Stolen Thoughts

by Tim Tigner

  “That’s an interesting idea, but that’s not it,” Chase said, sounding solemn.

  “Really? Are you sure?” Vicky was virtually certain she’d figured it out.

  “Don’t leave us hanging,” Skylar said, glancing at Vicky to express solidarity. “Fill us in.”

  “I’m not sure I should.”

  Skylar’s tone lowered. “What are you talking about? Of course you should.”

  They both turned toward Vicky.

  Intuitively, she understood. “He’s worried about temptation.”

  “Temptation?”

  Vicky smiled at Skylar before turning to Chase. “Pascal really did it, didn’t he? He figured out how to generate billions—without divulging the technology?”

  “You’re right on all accounts.”

  Skylar glanced back and forth between them. “I don’t see the problem.”

  Chase said, “Pascal’s plan is exactly what Vicky said she feared it would be, back when we were talking about making billions doing something in secret. It’s evil.”

  82

  Protégés

  SCARLETT PUT DOWN the phone and looked at her partners with relief-filled eyes. “Given all the attention, the coroner’s office rushed the autopsy. They’re calling Pascal’s death the result of natural causes. He had a stroke, end of story. The medical examiner did note the unusual presentation, but also the extreme amount of stress in Pascal’s life at the moment.”

  “Is he linking it to Jim’s stroke?” Colton asked.

  “No. But then Jim had a different M.E.”

  “Are we linking it to Jim’s stroke?” Sackler asked.

  Colton rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t see how they could be connected. Pascal wasn’t wearing glasses.”

  “It’s just quite a coincidence,” Sackler pressed.

  “I don’t trust coincidences any more than you, but they do happen. Did you know that shortly before John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln, Booth’s brother saved the life of Lincoln’s son?”

  Scarlett didn’t want to waste time running down rabbit holes. “What if Pascal was secretly wearing glasses? He confessed to trying to replicate our work. Said he worked hard at it for eighteen months before coming to us. Maybe it was really eighteen years.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Colton asked.

  “Pascal may never have stopped his own project. What if his promise of billions was just a ploy to get close enough to steal our secrets?”

  The three men all stared in silence as the implications sank in. Trent was the first to speak, and he nodded as he did so. “The man was a master negotiator and tactician. In high-tech, you have to be. Think about how Zuckerberg played the Winklevoss twins at Harvard, using deception to delay their website’s launch while building Facebook.”

  Scarlett wasn’t a tech expert like Trent, but she’d seen the movie The Social Network, so she knew the story—and it clicked.

  “The bastard,” Sackler said, drawing out the first ‘a’ as he shook his head.

  “He’s dead, Walter,” Colton said.

  “Sorry. The dead bastard.”

  “So the billion-dollar idea was all a hoax?” Scarlett said, as much a statement as a question. “He identified the one thing that could excite us, people who had it all. People who were making millions living celebrity lives full of accolades and peer admiration.”

  Colton completed her thought. “Billions instead of millions, and all without lifting a finger. We should have known better. We fell for the oldest trick in the book.”

  “The offer of something too good to be true,” Scarlett added, completing his thought this time.

  They sat in silence for a while, swimming in a shared pool of shame and sorrow.

  “Where does this leave us?” Sackler eventually asked.

  Everyone turned to Colton.

  “On the downside, we’re crippled.”

  Trent chuffed. “That’s a bit more than a downside.” He looked around and saw nothing but disapproving frowns. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “On the upside, we remain wealthy and have retained our perfect record.”

  “So we can milk it,” Trent said, again butting in. Again getting glares. “What?”

  “So we can go out on top, like quarterbacks who quit while wearing the latest Super Bowl ring. Fans will be screaming for more, and our legacies will remain forever unblemished. Our names will sit atop the record books for all time.”

  Scarlett liked that picture.

  “Your scenario certainly has its merits,” Sackler said. “But since it doesn’t keep the money flowing, there is an alternative we ought to at least consider.”

  Trent perked up.

  Scarlett was curious, but at that moment would prefer not to hear it.

  “We could pass along our talent to four protégés. ‘Hand-picked successors, trained in our ways,’” he added, sounding like a press release.

  “In exchange for a significant share of the profits,” Trent said. “How much are you thinking?”

  “Generally speaking, we could take lawyers who are already skilled enough to earn $1,000 per hour and give them the ability to double that—in exchange for half their earnings.”

  “But they’d just break even,” Trent said, obviously wanting it to work but not convinced that it would.

  “They wouldn’t just break even. They’d get prestige, their pick of cases, and the joy of knowing they would never lose.”

  “Right,” Trent said with a smile. “That gets my vote.”

  Colton raised both palms. “Hold on. Setting the risks versus rewards aside for now, even though they too will require much contemplation and discussion, we have to factor in the recent changes to our health.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” Sackler said. “While we still haven’t definitively linked our condition to the glasses, let’s assume that the cause-and-effect relationship exists. We’ve been reading minds for twenty years, and are only now seeing the side effects. Suppose we write the protégé contracts so as to effectively limit the use of the glasses to ten or fifteen years? We could, for example, select fifty-year-olds and require retirement at age sixty-five.”

  Trent leaned forward. “Meanwhile I’ll be supplying and servicing their glasses, so we maintain complete control while we each rake in about $3 million a year. I like it.”

  Keller and Sackler turned toward Scarlett and Colton, like tank turrets aiming at the Maginot Line.

  83

  Virtual Assistance

  SKYLAR LOVED her husband because of who he was and what he did and the way he made her feel, but moments like these were why she felt so fortunate to be with him. She’d never met another man with so much genius and compassion.

  “I’ll go pick up some pastries for breakfast,” Vicky said, after Chase suggested that she might be better off without the knowledge of Pascal’s evil plan. Without his placing that shiny apple of temptation forever within her reach. “That will give you two a chance to talk it through. Then we’ll sit down, or not, when I’m back.”

  “Thank you for understanding,” Chase said. “You’re amazing.”

  Skylar was glad the temptation didn’t apply to people without Pradas, because the curiosity was killing her. She had seen the same transcript of Pascal’s words and thoughts as Chase, but still had no idea how the tech exec was going to secretly turn mind reading into billions. In fact, she thought Vicky’s TV show idea was an excellent one. By far the best they’d come up with. But Chase thought he had something better. Or worse, as it were. And he was clearly confident in his conclusion.

  “So what’s his big idea?” she asked, grabbing the clone of Vicky’s phone and finding a key section of text. “Is LEXI an acronym you’ve heard before? I tried figuring it out, but couldn’t get further than Something-Something-Something-Intelligence.”

  “Lexi’s not an acronym. It’s a name. And Pascal revealed exactly what Lexi is.”

  Skylar scanned the transcript. Pa
scal hadn’t said much, or, more importantly, thought much. Between the vodka and the double dose of Rohypnol, he’d had one foot squarely in la-la land and the other on the brink.

  “I don’t see it.”

  “Ask Lexi,” he prompted, making air quotes. “Just ask Lexi.”

  “A search engine? Pascal was going to use mind reading to beat Google? Like in his secret-algorithm example?”

  “Not a search engine. A virtual assistant. Like Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri or Google Assistant.”

  Skylar thought out loud as she considered that proposition. “A virtual assistant that can read your mind. In some ways, their suggestions make it feel like they already can. Did you want to reorder this? Or, Is it time to go to that? But those are based on patterns. I can definitely see how true mind reading would be useful, and how such a system would quickly come to dominate the virtual assistant market, but I don’t see how to keep it secret. Or cash in on it. Alexa and Siri are free.”

  “Pascal gave us the crucial clue.”

  “He did?”

  “It was the last coherent thing he thought as he drifted off.”

  Skylar checked the transcript. “Advertising? I see how that makes money, but how does advertising keep things secret? Isn’t advertising the exact opposite of discretion?”

  Chase smiled. “How does Google make its money?”

  Skylar caught his smile. “Advertising.”

  “I did a bit of research. Took two minutes. The global market for digital ads is around half a trillion dollars. Google alone brings in over a hundred billion from it. Facebook is closing in on that figure. Alibaba, Amazon, Twitter, and others are also raking in billions from ad placements.”

  “Okay. But what’s the connection? Pascal can’t replace Google and Facebook and Twitter, can he?”

  “No, he can’t. But he doesn’t need to.”

  Skylar reached for her coffee. “I don’t get it.”

  “That’s because you’re forgetting the intermediary.”

  “What intermediary?”

  “The half-trillion doesn’t come from the consumers, the people using Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. It comes from the companies placing the ads on those platforms. They’re Pascal’s real customers.”

  “Okay. Keep talking.”

  “In short, if Lexi can truly ‘figure out’ what consumers are and are not interested in, by using a ‘secret formula’ to predict buying behavior, then companies will only spend their advertising dollars on platforms where Lexi is consulted.”

  “Because the ads will be so much more cost effective?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But how would Pascal implement it? How could he make Lexi a part of Google and Facebook and Twitter without giving the technology to those companies, which essentially amounts to making it public?”

  “Simple. He follows the lead of the world’s richest man and puts his smart speaker in every affluent person’s home.”

  “The world’s richest man,” Skylar repeated, thinking out loud. “Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Echo!”

  “Just ask Alexa,” Chase said with an affirming nod.

  Skylar’s head was spinning. “I’m starting to grasp the economic model, but I still don’t get the secrecy part. How does he keep people from figuring out what’s going on?”

  “Pascal told us that earlier on.”

  Skylar frowned. “I missed that too.”

  “He’ll do it the same way the other big tech companies do. Their algorithms are secret, remember. Granted, Pascal has to be careful how he markets Lexi’s capabilities, but I’m sure he figured that out. Something like: ‘Lexi predicts human behavior by synthesizing body language and other verbal and nonverbal clues, delivering users a more satisfying experience.’”

  “Clever. Sounds like that could work externally, with users and advertisers. But what about internally, with programmers and manufacturing technicians?”

  “That’s accomplished through compartmentalization. I once read that the recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken is kept secret by having half of the herbs and spices manufactured in one plant and half in another, with neither knowing what they’re making. Then, at the restaurants, the minimum-wage workers combine Bag A with Bag B before frying the chicken. Or think about Coca-Cola, which bottles its secret formula all over the world. There are plenty of examples of successful trade secrets—including the algorithms used by Amazon, Google, and Facebook.”

  “Well, you were right. This was exactly up Pascal’s alley. And it is evil.”

  “Evil and legal. There’s no law against reading minds. And all the tech companies shield themselves from invasion-of-privacy and other lawsuits with the Terms of Use Agreements we all Accept without reading.”

  “Some people read them. Competitors’ lawyers, for instance,” Skylar said, pushing back.

  “Right, but that won’t matter. They’ll use the same innocuous phraseology we just discussed, about permitting the collection and use of verbal and nonverbal information, including body language and other whatever.”

  Now Skylar’s head was really spinning. “Wow! The more you look at this, the bigger it gets. This is huge. Pascal would ultimately have had the ability to read everyone’s mind. Think of the power he’d have possessed.”

  “I try not to.”

  “I definitely understand why you hesitated to tell Vicky. At the moment, the situation is kind of like the chicken recipe. She has half with the mind-reading technology, we have half with the billion-dollar idea, but neither of us could cash in if we were suddenly struck by greed.”

  “Or coerced by blackmail or legal pressure.”

  Skylar took her husband’s hands. “Will you tell her if she asks?”

  “I don’t know,” Chase said, giving her a squeeze. “I’m hoping you can convince her not to.”

  84

  The Reversal

  BEFORE HER ASSISTANT KNOCKED on her office door, Scarlett would not have thought that her day could possibly get worse. Her extremely high-profile client had died of a stroke, an affliction that looked equally likely to strike her at any second. Her hope of becoming a billionaire on Easy Street now appeared to be based on an elaborate con, perpetrated by said dead client. And two of her three remaining partners were currently gunning for her to exchange peaceful retirement for fifteen years of stress and risk. Please, by the grace of God, let this be good news. “What is it, Margaret?”

  “A mister Fredo Blanco is here to see you. All four of you,” Margaret said. “I’ve alerted the others.”

  “How did Mr. Blanco get past security? We left clear instructions: no visitors.”

  “I believe he called up from the lobby and Mr. Keller approved the meeting.”

  Trent had no choice, Scarlett realized. They could hardly turn away their assassin. Fredo had failed to find Pixler, but clearly he’d succeeded in identifying them. Great. Let the blackmail begin.

  As she walked to the partners’ conference room, Scarlett tried to convince herself that it could be good news. Perhaps Blanco had located Pixler. Captured her even. Maybe the psychic was locked in his trunk and they were about to learn whether the strokes and their condition were natural or electronically induced. Maybe an hour from now they’d have the cure and could put their glasses back on. Maybe she wouldn’t have to spend the rest of her life worrying about a deadly or debilitating stroke. What a relief that would be. Like waking up from a long, cruel nightmare.

  But that was an unlikely scenario. In all probability, Blanco was about to blackmail them, and, even worse, their condition was the natural result of long-term exposure to their unnatural tool.

  She said a short prayer before opening the door.

  It wasn’t answered.

  The fourth man in the conference room wasn’t Fredo Blanco. He was tall, handsome, white, and vaguely familiar. Where had she seen him before? Regardless, the other partners obviously knew that he wasn’t their assassin and they had chosen to sit with him anyway.
In silence.

  Once she’d also taken a seat, the Fredo imposter opened the backpack at his side, withdrew a laptop, and set it on the table so that it faced their direction. He proceeded to open it like he was presenting the first course at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Voila!

  The computer had clearly been set to remain awake while closed, because the screen showed a videoconference already in progress. The sight gave Scarlett a jolt of electricity. Vicky Pixler!

  Catching sight of the other mind reader drew Scarlett’s attention to the glasses the imposter was wearing, and those her partners were not. Her heart seemed to seize up as the implication struck home. They were being read!

  Right on cue, the imposter said, “Remove your glasses.”

  While Scarlett complied, her stomach shrank to walnut size.

  Although they could no longer read minds, the partners of RRS&S continued to wear their glasses for the trademark image and the corrective lenses. However, they didn’t have them powered on. No sense risking the radiation without the benefit. But of course, the psychic and her companion didn’t know that. Or at least they hadn’t before this meeting began.

  Pixler moved on. “Before you ask, yes, my colleague is wearing my glasses, but no, he can’t read your minds. They’re interfacing with the computer to transmit your thoughts to me instead. I have not and will not share my technology with anyone.”

  The man turned toward each of them in turn, a move Scarlett knew well but one which made her feel violated. At least his robotic execution reinforced the assertion that he didn’t regularly wear the glasses.

  “I will start by noting that I’m extending you a courtesy that you did not show me. You should be grateful to be breathing. Grateful that I did not dispatch my assistant to kill you, as you did yours. Twice.” Pixler added with bite. “Frankly, that was a difficult decision, given that Fredo murdered my fiancé before my eyes. Thus far, with the help of friends, I have managed to let my angels prevail. Whether they keep my demons at bay will depend entirely on your future behavior. Are we clear?”