A Cursed Place

by Peter Hanington

  ‘You want to know who you should invest in? How about them? They look like a good bet.’

  Ferdy brightened.

  ‘You know about them?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Fred knew nothing. Nothing other than what his eyes could tell him. Handsome, square-faced, fair-haired – unmistakeably American. If you were looking to populate a new planet then you might well start with these two. There were several men standing on the terrace who were interested in doing exactly that, while the other VCs who were buzzing around them just wanted to make some money.

  ‘You think I should go check them out?’

  ‘I think you absolutely should. Let me know how it goes.’ Ferdy strolled off, cocktail in hand, and soon he was at the front of the civilised scrum that had developed around the two blond entrepreneurs. The pair were wearing sky blue sweatshirts, the logo of their so-far non-existent company emblazoned on the front.

  Fred returned to the bar and ordered another Jack and Coke. He could allow himself one more drink and still drive home. The other people at the bar were talking Silicon Valley talk: convertible notes, preferential shares … somebody was calling somebody else a sandbagging son of a blah blah blah. He was about to down his second drink, cut his losses and leave when he felt an arm brush his. The young woman had extricated herself from her group of potential investors and was standing next to him. The barman was there in an instant and Fred listened as she wondered out loud about a few drinks before ordering a bottled beer, the cheapest thing on the menu. She had a good voice – clear but not too high. She glanced over at Fred.

  ‘How about you sir? Are you interested in Artificial Intelligence?’ Fred looked at her.

  ‘I’d take any form of intelligence right now.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Maybe you should come over and talk to me and my business partner?’ Fred glanced back at the crowd of VCs gathered around her partner. They were talking to him but they were waiting for her.

  ‘I’m fine here, thanks. I like your sweatshirt.’

  ‘Do you? I can get you one of these, they only cost fifty thousand bucks.’

  ‘Is that right? I’m going to guess that you’ve sold quite a few of those tonight?’

  ‘I have … I mean we have.’

  ‘Good for you.’ He gestured at the logo on her blue sweatshirt, the company name.

  ‘Cloud Chancer. What does that mean then?’

  ‘It’s AI related.’

  ‘You said that already.’

  The woman blushed.

  ‘Sorry, yes. Well it’s a little complicated, although I’m sure you …’

  ‘How about you try me? Give me your elevator pitch.’ He smiled; ‘I’ll concentrate really hard.’ Fred didn’t need to concentrate; her idea was straightforward. Not uninteresting, but hardly revolutionary. It was the sort of idea that would attract a lot of funding. It involved AI and voice recognition, an area that Fred had explored himself, although with different objectives in mind. He nodded in all the right places and waited for her to finish. ‘I see …’ Fred smiled. ‘So I’m interested, but I’ve got some questions. Maybe we should talk later, when you’ve finished selling sweatshirts?’

  ‘I can just stop now if now’s better for you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No …’ He looked back at the group of men gathered around her business partner. ‘You’ve got them on the hook. The thing to do when you’ve got something hooked is reel it in, not walk away.’

  ‘Right, yes.’

  ‘Can I ask your name?’

  ‘Christy … Christina Newmark.’ He watched her wonder whether she should ask his name in return and decide against. The right decision. She knew who he was, everyone here knew.

  ‘Okay, Christy. So, I wonder, have you ever eaten at the Three Comma Club?’

  She scratched at her arm through the sweatshirt.

  ‘As it happens, I haven’t yet.’

  ‘Then we’ll go there.’

  27 The Pushback

  THE HEADLAND HOTEL, HONG KONG

  Patrick counted the seconds. The rumble of thunder had shaken the window in its metal frame – the lightning couldn’t be far behind. One, two, thr— crrr-ashh. The noise seemed to simultaneously crush Patrick’s chest and lift his bed. His hotel room was twenty-three floors up and right now it felt like he was inside the storm. A blinding bolt of pure white light lit the room. And then another. Patrick sat up in bed. He’d been terrified of thunderstorms as a small boy and he didn’t much like them now. The third bolt lit the floor, strewn with the documents that McCluskey had asked him to read. He’d read them, several times and in various orders and arrangements, and because of this and the difficulties he’d had finishing and filing Brandon’s latest radio report to London, he hadn’t got to bed until after one. The storm had woken him a few hours later and now he would not sleep. Patrick wrapped the duvet around himself like a cape and slid out of bed and onto the floor. He picked up one of the sheets of paper and read it for the third or fourth time. Increasingly he found his eye going not to the main body of the text – stories cut from a range of international newspapers or the chunks of transcribed conversation that McCluskey had acquired from God knows where – but to the notes that she’d written in the margins. Here, next to a story about a recent massacre in Myanmar, she’d scribbled ‘mention of restoration again but restoring what unclear as per maslih.’ Patrick shuffled across the floor and placed this piece of paper next to one that featured a recent story from the South China Morning Post about the protests in Hong Kong and underneath that, two blocks of untranslated Chinese text. McCluskey had underlined a handful of different characters that cropped up several times. In the margin she had scribbled ‘similar to maslih maybe? Check.’

  It was not obvious whether this was a note McCluskey had made to herself or an instruction aimed at Patrick. Better safe than sorry. He took a new notebook and carefully copied down the Chinese characters.

  He sat with his back against the bed and stared at the paper-strewn floor. He had spent months … no, not months, years now, since the first days of the Arab Spring, watching people across the Middle East, North Africa and now Hong Kong challenging the old order. He had seen half a dozen different revolutions spark and burn – brightly often, briefly always. He had spoken to hundreds of young revolutionaries about why they wanted change and how they planned to make it happen. Here, in front of him, was the other side of the story. Here was the pushback.

  He moved some more of the papers around on the floor. Protestors in one country tried to learn lessons from other protests elsewhere, that was obvious. The regimes in question did the same, just as you would expect. But that wasn’t what McCluskey was suggesting here. It was more than that. The pushback wasn’t just similar from country to country. It was the same. The thunderous section of the storm had moved away, but not the rain; it pounded at the window, like applause.

  Patrick made himself a cup of instant coffee using the neat little kettle and tea-making set that was stowed away behind one of the wardrobe doors. He drank it in bed, watching the uncurtained window slowly whiten as the day dawned. He picked up his phone and tried Rebecca’s number again. She picked up on the second ring.

  ‘Hello useless.’

  ‘It’s Mr Useless to you.’

  ‘You found a spare five minutes to phone the love of your life then did you?’

  ‘I’ve got ten minutes actually.’

  ‘Lucky me.’

  ‘I’ve actually got all night. Or is it all day? Whatever it is where you are … I’ve got all of it.’

  They fell easily back into their old pattern of conversation. Joking and teasing while at the same time avoiding anything that might come across as too sincere-sounding or corny. For instance, telling the other person that you loved them and missed them every single day.

  ‘How’s your class? Did what’s his name get excluded?’

  ‘Barry? No.’

  ‘How come
?’

  ‘He got himself a pretty shit hot lawyer.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, of course not really, you idiot. I decided to give him a second chance.’

  ‘If I remember right, that was Barry’s seventh or eighth chance.’

  ‘Everyone deserves an eighth chance.’

  Patrick paused.

  ‘Even me?’

  ‘Even you.’

  Patrick apologised again for not calling her back to talk through what had happened at the National Portrait Gallery.

  ‘Never mind, I don’t know why it freaked me out so much. Perhaps it was just some kind of mix-up. It just seemed weird, running into her twice in one day. And why lie about the nursery school you send your kid to?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wish I’d been there though Becs.’

  ‘I wish that too but …’

  ‘But I wasn’t.’

  ‘No. And you’re still not but let’s look on the bright side.’

  ‘What’s the bright side?’

  ‘Life is long and no one, not even you, can be a workaholic idiot forever.’

  They ended the conversation in a much better place than when they’d started. Happier and more sure of each other than they had been for a long time. Patrick made himself another cup of instant coffee. McCluskey had told him to Skype her when he was ready to talk and he was ready now. The information she’d sent him was fresh in his mind and it made sense to do it before the day got going and his own programme and other parts of the BBC started to hassle him. He reached for his laptop and dialled the Skype address she’d given him. The saccharine little ditty that signified Patrick’s line attempting to find another sang out for a few seconds and then he heard McCluskey’s voice, or rather the loud clearing of a throat and then her voice.

  ‘Internet cafés open early where you are.’

  ‘Yeah, well actually I thought it’d be easier if I just called you from here.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Here being?’

  ‘Well … my room.’

  ‘Christ alive. Are you an idiot?’

  ‘I know you suggested I use an internet caf—’

  ‘I didn’t suggest that. I instructed you tae do it. I told you we needed to be careful and the next thing I hear is you calling me on your own laptop from your own bloody bedroom. I despair.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought …’

  ‘No you didn’t. You didn’t think at all and now you’ve compromised my bloody Skype address as well as your own … so it’s back to square one.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll fax you a new address.’

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘Now, you eejit. So go an’ fetch it, get your arse down to a nearby internet café and we’ll try again.’

  A digital plopping sound confirmed that the line had been dropped.

  ‘Shit.’

  Patrick closed his laptop and frisbeed it down the bed, shrugged off the duvet and got up. He wondered briefly about a shower, but decided against; better to throw on some clothes and head down to the souvenir shop and the fax machine sharpish. He didn’t want to make McCluskey any more furious than she already was.

  28 God mode

  THE CHERRYWOOD HOTEL, CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA

  In a locked stall in the marbled hotel bathroom, Fred sat down on the toilet lid and got his phone out. He went to the Public Square site and typed in Christina Christy Newmark. There she was: long-time member, regular poster. Reading her resumé, Fred saw that she’d actually worked for Public Square for a year straight out of college. Their paths had never crossed; if they had then Fred would have remembered. If she’d left under a cloud then he would have known that too. He went to the search box and tapped in a long series of numbers and letters, a password that increased his access rights to Public Square data past and present. God Mode was what Elizabeth called it back at the beginning and only she and Fred had access. He used it often, Lizzie hardly ever. There was nothing in Christina’s data to concern him; he scrolled through the last eight years of her life, well-documented in messages and photos, likes and sad face emoticons. He went to her deleted posts and looked through those for a while. Nothing out of the ordinary. There was leverage if he should ever need it – embarrassing family members, some dodgy friends, druggy stuff, several interesting photographs from her high school and college days. Not pornographic but … provocative. Fred dug a little further into the dustbin of Christina’s life. You learnt so much more about someone from what they deleted than from what they chose to keep or display.

  He’d told the maître d’e at the Three Comma Club that he was expecting a guest and so by the time he’d finished his research and freshened up, Christina was already sitting at a corner table in the almost empty club dining room. She’d changed out of the sweatshirt and into a dress with some sort of floral print on it. She had both hands out in front of her and seemed to be testing the weight of the silverware. He walked up behind her, his Italian loafers silent on the plush carpet.

  ‘The silver’s real …’ She jumped at the sound of his voice. ‘As far as I know, I guess it could be silver plate.’

  Christy smiled.

  ‘I’m sorry, not very classy, checking out the cutlery.’

  ‘It’s fine by me. I think it’s good to be interested in things. In everything in fact.’

  His guest nodded as though he’d said something very profound. He sat down opposite her and paused while the waiter made a show of removing the starched white napkin from its ring and unfurling it for her. ‘I like your dress, I had wondered whether you might only have that sweatshirt to wear. I suppose we could’ve bought you something from the hotel boutique, but I guess that’s not ideal?’ Christy shook her head and silently cursed her luck. The man sitting opposite her would have bought the black Chanel dress she’d seen in the shop window without batting an eyelid. He probably would’ve bought the necklace as well, if she’d shown the slightest interest in it. She took a sip of the iced water and tried to focus. This was a big opportunity – for her, for her new company –and she didn’t want to blow it. The trick was, like always, to just pretend like you belonged. She picked the menu up and ran an eye down it.

  ‘So … what’s good here?’

  Fred smiled.

  ‘It’s all pretty good, most of the time anyway. It depends what kind of thing you like. If there’s something you want that’s not on the menu, I can ask them to make that too, it just might take a little longer.’

  ‘I’m in no hurry. Are you in a hurry?’

  Fred shook his head. He hadn’t planned to stay for dinner, he needed to get back and do some work at some point, but not immediately.

  ‘No more than usual.’ He looked up from the menu. ‘Maybe a little less than usual.’

  ‘Good. So how about we start with wine?’

  Fred laughed.

  ‘Good plan.’

  They ordered wine and food and talked shop. Christy made the running.

  ‘So you said that you like our idea?’

  ‘I said I found it interesting. Not completely original, but interesting nonetheless.’

  ‘Nothing’s completely original is it? Everything builds on what came before.’

  Fred gave this some thought.

  ‘That’s broadly correct, but there are revolutionary moments …’ He had a hard-baked breadstick in his hand and was waving it like a baton. ‘I think the great leaps forward come when someone realises that you can use the existing technology for a different purpose.’ He was talking quickly now, as he did when an idea excited him. His examples of great leaps forward included the ways in which space race technology changed the home, how calculators became computers that became laptops and now phones, how the internet itself had been designed with rather airy-fairy ideals in mind, but taken and used in ways that its inventors had never imagined, generating trillions of dollars and creating millions of jobs along the way. It was a history lesson that Lizzie would have found tiresome – she and her mom
and dad had lived it, they defined it – but Christy Newmark hung on Fred’s every word. When he paused she jumped in.

  ‘And AI is the next thing isn’t it? The next great leap?’

  He nodded.

  ‘It can be. It depends what we do with it. Artificial Intelligence is just a different way of saying computer programmes. You, me and everyone else are developing computer programmes that imitate human intelligence, yes?’ She nodded. ‘First we imitate it and then we seek to improve on it.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But why stop there? If computers can understand and imitate human intelligence, then why wouldn’t they be able to imitate other human qualities as well?’

  For the first time, Christy looked confused.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Human emotion. With enough computational power and the right data, computers can understand and imitate a range of different human emotions – happiness, sadness, fear, disgust etc.’

  ‘And then … what? Improve?’

  ‘Change.’

  29 Date Night

  THE HEADLAND HOTEL, HONG KONG

  In his eagerness to try to make amends for screwing up McCluskey’s plan, Patrick rushed down to the lobby before checking whether the souvenir shop was actually open at half past five in the morning. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t. He looked at the opening hours, stencilled on the shop window, and decided to get a takeaway coffee from the restaurant and wait until someone, hopefully Ada, came to open up at six.