“This girl has the spark of life. This is my primary filter for new friends (girl- and otherwise) and the highest compliment I can pay. I've tried many times to figure out exactly what ignites it -- what cocktail of characteristics come together in the cold, dark cosmos to form a star. I know it's mostly in the face -- not just the eyes, but the brow, the cheeks, the mouth, and the micromuscles that connect them all.Kat's micromuscles are very attractive.”

“Neel cuts in: "Where'd you grow up?""Palo Alto," she says. From there to Stanford to Google: for a girl obsessed with the outer limits of human potential, Kat has stayed pretty close to home. Neel nods knowingly. "The suburban mind cannot comprehend the emergent complexity of a New York sidewalk.""I don't know about that," Kat says, narrowing her eyes. "I'm pretty good with complexity.""See, I know what you're thinking," Neel says, shaking his head."You're thinking it's just an agent-based simulation, and everybody out here follows a pretty simple set of rules"-- Kat is nodding--"and if you can figure out those rules, you can model it. You can simulate the street, then the neighborhood, then the whole city. Right?""Exactly. I mean, sure, I don't know what the rules are yet, but I could experiment and figure them out, and then it would be trivial--" "Wrong," Neel says, honking like a game-show buzzer. "You can't do it. Even if you know the rules-- and by the way, there are no rules--but even if there were, you can't model it. You know why?"My best friend and my girlfriend are sparring over simulations. I can only sit back and listen. Kat frowns. "Why?""You don't have enough memory.""Oh, come on--""Nope. You could never hold it all in memory. No computer's big enough. Not even your what's-it-called--""The Big Box.""That's the one. It's not big enough. This box--" Neel stretches out his hands, encompasses the sidewalk, the park, the streets beyond--"is bigger."The snaking crowd surges forward.”

“To be honest, my life has exhibited many strange and sometimes troubling characteristics, but shortness is not one of them. It feels like an eternity since I started school and a techno-social epoch since I moved to San Francisco. My phone couldn't even connect to the internet back then.”

“Then: I google "time-series visualization" and start work on a new version of my model, thinking that maybe I can impress her with a prototype. I am really into the kind of girl you can impress with a prototype.”

“Neel takes a sharp breath and I know exactly what it means. It means: I have waited my whole life to walk through a secret passage built into a bookshelf.”

“Have you ever played Maximum Happy Imagination?""Sounds like a Japanese game show."Kat straightens her shoulders. "Okay, we're going to play. To start, imagine the future. The good future. No nuclear bombs. Pretend you're a science fiction writer."Okay: "World government... no cancer... hover-boards.""Go further. What's the good future after that?""Spaceships. Party on Mars.""Further.""Star Trek. Transporters. You can go anywhere.""Further.""I pause a moment, then realize: "I can't."Kat shakes her head. "It's really hard. And that's, what, a thousand years? What comes after that? What could possibly come after that? Imagination runs out. But it makes sense, right? We probably just imagine things based on what we already know, and we run out of analogies in the thirty-first century.”

“Kat bought a New York Times but couldn’t figure out how to operate it, so now she’s fiddling with her phone.”