by Tony Salter
The phone rang as I walked back into the lounge:
‘Mr Blackwell?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have a message from Ms Martin.’
‘Yes?’
‘She would like you to meet her in the lobby at six o’clock this evening.’
‘OK. Thank you.’
‘… And she suggests the blue Armani. You’ll find it in the closet.’
‘That’s fine. Thank you.’
What Armani? What closet? The place was full of cupboards and closets.
As it turned out, it wasn’t difficult to solve that puzzle. There were two huge wardrobes in the main bedroom and each of them was filled with designer clothes – maybe twenty jackets and trousers, shirts and shoes to match. There were even drawers full of boxer shorts and socks.
I found the blue Armani and tried it on. It was no surprise that it turned out to be a perfect fit. I stood in front of the full-length mirror and turned sideways, brushing my fingers across the smooth silk and trying to look rugged and handsome.
A room full of designer clothes and a suite at the Beverly Wilshire; I might as well have been playing the happy hooker in Pretty Woman. The parallels were uncanny, and I thought back to watching the film with my dad – he always said that the Julia Roberts character looked just like my mum.
What would she have thought if she could see me now?
I hadn’t seen Julie since the interview and my heart was in my mouth when I saw her walk across the lobby towards me. It must take a lot to turn heads in the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire, but Julie managed it. She was wearing some sort of body-hugging, red, backless dress and the narrowest, tallest, pointiest shoes I’d ever seen. She was stunning.
‘You clean up well enough,’ she said, looking me up and down. ‘Were the clothes OK?’
I guessed that it wouldn’t be smart to tell her that she cleaned up pretty well herself. I needed to remember that I was at work.
‘They were amazing,’ I said. ‘All of them were a perfect fit. And you’ve been so generous with the First-Class flight … and the room …’
‘… Nothing to do with generosity,’ she said, cutting me off. ‘I need you to look the part … And you’ll learn soon enough that I can be extremely demanding. I don’t need much sleep and I’ll expect you to fit in with my schedule, day or night. We’ll travel a lot and I want you to be as well rested as possible. We’ll also spend time working in your room and I don’t intend to sit in some cupboard.’
She definitely had a way about her. A way of making people feel like her property. It wasn’t quite as demeaning as that, not a master-slave attitude. More that she thought it was natural for everyone around her to prioritise her wishes and needs above their own. I figured I could live with that for a couple of years.
The red carpet was a let down. On television, it always appeared that it was reserved for the A-list celebrities. The reality was that everyone made their way through the gauntlet of screaming fans – ordinary invitees and superstars mixed together. The TV cameras just knew how to keep the rabble out of the picture.
It was only after we’d made our way through to the main arena entrance that the selection process began. Julie’s bodyguard whispered in the ear of an attendant and we were funnelled into a narrow grey corridor which ran down the length of the building.
I’d always been puzzled by the small blocks of empty seats at major events. The Wimbledon Men’s Final, Henley Regatta, a stadium gig or a Twickenham international, it didn’t matter. Look carefully at the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd and two or three little islands would stand out in the sea of fans.
Five minutes after we arrived at the Grammys I had my answer. Those were the VIP seats, and the VIPs had more important things to do. Actually going into the stadium to watch the match, show or concert was for the normal, ticket-buying plebs.
We reached the end of the corridor, a fire door opened and we walked into the noise and hubbub of a posh cocktail bar, filled with gorgeous people and familiar faces. Images of the awards stage and the arena flickered on a big screen in the corner, but no-one in the room seemed even slightly interested. A select few had a role to play on stage and they would disappear for ten or twenty minutes to retouch their make-up and present an award. Beyond that, the real action was backstage in the Green Room.
The 79th Grammys had already been under way for five hours by the time we arrived and the major awards were coming up. As main sponsor, Julie was presenting the Lifetime Achievement Award to Ed Sheeran who, at less than fifty, was the youngest recipient ever.
Ed had been making hit records since before I was born and had been a key part of the soundtrack of my life – it was difficult to imagine a year without a new Ed Sheeran album. Other artists lost the plot, became self-indulgent or ran out of things to say. Ed kept on churning out new material, fresh and relevant and … and … there he was, walking towards me and Julie with a massive grin on his face.
Donkeys
Nicki was waiting for me at Zak’s. The café was around the corner from my flat and meeting at either one of our offices would be a bad idea. At eight-thirty in the morning, Zak’s was almost empty; the yummy-mummies-to-be weren’t up yet and the yummy-mummies were still on their way back from the school run.
I’d already read though the detailed financial plans, and we spent half an hour talking through her assumptions. I was impatient to hear her explain why her sales forecasts assumed so many unsuccessful sales pitches.
It was only by challenging those conservative sales forecasts that I managed to nudge her towards the core issue – large groups could be managed consistently and predictably, but individuals – especially rich, arrogant ones – didn’t always behave rationally. The fact that the world’s elites had lost most of their real authority didn’t take away their potential to screw things up.
‘… It’s a delicate balance,’ Nicki said, bringing her explanation to a close. ‘You know what these people are like. We’re coming into six major election cycles and five of the favourite candidates are still sitting on the fence. We’ll sign up two or three of them, but not all. Even with guarantees of results and the threat that we’ll support their opposition, some will go elsewhere out of sheer stubbornness.’
‘Your plans assume that you can’t control the individual factor one hundred per cent?’
‘Exactly. However good we are, some people will always shoot themselves in the foot. It’s a fundamental weakness which we’ve had to factor into all of our growth plans.’ She shrugged and sat back in her chair.
I thought back to all the possible people Nicki might have become, the number of paths she could have taken over the past twenty years, and the likely results of each deviation. I’d done whatever I could to keep her on track, but there’d been so many ways to lose control. Apart from the uncertainties of emotions and hormones, I couldn’t preclude the thousands of scenarios which ended sharply and suddenly – a drunken kid with a knife or a stolen car, a random virus or an icy slip into a frozen river.
I looked at her as she sat facing me. We’d come so far and she couldn’t have turned out better. Was I proud of her, or proud of myself for bringing her to this point?
Did it matter?
But my task wasn’t over. Nicki was still a work in progress. She had one final step to take.
‘I disagree,’ I said, having left her to stew for long enough. ‘We don’t have to sit back and accept that those decisions are out of our control.’ I could see the “but” forming as she leant forward, and I raised my hand to make sure she gave me time to finish. ‘We just need to understand that some people have a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot. It’s our responsibility to persuade them that it would be a mistake.’
‘Easier said than done. You know the kind of people we’re talking about. They’re fickle and unpredictable. They can always be tempted to change direction by bigger bribes, blackmail or sudden attacks of moral conscience. There’s often no method.’
>
‘Indeed,’ I said, pleased that Nicki had understood her clients so well, and so quickly. ‘So let’s continue with the farmyard metaphor. The masses are sheep and we know we can manage them. Our clients are donkeys and in order to keep a donkey on the right path, you need a stick as well as a carrot.’
‘You’re suggesting we should threaten them in some way?’ Nicki shook her head. ‘That kind of strong-arming never works. At least not consistently. Look at Italy.’
‘Nothing so clumsy,’ I said. ‘My kind of threat has never existed before. I think our problem clients will take it very seriously.’
I was no longer smiling and a thin sheen of moisture was glinting on Nicki’s forehead. ‘Go on,’ she said.
‘What would these clients do if you told them you had the power to destroy their lives at the flick of a switch? Set something in motion which couldn’t be stopped, couldn’t be traced or tracked and which would take away their wealth, their reputation, their family and their freedom. If they believed you could do that, might they be persuaded to see the light?’
Nicki stared at me for a few seconds. ‘It might work if it were that credible, I suppose,’ she said. ‘After all, we’re only asking them to make the smart choice. I don’t know what you’re imagining though. A team of black-suited assassins hiding in a fortress at the top of a mountain?’
‘Nothing so dramatic,’ I said. ‘Although much more frightening.’
‘OK. Let me explain what I have in mind,’ I said. ‘First, I need you to imagine an independent AI agent which resides within the cloud, within all of the clouds, fully dispersed through the world’s IT networks, clever enough to find its way through, or round, every firewall as soon as it is put in place, but so fragmented that it can’t be traced, identified or eradicated. A true super-virus with a single goal and which is capable of evolving in order to achieve that goal.’
‘I can see how that could be designed,’ she said. ‘But I’m not quite with you. What goal?’
‘Each virus would be given a single individual as a target, and its mission would be to destroy that person’s life piece by piece.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Nicki, but the tremor in her voice told me she was beginning to.
‘The agent virus would be pre-programmed to start by addressing a set of obvious pressure points – financial, reputational, legal, family etc., and would monitor the effectiveness of each action through public media, correspondence analysis, satellite data, surveillance systems, whatever is available. It would then refine its attacks as it learns what works best.
‘So it might, for example, block funds, create fake media scandals or implicate the target in criminal acts?’
‘Exactly.’
‘That’s pretty extreme, Julie.’
‘Let me finish,’ I said. ‘Firstly, we’re not talking about nice people here; secondly, we’re not pressuring them to do anything terrible and, most importantly, this is a stick which is designed to be rarely used. If it did become necessary, we would use it sparingly and as a last resort.’
‘But from what you’re saying, this super-virus would persecute someone for ever. It would go on and on like something out of Dante’s Inferno.’
‘Which is why you needed to let me finish. We would give it a fixed lifetime, a pre-arranged and inevitable time of “death” built into its genes. It could be a day or a week or a month. That depends on the situation. After all, we don’t want to kill our donkeys – just to keep them on the path.’
‘OK,’ said Nicki in a soft voice. ‘I think I see what you’re driving at. A software version of the nuclear deterrent?’
‘A good analogy,’ I said. ‘And we would hope to never need it … although I suspect we will need our own Hiroshima to prove the concept.’
Nicki sat silently, presumably thinking. ‘It might actually work,’ she said. ‘These people are all afraid of something, and by dehumanising and automating the threat, it would frighten them even more.’
‘That’s my thinking,’ I said. ‘Is something like this technically possible?’
‘In theory, yes. It wouldn’t have been a few years ago, but some of the research coming out of MIT has opened a lot of new doors and it’s now possible to remotely access enough quantum hardware for it to grow and adapt fast enough. It won’t be easy though.’
‘I didn’t expect it to be. Could you design something like this?’
‘With the right help. I think so.’
‘How long before you could have something viable?’
‘I couldn’t possibly say right away. It would take months just to get an idea of the scope of the project. But I’m certain it’ll take years of development.’
‘We’d better get started then,’ I said. ‘I know you need time to think through the implications – I’ve already been living with this idea for a while – but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t do that while you’re scoping it out.’
‘I suppose not,’ she said. ‘It’s definitely going to cost a hell of a lot. I won’t need a huge team, but they’ll need to be the best. I’m guessing that the individual developers will need to be unaware of the actual purpose of the programme?’
‘I knew you were the right person for the job,’ I said, smiling. ‘And you know that you’ll have whatever funds you need.’
The next hour passed in a blur. We chatted about this and that – relationships, favourite restaurants, anything to keep the conversation light and to distract Nicki from dwelling on the true implications of the project we’d initiated. All the while, my mind was picturing a thousand bright threads converging like maypole ribbons on a single point.
I’d been waiting for such a long time and there had been so much uncertainty along the way. As I sat there, half-listening to Nicki blathering on about some amazing new TV series, I realised that my plans for Nicki and Sam were truly coming together at last. For the first time since I could remember, I could just sit back, relax and enjoy the show.
2042
The Daily Sun – Friday 6th June 2042
Julie Martin – An Icarus for our times.
Barely two years ago, Julie Martin was flying high in the stratosphere. Her company, Pulsar, was already the world’s third largest company and the number one spot was close enough for her to touch. The book chronicling her success, “Pulsar. Behind the Firewall” (written by her handsome young boyfriend, Sam Blackwell), was topping best-seller lists around the world.
Beautiful, famous, successful and richer than Croesus. What could go wrong?
The answer, as we now know, is absolutely everything.
Next week a jury is expected to reach their verdict in what has become the trial of the century. Julie Martin stands accused of deliberately blinding a policeman with ammonia during the TUC riots of 2011. We have also learned that she has had at least two other identities and a chequered past full of dark rumour and scandal.
To add insult to injury, she was brought down to earth by none other than her former lover, Sam, and Dave Bukowski, a genius professor who has benefited from millions in Pulsar grants. As the police closed in and Julie went on the run, Bukowski engineered an aggressive takeover of Pulsar.
The theories about why the pair turned on her are the stuff of Greek tragedy. Did Julie murder her father with a kitchen knife? Did she deliberately drive Sam’s mother, Fabiola, to suicide? Did she “groom” Sam as part of some warped Oedipal obsession?
We’ll probably never know the truth, as the evidence is slim and Julie Martin’s lawyers still have sharp teeth. It won’t matter; people will believe what they want to believe and juicy scandals tend to stick.
We are coming to the end of an era. Julie Martin has lost her company and her reputation. Will she lose her freedom next week? The Sun believes she will.
The story is as old as time; Julie Martin’s life seems destined to end, like many others who flew too close to the sun, in a pile of burnt feathers.
Change of Plans
T
he glass screen in front of me was grey and blurred, streaks of smudged fingers smearing the spots of spittle into tiny tadpoles. It wouldn’t have hurt them to give it a wipe from time to time. As soon as I found out where I was going to end up, I’d need to get a few things organised.
It had been three weeks since Sam’s visit with his unwelcome news about the new DNA evidence. He’d enjoyed himself too much, and too transparently, as he drove in the final nail – a spiteful boy after all. I could understand why he hated me so much – he had a point – but I didn’t feel the same way. I wanted to punish him, that was as it should be, but I didn’t hate him.
I pictured his beautiful face and felt my thoughts floating away as I focussed on the centre of the screen where the spit spray had concentrated in a pink-brown cloud. I hadn’t hated anybody since my father. Hate and love were such foolish emotions, equally blind, equally dangerous.
I’d hated my father, and I’d loved Fabiola; neither of those stories had ended well. Sam had only been a toy, but even with him, Fabiola’s long shadow had blurred my vision and tempted me to let my guard down. I needed to be more disciplined. It was the only way.
What about Nicki? Did I love her? Not like Fabiola, obviously. But was it love?
I looked up at the clock above the gunmetal-grey door. The round perspex face sparkled in the fluorescent lights, a curious anomaly against the dismal concrete wall. Five past. She should have been here by now.
My lawyers had asked for an adjournment as soon as the new evidence was officially submitted, but two weeks was the best they’d been able to manage and we were due back in court after the weekend.
Although I was over my initial shock, it was hard to keep the snarling black wolves at bay. I was tired and the list of names in my little black book was growing out of control.