The Bright Lights of the Salesforce Tower

"If I turn it on, it won't make a difference, literally," Campbell said with grim cheer. The thirty-fifth floor was dressed in the trappings of anonymous luxury: shell chairs, gas hearths, and an oyster sculpture on piled ice that radiated blue light, like a laptop keyboard. Campbell was in a distant corner, on his knees, pecking at a MacBook on a coffee table. He was wearing a puffy black Eddie Bauer jacket over a puffy charcoal-gray vest. His spectacles were pushed up on his forehead, nestled under a flop of gray hair. For some days, Campbell had been suffering from a chest cold, and, while speaking at a ribbon-cutting-type gathering that morning, he had been stricken with the stomach flu and evacuated mid-event. "I'm-under the weather," he said faintly, clutching a tumbler of water and glancing nervously at the fog. When guests approached to wish him well, he murmured something about Murphy's Law.