?”

  “Let me tell you a story,” he said, crossing his arms. “In 1979, my football coach took us all the way. Before then, we had been at the bottom of the league and had been there for years. Our home crowds expected us to lose every time. And lose we did. Every damn game. We were at the bottom in every metric. People got used to it. We were a bunch of stragglers without any hope whatsoever. We had no talent, no equipment, and really shitty attitudes.”

  The old man didn’t go into detail about what level of football he was talking about. I quickly did some math and figured he was probably referring to college ball. Once again, he didn’t bother going into it. And to be frank, I’m glad. Because I didn’t give a shit. But I listened anyway, with as much enthusiasm as I could fake.

  “Then, we got a new coach, you see. His expectations were different from what we were used to. He woke us up, made us comfortable in the uncomfortable. He took us from the bottom of the league to the top, and we only dropped one game. A line call in the dying minute that went against us. We could have been undefeated. Anyway, we made it to the end, and we won the trophy.”

  I stared at the old man, wondering how he could have ever played football. Surely, he would have been more at home running the water than on the field. I don’t know, maybe times had changed. Maybe he shrank as he grew older. Perhaps in his prime, he was a two hundred forty-five-pound linebacker.

  “Uh huh,” I said. “And?”

  “The next year,” he said, not even noticing my discomfort with the conversation, “management gave him an ultimatum: Get us to the bowl without dropping a game or go find yourself another job.”

  “Huh,” I offered. “That seems quite harsh considering where you started and where he took you to.”

  “The world is unfair, kid!”

  “So what?” I said, leaning back in my chair. “You going to tell me he did it, that against all odds he achieved the near-impossible, that he turned you into back-to-back champions?”

  “Hell, no!” he laughed. “We bombed...hard. Won three games the whole season. He lost his job! Took a gun and blew his brains out in his shitty little one-bedroom apartment.”

  “Fuck,” I said. I didn’t know what to say or where all this was going.

  “Damn right.”

  “So...you’re considering me as a player and you the coach? That you can take me to the top of my game?”

  He laughed. Really fucking hard.

  “Fuck, kid. Did you miss the boat on that one! But you gave me a laugh, so I’m going to give you a pass.” Then the joy vanished from his face, and his eyes grew serious. “No, by the way, you arrogant little shit. The moral of the story is that when you achieve something, people don’t just want the same again. They want it bigger and better.”

  He stared at me. There were several seconds of silence.

  “So, I’m not talking about you getting the same old result. I’m talking about you making something bigger and better. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I nodded slowly. “Yeah, reading you loud and clear. No pressure at all!”

  He stood up. “Because I put my fucking neck out for you. Which means everything you do is a reflection on me. This office you have is yours because I gave it to you—don’t forget that. And that means I can revoke it at any time.”

  Shit. Didn’t that sound familiar. I wonder what else Tealson and Talon had in common? On second thoughts, I don’t even want to think about it.

  “I’ve done this for you, which means I want payment in due course. I gave you everything you needed: hardware, software, contacts, expense accounts, the list goes on. That all makes me wonder when the payoff will be.” He looked around the office. “Fucking Elton! Imagine if he was stock. Where I thought he was heading, I would have invested a hell of a lot. And considering his lack of judgement, his monumental fuck up, that one decision he got wrong...well, I would’ve lost an absolute fortune. Not worth shit right now. Would’ve lost out big time.”

  At th
at, Tealson, evidently please with this accusatory tirade, stormed out of the office.

  As the door swung shut behind him, a million thoughts raced through my mind. The bigger picture, the intricacies of it all, the machinations of such an approach. Hell, I even pondered the ethical nature of it all. I briefly thought about morals, but then I quickly discarded them. I’m an investment banker. Morals played little.

  Finally, after pondering through the complications, an idea had formed. But I couldn’t pull it off by myself. I needed help.

  And that’s where Sonja entered the story.

  Chapter 9

  If you ask enough questions, you discover what you’re looking for—and I asked around plenty. I was seeking a computer whiz because I had no intention of learning all that shit and doing it myself. To be perfectly honest, I could have if I wanted to; however, fast to market was more important. I was outsourcing. Being strategic. Being resourceful.

  The hacking community and various dark web nodes referred to her as Fur, the Latin word for thief. I liked that. The symbolism of it all. She spent most of her time coding intricate protocols for sensitive collateral. She devoted her evenings breaking those same barriers and making money for a lot of people. I knew she was part of that list, but how much of that was true was a matter of debate. I didn’t care who she connected with, or whatever shady shit she did to pay the rent. I only cared about her expertise and what she could do for me.

  The meeting place was a diner on the outskirts of town. A place where the tables get wiped down once a day, where the seats are old and worn, and where the coffee tastes like you were gnawing on an old shoe. It felt like the perfect location to discuss this opportunity. I chose a booth farthest from the door and slid into it so I could still view the entrance.

  A few other customers were also there, but I felt out of place in my gray suit, polished shoes, and professional overcoat. A trucker sat at the counter. He hadn’t bothered to remove his cap as he alternated between shoveling eggs and guzzling coffee. He had his rig parked on the opposite side of the road. There was an older couple at a table, a map laid out between them, and they were pointing with spoons on the map, planning their next stop. Evidently, they owned the camper van out the front.