The Other Clock

"What exactly did he ask?" "Whether a laid-off StrataQuant analyst from Queens could identify soft information before it became public. Whether you were lucky, connected, or cheating." Cheating. The word had a clean legal shape and a dirty moral weight. Ethan had spent his life watching rich people call their advantages networks, instincts, access, pedigree, research. Poor people called the same thing cheating because nobody let them buy better vocabulary. "What did you say?" "I said I did not know." "That's almost honest." "It is honest." "No," Ethan said, opening the laptop again. The sentence was still there. "Honest would be admitting you want the answer badly enough to keep calling." Silence. Then Nora said, "Yes."