Xenotech Queen's Gambit: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 2) (4 page)

“They
were
building something tall,” I said.

“But not skyscrapers,” said Mike.

“And not particularly legal,” said Martin.

The Pyr drew himself up to his full four-foot height—five, with his chef’s hat.

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” he said. “If you can provide me with the particulars I’ll bring it to the board’s attention.”

“The board?” I said.

“Of Khufu, Limited,” said Roger Joe-Bob.

“He’s not
a
shareholder,” said our server.

I looked puzzled.

“He’s the
majority
shareholder.”

“Now, Dox,” said the Pyr, trying to retain his aw-shucks manner.

This was a very big deal. Khufu, Limited, was one of the three largest Pyr corporations operating on Terra.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Roger Joe-Bob, what’s someone in your situation doing running a Waffle House?”

“I like cookin’,” he said, “and makin’ customers happy.”

“You’ve certainly done an amazing job on this location.”

“Thanks,” said Roger Joe-Bob. “I wanted to do it up right and have a place where GaFTA species as well as humans could have great food.”

“You’ve succeeded.”

The Pyr smiled with two of his three mouths.

“I’ve got to get back to my station,” said Roger Joe-Bob, starting back to his grill.

If he’d had a shoulder he’d have looked over it, but since male Pyrs are trilaterally symmetric he didn’t have to.

“You just send me the details about those misbehavin’ construction ’bots and I’ll get to the bottom of what happened.”

Roger Joe-Bob extended a tentacle and passed his phone to Dox. She touched it to my phone, and Mike’s, exchanging contact information.

When she left, all my breakfast companions were staring at me.

“What?” I said.

“You make some pretty unusual friends,” said Martin.

Chit was nodding and Mike wasn’t even trying to hide his grin. Even Shepher’s eyes were amused.

“Look who’s talking?” I said, sweeping my arm to take in everyone at the table.

Dox came back to drop off the bill. Along with laminated paper menus, Waffle House still used paper checks.

“Who gets this?” said the server, resting one arm on my shoulder.

“He does,” I said, pointing at Martin.

“Here you go, sweetie,” she said, handing him the yellow slip. “Have a great day!”

“You too, toots,” said Chit.

We said our goodbyes and waved to Roger Joe-Bob on our way out. He waved three different cooking implements in three different tentacles. Dox winked at me again.

“Y’all come back now, Sugar.”

Somehow, I was pretty sure I would.

Chapter 5

“I don’t think he knows about second breakfast, Pip.”
— Meriadoc Brandybuck

Mike and I said our goodbyes to Martin and Shepherd and climbed in my van. Mike rode shotgun. I followed Martin’s police cruiser onto I-85, since there’s a small, paranoid part of my brain that believes it’s always better to have a police car in front of me than behind me. I was puzzled to see Shepherd’s SUV head south on the interstate, toward Hartsfield Port and Jackson Teleport Nexus, instead of driving north like we were. He hadn’t mentioned any errands that would take him in that direction, but then again, being Shepherd, he wouldn’t. I was about to send Poly a text to see if she was nearly done at Georgia Tech when my phone saved me the trouble.

“You’ve got a text from Poly,” it said.

We used text messages for initial contact since phone calls were more immediately distracting.

“Aren’t you supposed to play that recording of Poly saying ‘Oh Lover Boy’ when she texts me?”

We’d spent a romantic evening watching an old movie called
Dirty Dancing
two weeks ago after Poly had finished a major paper and she’d adopted those three words as an intimate catch-phrase because she liked watching me blush. I’d asked my phone to play it so I’d have more opportunities to get used to the phrase and could learn how to stop turning red whenever I heard it.

I still wasn’t technically Poly’s Lover Boy yet. My recuperation and her academic schedule hadn’t given us a lot of time alone together during the last month. No, scratch that. The reason we weren’t lovers yet was because I wanted everything to be perfect for our first time. I had mostly convinced Poly to wait until she graduated, when she wasn’t under so much pressure. I’d thought we could take a week off to spend on Maui or on one of the Pyr pleasure planets, but hadn’t broached the subject.

Privacy, and no tech support call interruptions, would do a lot to help me relax and feel comfortable with taking our physical relationship to the next level. I was still getting used to having a business partner—and a girlfriend. Poly respected the fact that I’d had bad experiences in the past when things had gotten too intimate too fast. Waiting until she graduated would be better for both of us. There was also a  high probability that my apartment was still being bugged, despite my best efforts to eliminate any surveillance. I didn’t relish the idea of an audience.

“You wanted me to embarrass you in front of Mike?” said my phone, pulling me away from my dithering.

Mike just looked out the windshield as my van navigated us toward the city.

“I’ve got to get used to it somehow,” I said.

“Okay,” said my phone.

It immediately started looping Poly’s voice—every bit as sexy as Jennifer Grey’s from the movie—over and over again. I turned as red as a Nic
ó
sn’s Santa-hat topknot and covered my ears after ten repetitions. My phone took pity on me and stopped the playback after two more iterations.

“What does her text say?” said Mike.

He could see that I was still trying to gain some control over my sympathetic nervous system. I might have succeeded in reducing the blood flow to the tips of my ears, but not much more than that, and was grateful for Mike’s distraction.

My phone made an interrogative bleep and I nodded for it to go ahead.

“Hi Jack,” read my phone in Poly’s voice. “I’m just finishing up here and wanted to see if you were interested in grabbing some breakfast.”

“Please tell her that sounds great. We’ll pick her up outside GAIMLI in—” I read my van’s ETA “—twenty minutes.”

The Galactic Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Institute at Georgia Tech was where Poly and her thesis adviser were working on Tigrammath A.I. psycho-optimization. Poly’s professor had promised her co-author credit on the academic paper he was writing.

“We just
had
breakfast,” said Mike.

“There’s always room for second breakfast if it means I can spend time with Poly.”

Mike smiled at me indulgently. I knew I was crazy about Poly and had been marinating in being-in-love endorphins for a month and a half now. So far, my friends considered it cute
,
but I didn’t want to come across as too besotted. I also had to focus and use the front of my brain to solve client problems.

“You can drop me off at the Georgia Tech station on the Purple Line,” said Mike. “It’s only a few stops from there to my place on Briarcliff Road. My car drove itself home already.”

Galactic construction techniques and GaFTA-driven revenue increases had allowed the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority to accelerate their building plans and complete a comprehensive public transit grid for the area ten years ahead of schedule. The line linking Georgia Tech, Emory and all the apartment complexes on Briarcliff was heavily used. It was Poly’s preferred method for getting from one of her master’s degree programs to the other.

“Okay,” I said, though I wasn’t quite sure why he didn’t want me to drive him home. Then Mike explained it to me, using small words.

“You and Poly should have more time alone together,” he said. “This way I won’t be a third wheel.”

“It’s no problem, I’m glad to drop you…” I began, but he cut me off.

“Don’t worry about it. You saved my butt this morning, so I’m glad to do my part to encourage young love.”

“I’m older than
you
are.”

“You’re also an idiot.”

I’m pretty sure he meant it affectionately.

“We’re almost at the station—just let me out.”

I did. A few minutes later I picked Poly up on the sidewalk outside the ten-story starcrete and glass GaFTA Modern GAIMLI building. She opened my van’s door with manic energy, bounced across the front passenger seat, put her arms around my neck, and gave me an enthusiastic kiss that made the tips of my ears turn red again. I tried to return as good as I got.

“Nice to see you, too,” I said.

Somehow Poly had ended up sitting on my lap, our arms around each other. My van had thoughtfully retracted the steering wheel to give her more room. I looked at the beautiful, intelligent, competent, ambitious woman I held and counted my lucky globular clusters that we’d connected during a tech support call at WT&F six weeks ago. She was tall—three inches less than my six foot two—and, like me, in her mid-twenties. Her shoulder-length auburn hair flipped delightfully when she disengaged from our kiss and her green eyes were dancing. Poly was upbeat, but I could sense an underlying tension in her. She was happy to see me, but concerned about something. Poly cuddled into my neck, inhaled, and popped back upright.

“No shower this morning, Jack?”

“I had an early morning support call.”

I inhaled deeply. Poly had clearly pulled an all-nighter.

“I can use some food, a shower, and some shut-eye, in that order,” she said.

“Me, too,” I said, fibbing a little about the food. “Come over to my place and I’ll take good care of you.”

Poly slid off my lap and moved over to the passenger seat.

“Promises, promises.”

“You can’t be
that
tired.” I sniffed theatrically. “And you
do
need a shower.”

“So do you, Lover Boy—and a shave. You’re scratchy.”

“True on both counts,” I said. “Mike needed me for an emergency tech support call, so I had to leave in a hurry this morning.”

“We could shower together,” she said. “I could scrub your back.”

I was about to reply, saying that I’d enjoy that more after I’d fully healed, when my van tentatively said, “Seat belt?”

Poly and I laughed and she buckled up.

* * * * *

When we got to my apartment at the Ad Astra complex—built by the city, state and county as a mixed use development that included room for alien species’ consulates and living quarters—I encouraged Poly to hit the shower while I made breakfast. She must have been really tired, since she didn’t repeat her invitation for me to join her. Through my open bedroom door I heard Poly say “Earl Grey, hot. Make it so,” and one of my favorite custom shower programs started. She’d be in there for a while.

I found some eggs and cheese and chopped an onion to go into an omelet. I rinsed some blueberries, seedless green grapes, and bright purple Nic
ó
sn jathberries to make a fruit salad. I checked on top of my refrigerator and one end of my Dauushan mega-banana was ripe. I pulled it down, peeled back some of the skin, and sliced off half a dozen thin, five-inch disks of the delicate pink fruit to add to each dish. A splash of chilled tangerine juice would keep the fruit salad fresh until Poly came out.

I put a thick skillet on the stove to preheat and cracked the eggs into a bowl. Then I added a little water, salt, pepper, and half a teaspoon of a dried Orishen herb that tasted like a cross between basil, oregano and cilantro, before whipping the whole mixture up with a fork. I put some butter in the pan and started to brown the onions while I checked to see if I had any bread. I was lucky—there was half a loaf of sliced sourdough. I put four slices in the toaster but didn’t start them: warm toast is much better than cold.

The fried onions smelled wonderful. I put them in a small bowl and added more butter to the skillet. When the butter was bubbling I poured in the egg mixture and topped it with the onions before turning down the heat.

I had a few minutes while the omelet cooked, so I found my nicest place mats—nearly indestructible Orishen pupa silk patterned ovals I’d bought while in graduate school off-planet—and put them on the table. I set out knives, forks, spoons and eating tongs and heard a soprano shriek from my bathroom. Poly had reached the part in my Earl Grey shower program where the water shifted from warm to ice cold, so she’d be out soon. As a bonus, the cold water should wake her up enough to eat and carry on coherent conversation until her body finally gave out after her all-nighter. Napkins, butter for the table and a jar of jathberry jam finished my table preparations.

Wait, no. I wasn’t done. What were we going to drink? Poly liked tea. I filled my kettle with water and grabbed a couple of mugs from a cabinet. Mine said “Galactic Congruent Systems” and had their stylized wormhole logo below the text. Poly’s said “Consensus Intelligence: Five Heads Are Better Than One.” It was from the Tigrammath company that supported her Georgia Tech professor’s research. The shower stopped. Poly would be out any second.

I added shredded cheese to the omelet and folded it in half to encourage melting. Then I pushed the button on the toaster. I turned back to the table in time to see Poly emerging from my bedroom wrapped in a large, white, fluffy towel that covered and exposed portions of her anatomy delightfully. I was glad Tom
á
so and Shepherd had stopped monitoring my place—I didn’t want to share moments like this with anyone except Poly. I wished I’d made more progress figuring out the other two entities getting feeds from my apartment.

Poly noticed my distraction and kissed me, a peck with a promise of more. Her damp auburn hair was a shade darker than it would be when it was dry but her smile was broad and bright. She tilted her head back and inhaled through her nose.

“Whatever you’re making smells wonderful!”

“Thank you,” I said, bowing in her direction.

She moved close, gave me another peck, and walked over to sit at the dining room table where she clutched her knife in one hand and her fork in the other. Her body language clearly said “Feed me!” and so did the next words out of her mouth.

“I could eat an ubercow, or at least a good chunk of one.”

That was hyperbole. Ubercows are from Neuva P
â
kkjuk, one of the Short P
â
kk planets. They’re sixty feet long and weigh as much as a fully grown Apatosaurus.

I divided the omelet, giving Poly the larger share, added two slices of toast, and put a steaming plate in front of her. Then I brought the dishes of fruit salad over from the counter.

“Dig in,” I said.

Poly didn’t reply. She was too busy following instructions. My teakettle whistled and I made two cups of allspice peach tea, one of Poly’s favorites. Poly looked up to acknowledge delivery of her mug, but remained focused on her breakfast. I ate some of what was on my plate but didn’t share Poly’s voracious appetite. At intervals, I asked if she liked the omelet, but her mouth was usually too full to reply. When her plate and fruit salad bowl were clean, and after she’d requested and consumed two more slices of sourdough toast, Poly finally seemed ready to talk. I was looking forward to it.

“That was delicious,” she said. “I love your cooking.”

“Thanks. How did the work on your project go?”

“Fine, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

Was this what was making Poly’s shoulders tense?

“You know what my research is about, don’t you?”

“You’re trying to determine the best mix of artificial intelligence personality types for Tigrammath composite machine intelligences, right?”

“Right,” said Poly. “Remember that the old Apollo lunar missions had three redundant computers?”

I nodded. My
mother
wasn’t even born at the time, but I recalled something from an alternate history novel where leaving our planet, rather than discovering congruent technology, was the key to a GaFTA membership invitation. Armstrong and Aldrin had been greeted by aliens in space suits when they’d landed in the Sea of Tranquility.

“They’d poll them to see if all three gave the same answer.”

“Uh huh,” she said. “They needed to take that approach because the machines were primitive and unreliable.”

“I’m with you so far.”

“Tigrammath A.I. systems have reliability problems, too, but not because they’re simple-minded. The problem is that they’re so brilliant they tend to go insane at unpredictable intervals.”

“I’ve heard about that,” I said, “but haven’t had to deal with any of them myself yet.”

“That’s because they’re primarily used to solve philosophical problems,” said Poly. “It takes a sophisticated A.I. to handle existential moral calculus.”

“With a non-zero chance of going nuts while doing so?”

“Exactly. That’s why Consensus Intelligence, my prof’s research sponsor, uses multiple A.I. units to cross-check and monitor each other to see if any of the composite machine personalities are becoming irrational. The project I’m working on is trying to determine the best mix of A.I. personalities to reduce the odds of any of them going off the deep end.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Crazy is catching.”

“Say again?”

“When one A.I. personality in a composite starts acting weird, it increases the odds that the others will, too,” said Poly. “It’s like they infect each other.”

“How many personalities are in the composites?” I asked.

“It varies from three to seventeen. Low numbers are used to handle simple ethical dilemmas, like trolley problems.”

“The ones where pulling a track switching lever kills one intelligent entity and not pulling it kills five?”

“Yep. Freshman-level stuff. Higher numbers are used for complex, large scale issues with millions of dimensions, like determining the philosophical implications of interspecies wars.”

“What?” The P
â
kk-Orish war was less than a generation ago and I’d never heard of A.I. systems being used to analyze
that.