What Kind of Paradise

Jane meets Lionel again in the chat room. She learns that he is 21, is a recent Stanford graduate, and was something of a prodigy. She asks him if he feels like a corporate tool for sacrificing his freedom for a paycheck, and he tells her that she is a strange girl but that he thinks she’s interesting. She asks him about possible databases that might help her find out more about her mother’s death, but he does not know of anything useful.

Jane finds what her father has named the “Luddite Manifesto.” She knows that the Luddites were a group of workers who rose up and rebelled against the implementation of automated weaving machines in 1813. They were not successful in their attempts to stop technology, but she can see why her father would be drawn to their cause.

She reads a few paragraphs. So far, his argument seems to be that technology corrupts society and that the constant march of “progress” re-orients people toward beliefs and practices that are ultimately unfulfilling. The “virtual” life is inferior to a life lived dedicated to truth, learning, and societal betterment. She decides to search his office again but finds that he has added an additional padlock. Frustrated, she calls Heidi. Heidi is openly dismissive of Saul and does not want to talk because she is waiting for a call from a new friend.

Jane and Lionel chat again. She explains that she has been left alone in the cabin and that she is a little worried about her father. Lionel is shocked when Jane reveals more about her life and tells her that if she ever needs help, she can reach out to him.

Saul returns after 10 days, and Jane voices her displeasure. She tells him that she was lonely, and he angrily retorts that companionship is a “crutch” and that learning to be alone is the most important skill he can teach her.

She shows him the website she created for his manifesto, and he seems pleased with it. Then, he takes the laptop away. He asks her how much time she has spent reading or going outside since he brought it home, and she admits to herself that surfing the web has become her only activity. She sees his point: Technology does replace other, more meaningful parts of life. Still, she vows to find a way to break past the new lock on his office door the next time he leaves.

Saul smashes the television. Now that he is no longer writing a zine, he argues that they do not need to know what’s going on in the world. Besides, they can always get old newspapers in Bozeman. Jane feels more trapped than ever. Without the internet or the television, she is bored and frustrated. It is winter, and Saul has stopped leaving the cabin. She ponders escaping. When he finds that only 11 people have read his manifesto, he plunges into a state of angry frustration.

Saul tells Jane about his intent to leave again. When asked what he does on these trips, he replies cryptically that he is just “trying to make the world a better place” (98). Jane realizes that accompanying him wherever he is going is her only hope of escaping the cabin, and she asks him to take her with him. Grudgingly, he agrees.

Saul gives Jane a red, spaghetti-strap dress. She is puzzled, and he explains that she is going to wear it to distract a security guard whose building he is trying to access.

Saul and Jane stay in a dingy motel on the way to Seattle, Washington, and Jane is disappointed that they are not closer to the city. She has never seen a real city. Saul promises to show her around Seattle the next day, after whatever it is they are doing. In retrospect, she thinks that should have noticed the smell of fertilizer in the car: It might have given her a clue.

The next morning they head into the city, and Saul still has not clarified their plan. She is worried and asks if he has any money. He hands her a large wad of new $20 bills and also a handgun. She again asks what the plan is, and he surprises her by saying that she is a beautiful blonde in a red dress. All she has to do is look at the security guard, and she will provide the necessary distraction. He adds that he knows he’s given her a strange life but that she will one day see that she is more like him than she realizes. He calls her “[his] girl,” and she softens under his approval, ready to help him with whatever he needs.

Jane pounds on the glass door of the building until the security guard comes to ask what she wants. She frantically explains that she lost her money under a car. She can see him eye her body through the dress and realizes that he chooses to help her because of how she looks, not because she needs help. As they walk away, she sees her father slip into the building.

Once the guard finds her money, he refuses to give it to her. Leering, he tells her that he knows what she is. He lunges for her, and she falls to the ground. She can never quite remember what happens next or how, but Jane’s self-preservation instinct kicks in, and she shoots him just as he leans over her, reaching for his belt. Terrified, she runs back to the car.

Her father joins her and, agitated, explains that they must split up. In retrospect, she wonders if she missed the explosion because she was in such a heightened state of panic. He sends her back to the hotel with directions to return to Montana and then meet him at a specified address in North Dakota if he does not show up within a few days.

Jane waits in the motel for her father. The hours tick by, but he does not return. Terrified and beginning to wonder if her father has also committed a crime, she gets into the truck to drive back to Montana. On the way, her mind whirs. She saw a hard drive in a bag her father was carrying, and she becomes even more certain that he did not run away because she shot the security guard. She drives carefully since the truck is not registered and she doesn’t have a license, and it takes her longer to get back than it did for her father to drive to Seattle.

When she arrives in Bozeman, she stops at Heidi’s high school. She wants to go to Heidi’s house to watch the news. Heidi is happy to see her but puzzled. She agrees to let Jane come over, and the two turn on the television. Jane learns that two people are wanted for the murder of a Microsoft executive using a homemade bomb. The television displays grainy security footage of her and Saul.

Jane heads to the cabin. The laptop is on the table, and she opens it to The New York Times. She and her father did not make the front page, but a few pages back, there is a story about an unknown killer who placed a homemade incendiary device in the research and development building at the Seattle Microsoft campus. It killed their chief scientific officer in charge of artificial-intelligence research, Peter Carrol. Jane feels sick and vomits into the snow outside.

Jane uses an axe first to break into her father’s office and then to break into his locked desk. She finds a birth certificate for an Esme Nowak, born in San Mateo County, who is nine months to the day older than Jane. Esme’s parents were Adam and Theresa Nowak. She finds Adam’s passport: It is her father. The phone begins to ring, but she ignores it. Anger fills her, but she knows that she must act quickly.

She goes back out to the computer to search for information about her mother’s death. What she finds shocks her: Her mother did not die in a car accident like her father claimed, but Adam and Esme were reported missing and then dead after Adam’s car skidded off the highway near Big Sur. By the time rescuers were able to reach the vehicle, the authorities presumed that Adam’s and Esme’s bodies had washed out to sea. She checks her father’s manifesto, which now has tens of thousands of views. She realizes that the bombing had always been his end game, and her anger toward him mounts.

Jane, or Esme, as she now realizes, tries to contact Lionel in the chat room without luck. She decides to head to San Mateo to find her mother. First, she sets the cabin on fire, as her father had instructed. As she leaves, she hears voices in the woods and realizes that torching the cabin likely destroyed evidence. She is actually 18 and can be prosecuted as an adult. Like it or not, she is linked to her father’s crime.