A Quiet Morning at the Paradox Club
In a secure basement room of the Paradox Club, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a young woman in a black suit sat in the midst of an array of antique computers listening to the buzz of a fluorescent light overhead.
The only piece of equipment in the room that postdated the creation of the smartphone was the iPad on which she played word games and math puzzles.
A low-resolution display covering one wall of the room pulsed in various shades of green.
To the digital native sitting in front of it, the wall looked like a matrix of Christmas tree lights, but if she squinted and looked from the back of the room, it was possible to tell that this display was meant to show a map of the world.
At the bottom of the display was a series of numbers capable of flipping over like an old railway station departure board.
This morning, like every morning, they were all zeros.
She had no idea how most of the equipment worked, or even if it worked at all.
Her job was to sit in the room and pick up a red phone if a red light appeared on the map.
She couldn’t believe they actually had a red phone—connected to a landline, no less.
In this bunker of a room with its antique display and its red phone she felt as if she were back in the Cold War—or at least in a Cold War movie.
At twenty-six, she had no recollection of the actual Cold War, but she had seen Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove.
“No, thank you. Is everything quiet?”
“Everything is quiet.”
“Then I think I’ll go home.” Pilgrim 3 shelved her copy of Gatsby the Great, shed her cardigan, and strode out through the members’ lounge of the Paradox Club, scattering the few members present and leaving them, as she saw it, awestruck in her wake.
Nemo 7 watched from the window until he saw Pilgrim 3 on the sidewalk below. Then he pulled out his cell phone and typed a message: All quiet on the Western Front.