Chapter 22: Three Percent

Row three was dark and smelled of perfume and warm velvet.

I sat on the aisle with Deb's hand crushing mine.

On the stage, a huge screen glowed gold with two faces and one number.

A host in a silver dress welcomed four hundred people to Lodestar Night.

She introduced Mr. Winston Aldridge.

The applause was loud and polite.

He walked out from the wings in his navy suit.

At a clear glass podium in the center of the stage, he stopped, holding a card.

He set it down on the podium.

He did not look at it.

He looked out over the dark, past the lights and the first rows, and found me.

I felt it in my knees.

"Good evening," Winston said.

His voice was steady and low, and the sound system carried it to the back of the hall.

"I was going to read you a statement about destiny. I'm not going to."

A ripple went through the room.

At the back, by the sound desk, a small red light blinked.

"A few months ago I filled in a questionnaire for this app," he said.

"The app believed me, and so did all of you."

Someone laughed, uncertainly.

"I let it put a number sixty feet long on the lobby wall."

He turned his head toward the wing.

"I am sorry, Simone."

Simone stepped out from the wings, in her green wrap dress, and stood at the edge of the light with her hands clasped.

"The number is wrong," said Winston. "It's not the app's fault. A description of a person is not a person."

"Mr. Aldridge," said the host, in a frightened bright voice. "I think we'll just..."

His microphone cracked and died.

The sound simply dropped away.

The room gasped.

In the last row, by the sound desk, a figure in black had risen with one finger pressed to a headset.

It was the chair.

He was speaking into it, sharp and fast, and I could see the white of his mustache in the light of the desk.

Winston stood there, soundless, at the podium, with his mouth moving.

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