Year Zero Read Online Free Page B

it from my pocket. “I assume your info came from The Gretch?” Judy’sassistant Gretchen has a harmless crush on Randy, which he parlays into a steady stream of intelligence about the mighty boss’s calendar.
    “Of course.”
    I glanced at the inbound text.
    Take me to your leeeeeea-der, Earth boy!
    My hands turned to ice as my thoughts returned to my alien-addled Uncle Louie. I meanwhile noticed that my phone had matched the sender’s callback number to “Paulie Stardust”—which made zero sense, because that name wasn’t listed anywhere in my contacts.
    “I figure that if the partners are thinking of Omening you, they may give you a little trial by fire over the next couple of days,” Randy continued. “And forewarned is forearmed.”
    I forced my mind back to our conversation. “I know. I … really appreciate the heads-up.” Randy was in fact doing me a huge favor. If the partners are on the fence about someone, they’ll often stage an ambush at Omen time to see if the person can think creatively under acute, unexpected pressure. Last year, they gave a woman ten minutes to prepare an hour-long rebuttal to a
Wall Street Journal
editorial that denounced a growing
tsunami of frivolous patent litigation for smothering the tech industry (no mean feat, as the piece was essentially correct on every point). The associate had to present her rebuttal to the full office, and did a great job. 2 The next day, she received The Omen, and is now very much on track for partner.
    “I bet if they’re gonna mess with you, it’ll be at the weekly meeting with Judy tomorrow morning.” As Randy said this, my phone vibrated with another message from Paulie Stardust:
    All your base are belong to us!
    “I … I’ll bet you’re right,” I answered.
    Randy rose and opened the door. “So. You may want to brace yourself.”
    The phone vibrated one last time as he left:
    Come directly to Eatiary. All will be revealed.
    This was followed by an address I didn’t recognize. I looked it up on my phone’s map as Randy left. Eatiary, whatever it was, was on the Meatpacking District’s outer fringe. Spooked to the core, but determined to get to the bottom of this, I headed to the elevators.
    Soon I was down on the icy, bustling streets. New York in February is New York at its worst, unless you count those hundred-degree August weekends when everyone’s off at the Hamptons but you. 3 The cheery buzz of the holidays is long gone, and the spring thaw is too distant to provide any solace. Add a three-inch layer of blackened slush, and it can feel like Moscow without the twelve-cent vodka.
I started walking toward the Meatpacking District.
    Eight blocks on, I found a cab. The crosstown traffic turned out to be so bad that walking might have been faster. But it was nice to get my stricken sinuses out of the freezingrush-hour air. As I settled into the backseat, my phone started humming from a flurry of inbound texts.
    OMG, EATIARY? I’m sooooooo jealous .
    That came from a girl I faintly remembered from college. Next in the queue was this from the cousin of a long-ago roommate:
    You must must must have the Stuffed Marrow Rings with Aduki Bean reduction!!!
    And on it went—fifteen texts from distant acquaintances, as well as an actual friend or two. After wondering if everyone I knew was in on some ingenious belated birthday prank, I figured out what was happening.
    Phluttr
.
    Phluttr is a smartphone app that lets you trumpet your every thought and action to an enraptured world by pushing out mini press releases via Facebook, Twitter, SMS, email, and, for all I know, telegrams and carrier pigeons. Being this fascinating can be taxing, even for clinical narcissists. So Phluttr makes it easy by infiltrating your phone and automatically publishing whatever it learns. In my first twenty minutes of experimenting with the service, every classmate and
co-worker that I’d ever had was told that “NICK just arrived at 200 Park Avenue!”