“Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

“Was it me?” Where?

“Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

A line of men and women—engineers and scholars— inched down the hallway toward the large door.

A polite but assertive young woman stood smartly dressed, holding a napkin. Slacks. White shirt. Short-cropped brown hair. Earrings. Friendly smile.

We limped forward. Other equally cheerful young women were also working the line.

“There are no right or wrong answers.”

But I didn’t believe her.

“I’m leaving,” I said. “I’m dropping out.”

I tried to walk away, but she held my arm tight, like a vise.

“Why are you dropping out?”

I looked down the hallway in the direction I thought I was coming from. The line was a mile long. Game? Prisoner’s Dilemma? Smallest unique number?

“Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

Princeton. The 1940s to the 1950s. The Institute for Advanced Study. Veblen, Einstein, Gödel, Morgenstern, Oppenheimer…

A wild party hosted by Good Time Johnny. Old German music! Mr. Piefke’s Prussia Gloria and Koniggrätzer March. Like cavalry, they raise their swords and charge at the brain. Gourmet food! Alcohol straight from Palmer Square. Gossip. Dirty jokes!

“Perhaps.”

“Maybe that’s not the answer. Think dualistically. Yes or no.”

“It’s not all ones and zeros,” I protested.

“Ha! That’s the money I get from you!”

A needle in a haystack—this is an exploration of her motives.

Am I dreaming? It reminded me of an office park with pleasant trees. Route 1, Princeton? Boston? Science fiction?

“Maybe I’ll stop today and start again tomorrow.”

She laughed. “Today is your 10,000th tomorrow.”

Loop?

“Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

Suddenly, the door opened. Bright light from the vast room illuminated the hallway like the sun. Vast racks held millions of servers. Fans roared like high-pitched jet engines, cooling all that computing power.

Then the door closed.

There were about 30 people in line in front of me now.

“Can I pass this one time?” I begged.

We looked deeply into each other’s eyes. Could she read my fear and despair? She seemed sympathetic. Then she asked the question in a fresh tone, as if it were the first time.

“Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

I pointed to the door. “Data center?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” she said brightly. “Absolutely nothing.”

I believed her.

Turn her position around. Wonderful!

“Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

She laughed. “It doesn’t matter. It was long before my time.”

“What’s the time?”

“Of course,” she said, then shivered as if she had gotten a chill. “Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

“Ask von Neumann.”

She laughed again. I think I was starting to really enjoy her. “That’s not possible. Von Neumann died in 1957.”

We took two steps forward.

“Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

It felt like I was heading toward the executioner. I wanted to confess everything I knew about von Neumann—all my ideas, from game theory to computer architecture to his mistakes in nuclear defense strategy. Every joke, every conversation, every memory.

Von Neumann was dying, screaming from a night terror.

End. Purged.

“I’m going to clean it up.”

She wasn’t listening. The IBM-type man in a dark suit who had been walking in front of me was slumped over.

“Yes! Yes!” he cried. “I went to von Neumann’s party. A lot of people came! I had a lot of fun, too! I got drunk and danced the polka!”

Before the IBM guy could continue, the short underground gamer turned around and said, “It’s not me. I wasn’t born.”

The young woman turned her back to the IBM guy and the gamer in the basement and spoke quietly to me.