by Sam Maggs
“I came to see you, actually.” Nadia laughed. Usually people had to interrupt her. Maybe she and Margaret really were similar. Did they both get that from Hank? “Janet bought me a VERA for my name day and it is already changing my life. But the AI is so impressive and you are so impressive and really, I was in the neighborhood eating soup dumplings, so I thought—”
“VERA,” Margaret said around Nadia’s head. “Am I clear right now?”
“You have four different meetings right now,” VERA responded steadily. “A stand-up with Core, the scoping discussion, lunch with Karyn’s team, and the funding—”
“Right, right, right.” Margaret nodded. “Nadia, show VERA your ID. How would you like a personalized tour of HoffTech HQ?”
Nadia already had her learner’s permit halfway out of its holster on her cell phone. See? she thought. Sometimes things really do just work out!
“So, we have one studio here and the other is out in the Bay area,” Margaret told Nadia as they wandered the HoffTech halls. Nadia had consented to a facial ID scan by the VERA at the front desk and signed rights to her firstborn child away should she violate the extremely stringent NDA she’d just committed to, but she understood how careful companies had to be about their proprietary tech. VERA was HoffTech’s lifeblood; if someone were to walk away with her secrets, it would destroy the company from the inside out. “San Francisco is fine, but I always wanted to come back and open a campus in New York. I’m too type-A for the West Coast. We don’t jibe.”
Nadia bobbed her head in understanding while craning her neck left and right, trying to take everything in. The office décor matched the lobby: plants everywhere, white-and-birch standing desks, floor-to-ceiling glass windows to let as much natural light in as possible. Like a greenhouse for computer scientists, Nadia thought. You can’t know a person through their things, but if Nadia had to try, she would say that Margaret’s office made her look focused and driven and goal-oriented.
“This is Programming.…” Margaret waved at a group of fashionable cubicles staffed by more people in ponytails, jeans, and hoodies. “And this is Core; they develop the toolset we use to design VERA. Her actual servers are down a floor, sealed and temperature-controlled. Those are the writers.” She waved into a dismal corner with all the blinds pulled down over the windows. “They don’t talk much, but they have a lot to say,” Margaret whispered to Nadia conspiratorially. Nadia laughed, the sound echoing across the quiet space.
Margaret tugged Nadia into a glass-enclosed office and settled into one of the gold-and-acrylic chairs surrounding the wooden table at its center. She gestured for Nadia to grab a spot, too. The massive flat-screen TV at one end of the table was on, a screen full of code visible with a bright red section—an error, a bug in the code that someone must have been working on. Nadia was so in awe of this place that Margaret had managed to build so quickly, and all on her own. She had a vision, and she’d executed it.
While Margaret fiddled with the VERA in the center of the table, Nadia indulged herself in a brief fantasy: G.I.R.L., completely and carefully redesigned in tasteful shades of gold and white and wood. The plants would be easy; Priya could handle that no problem. Taina probably wouldn’t want them in her space, but Nadia could deal with that issue when it came up.…
“Here, I’ll give you the spiel,” Margaret said, bringing Nadia back to reality. The VERA cascaded in all its pixelated glory, and Margaret started what sounded like a talk she’d given hundreds if not thousands of times before, her tenor only betraying her slightly. “HoffTech is at the intersection of people and technology, a company designed around the core concept that we all deserve to—”
“‘Do less, and experience more!’” Nadia interrupted, enthusiastically.
Margaret laughed, so easy and infectious that it made Nadia laugh in turn. “Okay, so you’ve heard the spiel.”
“I have,” Nadia admitted. “It’s why I’m here.”
Margaret leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest, focusing the full weight of her stare on Nadia with a smile. “Then I want to hear your story, Nadia Van Dyne. What do you do? How is Pym Labs these days? What are you excited about?”
There was a question she hadn’t been expecting. Nadia shrugged and looked away from Margaret’s gaze. Nadia was a big talker—she loved to talk with and about other people—but she didn’t always love being put on the spot or being asked to talk about herself or her passion projects. That was more Janet’s and Alexis’s territory. And, while she had a lot on her plate lately, she didn’t know if she was necessarily excited about any of it. Or any one thing more than the rest. Mostly, she was just stressed.
There was also the fact that when Nadia did talk about herself, with anyone who wasn’t Dr. Sinclair, the Red Room often inevitably came up. Which led to pity. Something about relaying the origin story for her love of science made Nadia self-conscious. These days, she tiptoed around that part carefully with strangers.
“Well,” Nadia started, a little awkwardly. “I run Genius In action Research Labs, an all-girl division of Pym Laboratories meant to incubate the best and brightest talent New York City has to offer. But,” she added, speeding up, “it’s about resources and problem solving and teamwork and so. Much. Science.
“I want to take G.I.R.L. statewide, and then worldwide,” Nadia said. “And we’re currently working on a project for Stark Industries’ Like Minds think tank, focused on local environmental sustainability, but every idea I come up with is…”
“Also worldwide?” Margaret guessed.
“Yes!” Nadia leaned forward in her vaguely uncomfortable but very stylish plastic chair. “Exactly.”
“G.I.R.L. sounds like an incredible undertaking.” Margaret tapped her foot against her chair leg absentmindedly. “I wish there had been something like that at Pym Labs while I was there. I’m sure you’re changing lives.”
“Not like you.” Nadia shook her head. “You’re changing people’s lives all over the world.”
“Sure.” Margaret shrugged. “Now. But VERA started in my parents’ basement when I was fourteen. We all start somewhere. And you’re going somewhere, Nadia. I can tell.”
Nadia sucked in her bottom lip. She hoped so. So, so much.
“I’m so glad you came by to find me,” Margaret said, leaning over the table to grab the VERA. “I’d love to talk about ways HoffTech and G.I.R.L. could partner—”
The VERA sprang to life, surprising even Margaret. “Your three o’clock is early, Ms. Hoff.”
“Rats,” Margaret muttered. “Nadia, can you wait in here for a few minutes? I have to handle this guy or else he gets—”
“I know how that is,” Nadia said. “I’ll be here.”
“Thank you so much, I’ll just be two seconds.…” Margaret’s voice trailed behind her as she rushed out of the glass office.
Nadia sat back in her squeaky clear chair and looked up at the screen in front of her.
At all that red.
NADIA’S NEAT SCIENCE FACTS!!!
Computers run programs based on instructions called code. If there is an error in that code—or a “bug”—the program will still run, but it will output an incorrect or unexpected result.
So, here. Pretend your dog could make you breakfast as long as you gave it instructions on how exactly to do this task. And I mean exactly. Something like: “Open cupboard door. Get cereal box. Open cereal box. Retrieve bowl. Pour cereal into bowl until half-full. Open refrigerator. Retrieve milk. Open milk carton. Pour milk into bowl until full.” But imagine you accidentally wrote “water” instead of “milk.” Your dog would still make you breakfast, but it would be pretty gross. That would be your fault, though—human error—and not your dog’s. That’s the equivalent of a coding bug. Human error.
In a computer, even a tiny bug can have epic consequences. Take, for example, July 22, 1962. NASA launched a rocket, Mariner 1, that was supposed to head for Venus. I say “supposed to” because five minu
tes into the flight, Mariner 1 veered off course and—kablooey. It had to be destroyed before it accidentally crash-landed on a city. Eighteen million 1962 dollars down the drain—that’s over a hundred and fifty million in today’s dollars. You would assume it would have to be a pretty big mistake to cause something that terrible, right? Actually, it was ridiculously small: In the thousands of lines of code controlling the rocket, a programmer had forgotten to add a dash to one single equation.
Kablooey.
Enter AI. These machines that are capable of self-learning can also, when coded correctly, become capable of fixing their own code. Just like I can go online to search for “best bagel in Cresskill, NJ” or “how to create a three-story Teleforce,” AIs can go online to compare their own code to code that is designed to perform similar functions. These open-source repositories, like GitHub, are places where programmers make their own code available online for free (it’s “open” for anyone to use—even other computers!). If the AI thinks that code is superior to their own, they can use it to replace pieces of their own code—including code that might include bugs.
Of course, that only works if the AI’s programmers are aware of the latest updates in automatic bug repair.
And luckily for HoffTech, I am.
“Nadia, I am so sorry,” Margaret said, hustling back into the room not fifteen minutes after she’d left. “I have a little more time—Oh!”
Margaret took in the scene in front of her. Nadia had her feet up on the birch table, tilted back precariously in her acrylic chair. She had the VERA on her lap projecting a keyboard into the air that Nadia was manipulating with ease. Margaret glanced at the TV. The code that had previously been bright red—illegal output—was now blue. Clean and functional.
Nadia glanced up at Margaret, shaken out of her coding reverie. “Oh! I’m—” She dropped VERA back onto the table hastily, the keyboard vanishing. “It was staring at me. But I fixed it!”
Margaret sat back down across from her, all business. “I know. How?”
“It’s called CodePhage,” Nadia said. “It’s from MIT—”
“You told VERA to fix VERA for you.” Margaret shook her head. She looked delighted. “We didn’t have access to that program.”
“I mean, I don’t, either,” said Nadia, slyly. “But…”
“But.” Margaret winked at her in understanding. “Amazing work. Thank you.”
“Well, it helped me pass the time.”
“Right, I abandoned you cruelly,” Margaret said dramatically, still smiling. “Maybe this will make up for it. I want to help with your Like Minds project.”
“Really?!” Nadia tipped her chair forward, landing back on all fours with a thud. “Really?”
“Really.” Margaret nodded. “I think there’s a lot we could do together. Hank’s legacy. You know?”
Nadia had never thought of herself as Hank’s anything. Not even daughter. Not really. She rejected that label on purpose, after all the time the Red Room spent making her think that her connection to Hank was her only real value. Nadia was more Janet’s. Or her own, really. But she wasn’t going to dash Margaret’s dreams; not when she was so close to recruiting another member of G.I.R.L. And one so important, too! The lab had been so empty lately. Nadia allowed herself a brief moment to imagine what it would be like to walk into G.I.R.L. and find Margaret waiting for her with a project. It was a dream.
Plus, Margaret might finally be able to help Nadia implement one of her grander-scale ideas for Like Minds. Bobbi and Janet had been so insistent that Nadia stick to the parameters of Stark’s brief: local projects only. The rules were there for a reason, they kept saying.
But Nadia’s whole thing was rule-breaking. For good. She had always been that way. “Chaotic good,” as Shay would say.
Nadia made friends with her spy sisters; she purchased Pym Particles on the black market; she escaped from the Krasnaya Komnata in the dead of night; she was disrupting S.H.I.E.L.D.’s One Hundred Smartest People in the World list. She even broke the rules of physics! Rule-breaking, like liking things, was Nadia’s thing!
If Janet and Bobbi couldn’t understand that…maybe Margaret could.
“Listen, Nadia.” Margaret reached across the table and took one of Nadia’s hands. “I don’t know you that well, but I can tell you this. Everyone assumed I was some silly little rich girl who wasn’t good for anything more than marrying someone richer than my father. No one believed in me but me. I had to make everything—all of this—happen for myself. And I could only get here by knowing that my mission was worthy.” Margaret squeezed Nadia’s hand. “I don’t know what you’re using VERA for. But I know that G.I.R.L. is a worthy cause. And I know that you need to believe in yourself to make it a success. Okay?”
Nadia stared into Margaret’s clear eyes, and made a decision. More than anything, Nadia wanted someone to understand that she was more than just her projects and G.I.R.L. and Like Minds and the rest of it. She was finding a new part of herself through Maria’s journal, and Taina couldn’t understand that. Or, at least, she wouldn’t. But Margaret had a way of making Nadia feel like they were on the same page. Like she understood how Nadia’s mind worked better than most of the people she’d ever met.
“My mother—Hank’s first wife, Maria—she died before I could know her,” Nadia said. Margaret just held her hand, and listened. “I found her journal. She had a list of things she wanted to do with her future child one day—with me.”
Nadia hadn’t said it out loud before. Not quite like that. She was surprised at how it felt, how solidly it hit her that she was thought of. Considered. Loved. There was a time when she wasn’t alone, wasn’t an orphan. When she was a daughter, loved by her mother, who had plans to fill her life with beauty and color and joy and food.
“I have G.I.R.L. and I have Like Minds and I’m trying to learn to drive and one of my friends can talk to plants and the others are dating and I’ve never even been to high school—” Nadia took a deep breath. “But all I want to do is get through this list. And VERA’s already helping me with that. And that’s why I wanted to come meet you. And to…I don’t know.” Nadia faltered. “Say thank you, I suppose.”
Margaret squeezed Nadia’s hand again before letting go, and gave her a genuine smile. Not one of pity, like most people who learned that Nadia had never known her parents. But one of empathy and understanding.
“VERA,” Margaret said to the brick on the table. “Access Nadia’s VERA…with her permission, of course.”
“Granted,” confirmed Nadia.
VERA materialized an image of the full list of items on Maria’s to-do list. Margaret scanned the list while she talked.
“A secret in return,” Margaret said quietly, still reading the list. “I didn’t get an offer after my internship. Other people did—all the men in my cohort did, actually. Three of them. Cody, Ben, and Ryan.” Nadia could hear the venom in her voice, and she felt it in her bones. “When I didn’t get that offer, I swore to myself that I would make my own company, and that it would be twice as successful and twice as beneficial to the world as anything they did. I would prove to Hank Pym that I had it in me, even though he didn’t believe in me.” Margaret looked at Nadia. “And now I’m here.”
Nadia matched her gaze. “As someone who has spent her entire life escaping the shadow of Hank Pym,” she said softly, “I understand.”
Margaret held her eyes for a second and nodded. She flicked back to the list and spun VERA around, so the words were facing Nadia. She pointed in the air toward a bullet. “This one.”
“‘Watch the stars,’” Nadia read aloud.
Margaret jumped up and zipped around the table, pulling Nadia out of her seat. “C’mere. I’ve got something to show you.”
“Isn’t it amazing?” Margaret said, lying next to Nadia.
“It really is,” Nadia agreed, her hands behind her head.
The two looked up at the night sky above them in the middle of the day. Margaret ha
d rushed them up a flight of stairs, and then another, and then another (she was in surprisingly good shape for someone who probably spent a lot of time behind a computer screen), until they’d arrived on the building’s roof.
Or what would have been the roof, had it not been replaced with a massive domed planetarium.
“We don’t do a lot of the standard tech-bro garbage,” Margaret explained as the heavens rotated above the two scientists. “No foosball tables and no Ultimate Frisbee League, or whatever. But my favorite place in the world is this cabin my grandpa had way up in the Rockies, and all you can see is sky forever and ever. I used to go there as a kid, and it was the most sacred place I knew. There’s something so reaffirming about seeing the night sky.…” She paused. “I think it’s supposed to make you feel small and insignificant, but it just makes me feel like…whatever made the stars made us, and we should do something meaningful with that.”
Margaret rolled onto her side and smiled conspiratorially at Nadia. “And there’s so much light pollution in New York it’s impossible to see anything good at night. So, my one tech-bro indulgence. Can you blame me?”
Still staring straight up, Nadia shook her head. She had never visited a planetarium, ever. She knew there was one at the American Museum of Natural History in Central Park, but who really had time to go and do things like that? She was busy. She had lists to check off.
It was only as Nadia lay there on her back in the darkened dome that she realized this moment—moments like this—might actually help her to feel prepared enough to check off more of those list items in the future. There was something about doing this with Margaret that made it feel different; special, even. Sure, she’d been watching Star Wars with Ying, but the other items, the bigger ones, Nadia had been completing them alone. She hadn’t wanted to talk to many people about what was going on. Something about it felt too personal to share. And she hadn’t wanted Janet to hear about it secondhand, in case it hurt her feelings. She hadn’t even been able to share her mother’s goals with her own stepmother.