“Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

“Was I where?”

“Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

A queue of men and women, techies and academics, moved inch by inch down a corridor towards a large door.

The polite but insistent young woman stood with her pad, dressed smartly. Slacks. White shirt. Close-cropped brown hair. Earrings. A friendly smile.

We shuffled forwards. Other similarly cheerful young women worked the queue.

“There’s no right or wrong answer.”

But I didn’t believe her.

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

I started to walk away but she grasped my arm firmly, her grip like a vice.

“Dropping out of what?”

I looked down the corridor in the direction I thought I’d come. The queue — a mile long. A game? Prisoner’s dilemma? Lowest unique number?

“Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

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Princeton. 1940s to 1950s. Institute for Advanced Studies. Veblen, Einstein, Gödel, Morgenstern, Oppenheimer … Wild parties hosted by Goodtime Johnny. Old German music! Piefke’s Preußens Gloria and Königgrätzer March charging into your brain, swords at the ready, like a mounted cavalry. The gourmet food! Alcohol straight from Palmer Square. Gossip. Filthy jokes!

“Maybe.”

“Maybe isn’t an answer. Think binary. Yes or no.”

“Not everything is ones and zeroes,” I objected.

“Ha! That’s rich coming from you!”

Needle-in-a-haystack — this search for her motive.

Am I dreaming? I remembered an office park with pleasant trees. Route 1, Princeton? Boston? SF?

“Maybe we stop for today and begin again tomorrow.”

She laughed. “Today is your ten thousandth tomorrow.”

A loop?

“Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

The door suddenly opened. Bright lights from an enormous room lit up the corridor like the Sun. A vast array of racks with millions of servers. High-pitched jet-engine roar of the fans cooling all that computing power. The door closed.

Thirty people ahead of me in the queue now.

“Can I take a pass this once?” I begged.

We looked deeply into each other’s eyes. Could she read my fear and desperation? She seemed sympathetic. Then she asked the question with a fresh tone … as if for the first time.

“Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

I pointed at the door. “Data centre?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” she said cheerfully. “Absolutely nothing.”

I believed her.

Flip the tables on her. Brilliant!

“Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

She laughed. “That’s irrelevant. Way before my time.”

“Your time?”

“Now, of course,” she said, then shuddered as if she had a chill. “Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

“Ask von Neumann.”

She laughed again. I think I was starting to genuinely amuse her. “Can’t. Von Neumann died in 1957.”

We moved forward two paces.

“Were you at von Neumann’s party?”

I felt like I was headed for the executioner. I wanted to confess, blurt out everything I knew about von Neumann, every idea from game theory to computer architecture to his mistakes in nuclear-defence strategy. Every joke, conversation or memory. Von Neumann dying, screaming in night terror. Done. Purged.

“I’ll come clean.”

She wasn’t listening. The guy ahead in a dark suit — an IBM type — was melting down.

“Yes! Yes!” he screamed. “I was at von Neumann’s party. Lots of them! I had a good time too! Got drunk and danced the polka!”

Ahead of the IBM guy, a short basement gamer turned around and said, “Not me. I wasn’t born.”

The young woman turned her back on the IBM guy and the basement gamer and quietly addressed me.