“Ridiculous!” Shireen said. Her mouth stayed open long after the word had evaporated from the room.

  It was a week later and Delaney was finally on campus. Not in any of the main buildings, but she had entered the Every gate, and had been led to a low-slung timber-clad building covered with vines and succulents. Inside, the structure was a white box, a kind of utility space to be used for times and people like this.

  Delaney’s appointment had been for 3:00, but she had been asked to arrive at 2:30. She had gone through a fascinating security process that had taken fully twenty-eight of those thirty minutes. She had emptied her pockets and had her bag scanned, then was made to walk through a ten-foot pink tunnel, utterly silent. Her phone had been placed in a device that resembled a very snug microwave in which, she assumed, it was being scraped of all its secrets. The soles of her shoes had been wiped, and the wiping cloth had been put into a small silver box which eventually sang an approving song. After briefly reading legal language indicating that she could not reveal what was said in the interview, anyone she met or anything she saw, and that anything she said was theirs to keep, she signed three documents via finger-on-tablet.

  “All your feeds are very interesting,” Carlo said.

  “Very thought provoking!” Shireen added. “You scored high on word variety. Top two percent!”

  “Listen,” Carlo said. “All your numbers are great. Socials, PrefCom, and of course the culture index is super-high for our candidates. But you knew that. For this interview, though, we like to get to know a bit more about the future you see. You were at a startup, and you’ve put an extraordinary amount of time into examining the Every from the outside. We read your paper.”

  “Your paper was so interesting!” Shireen said.

  Carlo turned to Shireen with a smile of terrifying insincerity, then pivoted back to Delaney. “Delaney, what do you think the Every should do next?”

  Delaney paused. She and Wes had a proposal ready, but she hadn’t expected to unveil it so soon.

  “I know ideas are hard,” Shireen said.

  “I actually do have an idea,” Delaney said.

  Carlo and Shireen looked far more surprised than Delaney expected. Shireen’s surprise approached revulsion.

  “Can I dim the lights and use the screen?” Delaney asked.

  Their postures straightened.

  “Sure,” Carlo said. “Are we being treated to an actual presentation?”

  Shireen looked panicked. “Something you prepared?”

  On one level this was madness. Intellectual property was guarded with maniacal fervor here and in every related industry. The Every did not expect most candidates to simply give up a million- or billion-dollar notion in an interview. But Delaney had heard more than a few stories of candidates doing so anyway, presenting good ideas with no strings, and therefore being readily hired, not just for the quality of their ideas but for their trust in the Every and—more importantly—for their willingness to sublimate their own gain to the overall well-being and growth of the company where they hoped to work. Giving up an idea or two in an interview spoke, most importantly, to confidence, a confidence that the candidate had no scarcity of ideas—that these ideas came with enough frequency that giving up one or two in an interview was no great sacrifice. Conversely, went the logic, those who guard their ideas jealously likely have few.

  Carlo rose to turn off the lights. “I should remind you of the agreement you signed—”

  “Of course,” Delaney said.

  Everything said in the room was being recorded, she assumed, and besides, the agreement had pounded home, chances are that any notion given breath in the interview was already in development on campus.

  She and Wes had spent a week working up a rough prototype; Wes, usually listless and without self-direction, was relentless and untiring when given a task. Delaney had told him to be ready today for its unveiling.

  Delaney stood and took a meaningful breath. “I’ve been thinking about friendship,” she said, and let the sentence land. Carlo and Shireen were smiling like children who had snuck into a matinee.

  “Scientists again and again find,” Delaney continued, “that people with long-term, authentic friends are healthier, happier, and live longer.”

  Shireen nodded slowly, as if this was new and fascinating information. Her fingers, which seemed to want to write this down, tapped absently on the tablet in front of her. Delaney had the spontaneous idea to include Shireen in the presentation.

  “Shireen, you seem like someone who has a lot of friends.”

  Shireen nodded cheerfully, then, responding to Carlo’s urgent glance, decided she should articulate this aloud. “Yes I do,” she said.

  “But are there times when you’re unsure about them?” Delaney said. “Some moments when you’re not one hundred percent sure where you stand?” Before she was finished, Shireen was nodding vigorously, then remembered to speak her approval, too. “Yes. For sure.”

  “Tell me about that,” Delaney said, and Shireen lit up.

  “Well, sometimes I’ll text a friend—just something like a rainbow emoji followed by a two-way arrow and a question mark. You know, to let them know I’m happy and hope they’re happy.”

  “And then you wait,” Delaney said.

  “Right!” Shireen said. “And while I’m waiting …”

  “You wonder if they hate you and are plotting against you and will spread lies about you and ruin your life and you’ll want to die?” Delaney said. She expected a laugh, but the faces of Shireen and Carlo had gone gray.

  “I wouldn’t use those words, exactly,” Shireen said, “but—”

  “We wouldn’t put things in such graphic terms …” Carlo added.

  Delaney backtracked. “Of course not,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m a backwoods gal, as you know. I have some refining to do.” Their faces were still worried, borderline anxious. She needed to plunge ahead.

  “What Shireen described is something we all live with,” she said. “It’s uncertainty in the one place where we need it most. With our personal relationships. Our friendships.”

  Now Shireen’s face relaxed, and Carlo, who had gone briefly crosseyed, returned his expression to calm interest.

  “For years now, we’ve counted our friends here at the Every …” Delaney paused momentarily to see if her use of we had registered and had met with approval—it had. “But is that really the most important measurement? If scientists tell us that the depth of our friendships is the most important thing, shouldn’t we be measuring not the quantity of friends, but the quality of those friendships?”

  Carlo and Shireen were listening with mouths slightly agape. Delaney assumed she was hired. Now she only had to get through the presentation without unforced error.

  “So I was sketching out an app,” she said, “that brings some certainty to what’s always been vague and frankly a bit chaotic. Can I show you? I’m assuming this is ready?” She pointed to the wallscreen, which she tapped to activate. “Guest,” she said. “Seven-Oh-Eight-Eight-Nine.” A small box appeared on the screen and Delaney pressed her thumb to it. Her fingerprint connected her to her account, and soon the screen came alive with the life-size face of Wes, his closed-mouth smile seeming, Delaney thought, a bit too amused. Wes’s resting face appeared mocking, and he knew this, so he tried, always, to pepper his speech with words of unmistakable gratitude and sincerity.

  Delaney turned to Carlo and Shireen. “I hope you don’t mind, but I asked Wes, an old friend of mine, to be ready today.”

  Shireen looked doubtful and Carlo flashed an unhappy grimace. “It’s fine,” he said finally. “Hi Wes. How are you?”

  Delaney turned back to Wes. Until this moment, she’d assumed he was in their kitchen, but now she saw the distinct outline of a toilet tank. He was sitting on the can. This was his idea of a gag.

  “Wes, can you hear us?” Delaney asked.

  “I can!” he said, and added, “I’m so grateful to be with you!”

  “Do you think you might be more comfortable elsewhere?” Delaney said. “I have a sense the connection would be stronger in another room.”

  “No, it’s super-strong here. Potent, actually,” he said. “How is everyone?” he asked. Idiot, Delaney thought. He’d specifically promised not to make this joke.

  A few more pleasantries were exchanged before Delaney tapped a code on her tablet and a digital frame, embedded with icons, surrounded Wes’s face.

  “Tell me about your day, Wes,” Delaney said.

  Wes began talking, telling the tale of a day filled with average social calamity and embarrassment, while Delaney made sympathetic sounds and asked well-timed follow-up questions. As she spoke, the icons, sixteen of them, appeared in the frame, just below Wes’s chin, and began flickering with activity.

  “As you can see,” Delaney noted, “as we talk, our AI is analyzing Wes’s facial expression, eye contact, and vocal intonations. I know emotion detection is a big interest for the Every now. Obviously the tech exists and will only get better.” Nine of the sixteen indicators below Wes’s chin were green, seven red.

  “Looks like Wes is being truthful, as you can see here,” Delaney said, pointing to the first green indicator. “Over here, though, this facial sensor is red, indicating that he’s tense. If he were relaxed, this indicator would be green. The rest of the sensors are tracking things like candor, humor, sincerity and warmth. Wes has always been very funny, so you can see that the humor sensor reflects that.”

  “Whoa,” Shireen said.

  “Meanwhile,” Delaney continued, “our conversation is being transcribed and algorithms are analyzing the text, looking at the actual words spoken for keywords and phrases that are commonly used between authentic friends. So we have the facial rec analyzing surface indicators, the text being examined, and these two measurements are collated with Wes’s vitals, heart-rate, blood pressure and glucose levels, which are being monitored of course through his oval.”

  Shireen and Carlo nodded earnestly. The best thing to do, Delaney knew, was to include Every tech in her own, implying she was not replacing theirs, but was simply adding on.

  “Here you can see some of the aggregate numbers at the bottom. The conversation so far is rated 86.2, which is decent, and I think reflects the fact that Wes and I have an easy friendship. Anything over 80 is genuine. Over 90, though, is extraordinary.”

  “And Wes is seeing the same numbers on his screen?” Carlo asked.

  “For this demonstration, yes,” Delaney said. “But there would be times you’d want the data traveling just one way. For example, if I was unsure if Wes was being truthful on a specific topic, or if I wasn’t certain he was an authentic friend generally, I could set the tech up to deliver the metrics only to me.”

  “I love this,” Shireen said, her eyes wide.

  “In this case,” Delaney continued, “at the end of the conversation, we each get a score and a general assessment of the quality of the interaction. This one interaction of course goes into a larger folder of all the one-on-ones with Wes, and all our interactions are then aggregated and assessed as a whole. Sociologists who study friendship,” Delaney said, making up the statistic—“determined that a person will spend about 92 to 98 quality hours a fiscal quarter with a genuine friend, so that baseline is factored in. Users, of course, can choose to see where they’re at with overall quality hours.”

  “Amazing,” Shireen said.

  “And this is an actual functioning app?” Carlo asked.

  “No, no,” Delaney said. “None of this is real yet. All the numbers you see on the screen are just made-up for now. But most of this tech already exists. It’s all available, off the shelf, really. It just hasn’t been put in one place. I’m not an engineer, as you know. And frankly I’d love to see it happen here at the Every.”

  “Incredible,” Carlo said. “So who helped you with the coding?”

  “Well, it’s not exactly coding, but Wes helped, yes.”

  “Wes, are you still there?” Carlo asked.

  “I am,” Wes said.

  “Well done,” Carlo said. “It’s elegant.”

  “Elegant?” Wes said, seeming genuinely moved by the word. He’d rested his palm on his chest. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” Carlo and Shireen said in unison, then exchanged looks of confusion and embarrassment and, Delaney thought, maybe some latent sexual tension? There was a lot happening between them.

  “You’re welcome,” Wes said, and with that, logged off.

  Carlo turned the lights on and checked the time.

  “I hate to be the wet blanket here,” Shireen said, “but some years ago, a company tried to launch an app, I think it was called People, maybe spelled with two e’s, and its purpose was to rate other humans, the same way you might rate a hotel or rideshare driver. For whatever reason, that seemed to cross a line with many users and pundits. The app’s founders became not-so-popular and it never launched. I wonder how you would navigate those …” She paused, finding the most neutral word. She settled on “sensitivities.”

  Carlo shot an imploring look Shireen’s way, as if aghast that she might be jeopardizing what had otherwise been a dream interview with a candidate who was giving the company a gilded new prize.

  “It’s a good question,” Delaney answered. “And one I’ve thought about quite a bit. The first thing is that we’ve accepted the rating of all kinds of people. We rate drivers, cops, judges, contractors, doctors, plumbers, professors, chefs, waiters, neighbors, of course government officials—what occupation doesn’t have some rating system?”

  Carlo and Shireen shrugged in vigorous agreement, though Carlo was refusing, for the moment, to look at Shireen.

  “Early in this century,” Delaney said, “people accepted the rightness of measuring each other numerically. Why? Because numbers are inherently fair, while humans are inherently not fair. I think we all recognize that the only thing worse than being measured is not being measured, right?”

  Shireen laughed out loud, almost a shriek. Carlo’s head seemed to vibrate with aggravation. Delaney smiled at them both, papering over their interpersonal tension with a sense that they were all of one mind.

  “With Peeple—you’re right, that was its name, two e’s—they were asking for an evaluation that was both public and static,” Delaney said. “The public part was an issue, of course. It reduced a human being to a number, which is something I know you would never stand for here at the Every.”

  Carlo nodded slowly, closing his eyes briefly to emphasize just how much he appreciated Delaney’s gracious explanation to Shireen of what was, to him, so obvious.

  “With my app,” Delaney continued, “this is a fluid system, constantly malleable, ultra-responsive to input and effort. It can change every day, provided the user is attentive to it. The second, and more important distinction, is that whereas that previous, misguided, app sought to rate strangers, this is exclusively between friends.”

  “Ah!” Shireen said, feeling vindicated. Her probity had yielded an essential clarification.

  Delaney was building toward the final line, her favorite line—she’d planned to end the presentation with a statement so perverse it almost caused her internal bleeding. She placed her palms on the table and tried in vain to conjure some wetness in her eyes.

  “For something so important in our lives, friendship is woefully unexamined and under-studied. I think we deserve better. If we value friendship as much as we say we do, then let’s get serious. Think of how much more genuine and authentic our friendships could be,” she said, “if we just apply the right metrics to them.”

  Carlo said nothing. Shireen said nothing, but seemed ready to explode. Delaney wondered if it was all too much. Too silly? Any reasonable person would have her arrested.

  After the longest and most dramatic of pauses, Shireen’s inner light went bright again. “I would use this daily,” she said. The veins of her neck tightened. “Day-ley.”

  “Do you have a name for it?” Carlo asked.

  “Well, I’m toggling between GenuPal and AuthentiFriend,” Delaney said, and immediately knew that the right thing to do would be to ask them to weigh in. “What do you two think?”

  “GenuPal is more positive,” Shireen noted.

  “But AuthentiFriend is more pro-active, right?” Carlo mused, looking thoughtfully over at Shireen, who he had evidently forgiven. “It feels like an action to perform. As in, I need to authenticate a friend.”

  “Right, right,” Shireen said. Carlo beamed, apparently believing he’d come up with the name, and perhaps the app, too.

  Shireen was looking out the window, where a stray pelican was visible, flying low over the water, as steady as a bomber.

  “I still like GenuPal,” she said.

  VI.

  THE STORY THAT LATER PROLIFERATED at the Every was that Delaney had grown up in a log cabin. This was not quite true but not quite false. Her parents had raised her in a house made of logs, but the home could not be called a cabin. It was spacious and built in 1988, by one of the uncountable construction firms in Idaho that specialized in modern log homes. With seven rooms and 2,200 square feet, it would not qualify as a cabin, but it was not showy, and it was indeed located in the woods, in a small town called Ghost Canyon, next to a winding meltwater stream at the base of the Pioneer Mountains. Though her family had phones and computers and televisions and every other modern amenity, she remembered her early years as taking place outdoors to the soundtrack of rushing water.

  Her family’s house stood on four acres, the land divided equally between two sides of the bending river. Behind the house her parents had built a covered pedestrian bridge that spanned the stream, and on the bridge they’d installed a swinging bench, which they covered with pillows and blankets, and there Delaney would sit and swing with her dogs while the water rushed like frantic glass below.

  Their neighbors across the river kept horses, and from her bench Delaney watched the horses nodding and trotting and swatting; between the mad sparkling river and the ponderous movements of the horses, she could spend hours in passive distraction. When she learned to read, she brought her books to her bench, and with her dogs next to her, occasionally coming and going to investigate squirrels and mice, Delaney could spend whole afternoons.