They talked a little while on the needs for both of the ships related to crew and updates. The Ad Aeternitatem would hire a couple more crew to start modifying the internal compartments to remove some of the storage space and make more berthing in there. Both Captains had things they wanted to implement and Max really didn’t feel good without getting under way as soon as possible.
Bethany Anne raised an eyebrow to Bobcat, “He’s got the boat. So I don’t need to ferry him over.”
That caused them to discuss the two helicopters and the G550's status. Bethany Anne brought up something she had been thinking, “Bobcat, do you remember when I asked if you would consider learning new craft and perhaps teaching others once you’ve learned enough?”
Bobcat smiled, “You bet, are you going to let me learn how to fly your new ride over there?” Bobcat had been itching to see inside the ship, but it was off limits until Bethany Anne permitted anyone to touch it, much less go inside.
She grinned at the audacious pilot. “Hell no!” His smile turned into a frown, “I’m expecting you to help design small three person vessels we can launch off of either of our ships. With vessels that can go straight up, we don’t need to have an aircraft carrier.”
Bobcats’ smile went from large to just about bursting his face. “Hell yeah! That would be fun-fucking-tastic. What are the specifications?”
“One pilot, two ops team plus their equipment. Needs to be quiet and as undetectable as we can make it. I want them as stupid-proof as possible.”
“Outer space?”
“No, TOM tells me that requires a significant jump in complexity I’m not willing to wait for right now. However; these things will be able to push about mach 4, so almost faster than anything the militaries have except the theoretical scram-jet. Our stuff will be smaller, faster, and won’t require major training for black-outs as the insides will, according to TOM, stay at less than 1.25 g’s during any and all maneuvers.”
“Seriously?”
“Yup.”
“Tell TOM I’m his newest fan!”
Well, I’ve never had a fan before.
Wait until we provide more of your technology. Unfortunately for you, some people will want to call you a God.
Why is that unfortunate?
Because you're stuck in me and there is no way I can stand the idea of your ego getting too big for my body.
Yes, well, there is that little inconvenience.
Sucks to be you.
“Yes, I’m sure he will be excited to learn that. However; this means you need to find a primary for Shelly.” Bobcats face lost a lot of his enthusiasm. Shelly, or his Black Hawk, had been the craft that had helped him keep his sanity between leaving the service and finally joining Bethany Anne’s group. “I thought you might take it a little hard. Just remember this won’t happen for a while, so don’t make plans to stop flying Shelly for a few months, but you will need to consider passing the torch.”
Bobcat just shook his head. With everything good, a little rain must happen.
Bethany Anne continued, “Besides, just think what these little ships will do when you come out with version 2.0.” That was sufficient to pull Bobcat out of the worst of the punch to his ego Bethany Anne had delivered.
She turned to Nathan and her Dad, “Ok, Dan told me last night that you two might have some people for reviewing the ship and helping figure it out, but came with a catch. What is the catch before we go much further?”
Lance looked over at Nathan to let him know he had the floor. Nathan started, “What do you know about Strong AI?”
“Not a lot related to earth stuff, a little related to Kurtherian.”
Nathan opened his mouth, he wanted to ask about the Kurtherian comment but they couldn’t get derailed on that subject right then. “Well, we don’t so much want to bring people to look at the ship. Well, not totally true. We do, but our real problem and opportunity is one of the companies in TQB Enterprises is Patriarch Research out of Las Vegas. It looks like they have potentially created the software to bring about Technology Singularity.”
“Isn’t that the stuff the geeks in California are all arguing is going to end the world? I seem to remember Elon Musk and someone else bitching about that a while back.”
“Well, certainly the potential to end humanity. The sexy side…”
Bethany Anne snorted, “Leave it to a geek to describe a bunch of computer hardware and programming as ‘sexy’.”
Nathan shrugged his shoulders, “I’m not talking ‘Ecaterina’ sexy.” That got Nathan a quick jab from an elbow to his left, “Ow, thank you very much. As I was saying, sexy in a very interesting and exciting manner. Imagine a machine which can do the research of hundreds or potentially thousands of analysts simultaneously and run it twenty four hours a day. Then, if a problem occurs in the programming, it can adjust its own programming such that the same mistakes never happen again.”
“What is the downside to this, then? I can’t confess to following this stuff very closely.”
Lance spoke then, “The concern is that the Strong AI is expected to become an independent agent, operating for whatever it finds is the best solution. So, what if the best solution is the extermination of the human race?”
Bethany Anne could hear most of the hearts in the room suddenly accelerate. That was a pretty big concern to everyone here. “So, how do you figure out if you can get, what, a friendly AI?”
Nathan continued, “Yes. We are calling this imaginary AI ‘Adam’ at the moment. If Adam is on our side, we could leap frog potential operations and implementation abilities while keeping our teams pretty lean. Otherwise, the more we undertake, the bigger our organization and we already have two super yachts, two huge homes in Miami and are looking for a used military base.” Bethany Anne raised both eyebrows and Lance put up his hand to delay any comments. They would get back to that point in a minute. “So, we are quickly exceeding the operational resources we have here. The more we accomplish the more we need to hire and the nasty cycle keeps getting out of hand. To accomplish what we’ve spoken about in the future, we either have to stay small and lean, or connect with a really large government to help run this.”
“Ah, you nasty jackass, you hit my personal hot button.” She thought about it for a second, “I really don’t want to get any governments involved with us unless we have to, and certainly not where we are beholden to them if we can help it.” She looked up at Nathan, “You conniving manipulative bastard, I’m impressed.” She smiled to Nathan to show she really did appreciate how he had pitched this. He obviously wanted a try at this and besides the ‘sky is falling’ aspects of his pitch, she could see the benefits, or at least the potential benefits if they could pull this off. “I presume you have a working concept on how to move forward and who you would need?” Both Lance and Nathan nodded their heads, almost in unison. That was strange, her father was actually on board with this idea as well. “What is the time frame, budget, resources and where would you try this?”
Lance took that question, “We would need at least a couple of months, millions of dollars for hardware purchases, the team from Patriarch Research and we need to do it in the desert.”
That last comment surprised her, “The desert?”
Lance continued, “Yes. The final button to shut the system down if it gets away from us is a small EMP device. I don’t think we want to fire off an EMP near anything else we want, do we?” Bethany Anne just agreed that would be a monumentally bad idea. “If we make the location near Vegas, all of the needed personnel already live and work there.”
“What about security?”
“I’m going to tap into my contacts and find out how many guys I might know who are out or maybe ready to get out. The military will be ok with this as they are drawing down right now anyway. So, depending on the P&B’s…”
Ecaterina leaned forward, “Excuse me General, the P&B’s?”
Lance looked over at her, “Sorry, Pay and Benefits.”
<
br /> Bethany Anne pointed to Dan, “If it is civilian, that’s your camp Dad. If it’s military, talk with Dan. He has the general numbers already. Although, I don’t want to pay top dollar for someone guarding a bunch of sand.”
“I think we are paying for them to be able to keep their mouth’s shut. We won’t be really telling them what we are doing, that will stay with a very small group. If we don’t find a place that fits what we need, we will be building something quick and disposable.”
“What happens when you turn on the switch?”
Nathan spoke up, “Ah, well that is where you come in.”
Bethany Anne squinted, “Why am I having anything to do with turning on the switch? I don’t know shit about programming, trust me.”
Nathan snorted, “Thank god you don’t know programming. Some of us normal mortals… Ok, semi-normal mortals have a need to be better than you in something.”
Bethany Anne retorted, “Don’t be a hater.”
Nathan continued, “Seriously, if this goes right, this could save us years of effort.”
Bethany Anne opened her mouth only to shut it quickly. Then she looked back and forth between the two of them. Now she had figured out why they were working together on this. “Holy crap! You asses want to use the AI for offensive and defensive efforts on the Internet, don’t you?” She continued to watch both of their faces carefully.
Nathan hung his head and Lance smiled. Nathan reached around to pull out his wallet and pulled a hundred dollar bill and handed it to Lance.
Lance folded the bill and stuck it in his pocket, “Yes. Our ability to know what is going on would rival nation-states at that point. What we would be able to do…”
Frank came back into the room and interrupted. “Bethany Anne, we have a problem.” She turned around and everyone looked back at Frank. “We have two major Nosferatu outbreaks in Costa Rica and my research programs are recording a lot of inquiries into your old records. Not just any inquiries, these inquiries are coming from members of congress related to Michael’s holdings.”
“What the hell? Why is that?” Frank shrugged.
Lance thought about that, “Well, shit. This might also be from Patriarch Research. They did some research for financial companies and he had mentioned that they found some unknown financial super-powers which they had delivered the info back to the financial companies who passed it on to the government.”
Bethany Anne turned back around to her dad, “So, one of my own companies just shot me in the foot? How fucked up can that be?”
“Well, to be fair, this happened before you were turned, so it wasn’t really your company at the time.”
She leaned back in her chair, “I swear…”
John muttered back behind her, “Every damn day.”
She raised her right hand and shot him the finger. They all laughed at that. Frank walked back around to his chair.
“Ok, Dad you will have to jump on the plane and figure that shit out. I shouldn’t go to Washington D.C. and get stuck in some meetings. Some of those bastards still have a hard-on for me from my time taking some of those dick-less wonders down. Those I hurt also have lot’s of friends who are nursing a serous attitude as well.” She turned to Frank, “Now explain why I need to worry about Nosferatu in Costa Rica? I can only presume it is warfare for the power vacuum of Clarita’s position?”
“Yes. Basically, the younger, more brash and infinitely more stupid create these Nosferatu to help them take over their opponents. Then, one will get killed and his Nosferatu soldiers are without a command structure and start randomly attacking humans. The Forsaken ignore these issues until someone is crowned the victor. Michael’s family has always been the one to keep the leaderless Nosferatu in check while the political fighting continues. So, we are it.”
Bethany Anne just shook her head, “Fuck my life. If I could stab that bitch one more time, I would. She is screwing up my life even after she is dead. This is un-fucking-believable.” She thought about the situation for a while at vampire speed, to the rest of the group she might have thought about it for three seconds. “Ok John, change of plans. If we assume Gabrielle will be with us, that is a total of six bloodied members. If it gets too bad in San Jose, we need a plan to get the Wechselbalg brought down to help quickly. Hopefully we won’t get any of them killed. Todd?”
“Yes?”
“You are going to need to beef up your teams on the two ships or have a plan if we are going to be off of the ships for an extended amount of time. We better have permission to fly in Shelly across their fucking land or they can kiss my ass. I’m not doing this shit at night and I refuse to stay off these two ships too long and leave most of our fighters unavailable if we get attacked here. Dad, I need you and Frank to jump back on the Gulfstream and represent our interests back in the capital. Nathan?”
“Yes?”
“Can you get some of this shit started with Patriarch Research long distance, or do they need you? I would prefer your fighting skills here. You too, Ecaterina.” Nathan looked a little disturbed, he wasn’t accustomed to someone he loved jumping into danger. However; he knew not to say one damn word or he would be up shit creek with a hole blown in his canoe by Ecaterina herself. “In fact, Ecaterina I want you to head up a sniper group. Find out if we have anyone else on these ships with good shooting skills and get them ready. With TOM’s ship here, we can craft some special bullets to affect the nanocytes. It won’t be exactly shooting fish in the barrel, but I want to make it as close as we can. This isn’t our battle, exactly. We are here to protect the humans, if a Forsaken gets in my way, they will be terminated with extreme prejudice, is this understood?” Everyone agreed.
“Good, maybe we will get a shot at Anton. If Frank doesn’t have too much info on him, then that bastard is too sneaky by half for my liking. By the way, Frank. Work with Eric on what we think Anton did to come over here on a German U-Boat. Maybe you can track him that way. You know he has to have connections in as many of the governments as possible. He isn’t a day walker, so our guy won’t ever be seen during the day. Let’s speed up our conversation with Clarita’s children. If we get rid of Anton, we might need their asses back over here quickly to take control. Anyone we find who follows the Forsaken beliefs will be terminated. Ok, what have I forgotten?”
“What about the AI?” Nathan didn’t look like he was pushing the subject, just trying to close the decision loop.
“It’s a go. I’m not sure what you expect me to do, but I’m up for it. The risk is worth the rewards so long as we can shut it down if we get Lucifer instead of Adam, understood?” Nathan agreed. “Then tell them their first budget is thirty million in five million increments. We agree to to each five million before we move forward with the next step. Make sure Adam isn’t stuck out in the fucking desert if it works. That’s all I need, our ace-in-the-hole to be stuck in bum-fuck Nevada because we couldn’t move it.”
Nathan hadn’t really thought about that issue, but it was a good one. “It’s a shame we don’t have quantum computers.”
“Do I even want to know what that is?”
Nathan smiled, “Just a really small but exponentially powerful computer.”
Um, Bethany Anne?
What is it, TOM? A little busy now.
We have a quantum computer.
We do? Fucking Fantastic! Can we pull it from the ship?
Yes, we could if it was still ON the ship.
What are you talking about… Oh fuck me double time. This one in my head is a quantum computer?
Yes, it is our third generation version. However; we never made the effort to put an AI in these computers.
Is this computer something we can duplicate ourselves?
Not without understanding the Etheric.
So, not anything in the next six months, right?
Well, probably not.
What would make it possible?
TOM paused a second, finally he admitted the answer. A strong AI.
&n
bsp; Bethany Anne mentally sighed, Of course that’s the answer, because anything else would be too fucking easy.
They wrapped up their conversations and everyone split to the their most important tasks. Their little vacation from nosferatu fighting was officially over.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Frankfurt, Germany
Ivan didn’t have a clue how he should be acting. While he had never been to Frankfurt, with the maps on his phone he could see where they were going. However; he was clueless on how he should respond to the Wechselbalg contact they would be meeting. Stephen had woken him up early this morning and they had hidden some of their personal effects behind the wall.
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