by Ryan Kirk
There was no trace of the robot by the time the police arrived.
Chapter Five
Sometimes, Nat thought, she managed to get herself into dilemmas she never imagined were possible. Did normal people have the same problem? She was a hacker who lived underground with a robot. She acknowledged that her situation was odd, but she had never really imagined layering that with her present situation, sitting in a brightly lit glass office across from a gubernatorial hopeful.
When she had started digging into the life of Diamond Carter, she was surprised to realize that the young woman was far more active in the public eye than even Nat had thought. Granted, Nat didn’t pay too much attention to the news channels. If she had, she might have realized just how powerful Diamond’s movement was becoming. But she considered the channels to be little more than modern day propaganda machines whose sole purpose was to make people live in fear.
Still, she had expected to meet in some dingy basement, or to have a virtual appointment. What she hadn’t expected was to walk up to an old renovated building of the style that was becoming all the rage among trendy elites. The building’s brick was old, and there was still a garage door next to the entrance that Nat assumed was lifted to provide fresh air on nice days. The weather was flirting with zero degrees, so there wouldn’t be an open garage today.
When she stepped into the office, she wasn’t surprised to see an open floor plan with desks scattered in a seemingly haphazard fashion. How did anyone get anything done? Nat was only twenty-three, but she immediately felt old and out of touch among this crowd.
Most of the staff scurrying about looked like they were pulled fresh off their latest fashion shoots. The women looked like they modeled swimsuits after work and the men walked around as though wearing a shirt was an unbearable chore, the covering up of the six pack they had worked so hard to achieve.
Nat glanced down at her pasty white skin, suddenly aware that she didn’t get outside nearly enough. Even though it was the dead of winter in Minneapolis, everyone around her was sporting at least a light tan.
Forcing herself to come here had been a mistake. She didn’t fit in, and she was suddenly reliving her school days, her eyes darting left and right as she looked for the nearest corner to hide in. She forced herself to stand still, reminding herself that she wasn’t that girl. Not anymore.
When she made the appointment, she had expected to meet with some lowly office assistant. Diamond was becoming an important person, and there was no way she met with strangers off the street. Nat’s approach had been simple and direct. She’d found Diamond’s email address and wrote her, giving the other woman a brief rundown of her skills. She concluded with a simple request. She wanted to help and wanted to meet to find out how that might best be possible. As a last-second decision, she wrote her hacker handle at the bottom of the message.
Nat never expected to see Diamond herself striding up to her.
Nat’s first thought was that Diamond was absolutely stunning. She stood taller than Nat by a good three inches, and her curly, voluminous hair added another one or two on top of that. The effect was only increased by the heels she walked in as effortlessly as Nat padded around her cave barefoot. Everything about her was put-together and professional, from her walk to her perfect grin.
If she had been anyone else, Nat would have hated her. But she had followed Diamond from back in the day, long before she became the minor celebrity she now was in the city. As much as she might want to run the other way, she forced herself to stay rooted in place.
Diamond extended her hand. “Nat, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Come into my office.”
Nat shook her hand, noticing the firm grip, and followed, still surprised by the fact she was here.
They went into a small corner office, the walls made entirely of glass. Although the room was quiet, there was no privacy here. Nat wondered how much of that was intentional. Some statement on the importance of transparency, perhaps?
Diamond sat down and offered Nat some tea, which she gratefully accepted. She’d only been outside for a few minutes walking from the light rail station, but that had been enough time to make her curse the Midwestern winters.
“So, we’ll get to why you’re here in a minute,” Diamond began, “but first I wanted to tell you that I know who you are, and I love what you’ve done.”
Nat frowned. There seemed little chance of either of those statements being true.
Her confusion must have been evident, because Diamond flashed her another one of her grins, almost bright enough to blind her. “Back when we were both younger, you were kinda my hero. I loved when you cracked the parking meter system. Your solution was simple and elegant, and I’ll confess, got me some free parking for a few years.”
Nat was caught by surprise yet again. That hack, or at least the basis of it, was one that she still used. The system had been modified a few times, but the same basic loopholes remained. The city rarely changed its systems, and Nat had no plans to let them know their parking system had some serious defects. She suspected Diamond had been a part of several hacker communities when she was younger, but she’d never have guessed Diamond actually followed her.
“Thanks. I never realized you knew of my work.”
“I do. I was sad when you dropped off the map.”
That had been when Jack died. There were the fights with her parents, her depression, and the divorce. Then a couple of years of foster families where the internet access wasn’t always reliable. After all that, Nat went deep underground. The work she had done to prove that robots could harm humans was so sensitive that she didn’t trust sharing it anywhere, not even on the dark web where she spent most of her time.
Diamond barely seemed to notice the pause her comment caused. “So, how can I help you?”
Nat finally got her feet under her and looked at Diamond. “I actually came because I wanted to ask you the same question.”
Diamond gave her a short smile. “I appreciate the offer, but as I’m sure you’ve heard, I’m looking at setting up a run for the governor’s office, and I’m playing this one straight. Everything we do is going to be transparent and open. I don’t have any doubt of your talents, but your particular skill set isn’t really needed here.”
Nat shook her head. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I mean. What I’m trying to say is, I’m very interested in the work that you’re doing, and I’d really like to help out. I’m not sure how I can best fit in, but if there’s anything I can do, I would be happy to do so. Legal or not.”
In her imagination, Nat pictured Diamond acting grateful and kind, but then kicking her out the door as firmly as possible. She would have been perfectly reasonable to do so.
Instead, Diamond paused and considered Nat carefully. “Why? If my memory serves, and it does, the only time you came out of hiding the past few years was to express concerns about the development of AI. I won’t insult your intelligence. If you’re here, you know what I stand for.”
The question was a good one. After Jack died, Nat had been lost for a while, and occasionally she had posted angry rants on the forums about the advance of AI. Definitely not a strong calling card in this situation.
Nat took a few seconds to frame her answer.
“Until recently, I really did believe that we needed to be careful about AI. We still do, I think. We’re dancing on the edge of a precipice. If we can dance well, and if we can plan and be reasonable about intelligence development, I think AI can be the greatest tool in the history of the world. I think the risk is also there for AI to ruin us a species, or even supplant us completely.”
Diamond’s frown had grown.
Nat rushed to finish her explanation. “Look, while I think we need to be careful about AI, I think that it’s naive to think we can somehow stuff all the chaos we’ve unleashed back into Pandora’s box. AI is here, and it’s going to develop, and it’s going to take us in directions we can’t even predict. So we need to start thinking, real
ly thinking, about what the world looks like with true, unleashed AI in it. Right now we’re just guessing, and it’s not doing anyone any good.”
Diamond’s frown had turned a little, but she still wasn’t convinced. “I agree with what you’re saying, but I’m still not hearing your personal ‘why,’ and that’s what I want to hear.”
For a second, Nat considered standing up and leaving. She wasn’t the sort of person who liked to share about herself, but she knew if she went back to the cave now she would never stop kicking herself.
“Several years ago, just before I went dark, I was involved in an accident. My brother died, and for a time, I blamed AI. That was eventually what set me on the path I followed. I was afraid of the robots and what they could do. I grew out of it, but it took a long time, and a lot of help. I see the same problem all around me. People are terrified of the future, but the growth of the Sapiens and the Sapiens First movement is even more terrifying to me.”
Diamond sat silent for a few seconds. “That’s a good answer,” she said softly. “I’m sorry about your brother.”
She’d had enough of questions, so she turned the tables. “My question is, what are you going to do?”
Diamond gave her another appraising glance. “We’re still working on creating campaign promises, but what we’re looking at is what I would consider to be very common-sense solutions to get us started. For one thing, I want to prevent all robots from higher processing capacity than what exists currently. At least inside state limits. We need to slow down development so we have time to figure this out.”
“Do you really think something like that has any chance of working?”
“If I’m elected, I plan to try. Many people seem to think it’s crazy, but the only way we change society is by forcing it forward, one step at a time. If we don’t at least attempt solutions, there’s no way to know. Obviously, we can’t change things on a massive scale, but we can on a small scale, and maybe we can move the needle a little in the right direction.”
“Then what happens?”
“I really couldn’t tell you. I’ve got a number of proposals, but my first task, before all others, is to get elected. Without the people willing to vote for a change, there’s nothing I can do.”
Despite her distrustful nature, Nat found herself drawn to the charismatic woman.
“So, how can I help? You want to stay legal, and I can get behind that, but I still feel like my abilities have to be useful.”
Diamond looked around the office as though she was hoping for inspiration.
“I don’t know if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but I could definitely use your help in crunching numbers and spotting patterns. It’s not the most glorious work, but I’d really like a practiced eye looking for patterns in our data.”
It wasn’t much, and they both knew it, but Nat nodded. As Diamond said, it was a step in the right direction.
Nat sighed as she stared at her computer screen. She believed in who she was working for, but this was just different.
Years ago, right after leaving her last foster home, she attempted to work a real office job. She had a cubicle and everything, doing low-level programming work that numbed her mind and her fingers.
She lasted two weeks. In that time she had been yelled at frequently, endlessly criticized, and was constantly bored. The experience, terrible as it was, had taught her that she only had one true mission in life, the mission that had led her to Br00-S.
Nat interlaced her fingers and stretched them out, feeling the satisfying sensation of her knuckles cracking. This work was different. She was doing this for a cause she believed in. In her mind, sifting through data was about as exciting as watching a lecture, but sometimes it just had to be done.
She looked around at the campaign office. Diamond had wanted to put her right in the middle of the open-office floor plan, but Nat had begged for a corner. Diamond gave her a knowing eye and acquiesced. There had been a short string of introductions, but Nat immediately forgot all the names of the others. She couldn’t see them becoming friends, and there was no need to clog up her memory with unnecessary information.
Looking at the others made her feel like an outsider. She was an outsider. The others often clustered together in small groups, laughing together or looking over something with another person. They were a gated community, and she was locked outside the fence. The role was both familiar and comfortable to her, and she wondered if maybe she had changed enough to attempt conversation with the others.
She couldn’t bring herself to do it, though. Experience was a strict teacher, and she had been down this road before, several times. Nat didn’t follow social media. She didn’t know what celebrities were up to or what movie was most popular in theaters. Everything that greased normal social interactions was of zero interest to her. She wanted to go deep with people. That had been true even before the incident. She wanted to talk about beliefs and philosophies. But the older she got, the more she realized most people simply didn’t care.
Most people were happy simply living their lives, burning away their precious hours and minutes like they didn’t matter. Nat knew better. She had seen firsthand a bright and shining life taken far too early. Time was never guaranteed, and it made the shallow interests and entertainments of the masses seem like the time-suck they were.
The thought returned her full circle. There was no point in wasting her time thinking about others and their downsides. She had come here because she thought she could help Diamond, and in some way contribute to an issue she felt strongly about.
Nat’s first task was to do some deep data mining. Diamond had purchased an enormous amount of information, and it was Nat’s job to mine it for characteristics and patterns that the marketing team could then use to target their advertising.
It was exactly the sort of job that Nat detested. Frankly, a commercial AI would do the work better, and Diamond had confessed that once they saved up some more money they were going to rent one, but she also felt that humans might be able to recognize patterns an AI wouldn’t. Nat was skeptical, but she had to give Diamond credit for putting her money (or at least her volunteer hours) where her beliefs were.
Nat took a deep breath and opened a new file. Diamond had given her a decryption key, and the older computer she was working on slowly processed and decrypted the massive file.
To start, Nat simply familiarized herself with the file. She noted the vast number of data points and shook her head at the amount of information people were willing to give out about themselves.
She scanned a few of the rows of data. There was far more here than she could process on her own, but she was just trying to get a high-level overview of what the data looked like and what it might hold.
As she did, she felt a tickle in the back of her mind. It felt as though she had a word on the tip of her tongue but couldn’t quite bring it to mind. She didn’t try to focus on it, instead, she just let her mind wander over the data, allowing the connection to come to her mind and solidify in its own time.
When it did, she gasped.
For a full two minutes, she simply stared at the screen. Once she recognized the pattern, more and more details made sense, dropping into place.
Tearing her eyes away from the screen, she glanced over at Diamond’s office. The candidate was in there alone, working on something that seemed important. An interruption might not be welcome, but Nat had to know.
She stood up and knocked on the glass door. Diamond looked up, and her brilliant smile quickly covered up a momentary flash of annoyance. She gestured for Nat to come in.
Nat did and apologized quickly. “I’m so sorry, and I promise I’ll not be such a bother moving forward, but I did have one question that might help me spot some patterns. Where did this set of data come from?”
Diamond’s grin grew just a little, the smile of someone who was relieved she wasn’t going to have to deal with a serious problem. She glanced at Nat’s screen. “That
’s simple enough. We purchased it from a social network. It’s a standard voting package provided by the network. It’s specifically aimed at users who live in Minnesota.”
Nat nodded. From the data fields she had guessed as much, but she wanted to dig a little deeper to confirm her suspicions. “Is this data that any campaign could purchase?”
Diamond frowned, and Nat felt the need to clarify with a lie. “If other campaigns have access to the same data, we might be able to predict and counter some of their advertisements, is all I’m thinking.”
The activist nodded. “That’s smart. I can’t say I’ve really thought about it, but I imagine the other campaigns must also have it. It’s available to anyone who has the money to afford it.”
“Thanks. I’ll get on that analysis right away.”
She was rewarded with another award-winning grin and she stepped out of the office. Sitting back down at her computer, she stared at the data for a while.
Everything made sense; there wasn’t any doubt of that. And yet, she was still surprised.
Roger and Alex Jones had been killed for getting too close to a story. That incident had started everything. Their murders had made Br00-S the type of robot he was today. Br00-S had already figured out that the story had something to do with the political ambitions of Sapiens, but they had never put two and two together.
Nat had seen this data, partially encrypted, before. They had found it on the hard drives in the office building Br00-S raided the night Nat was kidnapped. Sapiens First had this data as well, and there was only one realistic conclusion.
Sapiens First had been trying to get Clive Proskey elected governor of the state.
Chapter Six
Drake looked out the window at the frozen wasteland below him, frowning at the first sight of his new temporary home.
