We were sitting around a long table, and the topic of conversation was the future of the novel. It felt like a safe topic, because not many people were still reading novels, let alone thinking about how they were made, or might be made differently. No one was likely to mind anything we said.
Another group, almost exactly like ours, was sitting at a similar table the next dining room over, and, from what I could hear of their conversation, they were much more likely to be a target.
The person sitting across from me wasn’t wearing a mask, and he looked approachable, so I said to him, Well, it used to be the case that there was what you know, and there was what I know, but now there’s also what the computers know, and I don’t think that’s really been put into a novel yet. For example, I said, do you know the name of the person sitting to your left, three seats away?
I didn’t move my eyes toward the person I was indicating, because I didn’t want to be rude. It can be as rude to point with your eyes as with a finger. Maybe I also didn’t want to let this person know we were talking about him. He had a nubbin-shaped head, his skin seemed to be Army green, and his face was covered by a visor. Do you know his name? I asked the person sitting across from me, who shook his head. Neither do I, I admitted, but his T-shirt says that he’s NP4, and why should we doubt that?
The person sitting across from me laughed.
They were coming now, we sensed, but it still seemed more likely that they were coming for the group at the next dining table than for us. Even though it seemed more likely that they were coming for that group, our group decided to get up and take a walk.
Why is two plus two? the person sitting across from me asked, the one who had such an open face, as we rose from our chairs.
How much time do you have? I asked in reply.
Maybe we better come back to it, the person who had been sitting across from me—who was now standing across from me—said, laughing.
But then we might never come back, I said, tapping my card against the device on the table. Often people who take a break from math never do.
That had been my own case. I had gone into novel-writing instead.
We left our coats and backpacks at our seats, because we wanted them to think we were going to be returning soon, that we were just getting some fresh air. Each of us had been given a brass water bottle, but I couldn’t find mine, and, as we filed outside, I asked my companion if he happened to have the one they had given to me.
He did have it, and he was about to hand it to me, when suddenly I distrusted it and wanted my old water bottle back, and wanted my coat and backpack, too, because after all I wasn’t actually going to be returning to the restaurant. I was going to flee.
I turned away from the group and walked back inside. There my old water bottle was, dented where I had once dropped it, its purple paint scratched by years of rattling around in its mount on my bike frame.
Was there time to refill my old water bottle? They might arrive at any moment. And maybe it was drinking my own supply of water that had kept me more vigilant than the others, that had protected me. Maybe the water in the restaurant had already been tampered with.
