“Yes, sir. She’s brilliant.”
“She’s close to you, isn’t she?”
“Yes. I guess you can say that.”
Brighton winked. “Then I’m ordering you to keep her in the country.”
***
The weekend after the message from the mothership, as the tabloids were still calling it, Allen Woodson, Kayli, Josh, and Mullins met Lisa Li and Peter in an Arlington park for a Saturday picnic. Hot dogs, chips, and Peter and Josh’s new favorite vegetable, carrot cake, were on the menu. Woodson had brought along a plastic bat and wiffle ball, and while he took the boys out on the field for a little practice time, Mullins stayed at the table to help Kayli and Li clean up.
“I’ve got this, Dad,” Kayli said. “You won’t be able to fit everything back in the basket anyway. Why don’t you either play ball or walk off that second slice of cake?”
“I’ll walk with you,” Li said.
They looped out past the third baseline toward a small knoll where benches lay scattered in the shade of hardwood trees.
“Have you thought what you’re going to do next?” Mullins asked.
“I guess I’ll go back to Jué Dé. I need to work. Peter will go back to China.”
He heard the catch in her voice.
“It doesn’t have to be that way. You could stay here and work in Washington.”
“Doing what?”
“The President asked me to approach you with the possibility of working on his AI project. He plans to use the remaining months of his term picking up the pieces of Brentwood’s research. It’s very secret and involves the team Brentwood assembled. Maybe even Brentwood.” Mullins laughed. “They’re all signing on voluntarily this time. The President will do everything he can to protect you and Peter. He really wants you.”
Li stopped as they stepped from the grass onto the leaves covering the ground of the wooded knoll. She turned and studied his face. “And what do you want?”
The question took him by surprise. He stuttered for a second. “Well…I…I want what you want. What’s best for you and Peter.”
“What I want? Okay. I want total honesty from you. I don’t want any barriers or questions unanswered between us.”
“I want you to stay.”
“And there’s nothing else you feel like you need to say or ask?”
Mullins knew he’d reached a moment of truth. He read it on her face. She wouldn’t be lied to.
“Go ahead, Rusty. Let me go.” Laurie’s voice, his dead wife’s voice, rang in his head. They hadn’t talked in a while, and the clarity of her words stunned him.
Lisa Li knew something had happened. She stepped closer. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Can we sit down?”
He led her to a nearby bench. They were alone on the knoll.
“Lisa, I know what happened. I’m not the best detective in the world but I can put the pieces together. Brentwood said we were all killers, but that some of us had killed for love. I saw the way Farino looked at you when Apollo sent those power surges into his own system. And I’ve looked at the file regarding the date of your husband’s accident and Peter’s birthday. No one would make any connection between the two events unless that person knew you were Peter’s mother. You were nearly five months pregnant when your husband died. Am I correct?”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Yes. When my husband found out I was pregnant, he was furious. He demanded I get an abortion. If not, he would tell the authorities and the law would be enforced. If Peter were brought to term, well, I told you how he would live as a second-class citizen. No, not even as a second-class citizen.” She looked out over the field.
Peter and Josh were taking turns at bat. Peter got a good hit and ran to first base. Josh trailed behind.
“You programmed a power surge?” Mullins asked.
“Yes. We had some keypads for access to restricted areas, not unlike what Brentwood installed. I activated the program when I knew he would be the next person to code in. Afterwards, I immediately deleted any trace. The accident was attributed to a faulty power supply.”
“And how did Brentwood and Farino discover it?”
“Brentwood was looking for any way he could pressure me. He got the DNA match and then examined the dates like you did. He was smart enough to envision the method I used and he had the advantage of testing his hypothesis through Apollo. During his first visit to California, he accused me and I broke down. I would lose Peter and be convicted of murder.”
“A most intelligent murder,” Mullins muttered to himself.
“What?”
“When murder doesn’t look like murder. And it doesn’t look like murder to me. There’s a boy on that field under a Washington Nationals cap that wouldn’t be there if his mother hadn’t protected him.”
He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “That’s all I need to know about you.”
The game on the field continued. And right then, their seats were the best in the world.
Acknowledgments
The quest for Artificial Intelligence is an area of scientific exploration making headlines. Prophets of unparalleled wonders and prophets of unprecedented doom agree on the undeniable fact that a self-aware, thinking machine will transform our world. The genie could soon be out of the bottle and this genie is of our own making. It could also be beyond our control.
Although the premise of a conscious-subconscious computer mind is my fictional creation, I am indebted to numerous articles documenting the progress of AI development, especially the MIT Technology Review. Special thanks to Mark Ethridge for sharing his research into the AI story, and, of course, I’m grateful for the imaginative vision of Isaac Asimov, whose robot novels first captivated me years ago.
Thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for sending Rusty Mullins on another mission, and to my editor, Barbara Peters, for keeping the story on track. Hank Hester introduced me to the Esperanto language in of all places, Matanzas, Cuba. Dankon, Hank.
One thing that AI machines might not ever know is the love of family. I’m grateful to my wife, Linda; daughters Melissa and Lindsay; son-in-law, Pete; and grandson, Charlie, for their love, something I hope will always keep us human.
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