FAI (11 page)

Chapter Fifteen

“What’s going on?” Kari asked. She hadn’t bothered to leave the room to answer the call, as she wasn’t sure where she was allowed to go. Also, she had nothing to hide from anyone in the room. She’d simply let them know that she needed to take the call and had accepted Motorcad’s request.

“Hey, boss,” Motorcad said. “Looks like they haven’t rounded you up yet.”

“Not yet. You staying safe?”

“For now,” Motorcad said. “I’ve tried to stay close to the Academy, but even after the government left, there are people crawling all around this place.”

“Vision personnel?”

“Mostly, from what I’ve seen. But plenty of independent journalists.”

In a world starved for a constant stream of news and updates, being an independent journalist was a fair way to make a living. It was brutally competitive, but if the journalist could build a reputation, they usually lived pretty well. Journalism held zero appeal to herself personally, but Kari appreciated the journalists who weren’t tied to the corporate-filtered news.

“Almost as bad,” Kari said.

“School hasn’t burned down yet,” Motorcad said. “But I’m not sure how long the Sanchez’s can keep the place under control.”

“Well, they will need to do it for a while longer,” Kari said. “It might be a little bit until we can sort this one out.”

“I figured. Anyway, the kids messaged me today saying they had a message for you. I’m going to put them on if that’s all right.”

“They know to keep it secure?”

“If they don’t know that by now, it’s probably our fault.”

“Put them on,” Kari said.
Please don’t make me regret this.

“What’s up, criminals?” Ruth said as soon as her face was visible. Jared joined the call a split-second after, but apparently he thought Ruth’s greeting spoke for both of them.

“Detention,” Kari said.

“We’ll be serving out our detention sentences until we’re as old as Motorcad,” Ruth said.

“I don’t want to think about being that old,” Jared said. “All that knee pain and the back problems.”

“Tell me there is a reason we’re all on this call right now?” Kari said. A list of possibilities ran through her mind and she suddenly felt nervous.
Maybe I shouldn’t ask . . .

“Christina Wolfkin sent us a pretty nasty message directed for Freelancer,” Ruth said. “So we thought you might want to hear it.”

“You didn’t say you’d give it to Freelancer, did you?” Motorcad asked. “She could use that to shut the school down if you did.”

“Of course not,” Jared said. “We told her we had no idea how we would send a message to such a petty hacker and that Broccoli Rob was probably who she was looking for anyway.”

“Broccoli Rob,” Ruth echoed with a nod. She raised her eyebrows to emphasize the name.

“OK, less detention,” Kari said.

“You still haven’t earned back your recess privileges yet,” Motorcad said. “Let’s hear the message.”

“I’m going to paraphrase it for you in order to protect young Jared’s ears from the profanity.”

Just get to the point. Some us are in the middle of some rather emotional family-reunited-slash-meeting-your-boyfriend-and-AI-friend-for-the-first-time drama.

“Give us back Fai or I am going to come after you, everyone you know, everyone you don’t know, and I’m going to sue your school into oblivion and then sue the void it leaves.”

“Well, that’s about what I expected to hear,” Kari said.

“What’s a Fai?” Jared asked.

“You’ll find out in due time,” Kari said. She wasn’t quite sure how to handle who knew about Fai. Her parents knew about her know, as did David, but that was it. Christina had gone to great lengths to keep her existence a secret, and so far Kari had felt that it was the best strategy as well.
Besides, if I tell Broccoli Rob it’ll be all over the internet in a matter of seconds.

“A bomb?”

“A new mind chip that doesn’t require insertion?”

“Christina’s most beloved digital pet?”

“A bomb that looks exactly like a digital pet so people don’t see it coming?”

Jared and Ruth shouted out ideas faster than Kari could process them all.
I should never have let them both be on the call at once. One is more than enough.

“OK, thanks kids,” Motorcad said. “Don’t hack any federal agencies!”

“No, we have a right—” Ruth said, before Motorcad cut her off the call.

“Thank you!” Kari said.

“What do they have to sue us over?” Motorcad said. “Breach of contract? We can always just return the money.”

“Does it matter? They have enough lawyers that they could just file fake lawsuits against us for the rest of eternity and we’d never be able fight them all off. We don’t have the money . . .”

“Not if they pay us what they paid you.”

“I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Considering they are trying to kill me.”

“What?” Motorcad said. “You mean?”

“Yes,” Kari said. “It was Christina. She was behind it.”

Motorcad cursed in his usual fashion. Weaving gaming terms into classic obscenities.
At least he does it with style. I’d be able to pick his curses out of a lineup. I tend to be a little old-fashioned in that regard . . .

“Yeah,” Kari said. “That just about sums it up.”

“Why? What am I missing?”

“Fai’s an AI,” Kari said. “Christina wanted to get rid of John, so she set me up to make it look like I was the person behind everything. Fai helped me escape and now she wants Fai back.”

“Oh,” Motorcad said. “Makes sense.”

“That’s it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well . . . most people have bigger reactions to the news than that. I mean it’s a new species and all . . . created by man. Sort of the technological dream for the last thousand years . . .”

“Can Fai get us out of this mess?” Motorcad asked.

“She might be able to help.”

“Well, that’s all I care about,” he said. “So what’s the plan now? We can’t let the Sanchez’s run the Academy forever.”

“I . . . I’ll let you know,” Kari said. “You think on it, too, and we’ll talk again soon.”

She closed the call and returned her vision to her parents’ living room, where everyone was sitting patiently waiting for her to finish her private conversation.
Well . . . where were we? Parents have met David and Fai. We hugged. Seems like we covered our bases. Maybe I’ll drop by again in three years?

The rain hadn’t stopped all day and the ground was flooded with a thin layer of water, but it felt good to be outside after a week trapped in her parents’ apartment. Kari walked slowly around the park next to David. They carried an umbrella to keep them dry, but perhaps more importantly to keep their faces hidden from any cameras.

Funny that with all the technology and designs available, most people still print an umbrella when it’s raining. There’s something to be said for simple, cheap, and proven products.
Some of Kari’s first designs, long before she accepted clients for vast sums of money, were high-tech solutions to problems that were easily solved by something as simple as an umbrella.

It was a lesson she shared with her students now. She encouraged them to use base designs and software where acceptable and to spend their time trying to solve problems that really mattered. She had hated busywork when she was in school, and she spent a lot of time making sure her curriculum was free of worthless tasks. She wanted to teach her students the sheer joy of creating solutions, not teach them how to take tests.

“What are you saying?” David asked.

“Nothing. Well, I’m not sure,” Kari said. “My parents are happy here. They have a good life, a normal life. Sure, it’s simple, but it’s peaceful.”

“You’re not seriously considering just staying here, are you?”

“No, I guess not. I doubt Henderson will ever stop looking for me, but part of me wishes we could just stay here. Leave all that mess behind us. Never have to risk anything again . . .”

“If anyone is entitled to wanting to live a peaceful life without people hunting them, it’s you. But I don’t think you’d be happy here, not really.”

“You’re right.” Kari sighed. She tripped slightly on a bump in the path, which slowed her just enough to get her pants slightly wet.

“Besides, you can have that life back home. You can clear Freelancer’s name! I’m sure of it.”

“Maybe . . . but we have to take care of Christina first. The people she killed deserve that.”

“Others always come first for you, don’t they?” David asked.

“Most people would say that’s a good thing.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I love that about you. If that wasn’t true, I don’t know where I would be. But—”

“After,” Kari said. “After we take care of Christina . . . I’ll see what I can do about changing the public’s opinion about Freelancer. Not sure how I’ll do that with Henderson—”

David stopped suddenly and since he was holding the umbrella Kari stepped out into the rain.

“David!” Kari said, a little too loudly, as she dodged back under the umbrella. Her first thought was to slug him. Her second thought was to search around the rain-soaked park to see what had made David stop in his tracks.

“Henderson is the key!” David said.

“To what?”

Henderson is the key . . . to taking Christina down? That’s what we’ve been focused on all week. But how would he be able to help stop Christina? Right now, she’s his partner. We won’t be able to catch her in the act like we did with Joseth and his army. So why is he the key? He’s the one who keeps the public focused on me. He’s the one blaming me, so if we could convince him of my innocence, he might leave me alone?

No. He didn’t do that after Joseth and he knows fully well who helped him. But . . . I didn’t have the chance to negotiate with him last time. If I promised him that he could arrest Christina Wolfkin, one of the richest people in the world who has thumbed her nose at the government a number of times, we might have something.

He won’t trust me, though. It would have to be concrete evidence. I give him undeniable proof it was Christina, he uses that to become America’s darling public servant again. He stops coming after me and we get Christina at the same time.

“We would need graphium evidence,” Kari said. “One hundred percent undeniable.”

“Not again . . .” David said.

“What?”

“I have a brilliant thought, and you go and piece it all together before I can take credit for it.”

“Hey, you did it with London on the flight, remember?” Kari said. “We’re even now.”

“Oh yeah, even, if we don’t count all the other times.” David nudged her outside the umbrella as part of his feigned anger.

“Give me the umbrella,” Kari said.

“No way, it’s my only source of power in this relationship.”

“So this relationship is a power struggle?”

“I sure hope not,” David said as he handed her the umbrella. “Because you’re about to go up against one of the most powerful people in the world. I don’t think I can compete with that.”

“We are.” Kari corrected him, which brought a broad grin to his face. She liked his smile, not as much as his eyes, but it was a close second.

“So we make a deal with Henderson?” David said. “Right . . . that’s where you ended up?”

“Assuming he would be willing to deal with us,” Kari said. “Then yes, I think he’s the best chance we have. He’ll probably try and cheat us, but I think it’s a good angle. But that only makes sense if we can link the research lab to Christina with more than some printed badges on the shoulders of gunmen.”

“You better get hacking, then.”

“No,” Kari said. “I don’t think so. Oedipus is the only person I’ve known who was able to get through their security. We’ve spent the last week trying and we haven’t gotten anywhere. Besides, Christina is too smart for that, she wouldn’t leave any traces behind.”

“Oh . . .”

“Don’t worry, I think we can get something even better than some digital records.”

“What?”

“A confession.”

Chapter Sixteen

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Kari asked. “There’s no going back.”

“It is likely that announcing my existence to the world will be met with a range of responses, but I am optimistic that it is for the best,” Fai said.

“Can you be optimistic?” David asked.

“I believe I have more capability to be optimistic than most humans. I have the ability to run a number of models and base my decisions upon data that you will never have.”

“If it’s just based on data, then why don’t you call it confidence?” David asked.

Kari kept herself from refocusing the conversation like she wanted to. She was still uncertain about posting her open letter on the Internet. David and Fai agreed it was an important part of the plan, but she still felt uneasy about it.
But it’s Fai’s decision. Not mine. I can’t hide her from the world forever, even if I want to.

“Confidence would reflect I have let the data alone make the decision for me. But I am more than an algorithm and make decisions that may not be backed by the strongest numbers.”

“I see . . .” David said.

Well, at least Fai’s data agrees with me. Telling the world about her is risky.
Fai sensed her concern, either through intuition or some advanced reading of her body.

“I want to do this, Kari,” Fai said. “Humanity’s reaction to my life is something that humanity will have to sort out. I am not apologetic for existing.”

“Well, I can’t argue with that.”

Kari took a deep breath and posted her letter explaining the events at the research lab online. She didn’t blame Christina or point any fingers; she simply stated she was present and that she had nearly died. She detailed how she was working on Fai and that together they had escaped the massacre. The final part of her letter she had used to call Fai her friend and assure everyone that the first AI in history was peaceful and safe.

The places on the net where the hacker community had used to congregate were gone. The government’s crusade on hackers had been extensive. The only communication she had with unaffiliated hackers these days was through private, encrypted channels far from where the government would be able to find them. She let what hackers she could find know about her post and that it had indeed come from her.

Without being told what to do, they started to repost her article and vouch for the authenticity. Motorcad wasn’t the first hacker to share her letter, as to avoid any connection between them, but he did his part as soon as it didn’t look arranged. It didn’t take long for Kari’s letter to spread out across the world. It immediately dominated the social networks and the official news stations.

I’m sure Christina has seen it by now. Vision promised to put a bullet in my head if I broke my NDA . . . but they’ve already tried to do that.

“I’ve never seen anything go viral so quickly!” David said.

“It has exceeded my predictions,” Fai said.

“Well, the world has never heard directly from Freelancer,” Kari said. “And I guess you might be able to take some credit, Fai. Being the greatest achievement of mankind ever, and all.”

“From my limited evaluation the conversation seems to be centered primarily around you,” Fai said.

“Humans are stupid,” Kari said.

I guess people are desensitized to the term AI. We’ve been calling everything from a meeting scheduler to a smart fridge an “AI” since long before I was born.

“Humans created me,” Fai said.

“I’ll take credit for that part,” David said. “As a human, you’re welcome.”

“The League of Humanity has released a statement vowing to destroy me and the entirety of Vision.”

“And my point is proven,” Kari said.

“Well, I retract my statement,” David said. “I no longer want to be part of humanity.”

“Why would they take credit for the attack on the research lab if they didn’t do it?” Kari asked.

“They probably figured it would boost their street cred. Terrorist organizations in the past always tried to claim every random gas line explosion,” David said.

“I find it curious that Vision has not released a statement yet,” Fai said. Surprisingly, she was the one to stay on topic the best. Usually she was all too happy to explore tangents to their full extent.

“They are probably working through their legal team trying to figure something out,” Kari said. “They are a big company that just had their greatest invention leaked to the public. I bet we’ll hear from them soon.”

“I understand,” Fai said.

“Are you feeling OK?” Kari asked.

“The reactions are so numerous, and all of them are so . . . personal. I’ve never been the subject of my own study before. I am not sure I fully understood how reading individual responses would affect me.”

“Don’t read them,” Kari said. “It won’t do you any good. That’s something I learned a long, long time ago. None of it matters. All that matters is what you think. And maybe what the people you care about think.”

“And we think you’re great,” David said.

Fai blinked and her electronic mouth formed into a smile.

“I won’t read any more,” Fai said. “Thanks for your advice. I consider it helpful and meaningful.”

It was a reminder of how teachable and sincere Fai was. If Kari had given that advice to any of her other students and they had responded with the exact same words, she would have been upset.
Let’s hope Fai never learns the art of sarcasm from either of the Broccoli Rob twins.

“Well, do you think Henderson has read the letter by now?” Kari asked.

“I’m sure he was the first one to read it,” David said. “He hasn’t missed a single word about Freelancer in years. He’s more devoted to you than I am!”

“Please don’t say that,” Kari said. “It creeps me out.”

“But I’m not worried about it, Fai,” David said. “He can try as he might, but I’ll always be her biggest fan. And her best looking.”

“I would like to enter my name in the biggest fan contest,” Fai said.

“Oh great, just what I need. More competition.”

“I guess we should give our old friend a call, then,” Kari said.

She took a seat in the chair they had prepared for the call and checked around herself one last time to make sure there was nothing visible that would give Henderson any help in knowing where they were hiding.
Even the smallest details, such as kind of lightbulb or angle of light in the video at the time of day has gotten people caught before.

Kari didn’t see anything that would give them away, so she proceeded to set up a secure call to Marshal Henderson. She ran a trusted script that would constantly change the proxy she was using to reroute the secure call. It was more protection than she needed, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

Henderson hadn’t changed his personal contact details since the day she had stolen all his information from his prison.
Not very smart, but at least it makes it easy to contact him when I need him.
He didn’t answer the call immediately, which Kari found to be a little surprising.
Maybe I caught him at a bad time. He could be in the middle of arresting another teenager in order to force her to work for him.

He didn’t say a word as his face appeared in the call. She saw a slight twitch of his eye that betrayed his surprise at seeing her. He had done a good job at keeping his face in the headlines over the years, so he looked exactly as she knew he would. Slightly grayer, slightly more miserable than he had back when they spent more time together.

“Hello, old friend,” Kari said. “You’re looking . . . well . . . old.”

“I don’t take calls from or negotiate with terrorists,” Henderson said.

He sounded serious enough that Kari almost believed him.
Not quite.
She looked over her shoulder as if she were searching for someone.

“Who, me?” Kari said. “We both know I didn’t do it. Don’t even pretend that you think I would do something like that.”

“You want me to believe that the escaped felon who broke thousands of criminals out of prison while stealing government secrets and who went on to work with a anarchist lunatic is innocent?”

“You only stopped him because of me. Otherwise, you’d be working for Oedipus right now. Of course, you’d probably enjoy working for someone who shares your ideals of forced labor . . .”

“Are you calling to turn yourself in?”

“No.”

“You should consider it,” Henderson said. His voice suddenly lost its edge and his face softened. “And I mean it. If I don’t find you first, I’m afraid the people that do won’t give you the luxury of prison.”

Those old tactics aren’t going to work on me. I saw through them the first day we met. You don’t care about anything but yourself.

“Given the choice between your prison and the other option, I might need some time to consider.”

“Why did you call today?” Henderson asked. “I do hope there is a point to all this, because you just interrupted some very interesting reading.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“Then who did?”

“You don’t know?”

“I have my theories,” he said, refusing to betray anything.

He’s smarter than I want to give him credit for.

“What if I told you it was Christina Wolfkin, one of the richest and most powerful people in the world?”

“Ha!” Henderson scorned her, but she wasn’t sure if he was sincere or not. “I would say you better have some incredibly legally sound proof.”

“What if I did?”

“You don’t,” Henderson said. “You wouldn’t be calling me if you did. You’d do exactly what you did with your other . . . investigative results. Besides, you just put out a little letter that didn’t mention Miss Wolfkin.”

“You’re right,” Kari said. “I don’t have it yet, but I will.”

“Well, good for you,” Henderson said. “I don’t see why you are calling to tell me about this.”

“I’m telling you because we both know what that information would mean. We both know what that would do for your career! Sure claiming to stop Oedipus was something, but this . . . this would cement your legacy.”

Henderson frowned, but his eyes were alive with greed.
You’ve never been able to control that side of you. It’s always been your weakness.

“I’m guessing that such information wouldn’t come from the goodness of your heart,” Henderson said. “What do you want?”

Spoken like someone who is truly used to making dirty deals.

“I want you to arrest Christina and make her pay for her crimes. She killed so many good, innocent people and she needs to answer for that.”

Or, at least, innocent in Adrian’s case.

“And?” Henderson said.

“And I want a full pardon for myself, my parents, Udarh, and anyone else you’ve arrested along the way to get at me. And I want you to leave me alone, for good.”

“Oh, is that all?” Henderson asked mockingly. “You sure you don’t want me to bake you a cake and shine your shoes as well?”

“I’ve tasted some of your food before, so I’ll pass. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from your prison.”

“So just to be clear, you called me offering to give me the break of a lifetime in exchange for arresting someone who tried to kill you, and then you want me to just let you walk free for everything else you’ve done?”

“It’s a good deal for you,” Kari said. “Don’t act like it isn’t. A few pardons for fake crimes in exchange for landing one of the biggest arrests in the history of the country, that is more than fair.”

Henderson took a deep breath and sighed as if he were exhausted with the conversation. Then a smile spread across his face.

“I’d be happy to do a deal with you. I’m not sure about full pardons, but we could work out the fine details later, I’m sure. But there are two problems.”

Kari stared at Henderson. She no longer bothered to try to hide her disdain.

“One, you don’t have the proof. It doesn’t exist. You’re trying to make hypothetical deals and I don’t make hypothetical deals.”

He paused.
And?
He looked slightly disappointed she didn’t respond, but that disappeared as a grin spread across his face.

“And I’m old-fashioned. When I make deals I like to shake hands on it. And since you’re in London and I am not, I just don’t see how it’s going to work out.”

Kari ended the call.