“Well, some of those too.” Bethany Anne smiled.
Gabrielle rolled her eyes. “You are a handful, my Queen. Ok, I’ll share more some other time and yes, I have had in excess of ten lovers.” Bethany Anne raised an eyebrow. “Ok, twenty.” She raised the other eyebrow. “Forty, but that is over a very long time. There was a time back in Paris in the twenties that I might have been considered for some of those words you used.”
“Really, the 1920s?”
“No, the 1820s.”
“God, this is just like Ivan was talking about with Stephen, you have to confirm what century you two are talking about.”
Gabrielle did her best impression of her father. “Indeed.”
Bethany Anne sighed and sat back up. “Ok, you’ve been fair. I don’t want to talk about this subject, so it’s easier to pick on you. I don’t know what I want to do about children.”
“So, you understand my dilemma?”
“Maybe, but for you I would think it could be both easier and harder. Easier because it has been a significant, but unknown, amount of time since you knew you couldn’t have children so why make a change now? On the other hand, you have a human lover and within a few years, he will probably want children, and him knowing you can have children will make it harder for you as time goes by.”
Gabrielle sighed. “Yes, that about sums it up nicely.”
Bethany Anne scooted to the end of her bed and draped her legs over. “How much do you care for Ivan?”
Gabrielle looked over Bethany Anne’s head, gazing into the distance, focusing on nothing. “I don’t know. Part of me misses him, part of me forgets to miss him when we get busy. It is only when everyone is asleep and I am by myself that I think of him.”
“So, to be blunt, you’re lonely for companionship because it’s not available, but it isn’t a driving need in your life right now?”
“It does make me sound like a user when you put it that way.” Gabrielle said.
“Who’s to say you aren’t both users? I don’t know that Ivan is pining away for you, either. The distance is probably showing you both that the relationship is nice, but not a driving factor in either of your lives. You need to talk to Ivan and let him know you need some time. You don’t need to keep him tied up if you truly don’t want a relationship. It isn’t like he wouldn’t be willing to provide you a warm bed… Damn, listen to me. Using him like a convenient sex toy when you’re in Romania sounds a little crass.”
“But isn’t this what men and women have been doing for centuries?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t around, but you were.” Bethany Anne’s smile came back,.“How many centuries has it been going on?”
“Ever since I’ve been alive.” Gabrielle stuck her nose up in the air.
“Which is?”
“None of your business!” Gabrielle smiled, appreciating Bethany Anne pulling them out of the morose talk. “I’ll call Ivan and let him know I’m too busy right now with the teams to continue a relationship at this time.”
“Will you let me know how the call goes?”
She eyed the younger woman. “Will you continue trying to find out how old I am?”
“Yes.” Bethany Anne said.
Gabrielle sighed. “Well, it was worth a shot. I’ll let you know about Ivan, even if I have to deal with your insatiable curiosity.” She got up out of the chair. “Thank you for this, you know. I’ve never had a friend to truly talk to about these things.”
Bethany Anne looked at her, puzzled. “Boys?”
“No. Well yes, in a way. Matters of the heart. For vampires, such things can be used against us and we don’t forget leverage like who other vampires care for, so we don’t share.”
“Is that why you don’t talk with Stephen about it?”
“Oh definitely not! It wasn’t because he would use it against me, it is that he would laugh at me for centuries… at least one that is, and I couldn’t provide him proper guidance if he could throw this back in my face.”
Bethany Anne raised an eyebrow. “You mean like three guys at one time?”
Gabrielle walked over to the bed and stuck her face six inches in front of Bethany Anne’s and said in a slow measured voice, “I think I hate you.”
Faster than Gabrielle could react, Bethany Anne struck out with her lips and kissed Gabrielle on the forehead. “No you don’t, you just aren’t used to having a girlfriend tease you. I’ll get you past it, trust me.”
Gabrielle stood transfixed. The strike was fast, the kiss was nice, the comment made her heart glow as a fire on a cold night. She stood up, slowly and looked down at the woman who was smiling, a twinkle in her eye. “Yes, a girlfriend to tease me.” She turned and walked to the door, opening and closing it without looking back at Bethany Anne. When she finished closing the door she reached up and wiped away the tear rolling down her cheek. She hoped the phone call with Ivan went well.
Las Vegas, NV, USA
Jeffrey Diamantz and Tom Billings, CEO and Lead Programmer respectively, looked at the large number of computer boxes sitting on the floor in Building 1. They had talked for fifteen minutes about what designations they should use for the buildings, then named them buildings 1, 2 and 3.
Building 1 was where ADAM would be constructed. Well, to be truthful it was where the computers would all be put together, along with the critical kill switch. Building 2 would be where they would house all of the secondary computers and internet connections and building 3 would be for housing, showers, food and tertiary uses.
The racks had arrived yesterday and they had a crew in the previous night assembling the damn things. They didn’t look like much. Basically big-ass metal boxes on wheels. Both of the men had wanted to slap themselves in the head when Nathan had asked about moving the whole thing once it was proven to work. The original design had them using computer server racks that bolted to the floor. Tom suggested they use the much more expensive rolling racks and they would lock them in place. If and when they could move, they would have to shut everything down, move the servers and bring them back online in the reverse order.
Of course, they would be crossing their fingers the whole time that somehow they didn’t kill the first AI in the world by doing it this way. That wouldn’t look good in the history books.
Then again, if ADAM 1.0 was going to design ADAM 2.0, maybe he would have a better idea. Kind of like asking a brain surgeon to operate on himself.
They were looking at the server boxes around the room when they heard a vehicle stopping outside. The brakes on the newly arrived vehicle squeaked horribly. Tom looked over at Jeffery who just shrugged. They walked out through the doors to find a dark blue jeep with an Air Force insignia on the door. One man stayed behind the driver’s seat while another got out of the passenger side.
Jeffrey took the lead. “Good afternoon Officer… Billings?”
The blond haired man closed his door and put on his hat, then reached out to shake Jeffrey’s offered hand. “Yes. I’m from Nellis as you might have guessed.” He turned and shook Tom’s hand.
“How can we help you?”
“I’m here to find out about our newest neighbor who has purchased property and brought in a ton of computers right next to a large Air Force base. Plus, I understand that our newest neighbor is bringing in a substantial amount of internet and communications and I wouldn’t want to mistake you for a foreign power trying to sneak a peek into our computer systems.”
The blood drained right out of Tom’s face—Jeffrey was able to keep his composure a little better. Shit! Neither had considered what it might look like to the Air Force to drop millions of dollars in computer equipment and connectivity right on their damn flank.
Tom said, “Ah, no. To be honest we rather didn’t think about the fact that we were right on your fence line or how it would look. We needed a building, fast, and this old machining area had the Ps we needed or could acquire fast enough to meet our timeline.”
The Air Force officer was
puzzled. “The ‘Ps?’”
Tom shook his head, trying to get his equilibrium back. “Yes, sorry, Power, Ping and Pipe. Our company, Patriarch Research, has a new set of code we need to test and it isn’t something we want to do out on the wild and woolly web. The owners are pushing us to move forward, fast. We thought we might have two years to test our research. They gave us a bit less.”
Officer Billings face held a small smile, “How much time did they give you?”
“Two months.”
Billings nodded as if he expected that answer. “That had to grab you by the short and curlies! So how long did you look for a building?”
Tom looked over at Jeffrey as if hearing it for the first time, himself. “Two days… three, sort of.” He turned back to the officer. “We had already used up five percent of our time so we grabbed the first property we felt would work. Got our corporate overseer to approve the purchase and started with the changes including the power review, the internet connections, the cooling and the building modifications. We have the server cages inside and a substantial number of computer boxes to go through.”
The officer looked around. “What is it you’re going to do with all of this?”
Well, that was the rub, wasn’t it? Jeffrey really didn’t want to tell the Air Force officer that he wanted to create the world’s first Artificial Intelligence, but if it ever came out that he had lied, Jeffrey wasn’t sure what his culpability would be. So he punted and turned to Tom. “Officer Billings, meet Tom Billings our head of Research and Development.”
Tom asked, “Nevada Billings?”
The officer shook his head emphatically. “Hell no! Montana.”
Tom shrugged. “No family in Montana, so probably not connected.” He turned around and pointed at the building they had just come out of, “This is building 1, it’s going to house the main set of computers to run our Heuristic Internet Defense algorithm. We have no internet coming into this building.” He pointed to the next building. “That’s building 2; it houses the internet connections and some servers to pull data from the internet. We’re using that building to download everything we need and then using sneakernet to move the data over to building 1.” He jerked his thumb back at the building behind them.
Officer Billings interrupted him, “Excuse me, but did you say ‘sneakernet’? I’m not familiar with that term.”
Tom pointed his finger down at his Adidas shoes. “Sneakers, as in we are walking the data from building 2 to building 1 using our feet. No connectivity between the two buildings.”
“Why wouldn’t you have connectivity between them?”
Jeffrey was wincing internally. He hadn’t meant for Tom to tell the truth!
Tom shrugged. “Just a precaution. If the program doesn’t work as we expect, we don’t want it to do anything out on the real internet. We operated the damn thing on the Amazon AWS system a couple of years ago and got a three hundred-thousand-dollar data bill in ten minutes. That pissed off the bean counters.” Tom turned to look at Jeffrey. “No offense.”
Jeffrey shook his head in amazement. “None taken.” Instead of bullshit, Tom was baffling him with the truth.
Tom continued, “So, imagine what would happen if some idiot forgets to disconnect a connection in time? Our Internet bill would make even the Kardashians wince.”
Billings, the officer, not the research guy, was pretty convinced he didn’t have any foreign terrorists on his hands, but rather a couple of bumbling scientists. He was wondering why they hadn’t been fired already. Three hundred-thousand-dollar data bill? This made his daughter’s seventy-dollar text overcharge pale in comparison. “What about the last building?”
Jeffrey took that one. “Building 3 is for food, restrooms, showers and cots. We only have a few weeks to get this done, so some of us aren’t going to go home much. I don’t want a bunch of ants in the computer rooms, so I’m being an ass about cleanliness.”
That was something the Air Force officer understood and did appreciate. “Ok, I hope you understand why we got a little nervous.” Both men nodded in agreement.“I’ll probably still stop by from time to time, just to make sure everything looks on the up and up.”
They all shook hands. Jeffrey and Tom watched as the Air Force Jeep turned and left.
Tom looked over at Jeffrey. “Is that what you wanted?”
Jeffrey considered that. “No. But it was the perfect answer. How did we miss such an obvious problem?” He looked after the retreating Jeep.
Tom followed his eyes. “Maybe because we aren’t terrorists that are wanted by the US Air Force and didn’t think about what it might look like from their side?”
Jeffrey agreed, “Yeah, let’s just hope Adam 1.0 doesn’t become Anarchist Adam 2.0”
“There is that,” Tom said. They turned and went back into building 1.
4
The Queen Bitch’s Ship Ad Aeternitatem
Bobcat was deep in conversation with Chief Engineer John Rodriquez who was on the Ad Aeternitatem for the meeting. It was being held in a private room inside the Superyacht. Bethany Anne had given Bobcat the authority to include whomever he felt was necessary to get the small supercraft project running and Rodriquez was known for coaxing miracles out of bailing wire and string. Well, if you didn’t include the alcohol and cussing that he considered necessary ingredients at times.
The Chief Engineer was talking, “I’m telling you, Bobcat, the thermal effects of that much speed is going to affect the people inside. You need to get a scientist who understands these metals better than you or me to run some tests. The design will probably work to cut down the wind resistance, but unless it has a way to ignore air,” he paused. “It doesn’t, does it?” Bobcat shook his head. “Ok, then consider a rocket or a missile design. We can’t have it long enough for three people stacked on top of each other, so we need to design it as a rocket fat enough to house three around a central axis. It can land on tripods that fold back into the body. Does it need stabilizing fins?”
Bobcat considered what he knew. “Doubt it. TOM’s craft doesn’t have much of that right now, so I don’t see why.”
Chief engineer Rodriguez thought about it for another second. “Are we going to be able to get the same propulsion system that TOM’s craft has now?”
“Not sure how we can fit that in, although I would sure like it!” Both men smiled at that thought.
Bobcat sighed, “So you’re telling me I’m going to need a rocket scientist, right?”
“Yup, I might be able to do a lot of things, but I am not a rocket scientist.” They each reached for their beer.
“Looks like I’m gonna have to call Frank then. I’ll ask Ecaterina for the phone number. Wonder what kind of scientist I’ll have to deal with?”
John looked at Bobcat. He had a guess but he wasn’t about to mess things up for Bobcat by telling him what the guess was. He said his goodbyes, and headed out to hitch a ride back to the Polarus.
Bobcat took out his cell phone and hit the number for Ecaterina. It didn’t take long for her to answer the phone and after a few seconds she sent him Frank’s number. Bobcat called Frank’s number, and surprisingly the man picked up on the first ring.
“Frank, this is Bobcat. I was wondering if you had a few minutes?”
Franks inquisitive voice came back over the line, “Sure Bobcat, what do you need?”
Bobcat smiled. “Believe it or not, I need a rocket scientist.”
Frank laughed. “You don’t ask for much, do you? Will any old rocket scientist do, or do you need a particular type of rocket scientist?”
Bobcat paused. “Well, I didn’t realize that there were actually different types of scientists available. Do you have a catalog, perhaps?”
“Ah, no. I need you to give me an idea of what you need, and I will comb through the databases to find someone who might be available. Can you send me a request via email?”
“Sure, that would be easy enough to do. But will the emails be safe?”
“Just make it look like you’re talking about someone from the show Ancient Aliens, it will be flagged as a false positive if anyone should actually read it.”
“Ok, I can do that. Any idea how long this might take?” Bobcat was fishing for information. He was concerned he wasn’t going to get the craft done as soon as Bethany Anne might need it.
“I should have a good idea if anyone is available within twelve hours, I’ll have more information within twenty-four and at most forty-eight hours. We might have someone in the next few days, if they’re available and I can tweak their interest enough.”
Bobcat felt a little tension leave him. “Frank, you are a lifesaver! I will buy you as many beers as you can drink the next time we catch up.”
They said their goodbyes and hung up. Frank spoke to his now dead connection, “Don’t thank me until after you’ve worked with him.”
Bobcat turned around and covered up the designs he had been working on.
He walked out the door and shut it behind him. He ran into Chris in the hallway. They went upstairs, talking the whole time about the differences between the Sikorsky and the Black Hawk and how each one handled. Bobcat was a little bummed at having to leave Shelly behind, but he knew these new craft were the future and it was what he had signed up for way back in Miami. Not that he would have believed Bethany Anne had she confided in him that he would be working with alien technology.
The Queen Bitch’s Ship Polarus
Pete had to get Frank’s help with passports for two of his guys. So that took some extra time.
Pete had gotten to know each one of them on the trip down in the Gulfstream and then on Shelly to get them to the Polarus.
The nominal alpha of this group was Tim Kinley. Pete found him smart, aggressive and holding on to his patience by a thread. It hadn’t helped that everyone was stuck in the plane waiting for Frank to get passports pushed through. Pete had finally just dropped the door and ran everyone around the building a few times to get rid of some energy. Once they had the passports, they buttoned back up and took off.
Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Set One: Books 1-7, Death Becomes Her, Queen Bitch, Love Lost, Bite This, Never Forsaken, Under My Heel, Kneel or Die (Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Sets) Page 86