What Kind of Paradise

At work, Esme sees that a copy of the police sketch of her father is on the wall. People are throwing darts at it. Esme feels conflicted: She is horrified by her father’s crimes, but she still loves him. She doesn’t want to throw darts at his face.

She sits down at her computer to research her mother. Tess Trevante is a prominent computer scientist—she was even part of Signal’s Futurists lecture series. She finds out from one of her coworkers that Tess is one of the largest names in tech and the field’s most prominent woman. She wonders if her mother still thinks about her.

During a quiet moment, she goes over to her father’s police sketch and rips it down from the wall. Too late, she notices Lionel watching her.

There is a viewing party for the docuseries about Signal. Esme’s face features prominently, and she worries that someone will realize her true identity and report her to the police. Lionel gives her strange looks as they are watching, and she asks to speak to him in the park, alone, afterward.

Lionel has figured out that she is the bomber’s daughter. Lionel is hurt that she did not confide in him, so she tells him everything. In a move that surprises her, he explains that they need to find out the identities of everyone in her photo and warn them, together.

Esme and Lionel head to the San Francisco Public Library to do some digging. In a book on Peninsula Research, they find the names of everyone else in the photograph. Lionel locates their email addresses, and they warn them.

In the days and weeks that follow, Lionel and Esme fall into a pattern of working and then going back to Lionel’s to eat takeout and watch videos. Looking back, Esme is struck by how idyllic this time in her life was. Little did she realize that they were just in a moment of eerie calm that precedes a storm.

Esme’s father strikes again, this time killing a Harvard professor who was not in Esme’s photograph. She and Lionel realize that they have not figured out her father’s real plan, as he is targeting people who were not part of his original research group, and Lionel urges Esme to turn him in. He argues that if they have not identified all his potential targets, then Esme is ethically bound to tell the police everything she knows.

He then tells her that he can no longer be part of anything that she does. She asks if they are broken up, and he admits that he is not sure. Realizing that everything is spinning out of control, Esme deletes the “Luddite Manifesto” from its website.

Tess Trevante is giving a reading at a local bookstore, and Esme plans to confront her there. She is awestruck by her mother’s poise and intelligence, and after the reading, she nervously blurts out the truth of who she is while Tess is signing a book for her. Tess immediately accuses Esme of being a cruel stalker, but when Esme begins to produce old photographs, she begins to believe her.

Tess takes Esme to the coffee shop next door to talk. The reunion is nothing like Esme imagined it would be. Tess is shocked and terse and shows little emotion. They share one hug, although Esme can tell that Tess feels nothing. Tess explains that this is too much to process and suggests that they meet in a few days’ time to chart their course forward.

The next day, a man in an oversized pea coat steps out of the shadows and says hello to Esme. It is her father.

Esme reads more of the pages her father left for her. Saul/Adam recounts his relationship with Theresa and says that the two met at Peninsula Research Institute. She was the only female researcher and a true genius. Their relationship was based on their shared interests, and both found it intellectually rewarding.

They also shared troubled family histories: Each came from families who doubted their intelligence and abilities. They married, and Theresa became pregnant accidentally. She wanted an abortion, but Adam convinced her that he would do the bulk of the parenting. Theresa was reluctant because she did not feel maternal, but she finally relented. She was accurate in her self-assessment, Adam found, and she did not seem particularly bonded with Esme. Adam became Esme’s primary caregiver and tried to make up for Theresa’s lack of affection.

In 1983, their research was increasingly focused on government contracts and defense. Theresa did not care, but Adam worried about the use to which his work was being put. Theresa began working on a robotics project and was excited about an artificial-intelligence-driven future in which computers could make up for humans’ innately flawed nature.

Adam began using work hours to read Thoreau and other “comforting” philosophers. He stopped bathing and speaking with his coworkers. He told Theresa that he planned to quit Peninsula and that so should she. They must, he insisted, move to the woods. Something snapped in Theresa in response, and Adam knew he’d made a mistake. Theresa took over the parenting, and Adam could see that she intended to raise a child destined for science and technology. It struck him that she was performing a long-term science project on their daughter, turning her into a computer.

Adam decided that he must get Esme away from Theresa. Divorce was not an option, as Theresa would win full custody. He decided to fake his and Esme’s deaths and easily did so on a camping trip. He took only cash and a few photos. He knew that they could survive.

In the present, Esme and Adam get coffee at a nearby Starbucks. He is angry that she took down his manifesto. She accuses him of kidnapping her and ruining her life, and he accuses her of going to work for the very people who are destroying society. He corrects her, then, telling her that he did not kidnap her but save her. She waves this off and explains that he “saved” her from becoming her mother’s science project by turning her into his science project.

Adam is momentarily stymied by this accusation but quickly moves on. He attempts to rationalize the killings by saying that he is saving society, but Esme pushes back: What he is doing is morally wrong, and he must stop. He then asks her for the hard drive, the remaining money, and her mother’s address. They are to meet at the same Starbucks the following day. Esme is not sure what to think or do.

The director of Human Resources informs Esme that there is some error with her social security number: According to the Social Security Administration, Esme is legally dead. She tells Esme to bring in an ID or passport to clear things up. Esme begins to panic but is instantly distracted by something much worse: The presence of two FBI agents in her office. She learns from a coworker that the deletion of the “Luddite Manifesto” was traced to their office.

Wordlessly, Lionel gets up from his desk and heads into the conference room where the agents are meeting with Ross. Esme has no idea what to do, so she calls her mother.

She meets her mother for dinner. Tess lives in a stylish condo in Nob Hill. The décor is all white, and everything looks expensive. Tess is drinking wine and talks a mile a minute. She does not seem to grasp what Esme’s life has been like but is thrilled that she’s working at Signal. She promises to pull a few strings to get her admitted to the engineering department at Berkeley. She is happy that Esme is not a “liberal arts type” in spite of her father’s affinity for philosophy (310).

Esme is drawn to Tess but notices how cold and analytical she is. Still, her mother’s scent is familiar, and she is struck by memories of her braiding her hair. She interrupts Tess to explain that Adam is the bomber from the news, and Tess is horrified but not entirely surprised. Tess begins to panic as she realizes the implications of what Esme has told her. She stalks around, mind whirring. Then, she pauses, calm once more. She tells Esme that she will hire a lawyer and that this lawyer will accompany Esme to the police tomorrow. She will leave town in case Adam plans to target her.

Esme asks if Tess will make a public statement on her behalf, but Tess does not think this is a good idea. Esme realizes that Tess wants to wait to see if Esme will be prosecuted alongside Adam before claiming her as her daughter. Feeling betrayed by both parents, she leaves. On her way out, Tess explains that once everything calms down, the two can rekindle their relationship. Esme tells her not to “feel obligated” to do so (319).

Esme reads more of her father’s notes and finds out that he supported them by robbing banks. She realizes that these were the short trips he took periodically. He initially did so because he was unable to grow all their own food and provide the supplies they needed working odd jobs, as there were no odd jobs in the woods, but he eventually began to enjoy taking money from large banking institutions. He fancied himself a Robin Hood of sorts and enjoyed feeling smarter than their security systems.

Feeling betrayed by her mother, Esme is not sure what to do. She thinks that Lionel turned her in and that the feds are likely at her apartment. She cannot go back to Signal and feels lost. She runs into her coworker Brianna on the street, and Brianna shocks her by telling her that Lionel turned himself into the feds for deleting the manifesto.

Unsure how to process this information, Esme is silent for a moment. She asks if she can spend the night on Brianna’s sofa, and Brianna agrees. The next morning, she leaves without saying goodbye.

Jane meets her father at the Starbucks again, but she does not give him the hard drive or the money. She points out that everything stored on it is certainly backed up somewhere. Destroying it would accomplish nothing. The hard drive is, she argues, a metaphor for his entire fight against progress: It cannot be done. The march of technological progress cannot be stopped.

As her father begins to argue with her, the café falls silent. A group of men approach their table. It’s the feds. Esme can tell the exact moment when her father registers her lack of surprise: She has turned him in.

Jane reads more of her father’s writing. He describes how he found an old copy of The Anarchists’ Cookbook in a used bookstore and purchased it. It contained simplified instructions for making everything from LSD to bombs. When Jane began to age and he realized that he could not keep her in the cabin forever, he decided to make the world that she was about to enter a safer place. He decided to kill the architects of the technological age so that Jane would not become another screen-addicted cog in society’s wheel.

Esme contacts Lionel in the chat room. She is to be the key witness at her father’s trial. She apologizes for him having gone to jail to protect her, and he tells her not to worry. He chose to do that on his own. Besides, he notes, they let him out as soon as she turned her father in. She apologizes again, but he once again tells her not to worry. He still cares about her. There is, he argues, an essential part of identity that remains unchanged even in dire circumstances. He knows that Esme is a good person in spite of everything. They vow to remain friends.

Lionel calls Esme at her cabin. They are both adults. Their romance did not survive their twenties, but their friendship did. Esme came to understand how important it was to have a network of people, and she is grateful for Lionel’s continued presence in her life. She went to art school rather than engineering school and now works as a graphic designer. She is painting when he calls.

Years ago, she set up a google alert for her father’s name. During the early days after the trial, it pinged constantly. Luckily, one of Esme’s coworkers at Signal wrote a sympathetic article about her, and she was largely vindicated in the eyes of the media. As the years went by, public interest in Adam’s case and Esme’s role in it waned. Now, with the rise of artificial intelligence, Adam is in the news again. Some publisher bought the rights to the “Luddite Manifesto,” and it is now a book. Lionel is calling to discuss a new article about Adam: Perhaps, it argues, he was right to question society’s unwavering commitment to technological progress.

Esme is unsure of whether she agrees with her mother or her father about the role of technology. She has tried to walk a middle ground in her own life. She lives in a cabin in Marin County but is connected to society. Her daughter attends school and drives an electric car. She shops on Amazon. Still, she donates to the Audubon Society, does not use social media, and could be said to sympathize with her father in many ways.

She has not had contact with him or her mother since the trial. Tess chose to protect her own name rather than start a relationship with Esme. Adam wrote her letters, but she never read them. At this point, she feels like she has few answers. She would argue, if asked, that society was a pendulum swinging first one way and then the other. Technology can hurt society, but it can help it as well. She is content to focus on her work, her daughter, and her life. The bigger questions can remain mysterious.