“You know, it’s your name they’re chanting out there,” one guard said.
“Yeah, I know.” Leon sighed. What inspired people to such madness?
“You go can in, but they’re expecting the crowds to grow, and they’ll find the back door eventually.”
He nodded, grabbed his bag, and took the stairs at a run, bursting into the main office. The central space held less than a quarter of the people he’d usually find there. They were all clustered in the middle of the room.
He was met with stony silence instead of the usually friendly greetings. Not a single bubble “Hello” floated into his vision.
After a few seconds, a researcher approached from the herd. Leon remembered he was from the Education department. He quickly pulled up an info sheet from net space. His name was Miles.
“What are you going to do about this?” Miles demanded.
Leon looked at them all and thought for a moment. He liked technical problems, not people problems. “Go home, everyone. Go through the International Studies building now before the crowds build up. Go out two or three at a time. Don’t come back here until the protests are over.”
“But my work!” one woman protested. “I’m negotiating AI citizenship in Brazil for the upcoming election.”
“I’m not saying don’t work.” Leon said. He forced himself to smile, to project a sense of calm he didn’t feel. “Work from home, the way corporations do it. I know we all like coming in here where the bandwidth is high and we can chat with each other. But that’s not how most information workers do it. It’s just for a few days until this, whatever it is, blows over.”
There were grumbles, but people started to collect their belongings.
A blue robot named Sawyer wheeled up. “Do you recommend that we go home as well?”
He was joined by another bot named Sharp. “I don’t have a home. I live here at the Institute.”
Leon’s stomach dropped at the thought of all the bots and AI in the building. “Don’t go out. It’s not safe.” He thought about going to the window to look out, and then realized that would be a mistake. Someone outside might spot him. “Look, is Mike here?”
“In his office,” Sawyer said.
“OK. I need to talk to him. You two investigate some other options. You’re probably safe here if we keep the building locked down, but you might want to see about getting a helicopter to land on the roof and take all the AI out.”
Leon thought about the small data center in the basement that housed about a hundred AI employees. “Sawyer, anyone who is virtual should move to another data center.”
“They’re trying,” the bot said, “but we’re under a denial of service attack. Bandwidth in and out is limited.”
“Shit. Do what you can. I need to talk to Mike.” He headed for their shared office and yanked the door open. He stopped on the threshold and called back, “Have the helicopter bring a portable mass storage device and make a backup of all resident AI.”
He turned back to the room, letting the door close behind him. Mike was deep in concentration. His status was set to On Call. Leon sent a priority note to let him know he was there.
Mike held up one finger, and Leon sat down to wait. Within seconds Mike stood up. “I eked out a low bandwidth call with Rebecca. She says the People’s Party have been whipped into a frenzy by their leadership, and the protests are expected to continue.”
“How could this get out of hand so quickly?” Leon asked. “A month ago this wasn’t on anyone’s radar.”
Mike slowly shook his head, clearly bewildered. “I don’t know.” He stared helplessly at the wall. “Rebecca says we’re in danger. That we should avoid going outside if we can help it.”
“No shit. What about Sonja and the Enforcement Team?”
Mike paced to the interior window, looking over the main work room, now nearly cleared out. “I know Sonja went to San Diego with the team. Obviously they were investigating the murder. But who was she going to see? What clue tipped her off? I have no idea. Her case files are so heavily wrapped in encryption that none of the resident AIs think there is a hope of cracking them. She obviously feared the case being compromised.”
“We can’t give up!” Leon walked over to Mike.
Mike turned his head to meet his gaze. “No, I am not suggesting that. We still need to get to San Diego and track her down. It’s just … It’s going to be a lot harder now.” He gestured at the empty room.
No one to back them up. No one to give them support. Having to get across the country without being spotted by the extremists. “Yeah,” he said, somberly. “Don’t tell Rebecca we’re going, or she’ll say no. She’ll make the Secret Service babysit us.”
Mike nodded.
“We need to talk to the AI that Sonja mentioned, Shizoko,” Leon said, after a pause. “It must have more information.”
“Shizoko Reynolds,” Mike said. “I spent some time researching it. It’s an odd duck.” Mike pushed files into their netspace. “Class IV artificial intelligence. That alone makes it hard to understand. And Shizoko is a loner, the sole tenant of the Austin Convention Center. Its origin is even weirder. At the last SXSW Interactive conference eight years ago they had a workshop on third generation AI. Apparently they spun it up based on donated smartphones.” He pushed a digital photo to the foreground.
Leon pulled it closer to inspect it, until it filled his vision. A mostly male group, wearing eyeglasses and dressed in checkered shirts or T-shirts with obscure logos. Geeks, in a word. They stood around a collection of smartphones, tablets, and old routers, their smiles frozen in place. “What was the point of it?”
“An experiment in collective algorithms. Everyone donated neural network parts, including a bunch of AI. The workshop was called AI Fusion. Two guys named Harper Reed and Ben Huh led the effort. Anyhow, this Shizoko is still that original AI, eight years later.”
Leon whistled softly. Eight years was an eternity for an AI. “You said he’s Class IV.” Leon waved at the photo. “There’s no way this cluster of antique computers is a Class IV AI.”
“No, of course he’s upgraded over the years. He’s applied for the experimental Class V license twice but we turned him down both times. His reputation score is borderline. He’s trustworthy, just odd.”
“So you talked to him?” Leon asked.
“No, that’s the problem. He only wants to talk to us in person.”
Leon wiped netspace away. “In person?” He squinted at Mike.
“Yes, I tried several times to talk to him, to email him, but he gives me a canned response saying he’ll only talk to me if I go there. To Austin.”
“Neboken ja-neyo! Weird, dude.”
“I know,” Mike said. “I don’t think we have a choice. We have to go to Austin first.”
12
Cat stepped off the train, sniffing curiously at the warm Los Angeles air. It was easily twenty degrees warmer than San Francisco, which she’d left just an hour earlier. She followed a small group from the train toward the electric tram stop marked Downtown.
She felt herself relax, just a little. One black boot was stuffed with anonymous payment cards and the other held a small boot knife. Over both shoulders, she carried her ever-present backpack, packed with spare clothes and a toothbrush. She carried it always, in case she needed to run again. Two weeks in California had bought her a little street wisdom and a few possessions.
She’d slept in abandoned buildings until she thought of using her implant to find unoccupied apartments by analyzing power consumption data. Financial records were encrypted, rendering them impossible to use, but smart appliances reported their power consumption in the clear. So she looked for apartments whose refrigerators and water heaters were in long-term standby. The first place she’d hacked had been a single woman’s apartment. She’d slept on flowered sheets, taken showers with perfumed soaps, and eaten organic food from the cupboards. Cat kept the window open onto the fire escape, and when she’d heard the front door knock down the pile of empty cans she’d left as an alarm, she scooted out the window and up to the roof.