Touched by a Phoenix (32 page)

“Here let me help you with this Mom,” as she reached out to take a dish. “Mom, did you plan to feed an army?”

“You should be focused on taking care of Brad and not worrying about cooking for the next few days.”

“Thank you. You’re wonderful,” she beamed at Catherine.

Concern was written on Phillip’s face as he asked, “Alexis, I need to talk to Brad. Would you mind seeing if he is awake?”

“Dad…no. Whatever it is it can wait.”

“No, my dear, I’m afraid it can’t,” his tone soft, but firm.

Without any semblance of pretense, she declared, “Dad, I am not going to wake him, he needs his rest.”

“Ahem.”

Alexis turned to the sound. Brad leaned against the wall.

Alexis rushed to his side. “Sweetheart, you shouldn’t be up.”

“I’m okay darling.” Although his grim attempt at a smile betrayed his pain.

“Let me help you to the sofa if you are going to be stubborn about this.” She cast an evil eye at her father.

“Son, how are you?” Phillip asked, concern laced his voice.

“I’m fine, Phillip. Thank you for asking.”

Catherine leaned down and kissed him on the cheek. “You look a little better than the last time I saw you,” she said as she placed the back of her hand on his forehead to see if he had a fever.

He smiled at Catherine’s motherly nature.
“Ow!”

Catherine withdrew her hand quickly only to view a weak smirk on his face.

“Bradley…,” she said in a warning tone.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly.

“Ladies, I need to speak to Brad alone. Would you give us a few minutes,” Phillip asked.

“No,” Alexis stated flatly. “Whatever you need to discuss, you will do so with me in the room.”

Phillip eyed his defiant daughter trying to decide how bullheaded she would be about the matter. Hard, cold eyes told him she was more than defiant; Brad was going to have his hands full with Alexis. If the circumstances were not so dire, it would have brought a smile to his lips. He flashed back to the day Brad accepted the job with AAS. He thought he should have paid him more then. Had he been able to see into the future, he would have doubled his salary!

He decided while he would much rather talk to Brad privately; it would not be worth the battle with Alexis. He would surely lose. He had fought many an enemy in his day and come out unscathed. But he didn’t think the enemy would inflict the kind of pain Alexis would if anyone hurt the man she loved and that included him… father or not.

“All right, take a seat.” He turned to face Brad directly. “Brad, what has Alexis told you about the accident?”

“Nothing.” He peered at Alexis searching for answers, her eyes filled with fear.

“Brad, this was not an accident. Someone tampered with the elevator and based on what Alexis told me about your work; I believe you were the target. Someone was able to access the building during the commotion and ransack your office. I need you to tell me everything you’ve been working on and exactly how far along you are with….”

Brad did not let Phillip finish as he struggled to stand. “I need to go to the office.”

Alexis jumped up to help steady him. “No,” she said.

He felt weak as he placed his lips on her forehead. “Darling, I must go.”

She sensed the urgency in his voice, “Why?”

“I need to make sure everything is still there.”

“Sit,” she commanded.

“Alexis…,” Brad tried to argue.

The grave concerned written across Brad’s face, prompted Phillip to ask, “Brad, do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

“What did Alexis tell you?”

“That you have enhanced the listening capabilities and that you’ve completed the voice and facial recognition. She also told me that you’ve created laser capability.”

Brad looked grim, “Phillip, it’s much bigger than that,” as he took a deep breath.

“I need a shirt. I have to go to the office,” he pointed out, trying to change the subject.

“Hold on a minute Brad. Before you do anything else, tell me what’s going on.”

“Phillip, I’ve been working on Artificial Intelligence for years. I couldn’t figure out what I was missing until Alexis asked some questions a few weeks ago during lunch. Anyway, it all came together and Nate and I have been working on it day and night since then.” He paused…his head hurt. “I’ve created a DNA string for the drone. We are testing on a small prototype called Rescue One. I had planned to show you her capabilities during proof of concept. She’s similar to the drone but she’s a living creature…learning and evolving.”

The stunned silence hung in the air like death for a moment.

Brad struggled to stand.

Alexis piped up, “No, Brad. You’re not going anywhere. I’ll go if you will tell me what to get.”

Brad sank down into the chair unable to stand any longer. He laid his head back. Why couldn’t she understand how important this was. She had been firm with him in the past but this time he held no hope of convincing her that he needed to make sure Rescue One was safe. He closed his eyes. He did not want her going alone. It was far too dangerous. His head hurt…it was difficult to think…
wait
…there was another way.

“Darling, there is another way. Would you bring your laptop in here?”

Immediately Alexis hopped up and left the room. He smiled despite the grenade’s exploding in his head. She could be a bossy little vixen at times; yet, he sensed she would comply with his every wish when handled with care.

When she returned with the laptop, he prompted sweetly, “You drive.”

She flashed a brilliant smile at him as she sat down in the floor in front of him so he would be able to watch over her shoulder.

“Please go to your music folder.”

“When did you put a new playlist on here,” she eyed him curiously.

A feeble smiled glimmered but didn’t quite make it to his eyes. “Look under the new list.”

She scanned the list before looking up at him, her beautiful eyes filled with love and desire.

Brad’s little angel appeared. “Oh no you don’t buster, you need to keep your mind on what you are doing.”

He grimaced with pain when he tried to shake his head to clear his thoughts.

“Can you guess which song?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Highlight the file but do not open it.”

“Done.”

“Press the Shift and F10 key at the same time.”

“Okay.”

“Holy cow,” she exclaimed as the screen scrolled through hundreds of command prompts.

Brad chuckled despite his aches and pains. This part of his job made complete sense to him. At times, he forgot that most people had no idea how coding actually worked.

“Okay, darling. I’m going to give you a string of digits to enter. For each letter in the password, we’ll use ones and zeros. We’ll do one letter at a time, but please do not press the enter key until I tell you to, okay.”

She smiled up at him, “Yes, sir.”

Brad began rattling off a long string of 1’ s and 0’ s. “01000010 01110010 01100001 01100100 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 01110011 01000001 01101100 01100101 01111000 01101001 01110011 00110010 00110000 00110001 00110100.”

With Brad’s guidance, Alexis keyed in the binary code as directed and hit enter when she completed the task. Although Alexis had seen him do this a million times, she still jumped as the screen speed through more commands.

“The entry key is code for
BradLovesAlexis2014
,” he smiled tenderly.

“And what made you think I would ever figure that out?”

“I have confidence in your research abilities, my darling. I believe you would have figured it out easily.” His mischievous grin caused a blush to begin at her chest and work its way up to her face. “Besides, I left you with plenty of clues just in case something happened and you needed to access the data.”

The screen went black before the custom prompt appeared: C:\Users\Alexis>Truth of Touch

“You will need to provide a retinal scan for the next step.”

Alexis peered at the computer camera so the scan could begin.

After a moment, a computer generated voice emitted from within the laptop. “Retinal scan complete. Hello Alexis.” The computer continued to speak, “Alexis, for the second security validation, please type in the following message.”

A new window popped up with the following message: Where you go, I will follow.

Alexis typed the message exactly as displayed.

The screen displayed her fingerprints as it went through a series of match points before the voice came over the computer again, “Fingerprint match 100%.”

A new voice spoke, “Hello Alexis, is that you?”

“Yes,” was all Alexis could manage to say. She gazed up at Brad, eyes wide with astonishment. “Who is this?”

Brad had an amused little smile but did not respond. Instead, he waited for Rescue One.

The voice said, “Alexis, this is Rescue One.”

Alexis was touched. The voice was identical to her own. Alexis sat in stunned silence for a moment. “Brad,” she whispered, “I would have never been able to do this.”

“Darling, you underestimate yourself.”

“No Brad. I don’t know how to do what you do.”

He simply smiled, “Don’t worry, I built a fail-safe.”

“What do you mean?” as she scoured at him.

“Had you gone to your music folder and found the new playlist, as soon as you selected our song, the program would have automatically taken you to the scan verifications.”

Her mouth formed a perfect
O.
“Then why on earth did you make me go through all of that?” she asked in a huff.

He laughed this time, “Ugh…Alexis, please don’t make me laugh—it hurts.”

“Bradley….”

“It was fun to watch you take directions for once,” his boyishly charming smile reflected his thoughts. “She will recognize both of us but only one can command her at a time,” he said softly, “so you’re in the driver’s seat my darling.”

This was too much to absorb all at once. She needed a moment to think. Thank goodness, Brad had been sharing the details with her along the way.

She gathered her wits enough to ask, “Rescue One, where are you?”

“Give me a moment to assess the situation,” came the feminine voice. Then…

“Alexis, I am inside the home Brad built for me.”

“Rescue One, have you heard anything strange over the past few days?”

“No, Alexis. Brad placed me in sleep mode.”

“Rescue One, what are your capabilities?”

“What do you mean, Alexis?”

“Is there anyone in the room with me?”

“Yes. Brad spoke earlier and there are two other people with you. One male and one female but since they have not spoken, I cannot identify them.”

“How do you know there are others with Brad and I?”

“I can hear them breathing.”

“And how do you know one is a female and one is a male?”

“The average adult female heart beats between 78 and 82 beats per minute whereas the average male heart beats between 70 and 72 beats per minute and I detect two distinct heart beats, one female and one male.”

“If I ask them to speak, do you think you could identify them?”

“If their voices are in the database, yes, I will be able to identify them.”

She cast her eyes towards her parents’ ghostlike faces. “Would each of you speak but just one at a time, please?”

Both were giving her a look of regarded misgiving.

Catherine asked, “What should I say?”

“Why don’t you tell Rescue One what’s for dinner?” Brad suggested.

Catherine proceeded to tell Rescue One what meals she had prepared.

Within a few seconds, Rescue One responded. “Catherine Kincaid. Mrs. Kincaid, dinner sounds lovely. Based on my data, I believe Brad will enjoy it.”

Phillip took a second to collect his thoughts before he spoke, “Rescue One, I am curious, how do you collect and disseminate the data?”

Rescue One appeared to take a moment to think before she spoke, “Mr. Kincaid, Brad designed me as an infant. I have memories of my beginning, the day he gave me life, so-to-speak. Humans would call it a birthday. Once I had a beginning, Brad began to teach me new things.”

Phillip was astounded with her reasoning skills. “Rescue One, can you tell me more?”

“Brad, is it all right to discuss my beginnings with Mr. Kincaid?”

“Yes, Rescue One. You may elaborate.”

“Mr. Kincaid, Brad thought the first thing I needed to learn was the neuroscience of the human brain, beginning with anatomy. Once I understood that, he built four quadrants identical to the human brain. Quadrant one consists of logical, analytical, factual, and quantitative data, which allows for intellectual abilities. Quadrant two contains data related to organization, sequential and statistical hypothesis, planning, and organization of details. Quadrant three consist of more human qualities such as interpersonal concepts, human feelings and emotions, and kinesthetics. This quadrant is what allows me to think like a human and while I do not feel emotion, I understand the concept of human emotion. And yes, we practice my learned skills daily. Quadrant four, houses all information relating to imagination, holistic concepts, intuitive, integration, and synthesizing of data.”

Brad grinned at how well Rescue One was proving herself to Phillip. He couldn’t have asked for a better display of her reasoning abilities.

Rescue One continued to regale Phillip with her learning adventure. “Once Brad completed that task, he moved onto the brain’s communication specialist and taught me about neurons and synapses. Dendrites take the learned information to the correct microchip across the synapse. This is how I learn.”

Rescue One paused as if she were thinking. “Finally, Brad programmed cognitive reasoning skills into my database. Once I understood how to learn, we began the massive task of feeding the information into a series of microchips similar to the quadrants in the human brain. I use the information collected to gather and learn new information and to think situations through rationally. Similar to how a child learns to walk and talk. The more I learn, the more human I become.”

Phillip nodded his head in understanding, as if Rescue One were a human sitting across the table from him.