Stones (Data) by Jacob Whaler

follows the red. Ten breathless seconds go by as it scales the mountain.
    Six more directors jump to their feet and swipe their jaxes.
    The green line makes the summit as eight fingers tremble over eight jaxes.
    “Sell stock.”
    The green line goes into a nose-dive and follows the red line down.
    Two minutes and ten trades later, Ms. Chen jumps to her feet, jax in hand.
    One of the directors clears his throat. “I’m dumping my entire retirement account into this.”
    Mr. Van Pelt jerks his own jax out of his pocket, drops it and dives to the floor after it. He comes up with it in desperation and begins to trade.
    Ryzaard stands to the side, observing the greed flow unabated.
    Ten minutes later, the directors look like wax figures in some modern art display, staring ahead motionlessly at the wallscreen, fingers dancing over jaxes.
    He gently clears his throat to interrupt.
    “My apologies, but we’ll have to terminate the demonstration at this point. We don’t want to attract the attention of the International Securities and Exchange Commission. ISEC tends to get rather curious about creative trading activity.”
    Eleven exhausted directors, including Van Pelt, sit down, and the lights come back on.
    “How did we do?” Ryzaard inquires of the directors as he claps his hands together.
    “I just made 500,000 IMUs,” one of the directors exclaims. “I can finally get that beach house in Fiji.”
    “Very good. I trust that we have demonstrated the power of our new technology to your complete satisfaction.” Ryzaard’s hands hang earnestly behind his back. “Any questions, Ms. Chen?”
    The Chinese woman bows and sits down without a word.
    “You’ve seen the technology we now have. Needless to say, it is the first of its kind, ushering in a revolution in the profitability of the entire corporate enterprise.” Ryzaard pauses for effect. “But we can do better. With enough resources, we can increase the volume of our data streams and boost the power of our predictive analytics by several orders of magnitude. Instead of thirteen seconds, what if we could predict thirteen hours or thirteen days into the future? What if we could predict phenomena other than the market, say consumer preferences, or even world events, such as the recent acquisition by the Japanese of military bases in Thailand, Greece and Tonga? With a little imagination, there is no limit to our potential for profit.”
    A stir rips through the directors.
    Ryzaard lowers his voice to a whisper. The room goes silent. “The only constraint on our algorithms is computing power. We’ve run up against the limits of our resources. We need to invest more, much more, to exploit this to our full advantage. And we need to make changes to the corporate organization to better suit this new direction.”
    Ryzaard arches an eyebrow in Van Pelt’s direction. “I give the floor back to the Chairman. I’m sure you will find his proposals interesting.”



CHAPTER 14
    M att slides through the back door into the kitchen just before midnight. His dad is sitting at the table working on a slate. “You don’t have to wait up for me, Dad.”
    “I know,” Kent says. “I’ve been working on an investigation of LanGar Corporation. Seems their tuna ranch off the coast of New Guinea is leaking toxic levels of nitrogen. Another red algae bloom disaster to track.”
    Moving past his dad to the kitchen sink, Matt fills a glass of water and downs it in three loud gulps. “Keep up the cyber-sleuthing. As for me, I’m going to bed. Big day tomorrow.” He disappears down the stairs into his room.
    As he lies on his futon waiting for sleep to come, the silent darkness seems to enter his mind, wrap around itself and form into a knot. The tightness becomes a ball that moves down from his head into his stomach, as if it were trying to get out. Twitching fingers grab the jax next to his hand and dance along its side.
    Hey Jess. Still up?
    Two seconds later, the vibration tells