Performance Anomalies by Victor Robert Lee

this.”
    “I didn’t pay money for it.” Cono looked at Todd in amazement. “Of course I didn’t.”
    “Some girl give it to you? The one at Michael’s who keeps giving you the eye?”
    “No.”
    “No, what?”
    “I took it.”
    “You stole it?”
    “I feel a little guilty, because it was so easy. The man at the store left it there.”
    “On the counter top, you mean.”
    “Yes,” Cono said, “then he went to help someone else.”
    “And you helped yourself.” Todd rubbed his fingers across his forehead, hard.
    “Too easy, you’re right,” Cono said. “Didn’t have to use any tricks.”
    Todd scolded Cono. It was the only time Cono had seen Todd’s eyes get lit up by anything other than their discoveries.
    “Cono, I don’t want to commute all the way to San Quentin to continue our collaboration. You have to get a job. No more stealing.”
    Cono got a day job, “serving petrol,” as he put it, at a station on the other side of the highway that kept the blacks and Latinos a safe distance from the mandarins of the university. Todd and Cono continued their evening sessions.
    “Cono, when you hear things, how do you hear things?” And on and on.
    Three months later they knocked on the door of a patent lawyer down the street from Todd’s apartment. The next day the attorney said he was so interested in their data compression techniques that he would work for them for no fee and wait to get paid out of downstream licensing fees. To Cono’s eye, the creases above the attorney’s mouth seemed to quiver too much, and there was a lack of smoothness as ripples of expression flowed across his face; Cono told Todd the guy couldn’t be trusted. Todd disagreed. A month later Todd said, “He’s a schmuck.”
    “Schmuck?”
    “Like you noticed the first time. What the hell did you see, anyway? Maybe there’s another algorithm there …”
    On a Sunday morning at Michael’s Café a man with thick, white hair overheard one of their bizarre conversations and approached them. Jim became their Silicon Valley godfather. He was a lawyer, a local figure with a storied past who seemed to know everyone. He set up a company to hold the patents for them, and soon everyone, it seemed, was interested in their data-compression algorithms: a chip company that wanted to provide video on demand; a consortium that intended to leap-frog videotape technology; a company hoping to send pictures using a new fad called the Internet.
    Try as he might, Cono couldn’t perceive any telltale shimmying of facial muscles that would signal him not to trust Jim.
    “Jim, what do you want?” Cono asked him square on.
    “I want you to succeed!”
    They did succeed, but neither Todd nor Cono was interested in business. Cono was restless and had had enough of California; his hands still smelled of gasoline because he hadn’t given up his day job, despite the mounting income from numerous technology firms. “Jim,” he said, “I want to move on. Change the business papers so Todd gets more of the money. He did all the work.”
    Todd stopped chewing his pencil and threw it like a dart across the room. “No way, Jim,” he said. “I’m not a schmuck. Don’t change anything. Cono and I did it together.”
    Cono did move on, though, and in time their algorithms for manipulating and compressing images became more than popular; they became essential. The mathematical inventions soon crept into countless devices, including something called Digital Versatile Disc. It also turned out that a system named MPEG worked best when using their methods. The patent royalties made the two young men rich, in a recurring fashion. In Chinese, Cono called this compounding windfall his “ zìyóu lĭwù .” His freedom gift .
    The wealth meant nothing to Cono, except that he decided to resist the urge to steal, and he felt freer to travel. And he could help friends when he wanted to. Friends like Xiao Li, and Irina, and a schoolteacher named Dimira.