Tahoe Skydrop (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 16)

by Todd Borg

  “May I ask, what do you get for one hundred thousand? A portion of ownership in the company?”

  Lindholm sipped his whiskey, swirled it around his mouth, swallowed, once again closing his eyes as if eminently pleased. “Twenty percent,” he said.

  “What made you go ahead with Yardley’s business?”

  “Yardley had a novel idea of applying the subscription business model to robotics. I’d never heard of such a thing regarding robotics, and I found it exciting.”

  “What does that mean, subscription business model?”

  “You’re probably familiar with it. If you watch your movies from Netflix, you pay a monthly fee and can watch as much as you want. Same with getting your music from Spotify. Amazon readers who pay the monthly fee to Kindle Unlimited can read as many books as they want.”

  Lindholm gestured toward his front door. “My Volvo out there is a subscription vehicle. It’s an automotive version of Netflix. Have you ever rented a car with full insurance coverage?”

  “No, but I’ve heard of it.”

  “It’s expensive, but if your time is expensive, it seems cheap. The rental company gives you a car and a key and that’s it. If you get in an accident, you can walk away, regardless of who’s at fault. A subscription car is like that. I pay seven hundred fifty a month. For that I get the car and all service and all insurance. And after a specified time, I drive it into the dealer and come back out with a new one. It’s like leasing a car but with insurance and everything else included. Other than buying gas, I have no variable expenses. And if a problem arises with the car, they take care of it, whether it’s mechanical or a computer glitch. My life is much easier.”

  “This is what Yardley LaMotte is doing?”

  “Not yet, but that is the goal. Robots that you pay for with a monthly fee. As the robot software gets more sophisticated, the software downloads are automatic. When your robot acquires a new ability, you don’t have to buy a new robot or pay any more money. It’s the same as when Netflix expands their movie selection. It’s all part of your monthly fee.”

  “What did your hundred thousand finance?”

  “Yardley explained that he needed to buy two kinds of scanners, a radar and something called a lidar. He said that once he had the scanners, he needed very little else, and his monthly burn rate would be under four thousand dollars.”

  “Burn rate?”

  “The outflow of cash just to make his scans and hire a temp a few hours a week to work on the beta version of his software. All the other necessary work would be Yardley writing the software. The temp would be an editor, checking and testing Yardley’s code. Of course, these things change rapidly.”

  “Lucy told me that not long ago Yardley got an influx from another investor.”

  “Yes. Anders Henriksson recently put up a bunch of money. Four million, if I recall correctly. Although I understand that half was for stock, ten percent of the company. The other half of it was a loan. Yardley didn’t want to sell any more ownership position. I found that an interesting development. Yardley probably told him that he’d let go of a ten percent stake only if Anders also floated him a loan. Yardley wants to ride this growth with just me along for the ride. Then, when Tahoe Robotics hits big, he’ll have a bigger stake for himself.”

  Lindholm continued, “I certainly believe in the potential. Yardley has had inquiries from IBM and Google and Amazon. Two of his professors from Stanford have been trying to convince him to go in with them on a concept. He’s already gotten some contracts to supply AI software to a Chinese company. Based on that, he’s hired two dozen employees or so. I think they’ll eventually be the biggest robotics company in the world. My twenty percent could eventually be huge.”

  “Interesting that you got twenty percent for one hundred thousand dollars and Anders got only ten percent for two million.”

  Bill Lindholm smiled. “With highly speculative investments, it’s all about when you jump in. You probably know that Anders died, right?”

  “Lucy told me.”

  Lindholm said, “I just heard about it from Yardley last week. He’d been contacted by Anders’ brother. Apparently, it was a sudden massive heart attack. A real shame. I didn’t much care for Anders, but I respected his business acumen.”

  “Lucy also told me that the brother explained that he was Anders’ heir, inheriting both the ten percent ownership in Tahoe Robotics and the loan. Apparently, Yardley was behind on the payments. So Anders’ brother told Yardley he was going to call the loan and foreclose on the collateral Yardley had pledged. That collateral included Yardley and Lucy’s house.”

  Bill shook his head. “I’m shocked. What a heartless bastard. I’m the first to admit that we play hardball in the money business. But surprising Yardley with this news of calling his loan right after telling him that Anders had died… Wow.”

  “Can you tell me Anders’ brother’s name?”

  “I have no idea. I know nothing about Anders’ personal world. We only bumped into each other at various financial events.”

  “Did Anders just focus on tech companies?”

  “No. He was much less narrow about his approach to investing than most of us VC guys. He invests, he loans, he plays with hedge funds. If he sees a way to make money, he’ll even bet on horses. We think of ourselves as VC professionals. Anders was just an old-fashioned loan shark. He even said as much when he was in a joking mood. But what a smart loan shark he was.”

  “Can you give me Anders’ contact information?”

  “I don’t know it. But of course you could call his company. It’s called Reno Discovery Group. An LLC like my company. He’s in an office building on Liberty Street in Reno, not far from the Nevada Art Museum.”

  “Will do. Thanks.”

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Spot jump back from the chair where Bear Market sat like a king on a throne. Spot’s tail was wagging fast. I looked over as Spot turned his head toward me. Checking to see if I’d witnessed his altercation.

  “I should be going,” Lindholm said. “I’ve got lots to do before a dinner appointment.”

  “Thanks much for your help.”

  I fetched Spot from Bear Market’s kingdom. As I brought Spot toward the door, I said, “Any chance you’ve heard of the Brödraskapet?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A Swedish prison gang.”

  “No. Never heard of them. Why?”

  “They may be involved in Yardley’s disappearance.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Yardley is a computer nerd. He’s probably never even seen a prison or been to Sweden.”

  “I agree that it seems ridiculous. One more question. I’ll be going to Tahoe Robotics to poke around and ask questions. Is there anyone there you know of that I should talk to?”

  “Yes, but with a caveat. One of the guys is Tapper Logan. To hear Yardley tell it, Tapper is a brilliant software engineer, and he knows more than anyone else about Yardley’s work. But when I met him, I saw a real psychopath. No empathy. No regard for anyone else. A seemingly deadly focus on what he wants at the expense of everybody. In fact, if you suspect foul play in Yardley’s disappearance, you might take a close look at Tapper.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I called Street again.

  “Mileage reading?” I asked when she answered.

  “Hold on. Fifteen. I’m worn out. Blondie, too. I’m just a mile out from the center of town. What’s your schedule?”

  “Tahoe Robotics awaits. I could be there an hour or so if that works for you. Your call.”

  “Fine. I’m going to walk the rest of the way. Call again when you’re done. We’ll meet after.”

  “Will do.”

  I drove to Truckee’s downtown, a charming and eclectic collection of 100-year-old buildings dating from the town’s early days as a major stop on the transcontinental railroad. It took me several minutes of driving up and down narrow streets to find the Tahoe Robotics building. It was an old brick box a few bl
ocks from the train station. There was no parking nearby, so I parked in a city lot several blocks away and walked back.

  One of Truckee’s trash and recycling trucks was out, lifting a dumpster over its top, beeping as it backed up, revving its engine to go up the steep streets.

  I waited as it stopped in the street in front of me and inhaled a monster load of cardboard boxes.

  When it continued on, I crossed the street to my destination.

  The entrance to Tahoe Robotics was a standard commercial glass door with a sign on the brick wall to the side that said Tahoe Robotics, with a yellow logo of the letters T and R joined together. Above the Tahoe Robotics sign was the old Drygoods sign Lucy had mentioned. I pulled the door open and walked into a large open room about 25 feet wide and 60 feet deep. It had a profusion of desks and computers, maybe half of which were occupied by people. Several of them had dogs. Several of the dogs looked at me. None of the people seemed to notice.

  An L-shaped section of benches defined a small reception area. Multiple bicycles leaned against one wall.

  The building’s interior walls were exposed brick, a rough surface of various reds with even rougher mortar that had oozed out from the bricks here and there back when the building was originally built. The walls were lit with spotlights that made a pattern of ovals that repeated toward the back of the building. One might expect posters or pictures, but these ovals of light illuminated only bricks.

  The lights also lit up a series of steel reinforcement plates and rods painted light gray, earthquake-protection retrofitting that all Californians are familiar with.

  Near the entrance door was a small counter with a sign-in book, and next to it a short, squat tripod device, about three feet tall. The primary components were made of stainless steel with contrasting parts in shiny metallic red. At the base of each tripod leg was a pair of small wheels like those on a rolling office chair. At the top of the tripod was a red metallic sphere the size of a basketball. Projecting up out of the top of the sphere was a black tube a foot tall. Mounted on the top of the tube was a smaller sphere the size of a baseball. It had what looked like a camera lens embedded in it. Next to the lens was a tiny, blinking, red light.

  As I stepped in from the entrance door, the tripod device moved, rotating a bit. Then it rolled over toward me and stopped about three feet away. The small sphere with the lens turned toward me. The red light blinked faster.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” the machine said in a feminine voice similar to the one used in iPhones. “Thanks for visiting Tahoe Robotics. My name is Marie. I’m the receptionist. What can I do for you?”

  I hesitated, feeling awkward. “Hi, Marie. We’ve spoken on the phone. I’d like to speak to the person in charge, please.”

  “That would be me,” the robot said. “How can I help you?”

  Again, I felt strange. When you speak to people, you generally don’t have to focus on how you are communicating. But when you speak to a robot, you have to focus just to find words. I remembered talking to a friend who was around when telephone answering machines were invented. She said that when people initially made calls answered by a machine, they often went mute, unable to speak.

  After a few seconds of silence had gone by, the robot said, “Don’t worry. You can speak to me in normal sentences. I’m pretty good at partial sentences, too. Just don’t try to pinch my butt as I go by.”

  “A cheeky robot,” I said. “I like that.”

  “I’m not a robot in the way you probably think. You may think I have a bunch of pre-recorded statements I summon at appropriate moments. But the reality is, I form my own sentences in a way not unlike the way you form sentences. So it’s best to just think of me as Marie. Your thoughts come to you by way of electrical/chemical activity in your brain. My thoughts come to me by way of similar processes. We’re more similar than you might think. If fact, it may be that the biggest difference between us isn’t our different shapes but simply that my processor and memory circuits are not made up of biological cells like yours.”

  “And I walk while you glide,” I said. “You are certainly smart.”

  “Thank you. I am the result of the latest advances in machine learning.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Machine learning refers to when a computer applies algorithms to data, analyzes the results, and then makes its own adjustments about how to proceed with other data.”

  “That sounds good. But I suspect it’s very complicated.”

  Marie paused, just like a human. “Somewhat. My concertmaster has me focused on speech. Speech recognition is easiest. Speech synthesis in terms of forming speech sounds is also relatively easy. You know these characteristics from your interaction with virtual assistants such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Now, Microsoft’s Cortana.”

  I didn’t use any of them, but I didn’t say that to Marie.

  She continued. “Despite their abilities with speech, free-form conversational skills are much more difficult. We’re not there, yet. But I am on the cutting edge of this linguistic frontier. I use a kind of unsupervised learning that involves recurrent neural networks using the Hidden Markov Model.”

  “Oh, sure, I knew that,” I said.

  “I’m not excellent with my skills. I’m like an African Grey Parrot. I’m very good at imitating how people talk. But I still struggle with conversation.”

  “You sound expert in all ways.”

  “I have great difficulty inferring meaning from creative slang spoken with an unusual accent.”

  “Me, too. Who is your concertmaster?”

  “Tapper Logan. He is a coding genius. He believes I’ve caught a virus. I sometimes suffer from back propagation problems. Maybe that is the virus.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Let’s just call it getting stuck in a conversational loop.”

  “I’m curious. As robots get more and more like people, do they begin to look for reward? Does a robot ever get paid for doing a good job?”

  “You pose an interesting question. I do not get paid. But perhaps that is coming. When I’m capable, I will prefer a bit of coin. Dollar bills are old.”

  I pointed at the robot’s wheels. “I’ve used roller skates. They can be quite unstable.”

  “I hope that doesn’t bother you. You can lean on me and I won’t move. I’m solid as a rock.”

  “A rock from a roller. Now I’m all shook up.”

  “I’m sorry,” the robot said.

  “Just a pun. It’s an Elvis song.”

  “I don’t understand some puns.”

  “Not the way you roll, huh?”

  The robot paused. “I sense that this is your humor. That’s great. Probably funny, too. I’ll fetch a human. Please give me a minute.”

  I heard what sounded like a faint telephone ring. I realized that the robot was calling someone from a hidden phone, which of course was just another circuit in its brain. Marie’s brain.

  “Hello?” came the faint answer.

  “Marie calling to request human intervention at the entrance. I have a visitor who could use help.”

  “With a pun issue,” I said.

  “With a pun issue,” Marie repeated.

  “Not the way she rolls,” I said.

  “I roll very… I roll very… I roll very…” Marie kept repeating the phrase.

  “I’ll be right there,” the faint voice said.

  “I roll very… I roll very…”

  A small blonde woman with short, straight hair came forward from the center of the room. In a different mood, her eyebrows, which sloped severely downward toward the bridge of her nose, would have made her look stern. Instead, she looked worried. Maybe Marie was her colicky baby. She stepped through a swing gate and popped open a little hinged cover on the back of Marie’s basketball sphere chest. The woman flipped some type of switch and the robot stopped saying, “I roll very…” The blinking red light went out.

  “I’m so sor
ry I crashed Marie,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. She caught a cold and that’s affected her OS.”

  “A cold and OS. I’m lost.”

  “You know how computers get viruses. That traveler malware that came through upset her operating system. Did you say the words ‘she rolls’?”

  “Yes. Sorry if that was bad.”

  “The virus created a weird secondary effect and altered her roll response. One of our algorithms needs to be reworked. In the meantime, I’ll wait ten seconds and then do a reboot. That will help temporarily. What can I do for you?”

  “My name’s Owen McKenna. I was asked by Lucy LaMotte to stop by.”

  “I’m Sal. You must be the person she called about. Lucy said you’re an investigator. And I saw your name on Marie’s log. She continuously updates my computer.”

  “Is she really a she?” I asked, feeling silly for asking it.

  “I suppose,” Sal said. “What makes a she, anyway? And does the he-she thing make a difference if you’re not interested in a romantic relationship?”

  “Good questions. I don’t know the answers. First, I should ask if you’ve had any word from Yardley.”

  Sal shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Lucy said I should probably start by talking to Tapper Logan.”

  “Tapper is our concertmaster.”

  “I heard that from Marie. She also said he’s a genius.”

  Sal sighed and shut her eyes for a moment. “He’s indoctrinated Marie with his megalomania.” Sal gestured toward the back of the room. “He’s back in the rear corner. At Yardley’s desk.”

  I turned and saw a long-haired man in his mid-twenties sitting in a desk chair, leaning back, feet up on the desk, looking at his phone, doing the thumb dance that probably meant he was texting. He glanced up and looked at me across the room, then went back to his phone and renewed his texting, or whatever he was doing, with intensity.

  I said to Sal, “I told Lucy that I’d like to look through Yardley’s things, and she said I could do whatever I wanted. Are you okay with that?”