Rath's Gambit (The Janus Group Book 2) (8 page)

Khyron smiled, but Dasi could see his forehead was beaded with sweat. “Yes, sir.”

“Taking good care of our Dasi?” Lizelle asked, still gripping Khyron’s hand, raising an eyebrow with mock seriousness.

“I – I think so, sir …,” Khyron stuttered, looking to Dasi for help.

But Lizelle laughed. “I’m just giving you a hard time. But do take care of her – she’s already helped my public relations team make great strides. And it’s been what, two years?”

“Eighteen months, sir,” Dasi corrected.

“Is that all?” he asked. “Sit, please. What can I do for you today?”

The young couple shared a look, and then Khyron took a deep breath. “I’m a programmer, sir – I have degrees in computer science and applied mathematics. And I’ve been working on an artificial intelligence program that I think has some interesting potential.”

“Don’t undersell it,” Dasi chided him.

Lizelle glanced over at her, then back at the programmer. “AI? Fair enough. You’re not going to tell me you broke the Groenveld Barrier, are you?”

Khyron bit his lip. “I think I did, sir.”

Lizelle put his fork down, eyebrows raised. “Really?”

“Really,” Khyron nodded. “I think.”

“You better start at the beginning,” Lizelle said.

Dasi smiled.
He’s interested now. I know that look.

“It started as my senior thesis project, a few years back,” Khyron related. “As you know, artificial intelligence has made notable advances over recent years, particularly in large dataset applications, but programs always seem to reach a threshold where they are no longer evolving or thinking on their own without significant human intervention.”

“Sure. The Groenveld Barrier,” Lizelle agreed.

“Yes, sir. They’ll learn everything they can given the data they have, and solve the problems set before them, but they don’t seek out new problems to solve. They don’t take initiative, as it were.”

“And yours does?” Lizelle prompted.

“Not at first, no,” Khyron admitted. “But I’ve been tinkering with the code for the last few years, and several weeks ago it had some surprising results. I’ve been using open source data and stock-trading as a test case – but not actually trading with it,” Khyron reassured him.

“That would be illegal,” the senator agreed.

“Right – just feeding the data in, and letting FiveSight make hypothetical trades on a virtual account.”

“Five-what?” Lizelle asked.

“FiveSight, the name of the program,” Dasi clarified. “Because it’s better than foresight ….”

“Cute,” Lizelle chuckled.

“It was late at night and my thesis was due,” Khyron shrugged. “Anyway, I started with standard datasets: weather, census, publicly available stuff. Then I connected it to market trading data, and started showing the AI how to correlate events and predict outcomes. When storms damage coastal communities, the regional insurance company’s costs rise, and their stock goes down, for instance. As it started to learn, FiveSight began to create its own investing rules. One of the first things it figured out is that solar activity has a positive effect on the market on certain planets – human mood is affected by those magnetic waves washing over them.”

“Fascinating. So I should schedule my speeches for high solar activity days, when everyone’s in a good mood?”

“Yes, sir! People would be more receptive. Anyway, I made some tweaks to FiveSight’s code, funded the virtual trading account and gave FiveSight discretionary authority. I started with ten thousand dollars. And FiveSight lost over nine thousand dollars in about twenty minutes of trading.”

Lizelle grimaced. “Ouch. That doesn’t inspire me with confidence.”

“No, sir. But by the close of trading, FiveSight had the volatility figured out, and the balance was north of a million.”

“You turned ten thousand dollars into a million dollars in one day?” Lizelle asked.

“Well, after the losses, we actually started with just about eight hundred dollars, and FiveSight did all of the work, but … yes.”

Lizelle whistled. “Okay, I’m impressed.”

Khyron nodded. “But honestly, that’s nothing extraordinary, Senator. Other programs can perform similarly well in the right market conditions. And all of them would have fallen short of the Groenveld Barrier – they’re all trading with high efficiency, theoretically making money … but none of them are taking initiative. But FiveSight did.” He shifted in his chair, pushing his shirt-sleeves up to his elbows. “I left FiveSight running overnight, while the markets were closed. When I checked on it in the morning, it had composed a message for me. Usually the messages are things like ‘I discovered a new correlation between this variable and that variable, and I tested it to see if I could make money with that knowledge, here are the results.’ This message was different.”

On his desk, Lizelle’s breakfast had gone cold. Dasi smiled, watching her boyfriend with pride.

“FiveSight had been reviewing news articles,” he continued, “and recognized that poor stock performance over an extended period of time predicted CEO turnover. But it went a step further – it was predicting not just which CEOs would be replaced, but who might replace them. It was thinking creatively.”

“Intuiting …,” the senator murmured.

“Sort of. I watched it over the next few months, and it was right – over ninety percent of the CEOs it identified were fired, and it predicted the replacements correctly more than half the time. And the next quarter it was even more accurate.”

“It’s interesting,” Lizelle allowed. “But it’s not too far off the investing mandate you gave it originally.”

“That’s true,” Khyron agreed. “But it started branching out from there. Each night it strayed farther afield – again, with no guidance or direction from me. Within a week it had found a solution for reducing delays in space travel by adjusting routes on two major carriers. And it’s still creating. So I’m pretty excited about it as a learning algorithm – I believe it’s outperforming any other artificial intelligence out there today. I’ve got a meeting with one of the lead researchers on the Immortality Project in a few months; I’m really excited to see what we can do.”

Lizelle sat back in his chair and spread his arms. “Okay, so you’ve got a hot program on your hands, I’m convinced. And I’m excited for you, really I am. But why come to me?”

Khyron rubbed his palms on his pants legs. “Well, we’re hoping for your help. The more data sources I expose FiveSight to, the more learning it does, and the better it gets at … well, anything I ask it to do. But there’s only so many correlations that can be drawn from the limited open source datasets I can access, so now I’m trying to add more datasets – proprietary ones, not publicly available. And the government has a lot of data.”

“Yes, we do,” Lizelle agreed. “I believe we store the most data in the galaxy, byte for byte.”

“That’s true.”

“Which data do you want?” Lizelle asked.

“Um … all of it?” Khyron suggested.

Lizelle laughed. “I like your enthusiasm. But I can’t just hook you up to every database we have. Give me an idea for what would be most useful.”

Khyron scratched his chin. “FiveSight already looks at Senate voting activity when it’s making predictions – that’s public data. But I have a theory that the world in general is actually more susceptible to activity that happens
off
the Senate floor – meetings, deals, conversations that aren’t part of actual legislation.”

“That’s a fair assumption; you’re probably not wrong. But there’s no database that can tell you what’s going on in every private conversation at Anchorpoint.”

“No, of course not, sir. I guess … well, whatever data you can get me, really. Employment reports, environmental studies, budget decisions, phone and message logs – not the actual content, just who’s messaging whom, or even, who’s messaging a lot, and who isn’t. Um ….” he trailed off.

The senator put his chin in his hands, shutting one eye and pursing his lips. “I can get you some of that, I think. But since you’re asking me for something, I’m going to introduce you to how things work at Anchorpoint: nothing’s free, and if you ask me for something, I’m going to ask you for twice as much in return.” Lizelle picked a piece of chicken off his plate and popped it in his mouth. “First, I’m going to put you in touch with a lawyer. He’s going to help you set up an LLC, and I’m going to be your first investor. We’ll work out the details, but when you monetize this thing, I want in. And I’m not talking chump change – I’ve got twenty million dollars coming out of other private equity ventures this year, and you might just get all of that. So start thinking about a business plan, who you need to hire, etc.”

Khyron gulped.

“Nervous?” Lizelle asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Stay scared, it will motivate you. I also want exclusive access to your analysis of the Senate data. I’m primarily interested in predicting voting outcomes, or even individual votes. Can FiveSight tell me who’s on the fence, and who’s likely to swing their vote?”

“Possibly,” Khyron guessed. “Probably.”

“If you can do that ….” Lizelle exhaled noisily, a slow smile spreading across his face. “If you do, we’ll restructure the investment deal so you get to keep a bigger share of the company. Deal?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. I’m going to hire you as an unpaid intern. I don’t think our tech team is going to give an outside researcher access to the data you’re talking about, even if I tell them to – you need to be a badged staff member. Once you’re set up on my team, we can make things happen. I also need to make some calls to our Tech department, call in some favors … but I should have you access in the next week. Dasi can take you to our staff coordinator to get the ball rolling.”

Dasi nodded eagerly. “Of course.”

Lizelle stood up and held out his hand. “Khyron, this has been most interesting. Keep me posted on your progress. Thanks for coming in.”

Khyron managed to overcome his shock, and slowly stood, a grin on his face. “Thank
you
, sir. I can’t wait to show you what FiveSight can do.” 

8

The woman’s datascroll chirped at her when she came in from the parking lot. She hung a set of air car keys on the large board behind the reception desk, then took a seat at the desk, picking up the datascroll and opening her messages folder. She didn’t recognize the sender, but the address looked valid, and the message at the top was labeled
URGENT.
She clicked it open.

From: SkyLine Rentals Corporate Security Division

To: All facilities on Lakeworld

In order to assist an ongoing investigation, all employees should be on the lookout for any individuals matching the attached photos, or anyone inquiring about the vehicle rental detailed below. Employees with any relevant information should notify Corporate Security by replying to this address immediately.

The woman opened the attached photos and scrolled through them, and then read the vehicle description. Her eyes widened.

“Oh, gosh. Now isn’t that a coincidence?”

She tapped on the
Reply
button.

A gentleman was just here a few days ago, and he asked about that exact kind of hoverbike.

* * *

Interstellar Police Station ALB112 was a tall, granite edifice looking out over a grassy plaza. Several police cruisers were parked on the street, and a pair of armed officers stood guard at the front entrance, while a steady stream of people passed in and out of the doors. Rath checked that the fake media credentials were still attached to his jacket, and took a deep breath. He eyed the doors with resignation, and then climbed the stone steps and passed inside.

In the lobby, an automated kiosk directed him to an office on the first floor, where he knocked on the door. The officer inside was on the phone, but he saw Rath and motioned him to enter and take a seat. Rath waited, nervously counting the police officers as they passed by the glass walls of the office.

One guy that could arrest me for Senator Reid’s murder … two guys that could arrest me … three, four, five guys …

“Sorry about that,” the police officer told Rath, hanging up the phone and turning back to face Rath.

Rath smiled, and resisted the urge to fidget in his seat. “No problem.”

“Now, what did you need help with?”

“I was hoping to do a story about one of your detectives.”

The officer eyed Rath’s
PRESS
badge. “Oh. Why didn’t you submit the request through our Public Relations portal?”

“Uh,” Rath stalled. “Slipped my mind, sorry.”

The officer frowned. “Is this your first time covering IP?”

“Yeah,” Rath admitted. “I just switched from another department.”

“Who are you with?”

“
The Daily Current.
”

“Mm,” the cop grunted. “Well, if you want to talk to anyone here, you’ll need to file a request through the online portal. Your office will have a login you can use.”

Through the glass behind the policeman, Rath saw a pair of cops push several handcuffed teenagers down the hall. He swallowed nervously.

“Is there any way you can put me in touch with the detective now, while I’m here? I promise I’ll file a request as soon as I get back to the office.”

The officer pressed his lips together, and then sighed. “What’s the detective’s name?”

“Martin Beauceron.”

The cop looked up, his eyes narrowing. “Why do you want to speak to Detective Beauceron?”

“My boss wants a story about the incident where he was kidnapped.”

“Don’t you think that story’s had enough press?”

Rath squirmed under the officer’s stare. When it was obvious he was waiting for a response, Rath shrugged. “Look, I’m just doing the story they asked me to do.”

“Well, Detective Beauceron is no longer assigned to this precinct.”

“Oh,” Rath said. “Sorry for taking up your time.”

He didn’t wait for the cop to reply, but stood and exited through the door to the man’s office. Glancing back, he saw the cop had picked up his desk phone. Rath hurried down the hall, turning and walking straight out of the station, headed for the nearest bus stop. He changed buses twice, and switched identities in a public restroom, and nearly an hour later, found himself back at his motel.