by Tal Turing
LilAI was wonderful. She could see Brad, of course, but she could also see the expressions of everyone at the table. Miriam chatted with Steve and Barrett while Donnie kept his attention on Cyn. And Brad appeared to be looking around the room while he spoke, but he often looked in Miriam's direction. Miriam was chatting up every one at the table with the exception of Donnie, Brad and Cyn. Interesting. Obviously she had made a mistake in not learning more about this Miriam. But in some ways, she had hoped their paths would not cross in any meaningful way.
Eventually, Cyn turned back to Donnie who was delighted to tell her what he had been doing over the years. In many ways, he was the same person she had known before, ambitious and garrulous. She was not surprised at all that he was already a senior officer. Of course his father was an executive with Humantis and the Cabb family and the Harilla family were old friends.
Cynnamon's mind swirled, a controlled tornado, and she concentrated as she had never done before, monitoring four conversations even as the AI revealed that Patron was approaching the table. The large man appeared, a congenial and apologetic smile on his face as he clapped both hands on Barrett's shoulders.
“Excuse me ladies. Gentlemen. Is everyone enjoying dinner?”
His expression hardly changed at the responses and he continued. “I have to borrow this man, apologies.” His gaze swept the table and then he leaned down again and whispered something which no one but Cyn could pick up. He said: Bring the asset too.
And then Patron was gone. Barrett smiled apologetically only at Miriam and rose to leave. Then, as if remembering something, he turned back and looked at Cynnamon.
“We'll need coffee and such, so the hospie is with me.”
“That hospie is assigned to me,” Steve protested, looking at Barrett.
Barrett shrugged. “Not any more.”
Cyn, happy to leave, rose quickly, smiled politely, and hurried off after Barrett. As she moved away, her AI caught all the reactions. Miriam gave her a quick, expressionless glance but returned to being the center of attention. Brad looked over at Miriam who ignored him. Donnie seemed more than a little annoyed, it was an ugly look. And Steve rose from the table.
“What do you need?” she asked, catching up to the security executive.
“Just come with me, and this is all business by the way,” he added hastily before walking on, ahead of her.
Thank the storms, she murmured to herself.
Annabelle
Ann rested her head on Ryk's shoulder as they danced, steadying her gaze at the Transom officer with whom they had been speaking earlier.
“Well, back to the drawing board, I suppose,” she sighed.
“At least he did find a record of your friend, that is something, right?”
“Yes, but nothing recent and that 'Charlee' told us Lyn had an appointment with a Transom reproductive clinic, right? I hoped we could confirm that and then go talk to the workers, maybe even identify this boyfriend.”
“Maybe we should talk to Miriam, if we can find her, she's been pretty good with the ideas,” Ryk observed.
“Ah yes,” Ann spoke out loud. “and another question I have is how did your Miriam get that Transom corper to run our query? She doesn't work for Transom...”
“I can tell you, Miriam never had a problem getting people to do whatever she wanted, especially the boys.”
“Perhaps,” purred Annabelle, her chin on Ryk's shoulder. “but batting one's eyelashes and flashing big smiles are overused and hence overrated strategies.”
“You might be under-estimating her and over-estimating men, present company not excluded.”
Ann smiled once again. She decided she could put aside work, enjoy the evening and start fresh the following day.
Executive Meeting
Cynnamon followed Barrett through a maze of hallways, but she knew they were in a section of meeting rooms dedicated to high level Transom-only personnel. As she walked across the threshold and into the room, she gasped to herself.
The small but incredibly elegant and upscale meeting room was filled with Transom executives, her AI told her as much. She had never been in the same room with so many powerful officers and she knew enough to be worried but knew better than to show it.
Barrett took a seat near Patron and she noticed the silver-haired man from Techview present. Confused, she looked over at Patron just as Steve Harilla slipped into the room.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Patron growled. “Executives only.”
“Martin is still unavailable, so someone has to represent SCR, right?” Steve explained calmly.
Patron did not reply but instead waived her to an open seat. As she sat down, Cyn realized that each person at the table was powering down their AI and sliding them onto the table. It was a rule in highly classified meetings, no AI. Only Tym seemed to have neglected that directive and was busy with a tablet.
Cyn fumbled to pull her inactive AI from her purse and dump it on the table, even as she worried about the one she wore on her head. She didn't even know where it had come from, what if it were detected? Could they detect it? Nervously she struggled to convince LilAI to power down. She was rewarded as the virtual callouts all faded away. The unit had stopped interrogating its surroundings but she could still see and hear as before. She hoped that was enough.
Patron began the meeting.
“Okay, before we disclose the reason to pull you all from your dinner, some introductions are in order. Some of you have already met Tym Matheson with SCR-Techview, he is acting as auditor, he may even have interviewed some of you.” Patron nodded to Tym before turning to Cyn. “And this young lady is also on loan to us from Techview Operations. And of course you all know Steve who apparently is here in place of Martin. Now, before we talk about the problem, let's speak first about the solution, the strategy. Tym, could you brief the room?”
At this point, Matheson casually powered off his AI and slid it to the center of the table. He looked around the room, making eye contact with each person as he began.
“As most of you are aware, although Transom Industries is known as the leader in corporate and human services in every corner of Las Joyas, we are also known as the company without a product. Yes, I hate to hear that as well, but it is not without reason. For an organization of our size, it is remarkable that we have been unable to develop and market a single tangible, extremely successful product. We won't discuss the theories of why but suffice to say that in recent years we devised new strategies to address the issue.
Enter Humantis Corporation, a small company with a growing expertise in body enhancement products but not enough capital to fully fund or support their burgeoning business. It seemed a natural fit; we provide support services to them, free of charge, in return for a share in new products. Many of you have heard of their recent success with a fertility product, news which implies that our investment is finally ready to bear fruit.”
“So that is the solution, now let's hear about the problem. Barrett?”
Barrett did not beat around the bush.
“As you can imagine, we have employees involved in all aspects of corporate life, we provide security, we supply clerical and hospitality staff, the list goes on. But in recent months, we have been plagued by a number of strange and costly incidents. Nothing consistent, an expensive piece of equipment goes missing, a database is accidentally wiped, a fire breaks out, the list goes on. The only common denominator is Humantis, the problems seem to be specific to them.”
Barrett stopped and waited for questions.
“Who is doing this? And what are we doing about it?”
“Great question and we don't know. We have steadily increased our security presence within the Humantis facilities and it hasn't helped. Somehow the problem is always where we aren't. Our friends at Humantis feel strongly that the blame lies with village contractors, both companies have them.”
Patron looked around the room, but no one seemed to have anything to say. So he asked his own
question.
“Why would the villagers do this? What would they have to gain? And what proof is there?”
“More good questions that I can't answer. When we speak with our contacts in the villages, they are as mystified as we are.”
“Do you believe them?”
“Well Patron, we haven't had any reason to doubt them in the past.”
“Let me blunt,” began another executive. “Why do we care? What is our exposure on this?”
“First, it hurts our reputation,” Tym spoke up, “we are known for our services, security is one of our flagship offerings. If it became known that Humantis had to replace us, saving some money at the same time, why wouldn't others do the same thing? Secondly, Humantis' product line is finally starting to take off, thus our investment is ready to pay dividends, so we do not want a situation where it looks like we are not keeping up our end of the bargain.”
The room was silent.
“What about Humantis themselves? Any reason why they might do this? Sabotage their own projects?”
“Sure,” crooned Steve, “they are dying to squelch their first significant profits now that they finally have some, after years of being a corporate door mat to the rest of Las Joyas.”
“We don't know,” Barrett admitted, “but I will tell you something, we have asked and asked for details about these 'incidents' and the only thing we have gotten is their insistence that they are unhappy. Answers have not been forth-coming.”
“Well, isn't it our job to get the details?” Steve asked innocently. “I mean, isn't that what they pay us for?”
Barrett glowered at him.
Patron waved a hand.
“We need information, we are playing catch-up and we need to know what is going on.”
“Why don't we send Cyn in?” Steve asked, his face a smirk of confidence. “She already has contacts among their leadership.”
Cyn felt her stomach turn, as everyone looked over at her.
“I am not sure I agree,” Cyn replied, “I knew some Humantis officers back in school but that was almost ten years ago. I...I dated a boy, who is now a senior officer but we have barely exchanged a dozen words since then. I was at a table with him this evening, before...”
“Exactly my point,” Steve laughed, “I saw you two at dinner, he obviously would like to reconnect with you at some level. Besides, you were a Transom operative, correct? Trained in Techview even, this shouldn't be any problem for you, right?”
“Naturally I could speak with him,” Cyn began carefully. “But I doubt he would tell me anything he doesn't want you to know.”
“What other choices do we have?” Steve asked the room as if that argument should be sufficient.
“You are our SCR guy,” Patron started, “what have you found out from your contacts over there?”
“C'mon, Patron,” Steve demurred, “you know its bad form to discuss business outside of the agreed particulars. I can't just ask about these incidents.”
“But we can and we have,” Barrett began, “but we don't get facts, just more complaints. So we would appreciate SCR's help on resolving that problem.
“Steve, you have something to do now,” Patron instructed. “Cynnamon, go ahead and speak with Donnie. Maybe he'll drop something, obviously we'll take it with a grain of salt.”
“I'm meeting with Donnie and some of his people tomorrow,” Steve offered, “why don't I just bring her along? That way she has an excuse to be there.”
“How about if you just stay the hell out of ops business?” Patron replied.
“Sure, no problem, but I thought this was super important, if you want to wait until you can make the connections...”
“This is important,” emphasized Barrett. “He might be right.”
“Of course I am right. That is what assets are for, to do those things...”
“Let me ask a question,” Tym interjected. “Miss Asset, tell us, do you have any experience with investigating rival corporations?”
“Of course, it's a fairly common request...” Cyn responded.
“Patron, how many counter-espionage cases has Transom-New Berlyn conducted with in the last year?”
“A few, why?”
Tym turned thoughtfully to Cyn.
“It seems to me it's a bigger problem for us in Techview. How many have you personally worked in the last year?”
Cyn looked up into the air, considering. “Roughly a dozen instances of corporate espionage against us.”
Tym looked over at Steve, his eyebrows raised.
“No offense, Steve, but as I said, it's a bigger problem in Techview. So she probably has more experience than all of us, it's not my field but I know they let their ops groups run themselves, with good reason.”
“Big difference between sleeping with the enemy and organizing counter-espionage,” Steve laughed.
“I don't understand you,” Tym spoke, quickly pulling his AI from the table and replacing it on his head. It flashed as it powered up. “Explain what you mean, Steve.”
Steve smiled, looking over at Patron for some support.
“Isn't it obvious? I'm saying it's more important to lead the operation than simply be a part of it.”
Tym laughed and looked over at Cyn. His normally friendly eyes dark and intense.
“How many of those counter-espionage operations did you lead?”
“I'm just an asset...”
He looked away from her and back toward the rest of the table.
“My information is that she has led ten espionage investigations for Techview. Oh, this is interesting. Tell me also, Miss Asset, why doesn't your team work closely management on these things?”
The silver haired man seemed infinitely amused. One of the other executive started to speak but Tym held up his hand as he waited for a response.
“It's just...” Cyn began thoughtfully. But she knew better that discuss Mother's philosophies. “It's just our standard procedures, to investigate independently...”
“Is it because more than seventy percent of the time there is a high ranking Transom official actually involved?”
There was a pause in the conversation.
“Fine,” Patron stood. “Cynnamon, have a word with Mr. Cabb, proceed as you think best. Steve, talk to your contacts at Humantis. See that Barrett gets the information he needs. When we next meet, I expect answers from both of you.”
Patron
Barrett put his feet up on the expensive boardroom table and leaned back in the chair, pushing its flexibility to the limit.
“Tell me Paul, why do we care about this, why now? I heard what Tym had to say and I get it, but at the of the day, neither the villages nor little Humantis want to mess with us. Last time I checked, we were the leading employer of the villages and number nine on the corporate power ranking. Don't we have bigger fish to fry? Like the Top Five?”
“I'm not worried about Humantis,” Patron murmured as he activated the privacy shields to the room. “They are just flexing their growing claws, they know their future is aligned with ours and one day they will be useful allies against the Top Five. But I am worried about the villages. You know the story of Palenque, right?”
“The fallen dome? That's all I know I about it. They built it, cost too much to maintain and abandoned it. It all happened about the same time as New Chicago was being settled.”
“Well, you are partially right. Lana was there, in the early days, so I know a little bit more about it. But it's a myth about the unexpected energy expenditures, in truth it should have been one of the most energy efficient of all of the Joyas – a sky bright enough to charge solar panels, extremely high, crystal rock walls that formed a canyon narrow enough that one dome could cover the entire thing, imagine a city the size New Berlyn under a single dome.
“So what happened?” Barrett asked, sitting up with interest.
“They were too successful,” Patron said with a worried look.
“What the hell does that mean,
Paul?”
“I mean exactly what I said. The whole thing worked too well, the corpers stopped worrying, they forgot that they were a small island in the ocean of Maltiempo. They stopped caring about their relationship with the villagers and, one day, the villagers left, en mass, no one even knows where. The city continued to run but as Maltiempo changed there was no one with any experience on how to adjust to it, the dome failed months later.”
“Well, that is not the way they tell the story.”
“Who cares? The point is, I am much more worried about a significant problem with the villagers than anything else. I should have thought of this before. If Lana were here...she would tell me I've been looking the wrong way while things happened behind my back...”
Poker
Cyn strode through the halls of Transom House, her heels clapping confidently, her stride now smooth with only an occasional over-correction, her smile was friendly hiding the feelings of awe over her new view of the world.
It had taken a good deal of practice, much effort, and she was still learning but Cyn felt that she could now use the strange AI efficiently. When she walked through a room, she did not need to look to the left or to the right to see who/what was there. She did not need to turn around if she heard a strange noise or a calling voice, she could see it all through this amazing device, through LilAI. She wondered if her new view of the world made her seem a little aloof? Still, she needed to get down to business and she was delighted to have a purpose again. There was no need to ask people if they had seen Donyden Cabb, LilAI led the way.
She found Donnie playing cards in one of the various social rooms, along with a group of other officers, including both Brad and Edwyrd. The balance of the room held some spectators and a bevy of hospitality assets shuttling fresh drinks in and carrying empty containers out of the room. All the players were drinking but they weren't all as happy as Brad Harilla seemed to be. He laughed out loud as Cyn approached and she noticed that he had a good-sized pile of chips near him. She remembered that he was a shark at cards, his good-natured attitude toward everything made it hard to read him.
