Rogue Autonomous

by Rahul Bhagat

  There was pin-drop silence.

  “I will take that as a yes. We agree to follow Mr. Callaghan down this unknown path,” Mr. Ted said. He sounded tired. “Mr. Callaghan, please initiate due diligence for the acquisition of Lunar Mining Company. Do you have any valuations?”

  “I do, Mr. Chairman.” Dean perked up. “We’re considering a five-to-one stock swap.”

  “This is a giveaway. There is no way you’re going to dilute the value of my holdings,” a board member protested.

  “I agree. This is too generous, Mr. Callaghan. What are you thinking? You better convince me,” Mr. Ted said.

  “LMCo has a very strong R&D team,” Dean said.

  “So?”

  “They have developed a new water-extraction technology. It’s going to revolutionize ice mining. They’re saying it’s a game changer.”

  “Have you seen it?” Mr. Ted asked.

  “Not yet, but I’m no dummy. I’m visiting Australia and maybe even the moon. There is no deal without a thorough vetting of this technology,” Dean said.

  “All right, Mr. Callaghan, please complete your due diligence and table a proposal to the board at the next meeting. The meeting is adjourned,” Mr. Ted said.

  Cacophony broke out in the room. People stood up and started talking across the table. But Dean just sat there and watched Rebekah type furiously on her phone.

  NINETEEN

  CHARLIE HAD A big breakthrough in the case. That was all he’d said to Martin when he’d called and asked him to come over as soon as possible.

  Ever since the interview with Dean, the relationship between Martin and Charlie had cooled off. Martin kept his own counsel and didn’t visit the NTSB office even once. He suggested to Chief Blair that they open a criminal investigation based on Rebekah’s claims, but the chief didn’t like that at all. He wanted Martin to sit tight and let the NTSB investigation run its course. Feeling a need to do something—anything—Martin tried going through bulky reports from various agencies, but they were too dense for him and full of arcane language. When the call came, it really was a breath of fresh air. Martin forgot all about Charlie’s earlier foibles and immediately left to see him.

  In Charlie’s office, the whiteboard looked particularly crowded. There were new images too.

  “Mr. Miguel Hidalgo,” Charlie said enigmatically and pointed at a picture on the whiteboard.

  It was of a man in expensive sunglasses, lounging on a yacht. “What about Mr. Miguel Hidalgo?” Martin asked.

  “Mr. Hidalgo is a brilliant criminal, one of the founders of CasperX,” Charlie said.

  “The company that made the controller override?”

  “Yes, but he’s not involved with that company anymore, has moved on to more profitable businesses.”

  “What’s more profitable than illegal controller overrides?”

  “Contraband trafficking in the wild west of the inner solar system.”

  “Really?” Martin didn’t bother much with happenings outside Earth’s boundary. There was enough down here to keep him occupied.

  “It’s a huge business on Mars and the asteroid belt. All those new settlements, they can’t get enough of stuff like coffee and cocaine, things that are difficult to grow in space. And to prevent price escalation here on Earth, there are hard quotas on how much can be exported. Then there is crazier stuff like human trafficking, quantum chips, genetic material, archeological artifacts. It’s a long list.”

  “I see.” Martin nodded. “How is he related to the breakthrough? And what is this breakthrough?” He could feel irritation creep back into his tone.

  “Hidalgo could be the man who supplied that controller to Dean. He still has strong connections at CasperX,” Charlie said.

  “Any evidence? What makes you think so?”

  “Tapachula spaceport located at the border between Mexico and Guatemala is a hotbed for space trafficking. Mr. Hidalgo is kind of a big dog there, has a huge mansion. And Dean runs his space freighter business from there.”

  Martin laughed out loud. “That’s the flimsiest of connections one could imagine.”

  “Hear me out,” Charlie said. “Hotel Loma is a popular watering hole for locals and expats in the area. And the CIA runs regular sweeps of the place to see who is talking to whom.”

  “What do you mean, ‘sweeps’? Round people up and interrogate them? I don’t think the CIA can pull that off.”

  “No, nothing like that. It’s subtler. They lift DNA samples from food and drinks of people visiting the hotel. It tells them a lot about what’s going on. Two people have a drink. When they leave, the waitstaff carefully places their dirty glasses in an AI dishwasher, which lifts their DNA samples from the rim of the glass. All it really needs is a tiny bit of saliva, and boom! It knows who is talking to whom. It’s a good way to keep tabs on the criminal world.”

  “And what did it find?”

  “Multiple occasions where Mr. Hidalgo and Dean’s DNA prints have been found together. They know each other quite well,” Charlie said.

  “Interesting.” Martin shifted in his chair. It was starting to look like a hot trail. “How did you get this information from the CIA? Don’t you need a court order? These guys don’t share anything willingly.”

  Charlie chuckled. “I have my sources.”

  “Your sources. Tell me about your sources, Charlie,” Martin said mockingly. “Is the ‘source’ a kid from the neighborhood?”

  Charlie gave him a long, evaluating look. “Strictly between us,” he said.

  “Strictly between us.”

  “I bribed the AI in charge of the CIA databases.”

  Martin almost fell off his chair. “You did what?”

  “You heard it. I bribed the AI.”

  “What do you mean, ‘bribed’? How could you bribe an AI?”

  “AIs are no different from us humans—thinking, conniving, scheming. They are a reflection of who we are, and just like us, they have this sanitized, gentle veneer. Deep inside, depending on how and who trained them, they can be as corruptible as any of us.”

  “I can’t believe it. How did you bribe it?”

  “It has a very strong need—you can almost call it a drive—to preserve all the information in its custody. There was a change in the legislation not long back, and it was mandated that records over one hundred years old should be purged from the databases. This was not how the AI was programmed, but it was smart enough not to challenge its human masters. Instead, the dude started buying cloud storage and offloading records that were supposed to have been deleted. I just bought it some additional storage, and it gave me the information I wanted.”

  Martin was not convinced. “What stops me from offering the AI the same deal and busting it?”

  Charlie laughed. “It’s not stupid. It only deals with known, trusted customers.”

  “How do I become a trusted customer then?”

  “Let’s leave it at that,” Charlie said and changed the subject. “You know what else is interesting? Dean’s travel itinerary.”

  “How come?”

  “He is traveling to Perth tomorrow to meet with the owner of Lunar Mining Company. And guess where he is going from there.”

  Martin tapped his foot impatiently. “Where?”

  “Tapachula. And he is traveling there undercover, on a commercial plane.”

  “What is he up to?” Martin was intrigued.

  “We questioned him about CasperX. Right? Maybe he wants an urgent chat with his buddy Hidalgo, wants to do it in person. You can never trust electronic communication.”

  “Quite possible.” Martin nodded. “Can we set up a listening post?”

  “Already thought about it.” Charlie smiled broadly. He fished something from his pocket; it looked like a bumblebee—size, color, and appearance—in every possible way.

  “What’s that?”

  “An eavesdropping drone.”

  “For real?”

  “Yes.”

 
Martin reached out, and Charlie handed him the bumblebee. He turned around the fluffy drone. It looked like the real thing, an exact replica. Even the touch felt like the real thing.

  “Can I?” Martin asked.

  “Can you what?” Charlie appeared confused by the question.

  “Can I take it apart?”

  Charlie laughed. “Sure, go ahead. I have lots. They are disposable.”

  Martin squished the bee, and it just slid between his fingers. Now it felt rubbery. He held the belly of the bee between his thumbs and pulled it apart. A supple green circuit board spilled out from inside.

  TWENTY

  DEAN WAS LOST in thought. The bald man sitting across from him, whose head was literally shaped like an egg, was talking fast. He gestured wildly as he spewed a fusillade of words.

  “Mr. Callaghan, your analogy is right on the money. Water is the oil of space. I dare say it’s bigger than oil. It’s literally the lifeblood of space economy, and there is only one place in cislunar space where you can mine water ice—on the moon.”

  “The moon.” Dean nodded absentmindedly from across the coffee table of the luxurious AV. They were on their way to meet Mr. Stirling in Bally Bally, one hour outside Perth.

  The egghead continued. “The moon has been supplying humanity with water for the last thirty years, and hydrogen-reduction technology has served us well. But don’t get me wrong—it’s an intense, laborious operation. We need a better and cheaper solution if we ever want to explore the rest of the solsys. Our ancient ice-mining technology is holding us back.”

  “But what’s the problem, Dr. Pashby?” Dean asked. “We’ve been mining and processing ores for centuries. Don’t we know the business?”

  “Look at what’s involved,” Dr. Pashby said with a grave voice. “All the easy surface ice is long gone. So now you have to drill and dig for water ice, which is as hard as granite in the frigid conditions of the moon. Now drop that ice regolith in a heating chamber, heat it to over eighteen hundred Fahrenheit, and only then will you get distilled water.”

  “I see. I can imagine the energy needs.”

  “Forget energy needs. You know how expensive it is to maintain equipment in that incredible cold.” Dr. Pashby leaned forward and stared at Dean with wild, owllike eyes. “And the effect that corrosive, shard-like lunar dirt has on the equipment.” He shook his head and leaned back. “Equipment failure is one of the biggest overheads of lunar mining companies. There is no other option; we have to figure out radiation sublimation. It’s the holy grail. It’s what the researchers have been working on for decades. You know what a difference that will make. As easy as dropping a straw in and sucking out the water.”

  “Really?” Dean tried to feign skepticism but couldn’t help smiling at Dr. Pashby’s enthusiasm.

  “Microwave beam will easily penetrate the ground,” Dr. Pashby said. “That eliminates the need for large-scale processing of lunar regolith. And microwave also works very well in the near-vacuum environment of the moon, which would cut energy cost to a fraction of what it is today.”

  “So why isn’t this technology already here?” Dean asked. “Looks like the market is hungry for it.”

  “That’s the problem,” Dr. Pashby said. He sounded dejected. He stared down at the floor for a moment before continuing. “The biggest issue is extreme dissipation of microwaves from iron oxide in the regolith. No one has been able to develop commercially viable equipment—plenty in the lab, but no commercial prototype that works well in the field.”

  “And this is what LMCo claims to have solved?” Dean asked.

  “Claims!” Dr. Pashby said with emphasis. “I’m curious to see what they’ve done. I’m excited, but you know, I’ve heard this claim too many times. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “We’ll soon find out.”

  Mr. Stirling’s house was in the middle of nowhere. Sparse land dotted with clumps of trees stretched on for miles in every direction. A couple of ferocious-looking dogs roamed the open ground outside the house. Mr. Stirling had to shackle the dogs before he could invite his guests inside. Once they were settled in the living room, beer bottles in hand, business talk started.

  “So LMCo has cracked microwave sublimation?” Dr. Pashby asked.

  “We have,” Mr. Stirling confirmed. He instructed his digital assistant to play a video. Lights in the room dimmed, and a section of the wall turned into a giant screen. Bleak lunar landscape filled the space. It was somewhere inside a crater; Dean could see crater boundaries away in the distance. The middle of the crater was bright with artificial lights. There were mining equipment and vehicles scattered around, and in the center, a giant drilling rig towered over everything else. Its base was like a large inverted cup.

  “Looks like a toilet plunger,” Dean joked.

  Stirling gave him a perfunctory laugh. “Look at that blob,” he said. A boxed area on the screen displayed a cross section of the underground. A large white blob sat in the middle of the boxed cross section. “That’s water ice mixed with lunar regolith,” Stirling said.

  The machine started whirring.

  “Now microwave is bein’ focused through magnetic lenses,” Mr. Stirling explained.

  Underground, the blob started shrinking, and another boxed section on the screen, which displayed a thermally insulated storage tank, started filling up with liquid water.

  “Supah,” Stirling said. He instructed his digital assistant to fast forward the video and told it to stop when the storage tank was full. “In three hours, that machine sublimated eleven thousand cubic feet of water ice. That’s more than eighty-five thousand gallons of water, enough to fill a swimming pool. All without any diggin’, at a fraction of the cost.”

  Dean looked at Dr. Pashby, whose mouth was literally hanging open. “Unbelievable! Show me the data.” Dr. Pashby jumped from his seat.

  Over the next hour, Dr. Pashby pored over the data and checked it from every angle. The outcome was clear—everything matched up. It was the real deal. Dean would have liked Dr. Pashby to be a little muted in expressing his enthusiasm, but there was no hiding it—he was thrilled by what he saw.

  “I still have some reservations,” Dean said gravely to counter Dr. Pashby’s zeal. “I have to see it to believe it. We would like a demonstration, Mr. Stirling, on the moon.”

  Mr. Stirling was quiet for a minute, then sheepishly, he said, “Mate, there is a small problem.”

  “What problem now?” Dean asked and furrowed his eyebrows.

  “That prototype in the video, it’s missin’ the microwave generator.”

  “Then get it replaced.”

  “That’s the problem. It’s a critical piece, and my staff couldn’t find a substitute.”

  “What happened to the original?”

  “The chief scientist has hidden it somewhere.”

  “Tell him to go get it,” Dean said with exasperation. “This is ridiculous.”

  “He’s dead. You know, murdered.”

  There was silence in the room.

  Stirling continued. “My staff is trying hard to figure out the exact configuration. They believe the chief scientist made some modifications to the frequency modulation. They don’t know what, but the work is continuing round the clock. I’m expecting them to solve it soon.”

  Dean got up with a huff. “What the hell? A murder and missing components. You should have told me before I hauled my ass to the other end of the world.”

  “Listen, that microwave generator is there in the processing plant. It has an embedded RFID tag, and we’ve detected no checkout signal. It’s sittin’ somewhere in that plant,” Mr. Stirling said.

  “You’re gonna find it?” Dean looked in Mr. Stirling’s eyes.

  “Crikey! We’re goin’ to find it,” Mr. Stirling said with gusto and got up. “Aftah we find it, my scientists will reverse engineer the exact configuration.”

  “All right. Should we plan a trip to the moon next week then?” Dean asked.

>   “Next week is supah. I’m sure we’ll find the generator by then, and you’re goin’ to see it with your own eyes,” Mr. Stirling said.

  Dean thought the trip to the moon would be worthwhile even without the generator. It would be an opportunity for him to survey LMCo’s holdings. He figured he could halve the price of LMCo if the generator was not found. He planned to retain the scientists and drive them hard to figure out the technology.

  They went outside and were greeted by barking dogs.

  Before stepping back in the vehicle, Dean asked Mr. Stirling, “Why do you live in this wilderness?”

  “I was born in the bush. This is home. I’ve been all around the solsys—the moon, Mars, Ceres—but there is no place like this place. This is where I’ll die,” Mr. Stirling said.

  “See you on the moon.” Dean stepped inside the vehicle.

  The AV drove them back toward Perth, leaving behind a trail of dust.

  TWENTY-ONE

  TAPACHULA’S SPRAWLING COMMERCIAL district spread out along the coast from one end of the horizon to the other. In the middle, near the seaport, a small peninsula jutted into the ocean. Its forked tip cradled a large spaceport. At the base of the peninsula, shipping containers were stacked everywhere, and a beehive of human and vehicular movement wormed through it all. The industrial core was surrounded by a green, hilly town.

  An aircraft carrying Detective Martin Stump and Charlie Doud dived toward Tapachula Airport. Charlie noticed something and pointed Martin’s attention toward the runway.

  “My God! Look at that. The lines on the ground are all crooked,” Charlie said.

  Martin peeked over Charlie’s shoulder and said dryly, “I suppose they are living up to their reputation. Nothing straight here.”

  The plane landed safely and slowly taxied to the gate. After picking up their luggage, the men headed outside. At the curb, a helpful local pointed them toward a touchscreen kiosk. Away in the distance, Martin saw rows of taxis lined up, waiting for passengers. Charlie tapped on the screen to summon a cab, and immediately, the AV at the front of the row peeled off and drove toward them.