by Ryan Kirk
Even a few minutes of searching indicated her unsuitability. While she was in current control of Proskey Enterprises, it sounded as though the board was looking to dismiss her quickly and return her to her original post. She was a woman who specialized in details and supply-chain logistics. If Proskey had been the head, she had been the limbs of the organization, making whatever Proskey desired a reality. But she wasn’t fit to lead, and after watching two public interviews with her, Nat was certain she would never become governor of Minnesota. She had all the personality of a wooden plank.
She considered investigating other employees in the organization, but that idea also didn’t sit well with her. Sapiens wasn’t going to pull some middle manager out of Proskey’s corporate structure.
But they might go higher, she thought to herself.
She turned her attention to the board of directors, thirteen names, some of which were more familiar than others. These would be the people Sapiens recruited from.
Nat repeated her search on all the board members, the sun rising high in the sky outside her window as she did. Despite the temptation, she kept her search limited to public domains only. There would be time for deeper and more illegal searches if she found a person of interest.
The task took her most of the day, and she saved clips of everything she found to her own computer to examine closer later. Of the board of directors, there were three people who set off her radar as possibilities. Two of them were powerful executives with an impressive amount of pull. They were all people who had publicly spoken against AI and robotics.
But it was the third man who interested her the most. Bryan Adair: a local defense lawyer who was an enigma if there ever was one. He had no social media presence, but all the same, he was everywhere. Nat dug at him with all the publicly available tools she could come up with, and she still felt as though she had only brushed the surface. The man took privacy to a whole new level. It took her almost ten minutes to find out where he had gotten his degrees.
But his name kept showing up, all the time. He was at fundraisers. He was an active philanthropist. As a defense lawyer, some of his court cases were legendary within circles who were aware of such things. He’d received honorary diplomas from a number of local institutions and was a frequent speaker at everything from graduations to fundraisers to law lecture series.
And Nat had never heard of him.
The more she scratched, the shallower he became.
There were hints of his beliefs. In his speeches he advocated a “common sense” approach to the further development of AI, and pointed out, quite correctly, some of the dilemmas that had yet to be solved. As Nat read through transcripts and even watched a few of his videos, she couldn’t help but be impressed by his reasonableness. Had she encountered the views in any other context, she might even have considered voting for him as a candidate.
It bugged her that he didn’t have an active online presence. In this day and age, such a thing just wasn’t done. It reeked of suspiciousness.
Just as she was shutting down her computer for the day, she received a call from Bryce. She frowned. Although she had given Bryce the means to contact her, the implication had been that he would only use it in an emergency. She thought back to Br00-S huddled in the cave. When bad things tended to happen all at once, there was cause to be worried.
She answered her phone as she left the library.
“Nat, are you okay?”
Her frown deepened. “Yeah, I’m fine, why?”
Bryce didn’t answer her right away. “Have you seen Br00-S? Is he okay?”
“He’s back home. He was acting strange, but physically he’s fine. What happened?”
After only a few seconds of hesitation, Bryce told her about last night’s adventures. Had the call been from anyone else, Nat would have doubted what she heard. She knew someone had defeated Br00-S, but she never imagined the victory could be so clean. But Bryce was as honest a man as she had ever met, and there wasn’t much reason for him to lie. What came next was even more surprising.
“Then we got a report about a robot beating the crap out of some drunk guy on the streets downtown. It’s being kept hush-hush around here, but your friend definitely made a name for himself. The guy hadn’t even done anything. From what we can tell, Br00-S instigated the incident. The entire force is going to be out looking for him now.”
Nat couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Br00-S was as good a person as she’d ever met, as good a person as she’d ever even heard of. There wasn’t any way he would do what Bryce was saying.
But her vision of him clashed with the reality the detective described. She trusted Bryce, and Br00-S had been acting strange. Still, she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe. There had to be something else, something that the police were missing. That had to be the case.
Nat sat down. The past six months had been good for her. She had enjoyed the partnership with Br00-S, and suddenly, the small-time thugs he had been beating up seemed like a good routine to return to. Had she just been wishing for something bigger to happen a week ago?
Bryce left a lot unspoken, but Nat understood. A robot beating up people on the street was a huge problem. Robots weren’t supposed to harm people. The fact that Br00-S had let himself be seen meant that a chain of events was already happening. Dominoes were falling, and Nat wasn’t sure even Br00-S could predict where the last one would land. His actions had been foolish and sloppy on his part. Worse, they had been wrong. Beating up people who were terrorizing mods was justified. Starting fights on the street wasn’t. For the first time, Nat worried about returning to the cave. What if he turned on her?
Moreover, if someone had tracked down Bryce, it was reasonable to suspect they might try to track her down as well. She was considerably harder to find than Bryce, but not invisible. No one was, not anymore. Being cautious was a way of life to her, but now she’d have to be even more so.
Bryce reminded her to be careful, and was about to hang up when another thought occurred to her. “Hey, Bryce. Have you ever heard of Bryan Adair?”
Silence was her only answer. Nat pulled the phone away from her ear and glanced at it to make sure it was still on. It was.
“How did you come across that name?”
“Can I just say he’s a person of interest?”
“I don’t suppose it would do me any good to tell you to stay away from him, would it?”
“Not much. Is he dangerous?”
The detective didn’t seem interested in trying to answer any more of her questions. “Nat, whatever you’re up to, just be careful. Be very careful.” Then the line went dead.
Nat didn’t want to return to the cave that night. Knowing what she did now, she simply didn’t feel comfortable around Br00-S. He was keeping dangerous secrets. Instead, she found her van and parked safely away in one of the few remaining parking garages in the city.
Sleeping in the van was a disconcerting experience. At one time she had slept there every night, but now it felt like she was a visitor in her own home. Although she had never done so, she imagined it was like coming back to the home you grew up in after you left for college or work. It was still yours, but as time passed, it became something else as well, something different and foreign.
As she tossed and turned, she considered what she could do the next day. Despite Bryce’s warning, and perhaps even a little because of it, she knew she was going to investigate Bryan Adair further. The simplest step to take would be to hack into his office’s Wi-Fi and start looking into his case files. It was highly illegal, of course, but that didn’t bother Nat much. Information deserved to be free, especially in situations like this.
Once her mind settled on a plan, she eventually fell asleep.
The next morning, she snacked on a bag of jerky she found stashed away in a drawer. It was hardly a proper breakfast, but she had never been much for cooking for herself. Simple was always best.
She did a quick systems check on the van,
but everything was in order. She had been a stickler for maintaining it, as it had been her home. How long had it been since she’d been back here? Weeks, at least. Possibly months. She couldn’t remember.
The engine turned over without a problem, and within a few minutes she was on the road towards Adair’s office. She had expected him to be downtown, but that wasn’t true. Her first surprise was that his law firm didn’t show up on a simple directions search on her phone. There was also no contact page on their website. She frowned. She had never heard of a lawyer that was hard to find. Hell, most of them seemed to be up on billboards these days, looking for anyone willing to sue for any minor reason.
Public records found the building, though. Interestingly enough, he was on the south side of the city, almost in the heart of a residential area. That was odd, too.
Shrugging mentally, she drove to where she was directed, ending up in a neighborhood that bordered a commercial zone. The building that Mr. Adair owned was a small, three-story structure, the exterior all different types of glass, as was the style these days.
No secrets to hide, my ass.
Nat couldn’t find a parking spot immediately, but after a few times circling the block, she was just in time to watch one open up right in front of the building. Nat pulled in and turned off the van, going in the back where her equipment was stored.
She directed an antenna towards the office building and powered up her computer. Even though she had built herself a decent setup in the cave, her primary equipment was still here. This was still most of her life, and she couldn’t quite convince herself to leave it behind. With what she knew now, perhaps she’d been right not to.
While her software searched for the signals to tap into, Nat set up her van’s security system. After spending too much time with Br00-S, and after being abducted from this van once, she had decided to upgrade. There were now more cameras and more sensors, and she turned them on and pointed several of them towards the offices. She recorded the video. Maybe someone coming or going would provide just the break she needed.
Nat returned to her computers. She had just accessed their wireless network, so now it was time to dig deeper. She threw on some headphones and started bobbing her head to rock music as she worked. This was always her favorite part of life.
Hacking into systems was more than just fun for Nat. She loved looking at security systems and trying to puzzle her way around them, try to find the flaws their designers accidentally left. For hacks like this, she had a set of commonly available tools that took most of the fun out of it, but still, she enjoyed the feeling of bypassing systems design to limit access.
Every layer was slightly more complex than the one before it. Nat felt as though she was peeling an onion, revealing layer after layer of new information. Eventually, she stopped at Adair’s client list. She whistled softly to herself as she went down the list. It was a veritable who’s-who of important people in the city.
One name in particular stuck out to her. Walt Drixler. The name sent a surge of anger through her. He was a lowlife that had worked undercover security at Proskey Enterprises. He had chased her through the streets of the city months ago and had made her fear for her safety. Their encounter had ended with Nat sending him down a flight of stairs, nearly killing him.
Thanks to the efforts of Mr. Adair, Drixler was already back on the streets again. Nat realized the odds of a chance encounter were slim to none, but the very idea that that man was out already was enough to make her skin crawl.
There was no way Drixler could afford Adair, not from the list and company he kept. Although she hadn’t found anything direct, Nat felt like her theory made sense. Adair was well-connected and respectable. He had lots of friends in high places, and Nat was sure he had to be a member of Sapiens First. If they were going to choose a candidate to represent the political half of their organization, she didn’t think they could do much better.
Nat was just about to pack up her gear and leave when her eye was drawn to the monitors showing the video feed outside the van. Adair himself was leaving the building, but it wasn’t him that drew her attention. It was the men and women he was with.
There were five of them, three men and two women. All of them were dressed alike, in black polos and khaki pants. Even their sunglasses seemed to match. All of them were incredibly fit, and all were armed with a variety of weapons. But none of that mattered to her. It was the logos that caught her attention. It couldn’t be, could it?
All the alarms in her head immediately went off. She turned on a directional microphone and pointed it towards the group. She only caught the end of the conversation.
“Thank you for your help, Mr. Adair. Please let us know if your client has any more information for us.”
“I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, you will be the first people I call should my client remember any more.”
There were handshakes all around and the group separated, Adair going back into his office and the team piling into a black SUV with dark tinted windows.
Nat pulled the footage up on her monitor and reviewed it. She had to know. She froze an image and zoomed in, her imaging software sharpening the pixelated image a little. Not enough to make out the lettering, but Nat would recognize that logo anywhere.
Curse words swam through her mind, but even combining them, she couldn’t come up with strong enough language.
Radius Robotics was here, and that could only mean one thing.
They were here to wipe Br00-S.
Chapter Nine
Drake sat at his laptop, staring at it thoughtfully. One of their women in the police department had sent him a video of an incident that happened shortly after he had supposedly assassinated the robot. When he first heard the news, he felt a hint of begrudging respect. Despite his careful planning, the robot had escaped. Fortunately, Drake received the information before contacting his superiors, so no one knew his first attempt at finishing the robot had failed.
Drake was certain he had killed the robot in the park, which meant his enemy had anticipated the trap and sent in a decoy. Detective Lewis might have been in on the plan, but Drake’s instincts said no. The robot would have found a model similar enough. When Lewis had his change of heart, he hadn’t seen the robot clearly, and Drake had pulled the trigger too soon. But that was in the past now, and there was no cause to worry about it. All that mattered were his next actions.
In a way, Drake was pleased. He had hoped for a challenge, and the robot hadn’t disappointed him yet.
His first step was reflection. What did the robot’s actions the night before tell him about his target? The list was long.
The first conclusion seemed the most obvious but was also the most surprising. The robot valued its own existence over that of other robots. It must, if it was willing to sacrifice another robot to save itself. Drake had spent years studying robotics and AI, believing that being informed about one’s enemy was vital. Robots were programmed to value each other equally, and in all his years of study, Drake had never come across a situation similar to this. He was convinced such a solution would never occur to another robot. It meant this robot was thinking more like a human than a robot.
Drake wondered how much it valued human life. It clearly was capable of causing harm far outside the bounds of its original programming. Could it kill? The question was an interesting one, but he had to push it aside. Those questions were the realm of speculation. He didn’t have an answer one way or another, and he didn’t want his judgment clouded by perspectives that weren’t backed up by evidence. All he could say for certain was that the robot was capable of feats not possible for most AIs.
What the robot had done after the ambush was even more instructive. As near as Drake could tell, it had gone searching for members of Sapiens First. Watching the video sent by his contact, Drake saw that the robot was more careless than it had ever been. Yes, it had led the pair into the alley where the actual deed was out of sight, but with no clothes, it h
ad exposed itself, and even your average beat cop would have no problem putting together what had happened. In a way, the robot had gone public for the first time.
Drake closed his laptop, his mind working the problem. Had the robot gotten angry at being outsmarted? It seemed a very human reaction, but no other explanation came to him. Everything he knew about the robot from Proskey and Felix’s reports said that the robot was careful and meticulous. Late last night it had been anything but. If the robot was making decisions based on emotional responses, that meant it could be manipulated, just like a human target.
He smiled. The challenge with this robot was becoming everything he had hoped for. He had found a weakness, now he only needed to figure out how to prove the weakness was real and push on that button until the robot destroyed itself. He wasn’t sure how yet, but he let his subconscious work on the problem. The solution would come in time. There was no rush.
His next order of business was a more active one. He pulled out a phone and dialed the number of the local hospital. When the receptionist answered, he asked for Matt Jones, a patient there.
As soon as they heard what happened in the alley, Sapiens had jumped into action, and Drake had been a part of that: behind the scenes, but always present.
Sapiens existed in three parts, really. There was the public face of Sapiens, the political party that talked about the dangers of robotics and Artificial Intelligence, a party with growing ambitions that was the ground-level voice of the people. Sapiens had plenty of prominent public backers, but behind the scenes was a backbone of businesspeople, lobbyists, lawyers, and politicians who supported the cause behind closed doors. For a variety of reasons, they kept their allegiance secret. But the first group, both the public and private sides, was entirely legal.
On the other side of a prison sentence was Sapiens First. While a few of the rich and powerful, like Clive Proskey, were involved in the movement, it was led not necessarily by the wealthy, but by those whose convictions ran deep, people who would do anything to prevent the advance of AI. Felix was an excellent example. Fairly smart, and driven to a degree most would never understand, he would have killed himself with a smile on his face had it meant the advancement of the cause.
