“Oh my goodness.” The aide said. “What did they do?”
“Well, they wanted to talk to me bad enough to let me in but they sure as hell weren't happy about it.” Dar followed the man out a side door, to a black sedan, whose driver opened the back door for them. The aide slid in, and Dar joined him, as the door was closed and the driver got in and started off. “This is going to go a little better I suppose.”
The aide eyed her. “You're pretty calm for someone being taken to meet the President.”
Dar half shrugged, deciding not to admit to the stomach flutters and lump in her throat. After all, it was just another person, and one she didn't really much like.
Her handspring buzzed and she pulled it out, finding a message from Kerry waiting. “How does she know when to do that?” She wondered, selecting it.
Hey hon!
Guess what? I hired a security guard. Here's a picture of him! His name's Carlos, and he's a friend of Marks.
Dar studied the picture, her eyes widening at the massive figure. “Holy crap.”
“Ma'am?” The aide leaned forward.
“No, sorry.” Dar went back to the message. “Just a note from home.”
He's an artist, who does this on the side, but I hired him full time because he wanted to work day hours, not night like everyone else wanted him for. I gave him a benefit plan, and brought him in on a salary, since I want him to be in charge. He has friends who would be interested if we needed to go 24/7 or something like that.
Dar felt a sense of relief, looking at the big, rugged, honest face in the picture. “Dad'll like him.” She muttered under her breath, then keyed in a reply.
Good job! He looks like a tank. Now I feel better about sleeping alone in Washington tonight. On my way to meet the Prez, wish me luck.
She sent the note, then relaxed back in her seat.
“Was the meeting going well?” The aide asked, after a few minutes silence. “The General was wondering.”
“I think it'll be fine. I was about halfway through convincing them.” Dar said. “Lot of objections, but I like that.”
“You do?”
She nodded. “Means people are thinking, not just going along for the ride. That's always good for everyone. The more questions, the better.”
The aide eyed her. “You've never been in the military, have you?”
Dar smiled. “No. I think that's why Gerry hired me for this.”
“I think you're right.”
The first meeting was with Bridges, in his office again. He had a group of four men with him, and he wasn't about to let then have the kind of free for all that Dar had just experienced with the military IT staff.
“All right people.” He sat down behind his desk. “So now that I've told everyone we're doing this, let's do it.” He looked across the table at Dar. “You got your plan ready?”
Dar nodded. “I have a blueprint, and a starting point.” She said. “I have data base designers working on the frame work.”
Bridges grunted. “This got higher profile than I thought faster than I thought, even though I”m the bastard who's supposed to think of all this crap.” He admitted. “Laughed my ass off when I was told not to use your former company, by the way.”
“So did Kerry's mother.” Dar said.
Bridges chuckled dryly. “Bet she did.” He said. “But because of that, this thing has to show results PDQ.”
The other men in the room just listened quietly, notepads at the ready, waiting to be given directions. Dar found them annoying.
“How long will it take for that?” Bridges asked her.
Dar thought about it. “I can probably prototype it in sixty days.” She concluded. “It'll mostly be raw and wire frame, but you'll have an idea of what it'll do.”
Bridges considered that. “Might need to be sooner.”
“Do you want it to work?” Dar asked, bluntly. “Or just be smoke and mirrors. I can do smoke and mirrors in two weeks but it'll do zero useful crap for you.”
He chuckled dryly again. “Let me get back to you on that one.” He said. “I see you remember our last dance.”
Dar smiled briefly.
“You really think you can do this?” Bridges asked. “No one wants to look like an ass. I don't want this to be paraded around CNN for a year, then turn out that we wasted our money and got nothing for it.”
Dar steepled her fingers and rested the tips of them against her lips as she considered. Finally she exhaled. “If you are asking – can I create a system that lets you intelligently search a massive data flow, then yes. If you want to know if I can pull some magic rabbit out of my ass, and prove it works by catching a bad guy? I don't know.”
Bridges lips twitched. “We can fake the second.” He said, with blunt honesty. “What I don't want is some smart ass to get into that system and find out it doesn't actually work.”
“What I give you will work.” Dar stated, then stopped talking.
Bridges waited, then as he realized nothing more was forthcoming, he grunted. “Okay.” He looked at the four men. “Your jobs, people, are to give this woman whatever it is she asks for in the way of access, data, people, authorizations, keys to the executive bathroom, you name it. She's got carte blanche, to use an out of data saying that doesn't mean much anymore.”
Dar, having come to the meeting expecting to have to sell her design again, was silently startled.
“Yes sir.” The oldest of the four said. “We understand.”
“Do ya? If this thing works, it means there's a chance...” He looked at Dar. “A chance, that some jackass somewhere in some government building sitting at a screen might find something that will prevent 9/11 from happening again. You all got that?”
They all nodded.
“The bloody idiots on Capital Hill know about it.” Bridges said. “It was not my idea to tell them.” He added, as an aside to Dar. “In fact, the next time I'll know who not to tell who wasn't supposed to tell but did. But they did, and they know, and now I've got congress-idiots calling me every ten minutes worried about privacy. Privacy!” He lifted his hands. “Idiots! They're all worried their damn affairs are going to end up in the Washington Post!”
Dar remained silent, her hands folded on the table.
He turned to her. “So what are you going to tell them about privacy?”
“I'm going to tell them the truth.” Dar said. “If they ask me.”
“Nice.” He sighed. “My next career's going to be on a farm somewhere feeding chickens.”
Dar shrugged slightly. “You can't search through all that data manually. It's just not possible. So either you know what questions to ask, and the system finds what you're looking for, or you trust the algorithm to make the connections and toss up something you hadn't anticipated.”
Bridges frowned at her. “Are you telling me something like, this thing will have intelligence?”
“To a degree, yes.”
All of them were staring at her. “Is this... some kind of science fiction?” The older aide asked, hesitantly. “Because it sounds like it.”
“Rockets were science fiction once.” Dar answered. “At some point, you reach the Turing test, and the programs become so advanced it seems like there's intelligence. Once you have something that can judge and evaluate data points, and return a result based on their weighting of them, how different is that than how you, or I, decide what to have for breakfast every morning?”
Bridges pursed his lips and made a sputtering noise with them. “Think I'll just tell them I hired a voodoo practitioner and they're killing chickens in some back office of the Pentagon. It'll scare em less.” He stood up. “C'mon, woman. Let's go get the dog and pony show over. I'm guessing you got some work to get done.”
Obligingly Dar stood up and followed him out the door. They walked down the hallway of the executive office building, heading down some steps and through what appeared to be a tunnel.