Page 51 of Dark Sky

“You know, there was a time when we knew where everybody was—our siblings, our parents, our neighbors. That’s because wetalkedto each other. Actually talked. We knew when someone was going to the store or to the movies. But that was before everybody spent their lives staring at their phones. The idea behind our app was to re-create that simple idea of a community of people who cared about each other.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “I didn’t mean to anger you.”

“You have kids, right?” Price asked.

“Three daughters,” Joe said.

“Wouldn’t you like to be able to open an app on your phone and know where all of them are and that they’re safe?”

Joe winced. He thought of several scenarios concerning his adult daughters that he absolutely didn’t want to know about. He said, “No, but my wife might like that.”

“Exactly,” Price said.

As they wound through a crowded copse of lodgepole pines, Joe said, “So what happened to the app? Why haven’t I heard of it?”

“It still exists, but it isn’t public,” Price said cryptically. For once, he didn’t say more.

“Did you sell it?”

“That’s what one does in my industry,” Price said. “You invent a unique technology, and if you’re lucky, someone bigger wants to buy it for hundreds of millions. Remember, Tim and I were sharing a dorm room at the time. We weren’t wealthy. By then I had the majority of the shares by just enough to make the decision on behalf of the company.”

“Who bought it? The government? The military?” Joe asked.

After a long break, Price said, “Something like that.” Then he moved on quickly. Joe noted it. “Anyway,” he said, “Tim and I didn’t agree on the sale or the terms. I was able to borrow a few million from a VC and buy him out except for five percent of the parent company. He was really happy with the deal at the time and, frankly, we were sick of each other. Tim thought he’d use the money to go and invent other great products, but hedidn’t and he hasn’t. He had one failure after another, unfortunately. Have you ever heard of WarmGlow?”

“No.”

“No one has,” Price said. “That’s my point. It was supposed to measure the rise in thermal temperature of a potential partner when he or she was near you. Somehow, it was supposed to reveal attraction. That was one of Tim’s great ideas. But it was a spectacular flop. It turns out the app couldn’t tell the difference between someone who heated up because they wanted to bewithyou and someone who was angry and wanted to punch you in the mouth.”

“Hmmm.”

“Tim was in debt when he came to me, and his investors wanted to string him up,” Price said. “This was just around the time we launched ConFab. He pulled at my heartstrings and reminded me of all those hundreds of hours we’d spent coding together in our dorm room. How we were such good friends. I let my feelings get in the way of my business sense, so I hired him back.”

“To be your assistant,” Joe said.

“He said he wanted to be partners again,” Price said defensively. “It was his idea, and that was the only position I had open in my inner circle. He might have thought he’d step right back into his role as my Steve Wozniak or something. Or that he’d be given a division or a big-shot title someday, but Tim, deep down, is a fuckup. I couldn’t just hand him a new venture knowing he’d shit the bed.

“He suggested once that I buy out his remaining five percent.I said I’d do it, but only at the value of what his shares were worth at the time we split up, so maybe a few million. Tim thought it should be for the current value, say eighty to ninety million. But he’d signed a document when we split up, freezing the value where it was at the time. That was his signature on the deal, not mine. Nobody held a gun to his head and made him sign it. So he’d fucked himself once again. That wasn’t my fault. The lawyers said, ‘Cut him loose,’ but I kept him around. I kept him close. I treated him like a brother.”

“I saw how you treated him at the airport,” Joe said.

Price waved that away.

“When I think about it, the signs were there that he’d betray me,” Price said. “I wanted to bring my wife, Marissa, along. She’s a real adventurer, maybe even more than me. She’s also three months pregnant...”

“Congratulations,” Joe said.

Price was on a roll. “I guess Tim didn’t want to kill off an innocent woman and our child. That probably would have been too much. But me? I had no idea how much he resented me. I should have listened to the lawyers a long time ago.”

—

Joe and Price trudged across a rockslide that had cleared a steep slope of trees several years before. In the open, Joe noted that the volume of snow had increased and was now accumulating on the ground. That wasn’t good, because leaving a trail in the snow was unavoidable if the Thomases figured out they’d been ditched in the southern drainage.

The trees opened up and Joe saw movement ahead and stopped. Price did the same.

“Look,” Joe said. He pointed out a small herd of elk grazing on the edge of the rockslide. Four cows, two calves, and two bulls.

“Are those our elk?” Price asked in a whisper.

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