Read Coming of Age: Volume 2: Endless Conflict Online
Authors: Thomas T. Thomas
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #science fiction, #High Tech, #Hard Science Fiction
She was halfway through her introduction and already hip-deep in a technical language filled with search strategies, heuristic learning types, minimax decision making, constraint propagation, and core resources when Praxis put up a hand to interrupt the flow. “Excuse me,” he said. “Could you start over, for the slow children in the room?”
Antigone, sitting immediately to his right, caught his eye and grinned.
Callie, across the table, leaned back in her chair and looked troubled.
“Yes, sir,” Winston replied. “What is it you need to know?”
“Tell me, in simple terms, what this thing does that we didn’t do before.”
“Well …” The young woman frowned. “It pays attention. It’s basically an artificial intelligence, although we don’t use that word anymore. It will help coordinate your business and govern your recordkeeping functions like accounting, finance, personnel, and project scheduling—the backroom stuff.”
“Does it replace the operating system, accounting package, and whatnot?”
“Oh, no! It’s an overlay to the system. It doesn’t replace anything. It augments and monitors. Think of it like having a real-time operator who watches everything and asks the right questions.”
“Does it talk?” Praxis asked. “Don’t artificial intelligences speak English?”
“It’s merely an analytical engine,” Winston said. “But, but if you want, I suppose we could put in a synthesizer and teach it English. We’d need a separate port for that, too.”
“Then could it attend our board meetings and make its own reports?” The possibility of having a robot system large enough, smart enough,
complex
enough to run a whole company intrigued him—even though he had been stung by one when he worked for the plumbing company. “Does it have a name? Do we call it ‘Hal’?”
“Well, sir, it has an IQ about equal to a dog’s,” she replied. “A really smart dog, a working dog, like a border collie—and with the same kind of fixed focus and attention span. But it won’t converse like a human being. And it doesn’t play chess or do psych evaluations.”
“Then we’ll call it ‘Spot,’ ” he said. “Or ‘Rover.’ ”
Penny Winston looked over at his daughter Callie for help.
“It’s just a machine, Dad,” she said. “It simply follows rules, or algorithms, that refer to an extensive database of prior examples—something like a person drawing on vast experience. But it doesn’t actually think—although it can learn and add to that base of experience.”
“Do you trust it?” he asked her seriously.
“More than some people I can name,” she said.
“Until it does something terribly wrong, I suppose.”
* * *
Antigone Wells had come to treasure the weekly trysts with John. It was usually on a Saturday morning, but sometimes Sunday, when the two of them went out for lunch together as a couple—just them, without Callie, her daughter, other family members, or PE&C associates, and no business talk allowed. This particular morning they had gone to Café de Young, attached to the art museum in Golden Gate Park, and after the meal they walked it off by touring the galleries. They were holding hands like a pair of teenagers—until they came to one piece in the exhibit hall of American sculpture.
Wells felt John’s hand leave hers as he stopped in front of a standing, larger than life marble figure of a woman. She was naked except for a sheet clutched around her waist. At first, Wells thought he was captivated by the coldly erect stone breasts, which was what you would expect from a man. Wells dismissed them as less than impressive.
“What a face!” John whispered. “Such a load of anger!”
Antigone Wells came back around and peered up into the face, which was bent slightly forward. It was a stern face, certainly, with eyebrows drawn together and full lips slightly pursed. But rather than anger, Wells read the expression as more consternation, confusion, or dawning realization. She looked down and, between the figure’s sandaled feet, saw locks of hair and an old-fashioned straight razor that was cocked open. The title of the work, carved into the base, was “Delilah.”
“Have you dealt with many angry women?” she asked. Now that Wells thought of it, the figure with its long hair and hint of darkness, even on the creamy marble, reminded her of his daughter Callista.
“Adele could have that look sometimes,” John said. “I often thought it was directed at me.”
That was his wife, the woman who died. A drunk, as Wells remembered from their consultation long ago about having her committed.
“I don’t know what she had to be angry about,” Antigone Wells said now in John’s defense. “She had a good life, didn’t she? Married to a successful man. Three talented and successful children. Big house in the smartest neighborhood—”
“We made a lot of sacrifices to get there. I think she would have settled for less.”
“Most women do,” Wells said sadly.
“But not you,” he said, taking her hand.
She pulled the hand free. “You don’t know what I’ve had to give up, either!”
With that, she walked away. Wells would let him come after her—or not.
But his footsteps followed quickly, and he called to her softly, “
Tig!
”
She turned into his arms. “All right. You get to keep your hair.”
Then she waited three beats before adding, “This time.”
* * *
Brandon Praxis had been called to a meeting in the corporate headquarters by someone he’d never heard of, a woman named Penelope Winston, “of the IT Department.” He didn’t recall PE&C ever having one, but he took it as a sign that the company was growing and expanding.
When he arrived on the third floor, his aunt saw him in the long hallway, gave him a funny look, and pointed toward the far end. “She’s waiting for you in the media room,” Callie said.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“We’ve all had to go through it.”
“Go through what?”
“You’ll see.”
In the conference room he found a young woman in her mid-twenties or maybe even younger, dressed rough in patched jeans and a tee shirt that said, “Forget the Clowns, Send in the Engineers.” But she was really cute, with tousled hair and big, bright eyes. She looked him up and down and gave him a grin.
Suddenly he was aware of his own clothes: khaki work shirt with button-down pockets and shoulder straps, tactical pants with side pockets, and steel-toed boots. He didn’t look much different from any working engineer called in from a job in the field, except for the M9 bayonet in a sheath on his right hip and the ammo magazines in those extra pockets.
“You must be the soldier,” she said. “I’m Penny Winston, your new in-house tech wizard.” She held out her right hand without getting up from her chair.
He was already moving to sit on the opposite side of the black-glass conference table but changed direction and leaned over to shake hands. She used his change of momentum, just like a judo throw, to pull him around and steer his butt into the chair beside hers.
“More comfy this way,” she said.
She tapped on the tabletop, invoking touch-sensitive symbols he couldn’t read because of the angle, and a window opened in the webwall across from them. Rather than the Skyped face of another person, it showed a blank screen with a blinking cursor, like an old-fashioned text application. He didn’t recognize any of the pictograms and pulldowns across the top of its frame.
“Hello, Rover,” Penny said to the room.
The screen stayed blank for a moment.
Then it typed, “H … ello, Winston!”
“Who’s Rover?” Brandon asked.
“That’s what Mr. Praxis insists on calling your new software support system,” Penny said, waving at the wall.
At the same time, the screen cursor did a line return and typed, “I am Rover. Who are you?”
“This is Brandon Praxis,” she answered for him.
The screen did another line return, gave that unnerving pause, then spilled out a paragraph of facts including his full name, position in the company, pay grade, New Social Security Number, home address—an apartment in a South of Market high-rise—three contact numbers with the proper descriptives, and curiously enough, his blood type, O-negative. It finished with “Grandson of John Praxis. Nephew of Callista Praxis. Former U.S. Army officer, official rank of captain at demobilization. Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, campaign ribbons for Memphis, Louisville, Pine Barrens, Atlanta. Honorable discharge but without veteran status or pension benefits.” Then it stopped, did another line return, and waited with blinking cursor.
He stared at the screen. “That’s a neat party trick.”
Penny tapped the table again, and the cursor turned into a square—the universal “offline” symbol. “Rover is here to correlate and compare data, to help run the company,” she said.
“It’s an intelligence,” Brandon supplied with a grimace. They’d had problems with those in the service. It turned out that, in the field, under pressure, “almost genius” could be the same thing as “amazingly stupid.”
“Think of it as a failsafe,” she replied. “Rover has already made three passes through all the company accounts and discovered a number of anomalies.” She tapped the tabletop again, and the cursor changed. “Tell us what you found in the Security Department,” she said to the screen.
The cursor blinked thoughtfully, then asked, “What is at 255 … 51 Industrial Boulevard in Hayward in California?”
Brandon knew full well what that facility did, because he’d set it up personally. The address was in a warehouse district just north of Interstate 92 with a short and relatively uncomplicated storm drain leading out to San Francisco Bay. He was naturally hesitant to describe what actually went on there—not to an unknown cyber system, and certainly not to the pretty girl with the blue eyes sitting next to him.
“It’s basically … well, a training facility,” he said. “For my security officers.”
The cursor blinked at him. “Sixty-five square meters is small for training.”
“It supplements our main facility in Menlo Park,” Brandon explained.
“Personnel office, material storage, and staging,” Rover replied.
“That’s right. Did you find any more ‘anomalies’?” he asked.
“Yes, two chemical fume hoods installed at that address.”
“My officers have to know how to work with CS gas.”
“Two-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile. Tear gas.”
“I don’t know. I suppose that’s the formula.”
“And fourteen drums of perchloric acid.”
Brandon paused. He wondered if the machine had a camera on him and was smart enough to read body language. Or could it detect stresses in his voice, like a lie detector? He glanced sideways at Penny, and found her looking at him with a gentle, expectant smile. Whatever the Rover software suspected, it hadn’t let her in on the joke yet.
“We use it for cleaning and etching metals,” he said flatly.
“As in … removing the serial numbers from weapons?”
“Something like that.” Brandon shrugged. “Occasionally.”
“Three thousand liters of acid? … I do not understand.”
“Well, what do you
think
we do with it?” he asked in exasperation.
The cursor winked at him thoughtfully. Then it typed, “Manufacture of ammonium perchlorate. A component of solid rocket fuel.”
Brandon sighed. “You got me! We manufacture propellant for our rocket grenades and other munitions. It’s not exactly legal without a license, but …” He glanced at Penny.
She looked like she was chewing on something, trying to smile but still in doubt. She tapped the offline again. “Getting you in trouble is not the purpose here,” she said quietly. “We’re not the cops.”
“Thank you. But then, what is the purpose?”
“We’re helping the new system understand what it’s seeing through your accounting, billing, contracts, scheduling, and other operational indices.”
“I understand. Is there anything else?”
She unmuted the intelligence long enough to confirm that it had no more questions. Then she tapped again for silence. She turned to face Brandon and stared deep into his eyes. “You know,” she said slowly, “I looked up perchloric acid as soon as Rover flagged the account. It’s a powerful corrosive, way too dangerous for amateurs to handle—especially in manufacturing explosives.”
“Uh-huh?” Brandon’s face didn’t move. “So … what’s
your
take on the situation?”
“That acid eats through almost anything. So I would guess you’re making something—
a lot
of somethings—just disappear. Things that are not exactly legal to have around.”
“That’s a good guess,” he said. “But, for your own peace of mind, as well as deniability, you really don’t want to take your hunch any further.” He paused to see how she reacted to the warning.
Her eyes went wide for a second; then she nodded. But she did so without the telltale squint that might indicate an element of either calculation or cunning. She was merely accepting his advice.
“Do you think your machine believed me,” he asked, “about making rocket fuel?”
She thought for a moment, then nodded again. “The numbers might almost add up. But sooner or later Rover will notice that you also buy those grenades and the rest off the shelf. It’s a very bright machine.”
“What should I do?” he asked.
She considered. “Leave a big hole in the data stream. Don’t file any reports about how many rounds you actually fire on the job.”
“We never do,” he assured her.
“What? Fire any bullets?”
“No. Kiss and tell.”
2. Red Handed
Pamela the Myrmidon was at least a dozen years older, and her bobbed and lacquered blonde hair now had a frost tip, but her tough, athletic body could still fill out a business suit with wide shoulders and a short skirt, and she could still crack walnuts with her bare hands—a trick she demonstrated at Christmas parties after three vodka sours. John Praxis’s daughter had found her by chance, working as cashier in the food court at Nordstrom’s, and immediately offered her a job. So Pamela was back at the PE&C reception desk, which was still located in the hallway opposite the door with the pebbled glass on the third floor at Sansome Street. If this desk wasn’t armored, at least the woman behind it certainly was.
When Pamela brought a man and woman into Praxis’s office, the frown on her face indicated trouble. But all she said was “Police Detective Blount and Assistant District Attorney Brown to see you, sir.”
They might have been fraternal twins, male and female, with sober faces, short dark hair, thick necks on hefty torsos, and navy blue suits. The only difference seemed to be that Ms. Blount’s jacket had brass buttons, epaulettes, a gold shield above her left breast, and a bulge where a pistol hung under her left armpit, while Mr. Brown’s business suit was conventionally unadorned.
“They just flew up from Los Angeles,” the receptionist added. “They
don’t
have an appointment.”
“I see,” he said. “Thank you, Pamela.” His watchdog receptionist reluctantly withdrew. Praxis turned to study his guests. “I’m surprised you didn’t call me on the webwall first,” he said. “I might have been out of town.”
“Some things still have to be done in person,” Brown said.
“Subpoenas, injunctions … reading Miranda rights,” Blount supplied.
“We came prepared to serve you and other company officers,” Brown finished.
“I see,” Praxis said cautiously. “And this would be regarding …?”
“Your award of the Long Beach Freeway renovation.”
“Yes, we just received the notice. Is something wrong?”
“The decision was improperly influenced,” Brown said.
“To the tune of half a million dollars,” Blount observed.
“Are you telling me Praxis has to
bribe
people to get jobs?”
The two just stared at him, like a pair of owls in daylight.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “We run an honest business.”
“We have one-half of the conspiracy already in custody,” Brown observed.
“The person taking the bribe, Melissa Willbrot, working with the Board of Public Works,” Blount explained.
“I’ve never heard of her,” Praxis said. He could feel his eyebrows drawing together. “I’d have to check our records, but I don’t recall that the request for proposal came from any such agency. Which one was it, again?”
“Board of Public Works. Willbrot was their staff counsel,” Brown said.
“She was on the review committee,” Blount offered. “She was very influential.”
“Very enthusiastic,” Brown corrected his partner. “Perhaps too enthusiastic.”
“I think we’d better include my president in this,” Praxis said. “And the head of my Legal Department.” Then he rang for Pamela to round them up.
* * *
When Antigone Wells entered John’s office with Callie to hear from the representatives of Los Angeles’s Police Department and District Attorney’s office, she pulled a chair around behind his desk so that she could sit beside John, whisper in his ear, and offer him legal counsel without having to talk to him across the desk. This way, she could also face his two accusers as his confidante and attorney. She put a restraining hand on John’s arm but kept her touch light for the moment.
She listened in silence while they preferred charges of bribery and conspiracy to suborn a public official against Praxis Engineering & Construction Company, its principals, and its executive-level officers, including everyone sitting in the room. When the two were finished, it was time for Wells to swing into action. She gave John’s arm a light squeeze for reassurance.
“I’d like to note for the record,” she began, addressing Brown and Blount, “that neither of my clients present had any participation in or knowledge of the alleged acts.”
The ADA and the detective ducked their heads together and whispered. Then Brown lifted his. “Your contention is so noted,” he said.
“We will immediately start an internal investigation,” Wells continued, “and will surrender the guilty party to you for prosecution. In the meantime, Praxis Engineering retracts its bid on the freeway project—” She heard both John and Callie draw breath at that. She tightened her grip on John. “—and cancels any extant agreements and subcontracts. We will also post a bond with the City and County of Los Angeles, with Caltrans, and with the F.R. Department of Transportation to cover the costs of rebidding. Will that be acceptable?”
More huddling. “Yes,” Brown said.
“And finally, as my clients are principals in this firm and integral to its continued operation, I would suggest they pose no flight risk. Can we dispense with the formality of your taking them into custody?”
Brown drew an envelope from his inside breast pocket and handed it to her. “So long as you will acknowledge that they have been properly served and will appear in court on the date specified therein.”
Wells opened the envelope, scanned the subpoena, and observed that it listed both John and Callie as well as a number of unspecified John and Jane Does. The date was for a month hence—plenty of time for her to investigate, file motions, and get to the bottom of whatever it was that had happened.
“So noted,” she agreed. She laid the document on John’s desk.
At her nod, he summoned the receptionist to escort the two visitors out, but he signaled for Wells and Callie to remain.
Antigone Wells moved around to one of the guest chairs in front of his desk.
When the door was firmly closed, John looked first at his daughter, then at Wells, and asked, “Any idea what all that was about?”
Callie sat slumped, arms folded, face creased by a deep frown.
Wells bit her lower lip. “They must have something solid, if those two will identify this Willbrot woman to us so openly. Some hard evidence. Maybe even a confession.”
“Callie?” John prompted.
“Kunstler,” his daughter said.
“She worked on the bid documents, of course,” Wells observed. “But then, so did two or three of our engineers, some of the clerical staff—”
“She went to Los Angeles,” Callie said. “Alone. She met with people, made contacts. None of the other staff did that.”
“Do you have reason to suspect she might have bribed this woman?” Wells asked, glancing sideways at John, who met her eyes. “In my review of them, I thought our bid documents looked reasonable, in line with—”
“Let’s say I have no reason to suspect she
wouldn’t,
” Callie offered.
“I don’t understand,” John said. “Why would she do that?”
“Because,” the daughter said, “Mariene likes to win.”
“But … you brought her into the company.”
“Yes, because I thought I knew her.”
“Not well enough, evidently.”
Wells had a sick feeling in her stomach. First, the Praxis grandsons in the Security Department and their unindicted felonies—assault, murder, destruction of property, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to commit all of the above. Now, the friend and protégé of Praxis’s own daughter and the suspicion of underhanded business dealings—subornation, bribery, conspiracy. What kind of mob family had she joined? And where would it end?
She quietly moved her chair back away from John’s desk. Just a few inches. But he noticed the gesture.
* * *
When Penny Winston was called into the media room by the spooky new receptionist, she found the chairman, John Praxis, the president, Callista Praxis, and the lawyer, Antigone Wells, all seated at the table facing the webwall. Callista had Rover’s text box open and was clearly trying to get information out of him—without success. His previous responses alternated between null signs, question marks, and requests for restatement.
Callista caught sight of Penny. “Well, hell, about time,” she said. Then her head jerked in annoyance.
“What?” Penny asked.
“Your tee shirt …”
The front lettering read “What part of
t√1-v
2
/c
2
don’t you understand?” It was the Lorentz transformation governing time dilation in special relativity. The shirt’s back, which was covered by her jacket, showed a saddle-shaped universe compressed into a globe, like the yin-yang stitching pattern on a baseball. That represented distance dilation, which was the flip side of the transformation. With all these engineers in the room, she figured someone had to have studied cosmology. Apparently not.
“It’s just science,” Penny said.
“Yes, but that’s hardly business attire.”
“Could we get back to the subject at hand?” John Praxis suggested.
“What’s the problem?” Penny asked. “Rover’s not responding?”
“I need to find out who authorized and distributed a sum of money,” Callista said.
“Oh, that would be in accounts payable,” Penny replied. “Rover?”
The cursor in the window blinked its ready status.
“We already looked there,” Callista said. “He’s got nothing.”
“It wouldn’t be a regular account,” Antigone Wells said. “It’s probably not even a company check.”
“Well, what
do
you know?” Penny asked reasonably.
“Someone in the company paid half a million to bribe an LA County official.”
“Whew!” Penny whistled. “And you want to know who, right?”
“It might not even be money,” Wells went on. “A bungalow on the beach. Or a couple of fast cars. The actual bribe could be impossible to trace.”
“But I can find those
things,
” Penny said, “if this company bought them.”
“The district attorney was very specific about the amount,” Callista replied. “It sounded like a lump sum.”
“District attorney, huh?” Penny said. “So the cops are already involved?”
“Yeah, we’re all going to jail,” Wells said, “unless we find the perpetrator.”
“It
could
be cash,” Callista said. “But try looking for smaller amounts, odd thousands, taken out over—”
“Wait a minute!” Penny held up her hands. “Start from the other end. What was the bribe for?”
“Favorable review of our bid on a big highway project,” Wells said.
“So it’s got to have come from a marketing account,” Penny said.
“You’ll never find it there,” Callista said. “I’ve already looked.”
“Yeah, but you have to know what to ask for,” Penny said. “Rover, display the annual budget allotted to the marketing department, subheadings only.”
Out popped a table of accounts and amounts. The total budget barely topped a million dollars.
“Sum expenses alongside, year to date,” she instructed.
The table repeated with a parallel column of amounts paid out for each heading. They showed that only half of the total budget had already been spent.
“Anything added or missing?” she asked the people in the room. “Bogus accounts? Bogus amounts? Expenses shown as paid that you know for a fact have not been made?”
They stared and studied, then one by one shook their heads.
“So, either your marketing people are able to subsist without spending any money—like some kind of air fern—or their regular accounts didn’t supply the half million used in the bribe.”
“It had to come from within the company,” Callista stated.
“Rover,” Penny instructed, “do a regression analysis of the entire corporate budget, variance between projected and expended, year to date. Note any outliers beyond ten percent. List and sum the outliers.”
The screen showed a scattershot diagram, dot by dot, drew a slanted line through the mass of dots, and circled those that lay pretty far outside the main pattern. It then listed the affected budgets and the amounts at variance. The total, combining both over and under variances, came to about two hundred thousand.
“Any of those look different from what you’d expect?” she asked.
“Are we really leaking two hundred kay?” the elder Praxis asked.
“Small potatoes,” the daughter told him. “The year is young yet.”
“Do you think any of those are hiding your bribe?” Penny asked.
“Not even close,” Callista said. “Unless you pieced ’em together.”
“Rover, note all high-side variances and sum,” Penny instructed.
The screen listed the different headings too fast to note, then gave a total that was more than half a million, but not by much.
“Is anyone in the company in a position to skim a little bit here, there, and everywhere?” Penny asked. “That is, and not get caught?”
President and chairman looked warily at each other. They shook their heads at the same time.
“That would be a neat trick,” Callista Praxis said.
“The managers involved would scream,” John Praxis added.
Penny shrugged. “Then we must deduce the money didn’t come from here.”
* * *
That evening when Antigone Wells returned with John Praxis to the house on Balboa Street, she could tell from the street that something was wrong. A white card about fifteen inches square was nailed to the front door, and she could read the title while still on the sidewalk: “notice of eviction.” Not until they climbed the steps to the front stoop and read the fine print did they learn the house had been sold at a sheriff’s auction two weeks earlier.
Wells was thankful it was just her and John. Callie and her daughter had moved out some months ago, taking an apartment closer to downtown and to Rafaella’s elementary school. It would have been bad for the little girl to come home in the middle of the afternoon and find the house sold—or even find the sheriff’s deputies still there, nailing up the notice and denying her entry.
“Nice of them to tell the owners,” Praxis grumbled. He tore the card down, folded it, put it under his arm, and unlocked the door.
“I’m sure it must be some kind of mistake,” she said. But when they got inside, Wells reached over and took the card from him. It was still a public document.