She leaned in toward the screen and I noticed that she was rolling back and forth across maybe two seconds of video.
“Is… I don’t see anything?”
It was a question. Shut up.
“I don’t either.”
“Marine you’re sort of prompting me to start asking what might appear to be silly questions. Okay?”
“Something moves. But there’s nothing in the image.”
“Don’t cameras usually have those, uhh… infrared?”
She leaned back in her chair. “They do. Mine do, I mean. They’re automatic, though. Only on when it’s dark.”
“So, what do we do? Cops?”
Now, I’m a patient guy, I like to think. One time I waited for twenty minutes to have my order taken at an empty Thai place. Seriously. Nobody in the restaurant the whole time. Chick never came out of the back. This is the robot thing again. Robots would come out of the back, I bet. She didn’t. Nobody came in. No phone calls. But you hit that point where it’s like, okay, I’m basically just here out of spite now. And by the time she came out, of course I’d literally run every possible way the order could go. Somehow, some-stupid-fucking-how, you always just assume that they’re a human, they’ll apologize, right? Even the fake one. Even the cursory “Hey! Sorry for the wait! I’m not going to explain why I was in the back for twenty minutes. Maybe there’s semen in my underwear, WHO KNOWS?! But I’d love to take your order.” You never get that. It’s like they farted while you leaned over pulling something out of your jacket and the fart was right on the side of your head but you just sit up real fast and don’t laugh or even address it. You get that. The “nothing is weird about this” thing. Still, in a case like this, I want to feel like I’m part of the conversation so I asked again.
“So, what do we do? Cops?”
…
Is she fucking serious? She’s not even looking at anything. She’s just staring at the wall behind the computer. I looked at the wall, just to be sure. Definitely nothing there.
“SO! What do WE do? COPS?!”
“Huh?”
Her eyes sort of snapped over to me like she forgot I was there.
“Oh, oh. I’m sorry. This is going to sound messed up, but I forgot you were here.”
“So, what do—”
“Right, I heard you. I think. Well, I think… maybe I know who did it.”
“You’re going to say we can’t call the police.”
“I am.”
I sighed. Not normally my thing, but I felt like trying it on for size. Didn’t like it. Hope I don’t have to do it again.
“Well fucking tell me then. What’re we doing?”
“Look you’re just a customer and—”
“And I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that.” My heart is bad at pretending. “Where are we going? What are we doing?”
“Seriously. This is not something I can let you be… you know, involved with?”
I fancy myself a bit of a puzzle piece connector kind of guy. I puzzled some pieces together. Or pieced… puzzled piece connected. Some puzzled pieces. Together. And, well, yeah. Invisible super strong thing ransacks Marine’s workshop real neat and tidy like. She’s a smarty-pants tech girl with possibly brown breast knobs— last time I bring it up, I promise, she’s just still in the shirt. It’s a thing at this point— and something important that she doesn’t want me involved with is missing.
“Advanced sex toy?”
“Pheh, and die in a patent minefield? No thanks.”
“So it’s AI then?”
She stood up faster than I expected she could. Doesn’t seem to have the sort of muscle mass you’d think could get her out of a chair like that. She hit me on the chest.
“Shut up. No. Fuck. Are you serious? Fuck. Is it that obvious? Fuck.”
Easily a three fuck sort of situation. Probably worth explaining a little. AI’s illegal. HEY! That went quicker than I thought. Two companies have special rights to black box AI. Violating black box is the only death sentence still on the books. Everything else is brain scan and decorporealizing. Live out your life as a restricted permission sim. Most people do that anyway so it’s barely a punishment.
“Look, I don’t care. I mean… I don’t think I care. I don’t remember that middle school robot ethics… thing. Did you do that? Like sex ed but for general intelligence machines?”
Marine sort of slumped back down into the chair. “No. Maybe, I don’t know.”
“So what are you even doing working with AI? On AI? Whichever.”
“It’s complicated.”
“I’d hope so.”
“I… look, I have needs.”
I waited a second. Not an awkward pause second, it just seemed like that shouldn’t be the end of the sentence.
“That’s really the phrasing you want to go with?”
She just sighed and put her head in her hands. Flippant and prickish as I might be, this was a pretty serious thing.
“Alright. Where are we going? Who’s got your magic beans?”
“Vircore.”
“Oh. Yeah, wow. Okay.”
“Look, you don’t…”
She trailed off. She wanted help.
“I’ll be downstairs. You can’t espionage anything in those clothes. Maybe a hot yoga class.”
Well, this was stupid. Maybe I’d live though. That’d be pretty good.
Chapter
THREE
Vircore is a bit of an anomaly. They’re a WorldGov subcontractor with a board made up of military types. Active military types. They were tasked with the black box tech. Or are. The sort of place that something like eighty percent of all random conspiracies are about. Used to release regular press documents and that sort of thing but about two years ago they went completely quiet. Company still showed up on WorldGov budget reports or something, but no more news.
Marine had changed. Like, not emotionally or anything. Into different clothes. And we were leaving. She had a backpack on, presumably with some fun toys in it. We headed out the back door of her workshop which, for reasons I didn’t understand, opened onto a main street. Probably they intended the door to her
