Operation Indigo Sky

by Lawrence Ambrose

  "Have you had anything to eat?" I asked.

  "Oh, thanks, but I need to get back to work."

  Talk about having to check your ego at the door! I could've sworn she was into me. I guessed I'd never understand women. Still, a small, calculating frown formed on her mouth as we paused before the men's locker room door.

  "Can I buy you a cup of coffee instead?" she asked. "I do have time for that. To be honest, I would like to pick your brain a bit."

  "Sure." I worked to keep my relief out of my voice. "Just give me a minute to clean up."

  As I showered I reminded myself that this was a professional operation, not an overture to an actual relationship or even a real friendship. I felt the need to remind myself because, despite only spending maybe ten minutes talking to her and the fact that she wasn't even my type physically or otherwise, I was drawn to Janine in some weird, puzzling way I couldn't yet define. Regardless, I needed to get my head in the game.

  Janine was waiting by the class area when I emerged, now in long jeans and a semi-dress shirt. Another class – this one mixed martial arts – was in session, featuring the usual assortment of elbow, knee, and hand strikes amidst grappling moves.

  "Looks painful," said Janine as I walked up.

  "No pain, no gain, as they say."

  She made a skeptical or perhaps fearful noise, and we strolled toward the front doors.

  "You know a good coffee place?" I asked. "I'm kind of new to the area."

  "As luck would have it." She nodded to a café across the street. Java Nation. "Let's drive over, if you don't mind. It's getting that time of night – though I'm sure I'd be safe with you."

  "Do you have a gang problem here? Just remembering what you said about your encounter in the convenience store."

  "Definitely. Though I think it's maybe not as bad as when I first arrived five years ago."

  I walked her over to her red Focus Electric – somehow I wasn't surprised at her choice of car – and followed in my rental GM. In the café, Janine ordered a mocha latte and I an ice cold frappe. I didn't object when she paid. We sat facing each other across a small table, and I took my first unabashed close-up look at her. She had a long straight nose and small mouth that was further reduced by being constantly pursed. Her light brown eyes approximated the shade of dark beer – an appealing color, in my opinion – but they weren't the kind of eyes you'd drown in or get drunk on. Too brightly lit for that.

  "You said you just moved into the area?" she ventured.

  "Yeah." I had been about to say I was just visiting, but then a better idea occurred to me, inspired by my time with Sonja. "I'm actually staying in a hotel right now, looking around at, ah, property. Any suggestions about good neighborhoods?"

  "Family-oriented? Single?"

  "Definitely single."

  She smiled. "Leona Valley's nice. That's where I live. Quartz Hill. Some good areas around Lake Palmdale. Of course, I don't know your price range."

  "Five to seven hundred, I'm thinking." Might as well continue living the dream. I guessed from her job, education, and house that she did all right herself. "I don't have a great feel for prices here yet."

  "That range should work." Her smile had turned approving. "What do you do, if you don't mind my asking?"

  As much as I'd expected this question, I still wasn't sure how to play it. A mixture of mystery and solid plausibility seemed like the right tactic rather than to just come out and say I worked for Intelligence International Services as a tester.

  "Is it something illegal?" Her laugh had a nervous edge as her eyes appraised me. "Sorry. I'm probably being too nosy. Comes with my profession, I'm afraid."

  "Security," I said, with a cryptic smile. "It's one of those jobs that if you tell people too much you have to kill them."

  "Ha. I'm hoping you don't mean the Mafia or something."

  "No. Nothing that small-time."

  "The government?"

  "We work with governments, yes."

  "Hmmmm. Interesting. We do, too, in my line of work. So you're private, then?"

  "Yeah. I was kidding about the killing part. Sort of. My employer has a thing about loose lips."

  "I can totally relate. If I told people everything I did..." She wrinkled her nose and snorted out a laugh. "Well, I wouldn't be the one killing them, but someone else might."

  "Really? Are you in security, too?"

  "God, no. I'm a scientist. But almost everything I work on is slathered in security."

  I feigned a puzzled frown while smiling inside. Slathered in security. That could probably apply to pretty much everything I was looking into.

  "A scientist?" I said.

  "Lockheed Martin."

  "Ah. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, considering where we are. Do you work on airplanes?"

  "Not exactly. I'm afraid I really can't go into any details."

  "Understood."

  "But I can be blunt about one thing. I was totally intimidated by what I saw in our class today. I know in theory that weaker individuals can do things to minimize size and strength differences, but I'm fairly certain that physics requires a certain level of physical strength to realize that theory."

  "Yeah, that's true in a kind of trivial sense. You couldn't do Jiu-Jitsu on someone if you were a squirrel. At least I don't think you could." I smiled. "Do you play chess?"

  "Yes. At a totally amateur level."

  "Martial arts are a lot like chess. It's mostly tactics. If you have enough strength to pick up pieces, you can play. And if you play someone who is naturally smarter than you, kind of like someone who is stronger than you, you can still defeat them with superior skills that come from practice and knowledge."

  "You think I'm strong enough to pick up chess pieces?"

  "No doubt about it."

  "Your confidence is encouraging." Her smile remained skeptical.

  "I could demonstrate."

  "Okay," she said, cautiously. "Um, what did you have in mind?"

  "If I started choking you from the front, could you get my hands off your throat?"

  "Maybe if I kicked you in the groin or gouged your eyes?"

  "That might work. Frankly, a standing front choke is a chump move that can be defeated in dozens of ways – no skilled fighter would ever do it. But some thug might, especially on a woman. Still, punching or kicking or gouging can't be guaranteed to work. But using your leverage against a weak point on your attacker's arm is guaranteed to succeed."

  "Interesting." She finished her latte. "Show me?"

  "Sure. Why don't we go back to the gym?"

  We tossed our coffee cups in the trash and stepped out into the warm night.

  "I should probably get going," she said. "Why don't you show me here?"

  "If someone saw me strangling you they'd call the cops."

  Janine laughed, grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the shadows, out of view of the café and the street. "No one will see us here."

  "You're awfully trusting."

  "If you wanted to, you could drag me here and have your way with me anyway."

  "You have an interesting way of looking at things."

  "I'm an interesting person."

  I laughed. "I'm starting to get that. Okay. I'm going to pretend to strangle you." I positioned my hands on her throat. "I want you to raise your right arm as if you're scratching your head. The idea is you're going to twist to your left, keeping your arm tight to your body so that it's striking my left wrist as you turn. Does that make sense?"

  "I think so."

  "Try it in slow-motion." She did, and my grip gave way.

  "How hard are you trying to resist?"

  "It wouldn't matter, but I'll try as hard as I can, I promise. This time twist at full speed."

  I tightened my grip and braced myself. She spun, and I felt a sharp pain in my wrist as she broke my grip.

  "That actually hurt," I said.

  "Really?" A laugh caught in her throat.

  "You're lau
ghing at my pain?"

  "Sorry. "You're sure you tried to resist?"

  "Absolutely."

  "It makes sense. With a given length of a bar and fulcrum position, I could lift a man."

  "I knew science was good for something."

  She grinned. "Thank you for that graphic demonstration. You made it easy to understand."

  "Glad to be of service."

  We walked back to her car, her head lowered in thought. I guessed she was thinking about what to do next regarding me, just as I was about her.

  "Thanks for the coffee," I said. "The dinner invitation is still open, by the way."

  "That's nice of you, but I should tell you something." She made a conflicted noise. "I just got out of a relationship, and I'm feeling a bit gun shy these days. More than a little skeptical of men, if I'm being completely honest."

  "I'm a little skeptical of men myself."

  "Yes, but hopefully in different ways." She returned my smile with a small grimace. "Are you coming to tomorrow's Jiu-Jitsu class?"

  "I'm planning to."

  "Me, too. I thought I'd try to get my feet wet. Why don't we talk about it more then?"

  "Okay. Sounds good."

  "See you later."

  I stopped for a leisurely dinner and a couple of beers on the way back, my laptop open on the table beside my food, reading everything I could find on Janine as I drank and picked through my meal. There wasn't a lot about her online, but what there was made my head spin. She had published scholarly articles in university journals – I had to pay with Scott Harrow's credit card to view them – and had posted a number of lectures on line.

  As if the subjects themselves weren't difficult enough, the sheer range of her interests – everything from the nature of life and her attempts to create it artificially to an obscure treatise on artificial intelligence – blew what was left of my mind. One of her projects involved creating a program for composing classic music. She gave a Ted Talk relating art to biology and quantum theory!

  I thought her lecture style could use some work, though. She was one of those people who spoke fast and excitedly, and her words were hard enough to follow without the constant hand-waving. Still, her love of her work shone through.

  So what exactly did she do at Skunk Works? I had trouble believing the government would be interested in A.I.-composed classical symphonies or quantum art.

  Back at my motel room, I resumed my study of the girl scientist wonder. A knock on the door made my hands freeze on the keyboard. Too late for housekeeping, so that left one main possibility.

  "What's going on with you?" Lilith asked when I let her in. "Making any progress with your 'target'?"

  "Yeah, actually I've talked to her and even gave her some advice on weight-lifting and martial arts."

  Lilith sank into one of the chairs, her smile oozing incredulity. "How did you manage that?"

  "I followed her from her house to a gym. I signed up, and made contact with her while she was working out."

  "The odds must be ever in your favor."

  "Or the force is with me. What about you and Sheldon Bronstein?"

  "I checked out his house." She shrugged. "I'm thinking of getting a flat tire or some car trouble on his street after he gets off work tomorrow."

  "Do you know when he gets off work?"

  "Not yet. But I'll figure it out. So what happened, exactly, with you and Ms. Geek Scientist?"

  I described meeting her, the coffee after the class, and my self-defense exhibition in the parking lot. Lilith looked puzzled, as if it wasn't quite adding up in her mind.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  "I don't know. It just sounds too easy."

  "I hear you. She's a lot friendlier than I expected." My smile faded. "I've been reading about her, and trying to wade through her papers, but I can't seem to get a handle on where she's coming from. Maybe you could make more sense of that."

  Lilith rose with a sigh and settled down beside me at the table. I slid the mouse over to her. She spent about twenty minutes clicking through the same stuff I'd been reading, "hmmming" from time to time.

  "Weird," she concluded. "Except for the art part, she's a lot like me. Too many interests to be contained by narrow academia. And yet she's managed to make it work, professionally. Maybe there's hope for me yet."

  "But the million dollar question is what the heck is she doing at Skunk Works?"

  Lilith leaned away from my computer, dragging her hair back from her face, her frown thoughtful.

  "If I had to guess," she said, "I'd guess artificial intelligence. That's the only thing I see that links all her interests together and would interest the powers that be."

  I thought about that. It seemed to make sense.

  "Robot soldiers? Skynet?"

  "Her algorithm for composing classical music could easily be turned to composing war scenarios. I doubt it's about robot soldiers. Her papers and research background suggest something bigger."

  "Skynet is the actual name for a NSA program that looks for terrorists."

  "That could be it. Or it could be military. A powerful AI could give any military a huge edge."

  "Until it turns on its masters."

  Her sharp laugh held a symphony of disdain. "You people and your superstitions. I'm surprised you didn't predict that factory machines would turn on you."

  "I think some people did."

  "Oh, right. The Luddites."

  "I thought people who are skeptical of intelligent machines are supposed to be luddites."

  Lilith shook her head. "A machine that's intelligent isn't a tool. It's a being. But a machine that behaves as if it's intelligent – makes intelligent decisions - can be a very dangerous tool."

  "And that's your best guess what she's working on?"

  "Yes." She swiveled in the computer chair to face me. "Did you notice that her papers and lectures stopped five years ago?"

  "That's when she started working for Skunk Works, I think." I stared at the computer screen. "Did you notice the last thing she was working on publicly?"

  "A paper on quantum computing and a new interpretation of the Church-Turing thesis."

  "So she writes something about computers, and then someone offers her a job at Lockheed Martin?"

  "Hence my guess it's about AI."

  "Her PhD is in microbiology, not computer science. Still, she is attempting to create artificial life."

  "The two could intersect," said Lilith. "Throw in her attempts to create algorithms for creativity..."

  "Right! Creativity is a big part of being intelligent."

  Lilith sat back in the chair and eyed the ceiling.

  "What's the story on your Sheldon Bronstein? What's his claim to fame?"

  "Spaceflight engineer. From what I can tell, he's more of an overseer than the talent, unlike Janine Callas. But he may know more about what we're trying to learn."

  "I can't see Janine being involved with something dark and nefarious," I said.

  "Scientists research and build things," said Lilith. "What other people do with them is not their problem."

  "Not all scientists feel that way."

  She shrugged. "Most do, from what I've seen."

  I paced slowly around the room, gathering my thoughts. To me, Janine seemed too cheerful and exuberant to be harboring deep, disturbing secrets. She might be working on a secret new technology, but I doubted it would fit into some dark conspiracy.

  "What we're trying to learn," I said, "is basically whether our government is gearing up to meet a threat from space like an approaching asteroid."

  "That and whether a parallel and more advanced space program covertly exists."

  "If it did, you'd think that would be the program that would handle a dangerous asteroid."

  "That might be above Lockheed Martin's security clearance."

  "Their former president, Ben Rich, allegedly claimed that Skunk Works has the technology to fly to the stars."

  "Allegedly?"
>
  "Only two people have come forward supporting it." I offered her one of her own dismissive shrugs. "But the key point is that Lockheed Martin builds stuff for NASA and DARPA. If there's a private organization with a higher security clearance, I don't know about it."

  "I don't, either. You and my dad would know more about that than I would."

  I stopped by the window, and peered through the curtains out into the summer night. Somewhere in the distance, sirens were wailing.

  "The scary thing so far," I said, "is the more I learn the less I think I know."

  Chapter 10

  IT WAS ALREADY NINETY degrees when I drove over to XFitness at 10 the next morning. I couldn't think of anything better to do than to hang out and hope Janine would show up. If not, there was the late-afternoon Jiu-Jitsu class.

  It was Saturday, and the place was packed. Probably the worst time imaginable to work out – with one exception: enough dudes on the basketball court for a pickup game. With no Janine in sight, I staked a claim to a spot, and had only a five-minute wait before my team jogged out onto the floor.

  I was rusty. It had been a few weeks since I'd pounded the hardwood. I managed one jump-shot and a decent pass for an assist – enough to win the game and keep us on the floor. Loosening up, I hit a couple of baskets, gathered a handful of rebounds, and blocked a shot. I also took an elbow in the ribs from some burly asshole who resented being guarded. I returned the favor with a sharp but subtle knee to the back of his thigh. He limped off the court glowering menacingly back at me after I'd held court.

  As the third game started, I noticed Janine standing at courtside giving me a quizzical smile. As I smiled back, the guy I was guarding flashed past me for an uncontested lay-up. Janine covered her mouth and held up a hand in apology before retreating from the recreation area. I was tempted to quit and join her, but I was on a roll – to me, basketball was almost as addictive as martial arts – and I doubted she'd run off right away.

  I was glad I stayed, because her appearance energized and inspired me. I flew up and down the court, batting away balls, driving past slow-footed opponents, and pulling up for sweet jumpers. The game ended suddenly, with teammates slapping me on my back and exchanging high-fives. I was half-tempted to go for 4-0, but duty called.