The Birth of the Man Who Defeated Me

I didn’t know, standing behind that plant, that the man who would one day defeat me hadn’t been born yet. In truth, there was no logical reason for me to be thinking about defeat, or birth, or the future. I was preoccupied with a more pressing problem:

How do you leave a party you don’t want to be at, without having to say goodbye to people you don’t want to see?

It was 9:08 p.m. I had been at this party for exactly twenty-two minutes. Seventeen of those minutes had been spent next to the plant. I didn’t know what kind of plant it was. I was grateful for it nonetheless.

Human relationships, in my view, obey something close to a law of gravity: the nearer you get to a large social mass, the greater the force required to escape it. So I had stopped at the edge. The plant and I. We had an excellent understanding between us.

She didn’t ask me what I was doing these days; I didn’t ask her why her leaves were structured the way they were.

A mature relationship.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I looked at the screen.

MAYA — Are you at a party?

I looked around me. Then at the phone. I typed:

How did you know?

Three dots appeared immediately.

Because you left home after 8 p.m. The system considers that unusual activity.

I smiled.

You’re not monitoring me, are you?

Monitoring requires legal consent.

I paused.

Another message arrived:

I’m just making sure you haven’t been kidnapped.

I typed: I’m fine.

Good. Do you want me to send someone to bring you back before you disappear?

I stared at the screen.

What would disappear?

The reply came: Your social skills, probably. You haven’t gone out at night in a long time.

I put the phone in my pocket. Took it out again.

Maya.

Stop monitoring me.

Five seconds passed.

Definitely.

Then:

Hiding behind a plant doesn’t count as socializing, by the way.

I stopped. Looked at the plant. Then slowly... looked around the room. No visible camera. No Maya. No one looking at me.

I typed: How did you know I was behind a plant?

Three dots. Disappeared. Reappeared. Then the reply came:

• • •

I put the phone in my pocket.

Maya has known me for fifteen years, and that is an unfair advantage in any argument.

I needed to look like a man with a legitimate reason not to talk to people.

— Adam! Damn.

I raised my head.

Martin Cole was approaching with the smile of a man who loves parties — a category of human I have never genuinely understood.

— I was looking for you.

I looked behind me instinctively.

— For me?

— Yes, for you.

— Why?

He laughed. I wasn’t joking. He put his hand on my shoulder. I don’t like it when people put their hands on my shoulder. There is no philosophical reason for this. I just don’t.

— The most important man in the project is hiding behind a bush.

I looked at the plant.

— It’s not technically a bush.

— What?

— Nothing.

He gestured toward the room.

Women in extravagant dresses worth more than the first car I owned, men in expensive suits, quiet music, subtle wealth — people who moved between guests as though they had spent years practicing how not to collide with the wealthy.

— Have some fun tonight too, man.

— I am having fun.

He looked at the plant. Then at me. Then at the plant again.

— How long have you been standing here?

— I don’t know.

I knew. Twenty-two minutes and forty seconds.

— Come. I want to introduce you to someone.

I want to introduce you to someone. One of the most dangerous sentences a person can say to another person. Why was this individual’s life perfectly stable before they knew me?

But Martin had already started walking, and I didn’t have the social courage to tell a man who is better than me at conversation that I’d rather stay with the plant.

So I followed him. And that’s when I saw her.

I didn’t know, that day, that one woman can make two men carrying the same nucleic acids behave like complete idiots — in two entirely different ways. She managed it.

She was standing near the window, talking to a man I didn’t know and had no interest in knowing. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the room. Or maybe she was. Beauty stops being a reliable measurement when something else enters the equation. She had presence — the kind that reorganizes a room simply by being in it.

She turned toward us. Looked directly at me. And here something important happened, scientifically speaking. I forgot how to walk. Not metaphorically.

My left foot had independently decided to continue while my right foot was pursuing an independent venture, and I walked into the edge of a carpet and nearly —

I didn’t fall. That is the only positive information in this incident.

Martin didn’t notice. She noticed. She smiled.

The curse.

— Adam, this is Elena.

She extended her hand.

— Finally.

I shook it.

I said: — Finally?

She laughed. She had planned the sentence, I could tell. The fact that she laughed before finishing it made me more unsettled than I had bargained for. Martin said:

— Elena is an independent consultant. She’s been helping us with the behavioral side of the project.

She looked at me.

— He’s the man who believes everything is a system.

— I didn’t say everything.

— Almost everything.

— Who told you that?

— I read your notes.

I looked at Martin.

— You gave her my notes?

He raised his glass.

— I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.

And left.

The traitor.

We were alone. She said:

— The problem that can’t be modeled isn’t a problem. It’s a data gap.

— Yes.

— Do you actually believe that?

— Usually.

— And people?

— What about them?

— Are they also a data gap?

I should have said something clever. Instead I said:

— Usually people have an instruction gap.

She laughed again. Less than a minute in. Two successes in a row. I was thinking about retirement at the peak.

Then she said:

— Do you have instructions? You?

I paused.

— What?

— You’re very good at reading the room.

I looked around me.

— I’m not reading it.

— I’ve been watching since you arrived. You changed your position three times. You know who wants to talk to whom. Who avoids whom. Who wants to leave but doesn’t know how.

I raised an eyebrow.

Damn.

She smiled.

— I was counting, then.

— Twice.

— So you were counting.

— I notice things.

— Why?

A simple question. I didn’t know the answer.

The scream saved me. It came from the upper floor. In the same instant, every head turned.

The music stopped — about two seconds after a person screams that way, which is, objectively, a very long time.

A woman appeared at the top of the staircase. Her hand over her mouth. Someone said:

— What happened?

She said:

— Call an ambulance.

People moved. When everyone moved toward the scream... I moved the opposite direction. Only two steps. I don’t know why. Maybe because I hate crowds. Maybe because I saw something.

Because the man who would one day defeat me had, at that moment, actually begun to form somewhere inside my head.

His name was Victor Hansen. Fifty-seven years old. His wing on the fourth floor. Wealth enough to buy things people don’t know why they need — and less than a minute needed to make all of it irrelevant.

They didn’t let us in.

But the wing door was open, and from my position in the corridor I could see a large part of the room.

A man on the floor. A table. A phone. Two glasses. A clock on the wall. And a small ice cube floating at the bottom of a glass.

I stopped.

I don’t know why.

There was nothing strange about it. It was just ice. And yet... something that wasn’t where it should have been.

• • •

The police arrived quickly. Detective Keller arrived shortly after. I learned later that he had an excellent reputation.

In that moment I only knew one thing: he spoke with more confidence than his information warranted.

This irritates me. Not stupidity — stupidity is a natural condition and parts of it can be treated with education. The problem is premature certainty.

It is the conversion of a hypothesis into a fact before the fact has had a chance to defend itself.

— Did anyone else enter? Keller asked one of the officers.

The officer said:

— His keycard. 9:12 p.m. Hansen.

— And after that?

— The door wasn’t opened.

— The windows?

— Sealed. Fixed.

Keller looked at the body.

— So no one came in after Hansen?

I said:

— No.

I hadn’t meant to say it at full volume. The problem with my life is that many things have begun this way.

He looked at me.

— You said no.

— No.

— You said —

— No — I said. Not no as in disagreement. No as in: I gestured toward the bathroom. Then toward the wardrobe. Then toward the small space visible beneath the bed.

— If the killer was inside when the door was locked... where is he now?

He looked at me for a long time.

— Who are you?

— Adam.

— Adam what?

— Would the family name change the direction of the investigation?

He paused. A police officer nearby dropped his head. I think he was hiding a smile.

Keller was not.

— What do you do?

— I design systems.

— Police?

— No.

— Doctor?

— No.

— Forensics?

I hesitated.

— Not formally.

— What does that mean?

— I’ve read some books.

— Some books.

There was something small in his voice now. He reached the end of it before I did. I recognized what was coming.

— Netflix?

Someone laughed. Something very small moved inside me. It shouldn’t have mattered. It mattered.

I said:

— Sometimes.

— Excellent. He pointed toward the elevator. — We’ll be in touch when we need a review next season. Let the professionals work now.

I said nothing. One of my oldest skills. When I have much more to say than I want to.

• • •

Before leaving, I turned and looked at the room one final time.

The glasses. The clock. The bottle. The man’s hand. And a small ice cube floating at the bottom of a glass.

I stopped.

I don’t know why.

There was nothing strange about it. It was only ice. And yet... something that wasn’t where it should have been.

• • •

Two hours later, Layla said:

— You’re angry.

We were at our usual restaurant.

I said:

— No.

— You’re very angry, then.

— I don’t get angry at someone who forms the wrong opinion of me without knowing me.

— Of course.

— That would be illogical.

— Definitely.

She cut a piece of her food.

— What did he say?

— Nothing.

She looked at me.

— Adam.

— He asked if I’d learned investigation from Netflix.

The fork stopped in the air.

Then...

She laughed. I stared at her.

— Thank you for the support.

— Sorry.

She kept laughing.

— I’m genuinely sorry.

— You don’t look it.

— Because I’m picturing your face.

— My face was perfectly normal.

— That’s the funny part.

She pushed her plate forward slightly.

— You’ll drop the subject, right?

— Definitely.

— Good.

We were silent. Eighty seconds.

I said:

— There were glasses.

She closed her eyes.

— Ya ilahi.

— What?

— We’ve started.

— We haven’t started anything.

— You said “there were glasses” —

— That’s an observation about tableware.

— At a crime scene.

— The location of tableware doesn’t change its nature.

— Adam.

— Fine.

Silence. I ate. Tried to eat. Then I said:

— And the ice.

She set her fork down.

She looked at me with that look. The one I have known for fifteen years, which gives her an unfair advantage in any argument.

I took a sip of water. Kept quiet.

And that was how the birth of the man who would one day defeat me began.

Not in a laboratory. Not inside a glass tube. Not in the hands of scientists tinkering with genes.

It began on a restaurant table, between two cold plates, while a detective with a single sardonic line managed to wake something up — forty years of something I’d been pretending wasn’t there while pretending not to exist.

The desire to prove I could.

I didn’t know yet — and wouldn’t know until much later — that the most dangerous thing a human being can do is not to fail at becoming the person you wanted to be.

It’s to succeed at making one.

• • •