Argosi ignored him. “Mr. Wu, remove the counselor please.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Mr. Argosi—” The attorney objected before being cut off.
“It’s Commander Argosi, and you can read the minutes afterward. Mr. Wu, if you please.”
In the next instant, the gentleman vanished, leaving just Perkins, his Chief Financial Officer, and his Chief Technical Officer.
“Anyone else want to object?”
Perkins sighed. “Can we do without the theatrics? We are going to settle with Mr. Reynolds. Please do not do anything that jeopardizes that arrangement.”
“Mr. Perkins, while I can sympathize with your position and the desire of your board and shareholders to pay Reynolds and company, I’m afraid that I cannot do that, sir.”
Perkins took a deep breath. “And why not, Commander?”
“Because it would violate federal law. Respectively, 18 U.S. Code 2339B: providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.”
“Foreign? Terrorist? A sentient being? Someone whom we wish to enter into a business relationship? Not unlike the hackers, that I might remind you, the FBI is all too eager to pay for information on how they did something or in many instances hire to work for them? By whose authority do you think you can impose such a restriction on us? Certainly not your own. Where is your boss? I want that person on the phone right now!”
Argosi just sniffed and studied his fingernails.
I wonder if I need to cut my digital nails? I’m sure the real ones will need cutting at some point. I wonder what happens to your nails and your skin when you stay in the pod for a month or two or even longer, as some people do.
Argosi ignored the glare of the man seated across from him, who now waved his phone around like a dagger.
“Commander, I’m speaking to you!”
Argosi flicked his eyes up from his cuticles. “I’m sorry? Just waiting for your rant to end. The answer, sir, is the attorney general.”
“Attorney who?”
Argosi smiled. “The Attorney General of the United States. That’s who I work for. As a matter of fact, I’m here in this meeting at his very request. And on his authority. So, have your person call the AG’s people and leave a message. Maybe he will get back to you, or maybe he won’t. I can wait.”
Perkins stomped his foot at his CFO and CTO, both of whom shrugged their shoulders. Perkins was still holding the phone when the receptionist nervously came on the intercom.
“Mr. Perkins, Mr. Reynolds is here.”
“Seems you’re out of time, Clayton.” Argosi grinned wide.
Argosi had deliberately used the powerful and politically connected CEO’s first name to remind him who was in charge here and that he was not in the business of offering deference to individuals attempting to obstruct a federal investigation.
“I’ll be out to see him in,” Perkins snapped at the receptionist.
The CEO got up and walked toward the door stopping to look at Argosi. “If more people die, Commander, it will be on you.”
Argosi ignored Perkins but spoke to Callum and Wu. “Both of you go into ghost mode, and one of you go with Mr. Perkins to fetch Reynolds.”
“Roger that sir, I’ll go.” Wu jumped soundlessly to his feet.
“It will give me a chance to try to get a link to his server or servers.”
Argosi nodded as both agents disappeared, still very much present but no longer visible nor detectable to others. Argosi could and still did see them both as gray outlines that told him that their ghost mode was active.
A minute or less after he left, Perkins returned with Alex Reynolds. The gray silhouette of Wu following behind both. Argosi had moved to the other side of the conference table and was standing against the wall behind the CFO and CTO. If Reynolds recognized him or knew who he was, he gave no indication.
Perkins motioned Reynolds to his seat. The same one that Argosi had occupied a few minutes earlier. Reynolds dressed in his customary classic dark dress business suit, the gold cuff links and tie tack shimmering. His hair perfect and his motions steady, like someone accustomed to being in control.
Perkins walked around the conference table and took his seat. He then introduced the CTO and the CFO ignoring Argosi. Reynolds smiled and looked up at the FBI Commander before speaking.
“And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
Perkins shifted nervously in his chair looking back over at Argosi.
“Please Clayton, feel free to introduce me. This is your meeting, after all.” Argosi shifted his gaze from Perkins to Reynolds.
Perkins turned back towards Reynolds. “Ah, Mr. Reynolds, this is... Commander Dominic Argosi, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Reynolds smiled and clapped his hands together before speaking. “Yes, of course, the famous Dominic Argosi, whom I’m guessing was somehow involved with the FBI’s rescue of those two poor young men yesterday from my evil grips?” Reynolds let out a laugh.
“Tell me, Commander, how are those two doing? Will they make full recoveries? I hope that nothing valuable got burned off, poor chaps.” Reynolds smiled and shifted in his seat before continuing. “Are all humans so fragile? And the screaming, oh the scream–”
“That’s enough! We are not here to discuss the specifics of that unfortunate incident.” Perkins chimed in.
Perkins is braver than I give him credit for. Argosi maintained his silence as he studied Reynolds. There wasn’t much to learn. Reynolds was nothing more than an avatar of a sentient being, himself just lines of code, or perhaps he was being controlled by someone directly.
“Yes, of course, where are my manners?” Reynolds raised his right index finger just above the table before continuing.
“But also, where are your manners?” Reynolds paused and shook his finger for emphasis. “Inviting the FBI into a private business meeting of which I am one of the principles without informing me before it?”
“It was short notice. They came in just before you arrived.”
“They? I only see the commander. Are there others here surreptitiously? That would be in bad form, Clayton.”
Perkins sighed. “Mr. Reynolds, this is complicated. We did not invite the FBI. That aside, they are telling me we are legally barred from doing business with you. A position that we object to and may challenge in court.” Perkins coughed at Argosi, who was busy in a conversation with Wu over the secure comm.
“Commander, I cannot get any link back to a server from Reynolds. Obviously, he is here. But there is no electronic trail; it’s as if he were residing right here in the DLS server.”
“Okay. Keep trying. I don’t know how much longer he will hang around now that Perkins spilled the beans so quickly about the money being off the table.” Argosi said on the secure comm before pointing a finger at Perkins. “No, Clayton. I don’t believe it is as complicated as you are portraying it to be.” Argosi interrupted and grabbed everyone’s attention.
“I hate to be disagreeable...” Argosi shifted his gaze to Reynolds. “But I must now address whoever is behind those little lines of code forming that ridiculous avatar with its silly-assed diction. Speaking in a vernacular that is out of some evil genius themed B-movie.” Argosi paused to stare into Reynold’s eyes.
“Thing is, there is no real genius here. Evil or otherwise, is there, Doctor Maddox? Or as they used to call you around here, Mad-Dox. Tell me, how is the vegetarian diet going? Pardon, I’m sorry you’re more whacked than that. I mean the vegan diet? Yeah, we know all about you. Pissed your pants lately, John?” Argosi snickered.
Argosi had nothing against vegetarians or vegans, but he was aware that Maddox was militant about it. He hoped going after his ego would draw him out. Of course, he was making a calculated guess that Maddox was listening or in some way controlling Reynolds.
It was a hunch, but one that was correct.
Somewhere in New Polis, Metaverse
; MD glared. How did this stupid cop know his name? What was the reference to pissing his pants, an urge that he was feeling now after hearing the FBI agent speak his name. MD’s mind raced.
Did he need to eject from his current pod? MD checked the screens in front of him. He saw Argosi’s pod communicating with the server for the DLS conference room, along with the DLS employees and another pod that was not visible, but was communicating with the same server.
I’m in control here, not them. Let’s see where this fool wants to take it.
After driving around Houston and watching the news to see if any information about him was being released, MD drove overnight to Ft. Smith, Arkansas using secondary and back roads. He arrived earlier that morning at the bot factory that he owned.
The factory was state of the art. While it did not fully assemble the bots at that location, it built many of the components for them. It was 100 percent bot operated. No humans were on the premises. Except for MD now secure in his pod in a hidden area beneath the factory floor.
There was a possibility that the feds might come to this facility due to the incident with BMM yesterday. But it was only one of the hundreds that manufactured similar bot components. Nothing in it or the paperwork tied him directly to it. He owned a shell company, under an alias, that was the principal investor.
Failing that, he had secured his pod room with its own power source under the factory. Its entrance hidden. Access was from another adjacent building not part of the plant with a tunnel to it and owned by a separate business that he controlled. He had an abundant supply of Nutrient as well as an animatronic device to service the pod. He could remain here for some time. MD had intermittently communicated with Alex but was careful until he could be confident that the sentient being wasn’t in some way compromised.
MD ditched the car, giving it instructions to drive to Dallas after dropping him off and wiping the inside clean of fingerprints or other evidence. In Dallas, it would park itself in the long-term parking lot at the airport and hopefully not get discovered for quite some time. The GPS was now disabled, of course. Even then it would go back to one Glenn Richards, not Jeffery Maddox.
MD viewed all from a secondary location hidden in the Metaverse where he had Alex hastily set up shop. Millions of orders for the safe passage fee were now backlogged, due to the interruption by this Commander Argosi and with that backlog, tens of millions of dollars lost. He wondered if the FBI raided the digital offices in New Polis, and if so, what they might have discovered from the encrypted data.
Then panic set in and along with it another urge to urinate. What if the disruption nullified the encryption? Or more likely when the system reset it picked up where it left off? Anything open could be viewed or accessed!
MD grew angry at himself for not preparing for such a contingency, but how could he know this buffoon would have the ability to do that? He was aware that it was a direct attack on him. It was time to do damage control.
As for Argosi, MD had enough of him and his insults. He superimposed Reynolds’s avatar over the sentient Reynolds, then ordered the sentient being to leave.
“Commander.” It was Wu over the secure comm.
“Sir, it looks like Reynolds... the sentient being has been replaced by an avatar. Although not visible to you in the room, I saw Reynolds go into a ghost mode then leave.”
“Ghost mode?” Argosi asked, knowing that such a thing shouldn’t have been possible.
“Yes, sir, not a ghost mode like Callum’s and mine. It was cruder, like he was merely going offline. Fading away, if you will. Reynolds must be in the server, sir. The same with the avatar, but I don’t know how they are controlling it without a link, or at least there is no evidence of one.”
“Okay Wu, keep looking,” Argosi said on the secure comm.
Looking for a reaction but getting none Argosi picked up where he left off, pointing a finger at Reynolds’s avatar for effect, knowing that guys like Maddox did not like being lectured to by others they believed to be their inferiors.
“This is the deal, shit for brains.” Argosi began. “You are not getting paid, and we are freezing all of the assets from the links that we traced into the Bank of St. Petersburg.”
Argosi paused for a moment to let that sink in. “Oh yes, we have been to your office, we have a copy of every paying account, and we have a record of every bank transfer. The CEO of The Bank of St. Petersburg has been most helpful in that regard.” Argosi lied about Mathias but Maddox wouldn’t know that, and it would help cement in his next point.
“How does it feel Mad-Dox? Here you are a supposedly brilliant artificial intelligence scientist, a leader in the field, outwitted by a bunch of dumb cops? All of your work for nothing; not a penny for your efforts. I mean come on dude I thought you would have a better plan than this? I mean supposedly some people assumed you had some talent.” Argosi paused again then shook his head as he continued to speak to Reynolds’s avatar.
“Although I must tell you, the guys who you worked around thought you were way overrated, brilliant was not a word they used–”
“Shut up, you low-paid, ignorant pissant!” The avatar of Reynolds slammed his fist down on the table, then jumped up onto the table and scrambled over it and in-between where Perkins and his CFO sat.
Argosi could not move, nor react, while held in place against the wall. In the next moment, the avatar of Reynolds had Argosi by the throat and was lifting him off his feet. The avatar of Reynolds looked up at Argosi as it held the FBI Commander above him with only his right arm. The two were nearly face to face, an artificial strength that should not be allowed with the realism settings and Argosi could not match.
“Commander, I don’t know who this Mad-Dox is that you describe, but I am Alex Reynolds—a sentient being and you are in my world now. I think one more demonstration is in order, don’t you?” MD said, using the avatar of Reynolds to shake and choke Argosi.
Argosi could feel the constriction around his neck. He didn’t think it was possible. The MCT was supposed to be on a secure system. More than that he knew that he had Maddox. No DSB would act out of such emotion, and if it was not Maddox, then why the reaction? While it’s true that Reynolds could decide to kill on his own, he would have stayed composed.
This was an out of control outburst. It had to be human. The irony of it was now that he figured it out he might very well die as he felt the exoskeleton crushing his windpipe.
Reynolds then pulled Argosi over the table and threw him across the other side of the room where Argosi found himself hitting the wall upside down before tumbling to the floor. Argosi felt his body hit hard as the H-Pod must have accelerated and then stopped suddenly. He tried to bring up his control panel without success. All of his comms had been turned off, trapping him in the pod and unable to get up off the floor in the simulation. The avatar of Reynolds slid around the conference room table. Reynolds pushed his foot onto Argosi’s neck. The FBI agent gasped for air as the exoskeleton contracted around his throat.
“Yes, Commander. If you haven’t figured it out, I have complete control of your pod and that of your agents.”
Callum materialized. Mr. Wu, not in a pod, remained unaffected. Wu made the decision to materialize on his own. Like Argosi, Callum found that he could not move nor communicate.
“When I finish with you I’m going to start on them.” Reynolds’s avatar jerked his head over to Callum and Wu.
Reynolds reached down and grabbed Argosi by the right arm and twisted. Argosi felt the exoskeleton twisting his wrist. He fought but it overpowered him, the servo growing hot. Argosi felt the sickening snap of his right wrist as the bone fractured.
Wu switched to his synthetic vision, which allowed him to “see” the application of the avatar of Reynolds in its original digital form, as a program. Wu, to the degree his mind was capable, was amazed. There where the avatar and its program should be was nothing. It was like a blank space. It was invisible code. Wu suddenly realized what he was
looking at as he heard Argosi gasping, trying to breathe.
“How ironic that you cannot even rescue yourself, Argosi.” MD said through the avatar of Reynolds, dropping the formal title. “What should we break next? Maybe a leg?”
Reynolds dropped Argosi’s wrist and snagged his left leg.
While Wu maintained himself in the Metaverse and continued to search for Reynolds or the program that controlled him, the physical Mr. Wu ran from the MCT lab in Denver to the pod bay. Locating the commander’s pod, Mr. Wu grabbed the power cable and yanked it out in a flash of sparks.
Then without unlatching the pod Wu pried it apart. The composite material shattered and tore under Wu’s powerful grip. Once he had the pod open, Wu ripped the internal power and control lines from the exoskeleton.
Immediately the exoskeleton relaxed its grip and expanded. Wu could hear Argosi gasping for breath inside. Wu cleared the rest of the non-functioning pod away from Argosi’s body, ripping apart the exoskeleton with ease immune from any stored electrical charges that flashed here and there. Wu then pulled off the SecondSkin hood from the Commander’s head before rushing over to Callum’s pod and repeating the process.
MD was surprised to see Argosi’s avatar vanish but was even more surprised that the Asian agent had stepped in front of the other agent, as if to block his path. MD looked down and saw that no pods were online in the room. The DLS employees had long since ejected. MD looked at Callum and Wu and then only Wu as the image of the other agent also vanished.
“You cannot harm me!” Wu laughed. “Oh, but I can harm you.” Wu rushed over to Reynolds.
Wu’s digital being momentarily merged with Reynolds. Possible because Wu was not in a pod and felt no push back. He could override the programming, which would not let two “physical” objects occupy the same space at the same time in this digital realm where real world physics ruled.
As Wu stepped into Reynolds, everything for MD in the conference room broke into a pixelated view. After a moment, the server reacted to the image of Wu moving into the other image. It bumped Reynold’s avatar out of that space. MD found himself in the outside waiting room of DLS. He watched Wu as he passed through the wall and approach him again. Wu stopped just short of Reynolds’s avatar.
The Metaverse: Virtual Life-Real Death Page 37
