Maiden Lane

What lies at the end of Maiden Lane? The girl asks. A simple question with a complicated answer.
Roderic Gant is a mathematician, a pioneer in the new field of Megalytics. He’s in New York for a job interview with a certain online retail giant. Interview? Courtship is, perhaps, more accurate. Roderic’s new mathematics has the potential to open vast, lucrative markets. Wined and dined, Roderic is ready to return home to California. But on his way out of town, he meets a strange girl in the elevator of his hotel.
“What lies at the end of Maiden Lane?” she asks Roderic.
He has no answer.
Minutes later, she appears again in the subway, asking Roderic the same question. “What lies at the end of Maiden Lane?” But this time, she’s someone else.
Or is she?
“What lies at the end of Maiden Lane?”
The answer will turn Roderic’s world upside down.