some diversity that throws people. No one ever expects a guy like me to know anything about Balzac.” He smiled. “You really ought to figure out a plan for yourself. Figure out what you really want to be.”
Adam thought back to what Professor Marsh had said this morning and sighed. “I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.” T. J. paused, then said, “I could help, you know. Sometimes it’s helpful to have someone who’s been through it to bounce ideas off of.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Absolutely. Why not? Cheers.” T. J. clinked his glass against Adam’s.
“How about a refill?”
Adam’s spirits were high with this affirmation from T. J. and the whiskey as he cheerfully mixed another Manhattan.
“So, do you still play soccer?”
“What?”
“Your dad said—during his toast he said you used to be really into soccer.”
TJ’s jaw clenched a little but he responded coolly. “No, soccer ended up not being the right sport for me. It was a little too … co-operative. I’ve found I prefer individual competition.”
“Oh.” Adam was worried he’d said something wrong.
T. J. chuckled. “Dad’s been pretty wrapped up in this Gibly stuff. Guess he’s missed the past, oh, ten years.” Then with a big forced smile he added,
“What do you say we get out of here, Adam? Go have some real fun?” Adam looked at his watch. He’d made a deal with Margaret that he could leave at eleven-thirty at night so he could work on his homework problem set, and it was now past midnight. He briefly wondered when he would get to that problem set, then brushed the thought aside. “Sounds good. Where to?”
Chapter IV
The Nerd Lab Bender
B ack on campus, Amelia was on a roll. It was approaching one o’clock in the morning and she’d been in the Gates Computer Science building since before noon. She’d gone through three shifts of teaching assistants, graduate students who hung out in the computer lab in case undergrads had any glitches and made sure people from outside the University didn’t sneak in to try to poach ideas. While most of the campus was dead at this hour, the real action in the Gates building had only just started; around eight o’clock, programmers had filed in with Chinese take-out and set up shop for the evening, and right now the energy was palpable, with twenty-odd engineers typing away at their computer screens.
The Gates building had been donated to Stanford by Bill Gates himself, and, for someone like Amelia, it was heaven. The warm, blue glow of large-screen PCs lit up the long rooms, and eager computer scientists perched on ergonomic chairs coding away around the clock. Gates had designed the building with engineers in mind. Vending machines were stocked with ramen noodles and Hot Pockets, in addition to the standard candy bars and potato chips, and the fridge was filled with an open supply of Red Bull.
Bathrooms were equipped with showers, in case students didn’t want to go back to their dorm rooms to freshen up, and the lounges were equipped with Xboxes and Wii sets for taking a break. But the real energy was in the computer rooms. The mixture of adrenaline, creativity, and anticipation was hard to describe. Everyone in the room was on the cusp of something groundbreaking. The guy next to you might be creating the next Google or Groupon, or maybe even Facebook. People came in and out, but most of them stayed for long stretches—fifteen and twenty hours at a time—the excitement of a new idea outweighing physical exhaustion.
Even though there wasn’t much chatter, there was camaraderie among the engineers. When someone finished a major code pattern, it was normal for him to throw his arms in the air and yell, “I am awesome!” and everyone would wildly applaud and respond, “You ARE awesome!” On the occasional instance when someone’s computer crashed and they lost their work, the whole room felt the devastation. Those were the worst possible moments for an