“Then why don’t schools?”
“I don’t have a good answer for that,” he admitted. “But I do have something to show you.”
I followed him through dimly lit hallways until he used his card for access to an administrative section. It was a ghost town, the feeling of doing something wrong doubling down. “Should we be here?” I whispered.
“Livi.” Caleb held open the door to his office. “I work here.” He shook the mouse at his computer. “I do need you to sign an NDA, though.”
I brought my hand to my throat. “What? Ca—”
“Kidding,” he said. He stooped, retrieved a bottle of red wine, then twisted off the cap and poured it into a pair of glasses he had on a shelf. “Glass of pinot mixed with years of dust?”
“The kind that takes the edge off,” I said.
I dragged a chair over to sit beside him. His jaw suddenly tensed. “No NDA, but I’m not kidding about not saying anything about this yet,” he said.
“Oooh, secrets,” I teased. “Am I the first to know?”
“Not exactly.” He cupped his chin in his hands while the screen loaded.
“It smells like a library in here.”
He raised an eyebrow in my direction. “You trying to talk dirty to me, Adler?”
The screen blinked into focus. I sipped my wine, interest piqued. “?‘The Longevity Project,’?” I read aloud. “?‘Developed by Caleb Mariner, curator at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York’.” For one second, I forgot I was mad at him. I prodded his arm. “What have you been keeping from me?”
“Actually, something fairly big.”
“Show me.”
“Here goes.” His shoulders were as stiff as a seesaw. “Ever since Soulmail came out, I feel like the world is somehow both on fast-forward and rewind. I just want to know so much—about everything.” Relatable. “And I want the time to do it.”His eyes widened, and his words fell over themselves, the cadence unlike the thoughtful way he usually spoke. “The Longevity Project is based on the idea that our social groups dictate our happiness and the length of our lives, barring some kind of peril.”
“Like what we talked about at Nat’s birthday? How having no one to socialize with is worse for you than drinking and smoking?”
“Basically, yeah.”
“Bad press for the D.A.R.E. program.” I leaned forward.
“Well.” Caleb traced the space bar. “I partnered with some researchers on social relationships and our quality of life...”
“Spit it out.”
“And how Soulmail sort of categorizes it for us.”
Wells. The wine burned my throat. “It’s been a long night. Humor me.”
He spun my way. “Okay. In the simplest terms possible, if positive social relationships bolster our lives, then Soulmail basically tells you who to keep in your life to make you live longer.”
I considered this, rubbing my palms together. “How does your project work?”
“It’s a user-generated experience. You enter your information and the info of your soulmate. If your soulmate also enters your personal info, then that essentially dual-confirms it: There’s a match. And then from there, you enter in your family, your best friends, and so on. All of them enter in their information, and these little groups start to form.”
“Little groups?”
“Yeah. Sort of like—you know how on Facebook you need to be mutuals to be friends? Unlike other apps, where you can follow someone or someone can follow you without being mutuals?”
“Sure.”
“This has a similar element. On the user-facing app, you can enter whoever you want once your verification goes through—got the idea for that from that dating website guy you interviewed. And then, the other person has to confirm it on their end. Everyone receives a unique number-and-symbol combination to use as their log-ins. Once you’re confirmed, there’s a branch of a relationship that comes off you. I used all that information to create a visual representation of it, which created these little... clusters.”
