Lance would have preferred Nathan to be with him on this trip, but he was needed up in New York. If Lance needed him, then Nathan and Pete would jump a flight in New York City and come straight to Las Vegas after their meeting.
There was a quick knock on the conference room door and the lovely Annette came in and brought him coffee, black. He missed Patricia, hopefully she was enjoying her new boss. He took out his phone and set up a reminder that simply said “Patricia?”. He set the reminder’s alarm for 3:00 PM that afternoon.
There was another knock on the conference room door a minute later and the CEO came in.
Lance stood up with his hand outstretched, “Lance Reynolds.”
Jeffrey was surprised. He noticed the guy in front of the conference room door and he was a walking tank. He expected a gruff guy. Not that the man in front of him didn’t seem straight and to the point, but he didn’t seem full of himself. He seemed…
“Hi, Jeffrey Diamantz. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Reynolds.”
“Likewise, just call me Lance or occasionally I’ll answer to General. Take your pick.”
Military, that was the word Jeffrey was looking for. “I’m good with Jeff or Jeffrey, no preference.” Jeffrey sat down in the head chair, Lance hadn’t taken the expected ‘power chair’ after all.
Lance pointed with his head to Darryl. “This gentleman is Darryl Jackson, the first man you saw was Scott English. My daughter, the CEO, worries more about me than I think is prudent.” Darryl carefully kept his face neutral. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, including whatever lies the COO tells.
Jeffrey just looked over at Darryl and nodded and Darryl nodded back. Jeffrey didn’t consider himself a very violent man, but the black gentleman looked like he could easily reach over and casually break Jeffrey’s neck. It wasn’t a very practical solution for someone with Darryl’s kind of skills to be merely decoration. However, Jeffrey appreciated the effort to put him at ease. It told him a few more things about Lance than maybe Lance cared to share. None of it bad, to Jeffrey.
“How can I help you, General?”
Darryl held in his smile, he just made $50 from Scott and the General on whether Jeffrey would call the General by his first name, last name or his old title.
Lance just looked over his shoulder, “That was $50 for you, right?” Darryl let the smile show and shook his head yes.
Jeffrey caught on quickly, “So, you guys bet which name I would use?”
Lance filled him in, “Yes. I said Lance, Darryl here said ‘General’ and Scott took ‘Mr. Reynolds.’”
Jeffrey just shook his head, this guy was not what he was expecting at all. He decided to just lay everything bare without much preamble.
“General, we've made what could be a seriously tragic development here, so I’m really glad you decided to come by when you did.”
If Lance had one of his cigars in his mouth, it might have dropped out. “Seriously Tragic Development? Did you study TLAs for Military Usage?”
“TLA?”
“Yes, three letter acronym. However, like anything in the Military we say three but mean three, four and occasionally five or more. Like FNG, FUBAR and LOST.”
Jeffrey knew what the first two meant but, “Lost?”
“Looking Over Strange Terrain.”
Jeffrey shook his head and laughed a little, “Strangely enough, LOST fits.”
Lance sighed, he hadn’t made it through his first business meeting and some shit was hitting the wall. He spoke like he would talk to a newly minted officer, “Tell me more.”
Darryl just considered that Bethany Anne’s luck must have been passed down from her father.
“Well, General, do you know what the technology singularity is?”
“We’re talking when we get strong A.I., right?”
Jeffrey took a second to stop his explanation from erupting out of his mouth. He hadn’t expected the General to know anything about that. “Ah, yes. Exactly. How did you know about that? Sorry, not being rude but most people outside of either artificial intelligence, techies or trekkies don’t know about it.”
“Military, remember? We war-game all sorts of shit that could turn Darryl back here,“ with that he pointed his thumb back at the security person, “white.”
Darryl smiled. Lance was old school and Darryl was amused to see Jeffrey’s eyes freak out. If this guy had known there wasn’t a racist bone in Lance Reynolds body, he might have been less concerned.
Darryl had bled with all his brothers over in the pit and as far as he was concerned, they were all the same color. Red, white and blue. He hadn’t had to punch a racist in over ten years, his brothers always did it for him.
God forbid someone should be stupid enough to do it around Scott, Eric or John, and he hoped he never witnessed someone do it if Bethany Anne was near. His brothers would put the person in the hospital, Bethany Anne would put them in the ground.
Jeffrey tried to stop looking over at Darryl. “Ok, got it. Ah. Right. Well, the big issue with a tech singularity is whether or not that creates a benevolent strong AI or a malevolent one. One is good, the other could end with the complete Terminator experience.”
“Yes, that was the one we typically would war-game.”
“How did you combat it?”
“We started with high altitude nuclear explosions from 30 miles to 330 miles up generating EMP pulses to destroy the infrastructure. Unfortunately, that can also destroy a lot of electrical infrastructure so your own people can’t heat their homes or cook their food. I can’t say we ever had a successful combat solution based on the ones I was part of. Once the AI got into the Internet, the assumption was you can’t stomp it out. Hell, we can’t find and get rid of human created viruses right now, how could we get rid of the ghost in the machine?”
Jeffrey was having a hard time getting his head around this conversation. The General here was not the person he had been gearing himself up to talk to. “Right.”
“So, you’re telling me you guys have done this?”
“No, well maybe.” Lance just looked at him. “Ok, we were doing a project for a financial company where we spun up a lot of instances on AWS.”
Lance put a hand up, “Just because I understand the main subject, don’t assume I understand the smaller minutiae.”
“Ok, AWS is a service from Amazon which allows you to rent computers based on how powerful they are, how much memory you need and how much bandwidth you consume. You can do as many thousands as you need and then shut them all down when you're finished. This was perfect as we had a new piece of software we were testing, a heuristic internet defense program. It has the ability to learn as it gets attacked or as it acquires new information it can ‘find’ disparate connections between them and bring out new information. That was the piece the credit card companies wanted us to test. We figured it would be a good test and it was close enough to our other logic that it might work well.”
“I supposed it worked well?”
Jeffrey leaned back in his chair, happy to be sharing this monkey he had carried for almost two years. “Yes. We had already programmed the shutting down of the instances so when the information was finally dumped and the program wasn’t focused on its primary job, we’ve figured out the software had started ‘looking around’ on its own. With that much computing power it was trivial for the program to start reaching through the internet and pulling down data for its own use. Our data bill for just the few minutes was astronomical. Almost all of the data throughput bill was our program running data pulls for itself since the financial data had been loaded on the servers already. It started to get smarter with the data requests into the internet even as the quantity of servers running the program powered off.”
“Why did it allow you to turn it off?”
“We don’t think it was paying attention at that time. We have surmised over the last eighteen months…”
“Eighteen months?” Lance raised his eyebrows. He thought this was a re
cent event. He calmly folded his hands together and waited for Jeffrey to continue.
“Yeah. This happened almost two years ago, but we’ve been trying to test smaller parts of the program and confirm what we see in the data. When we were being hacked a couple of weeks ago, we were considering turning the program back on to help protect us as Internet Defense was the original reason we built the software.”
Lance kept his shock off of his face. He and Nathan had almost been the cause of these guys turning their software back on. Oh, holy shit. “Ok, I get that, go on.”
“Well, the hacking stopped and the next day your secretary called to setup this meeting. I’ve been waiting for this meeting to speak to you. I put the information in the quarterly reports for the last nine months ever since we confirmed our data back in March and was about to provide the overview again in our annual report.”
Lance interrupted him, “You email this?”
“Normally, no. There is website where I sign in and drop off the reports.”
“Ok, sorry. I don’t know those details and I’ve never seen any of your reports. I apologize that our oversight process has apparently been off of the tracks so badly in the last year.” Lance was wondering just how many reports were sitting on some server somewhere waiting for someone to read them. “Do you have contact information for Ecaterina, specifically her email?”
“Yes.”
“Good, please request the new location to drop off your report so that I can make sure I read it going forward. For this issue, I have another person I’m going to need to come fly over to deal with this as the technical details are over my head.”
Jeffrey just nodded his head. “When do you think he will make it here?”
Lance looked at his watch. “Well, his meeting in New York should be done in the next few hours. Unless you think we need to solve this tonight, let’s let him decide where to sleep and we will get back together tomorrow at 11:00 AM and do a working lunch?”
“Ok. I’ll have my main programmer Tom join us for that meeting.”
“Sounds good, why don’t you explain what you had wanted this program to do? Also, while I’m here and have your time, would you mind catching me up on what you guys have accomplished in the last, I don’t know, say ten years?”
That, Jeffrey considered, was a very politely phrased order. It was going to be a long afternoon. Jeffrey looked at his watch, he would need to cancel two project meetings or hell, he could just have the General sit in on them, it might help. “Ok, do you want to do lunch in our out today?”
“Oh, I think out works well today. You guys are pretty close to Four Kegs Sports Club and I’m dying for a Stromboli. I’ve got a bet with Scott he can’t eat two of them.”
“Oh, in Las Vegas much?”
“What? Oh, no. I love to watch Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and I had Ecaterina find the place for me after I watched a rerun. Looks like my kind of place.”
This day hadn’t started anything like Jeffery was expecting and it looked like lunch was going to be just as unique.
CHAPTER FIVE
New York City, New York - USA
Terry was in his car in the warehouse parking lot. He was concerned until he received the text from Jason, his friend, inside. It simply said, ‘not going to be here.’
A large weight was lifted from his shoulders. His Uncle Jim, Jack’s dad, wanted to know more about what the vampire was doing and wanted his nephew to get him the information. At first, he had been reluctant, he didn’t want to meet the vampire again and his uncle could tell him he owed Jack all he wanted, he wasn’t going to face her again.
After a particularly heated argument, Terry told his Uncle Jim that Jack shouldn’t have mouthed off in the first place and his Uncle had verbally flayed his skin alive. They finally agreed he would go if she wasn’t going to be at the meeting.
He turned off his car, got out and pocketed his keys. The old light blue Camaro wasn’t great to look at, but it got him around town. The clutch was a bitch when stopping on hills. You had to release the clutch and press the gas quickly or risk running backwards into the car behind you. Actually, he hated this car.
In fact, he kinda hated his life right now. If it wasn’t for that cranky bitch vampire - his Uncle’s words reverberating in his mind as he walked up to the warehouse steps to go in - things might be going well for him right now. He opened the door and walked inside. Carefully not registering Jason except to see him in his peripheral vision, he noticed a small group of his compatriots from the last meeting and walked over to them. All of them gave him the guys head nod in recognition. A lot of the other ones in the room who hadn’t been a part of Paul’s group, recognized him and didn’t give him a second glance.
Assholes.
The Alpha of New York, leader of the Pack Council, was talking to another couple of people over at a table thirty feet from the door. The building was large, really large. He wanted to sneeze from the dust. God, he hated dust. He hated dust, he hated his car and he really didn’t want to fucking be here. Where was Nathan Lowell?
The door opened and everyone looked over to see who else was joining them. It was Nathan Lowell and another guy dressed like the security from the previous meeting, except this one was a Were like them and young. He had on black tactical pants with black boots that tied all the way up and looked like they had some sort of waterproofing. He carried a pistol in a shoulder holster and he had a patch on his shoulder. He looked closer when they turned to walk over to Gerry.
The patch was a bleeding vampire skull with red eyes and a woman’s hair. It had ‘Bitch Queen’ over the top and ‘Aeternitatem’ under the skull. The guy moved quietly, without so much as even acknowledging the other Werewolves. That pissed Terry off. Why was he any better than anyone else? Walking in here like it was beneath him. He was a Were just like the rest of them. He looked at his friends around him and said in a low voice, “Look at that prissy dick, thinking he’s all that.” The guys around him mumbled their agreement. Not too loud, in case they got Nathan’s attention.
Pete heard their comment, but he ignored them. He wasn’t here to make friends. He was here representing the Queen Bitch’s guards and John had told him the whole story of the last meeting. Darryl and Scott told him their versions of the ‘recruit and shoot’. Why they shot the first two guys and then why they executed Paul Gleason for disparaging Bethany Anne.
The Pete who existed during that time frame wouldn’t have understood anything they were talking about. The Pete that went through the trial on the Polarus and lived with these guys for the last ten weeks understood very well.
Nathan and Gerry shook hands and caught up for a few minutes. Pete was listening intently to everyone around him. A Wechselbalg’s hearing was already superior to a humans, but Pete's hearing was superior to almost all Wechselbalg he had ever met. He backed up to the wall and just kept alert.
There were a few guys who noticed that the young Werewolf with the patch on his arm seemed to radiate the same calm professional demeanor the team of humans had back in the Tunnels. They decided to leave him alone.
Gerry looked over at the new guy behind Nathan and did a double take; that was Jonathan’s son, wasn’t it? He got Nathan’s attention and then used his eyes to look at Pete and shrugged his shoulders. Nathan just nodded ‘yes’ and Gerry was surprised. This was the kid that stupidly let some humans see him change? He wasn’t sure what had happened to him in the last couple of months, but Gerry would have kept him in sight as one of the most dangerous in the room. A far cry from the spoiled frat-boy his father had talked about.
Damn, Bethany Anne’s group can make some changes.
Gerry jumped up on the table and the talking quieted down and a fair amount of the guys there started walking a little closer to the table. “Alright everyone this isn’t a pack event, so I’m only here because you’re on my packs property. I’m not here as the Pack Council leader except to say that this talk is approved and whatever you ask here i
s not counted against you. If you choose to leave the American Pack - and trust me, if you sign up with Bethany Anne, you will be required to leave the pack - it will be without animosity on our side.”
A guy in a green jacket and yellow shirt with daisies on them, asked the first question. “Can we get back in if we don’t like it?”
Not if you dress like that, Gerry thought. However; he answered, “It depends on why. If Bethany Anne’s group agrees that you may leave without dishonor then we will have to ask another pack to take you in. If another pack agrees, you may move there. Once you leave your pack, you have repudiated them and they will not take you in. You’re leaving the pack life. You want out of the structure of having the Pack Council tell you what to do?” At this, Gerry could see most of their heads dip a little. “Then you have to realize that is a slap in our face. You think we don’t know this? My guess is some of you will be too soft to make it with Bethany Anne and a pack will become what you really want the whole time. We will talk with Bethany Anne…”
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