By the time the Red Cross plane leveled out, sweat was pouring off of Desmond. Peyton had unzipped his sleeping bag, but it was little help.

Every few seconds, he tossed his head from side to side.

Peyton tried to wake him for five minutes straight, but it was no use. It was as if he were in a coma.

She heard footsteps behind her, turned, and found Avery towering above her, squinting at Desmond wincing on the floor.

The slender woman squatted, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and cupped his face in her hands. She leaned close, listening to the words he mumbled.

It struck Peyton as a lover’s embrace, not a clinical inspection. She wondered if it was an act—or something Avery had actually done before.

Without turning to Peyton, Avery said, “Should we land?”

“I don’t know. Where are we?”

“Over Ethiopia.”

“He’s stable for now. I favor waiting until we reach Europe.”

Avery left without another word. As soon as the door to the cockpit closed, Peyton wiped a new layer of sweat from Desmond’s face and placed her hands where Avery’s had been, feeling the stubble on his lean, glistening face.

All she could do now was wait.

Two days after Christmas, in Peyton’s apartment, Desmond presented his theory to her.

“I’ve figured it out.”

“What? The meaning of life?”

“Better. Why companies fail.”

“Oh.” She was reading People magazine and watching reruns of Friends.

“It’s the X factor.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Think about it. First the company has to address a large market opportunity.” He was pacing in the small apartment now, cutting off her view of Ross and Rachel. “xTV got that right. But success requires two components: operational proficiency and the X factor. For all these web startups, the operational part is actually the easiest. You make sure your code works and the product scales, you pay your rent, et cetera, et cetera. The X factor is the issue.

“For web companies, the X factor is consumer adoption. Every one of them is disrupting the world in some way—they’re trying to change customer behavior. Think about it. Amazon wants to change the way we buy books. Instead of walking into a Barnes and Noble, you order it online and it arrives at your door. Who knows, maybe they’ll deliver all kinds of stuff one day. Webvan wants to deliver groceries in the same way. No more driving to the store. WebCrawler wants to change the way we find information. Forget going to a library and looking it up—simply search for it on WebCrawler. Need to find a business? Don’t dial four-one-one, forget the yellow pages, just search for it on WebCrawler. They’re all trying to change the way we as consumers behave—and funnel attention and money to them.”

“Makes sense.”