After On

by Rob Reid

  “Who do you think he thinks the puppeteer is?”

  Mitchell knows what Kuba thinks. And he probably thinks the same thing himself by now. But he wants to talk it through. “Well, a couple nights ago, I was pretty sure it was the Authority. But we have to rule that out now.”

  “Because?”

  “Because the puppeteer’s been taking the Authority’s people out. Beasley and Jepson both worked for them.”

  Tarek nods. “And what did you think pointed most strongly at the Authority before that?”

  “Well, the threatening notes we got right after the bombing seemed to come from them. But those could’ve been faked. So Commissioner Milford getting taken down right after threatening an Authority project was a stronger signal.”

  “In other words, the puppeteer is anti-Milford and anti-Authority. So who’s against the Authority these days?”

  “Jaysh al Hisaab, for one,” Mitchell says. This obviously isn’t the culprit (among countless other things, why would they give a damn about Commissioner Milford?). But he wants to hear Tarek’s (which is to say, Kuba’s) logic.

  Tarek shrugs skeptically. “I guess. But like one of the pundits said, Jaysh is basically ten slick videos and some how-to manuals. If they have any central organization at all, it’s out in the wilds of Chad, or something. They may not even know the Authority exists. Most people don’t.”

  On to the next straw man. “Then, of course, there’s China.”

  Tarek shakes his head impatiently. “Except we just agreed that they’re looking like marionettes themselves! No way is it China. But it is someone else who’s anti-Authority. So—what does the Authority want to wipe from the face of the Earth, in addition to Jaysh al Hisaab?”

  Mitchell knows exactly where this is going. He’s not sure he wants to go there, but there’s not much choice. “Any super AI not being developed at Sandia,” he answers.

  “Riiiiiiight. And where did the intercepted Authority memos say that might develop? Other than China?”

  “Silicon Valley.”

  “Right again. And who was the leading voice against any super AI anywhere?”

  “Beasley.”

  “You got it. And who was also in charge of destroying nascent super AIs outside of Sandia?”

  “Beasley again.”

  “Uh-huh. And what did Commissioner Milford want to shut down?”

  Mitchell braces himself, then says it. “Phluttr.”

  “Right! Oh—and who, or what, got you laid?”

  “Phluttr.”

  “And who cured you?”

  Mitchell’s briefly mute. And feels not just dumb, but stupid. In the lunacy of the past forty-eight hours, he hadn’t thought of this.

  Tarek continues. “Whoever made that probiotic is really smart. And isn’t your doctor.”

  “It was Phluttr!”

  Tarek nods. “Kuba’s phrase for what’s enabling a lot of this is ‘social omniscience.’ It starts with total knowledge of every digital message sent or archived anywhere in the world. That’s coupled with an incredible predictive sense for what a given person will do in response to a given bit of information.”

  “That’s terrifying.”

  “It is and isn’t. I mean, is it really much different from Susan Marion?”

  Mitchell draws a momentary blank. Then, “Ohhh, her?” Susan was basically the Saddam Hussein of their middle school. And she’s a weirdly apt analogy. “Good point! But—how do you know about Susan Marion?”

  Tarek rolls his eyes. “I don’t. Kuba just told me that she’d be an interesting metaphor to you.” As he says these words, he grabs Mitchell’s hand under the table and firmly presses a small square of paper into it. Instincts honed over thirteen years of public school note-passing kick in, and Mitchell clasps it without betraying any hint of the handoff. He maneuvers it into his front pocket with similar deftness—and, with agonizing care. Normally you’re hiding this sort of contraband from a teacher with a lone set of eyes. But they’re up against a super AI. And according to a certain canon of movies and page-turners (which is all they have to go on), such a being could tap any digital eyeball on Earth—which would include every smartphone in this room.

  “And here’s a great quote Kuba pulled from one of Monika’s old columns,” Tarek continues fluidly, the NetGrrrl logo flashing on his phone screen: “She’s the most popular, gorgeous, and ruthless kid in our eighth-grade class: a gossipy autocrat whose approval we crave, whose censure we dread, and whose wrath we occasionally bring down for no discernible reason. She knows everything about everyone, ourselves absolutely, and often very eerily included.”

  “That sure was Susan Marion.”

  “I’ll take your and Kuba’s word for it,” Tarek says. “And it sure is Phluttr.” That’s when Mitchell’s phone rings. Spying the caller ID screen, he hammers his hand down to it with such cobra-like violence that Tarek jumps backward. “What the hell?” he asks.

  Fixing him with the steadiest gaze he can muster, Mitchell says, “It’s Jepson.”

  Mitchell: Writing this en route from visiting Kuba in jail (!) to meet w/ you. If you’re reading this, it means you’ve accepted the viewpoint that Phluttr is likely behind all this, and hopefully you have the sense to HIDE THIS NOTE from any smartphone, security cam, laptop camera, etc.!! I will (and YOU SHOULD) act neutral-to-positive about Phluttr whenever in range of any/all devices. But make no mistake. SHE HAS KILLED TWICE THAT WE KNOW OF & has unknown capacities that we MUST assume are VAST. God knows if her plan is to snuff humanity but even if it’s sub 1% odds (and it’s MORE than that) we must do all possible to SHUT HER OFF. Her core = no doubt Ax’s quantum node. TURN THAT SHIT OFF if you can! Will try to do same.

  There’s immediate explosive pressure to cough up the suspect in the Beasley hit. But those Washington turds can suck it! At least for a while, right? Because when your clearance rate’s as low as the SFPD’s, you don’t need someone else taking credit—again—for a rare lightning-fast bust! You’ve had a rough few years, after all. There was the daylight murder of that yuppie gal by the seven-time felon who you’d freed over Homeland Security’s objections (because he was an illegal immigrant, and this here’s a sanctuary city!). There was the so-called “racist” texting scandal (which was just banter—between fourteen officers, max!). There was the quadruple homicide on that busy street, which produced not a single arrest (because…because!).

  Then after all of that, imagine you somehow luck into a gold mine of anonymous tips! And you parlay that into the fastest terrorism investigation in history! And then you have to stand back as a bunch of fedtards steal the limelight and take full credit! And now, a couple days later, imagine the tip font hands you some case-cracking evidence on a minutes-old drive-by shooting! And then those very same fedtards crawl up your ass demanding control of your Polish drive-by suspect!

  Of course you’re not going to violate any laws. And of course you’re gonna respect federal prerogatives! But first, certain procedures must be followed. Certain motions filed! Certain requests made—and once made, reviewed! Sure, you could fast-track all that into nothingness—again. But where’d that get you last time? Forty feet to the left of the fucking podium—that’s where! And the only “journalists” left after the feds said their bit and CNN took off were some local bloggers with follow-up questions about that ancient texting scandal! Eeeeeeezh! So yeah, what say we show our Pollack suspect—our suspect!—some due process here? What say we make those pushy fedtards cool their heels for a day or four, and respect the goddam process? They’ll get their hands on the guy in good time. But meanwhile, it’s our arrest, our story, and our time frame!

  That’s how the cops see things, anyway. As for the Authority? Well, fine; they’re terribly sorry the FBI and others were such prima donnas toward the SFPD throughout the Ebola bombing. But when your own very existence is a secret, there’s no choice but to work through those public-facing assclowns. So again, apologies and all. But get over it, becaus
e this shit is serious! It could lead to World War III! And while the Polish kid’s probably laughably innocent, he’s got some kind of connection to the insane crap that’s radiating out of San Francisco—so we want to interrogate his ass now!

  In normal times, the Authority would gin up the bureaucratic equivalent of siege towers and a battering ram, and have Kuba in Gitmo (and the SFPD brass begging to get their pensions back) by sundown. But these are not normal times. So they only muster a token effort. The main body of the China crisis (the part involving scrambling nukes, if you’re curious) is taking up a bit too much Authority mindshare (every neuron in every skull that isn’t tasked to bodily functions, since you asked). And on that front, things went from awful to wayyyyy-the-hell worse the instant that WhistleBlowings post went up.

  Not that the world at large particularly noticed (ordinarily it might, except a new Kardashian pregnancy has seized the headlines). But every hawk, demagogue, and populist on the Hill is screaming bloody murder! Half of Congress is demanding an octupling of funding for Sandia’s TYSON project (despite not knowing what superintelligence is). A dozen senators are baying about “standing firm” against foreign aggression. And some crackpot in the House wants the Chinese premier indicted for Beasley’s murder (oh—and the IRS, Treasury, and Fed dissolved, and “open carry” allowed in airports and on commercial planes). Bottom line: a thousand government blowhards are now grabbing a wheel that is plenty hard to steer in normal times, with just a tiny group of statesmen*1 manning*2 the bridge.

  Meanwhile, the burning mystery as to why Beasley (Beasley!) got offed remains unsolved. The documents leaked on WhistleBlowings look like authentic memoranda from the pinnacle of Chinese intelligence. Assuming they’re real, Beijing somehow talked itself into thinking that Beasley (Beasley!) is the linchpin to America’s super AI program. Since even the WhistleBlowtards were too smart for that theory, who could’ve possibly sold it to Chinese Intelligence, who’re some of the smartest folks around?! The Authority has its theories. But none involve a borderline omniscience who’s pulling everyone’s strings behind the scenes! Utterly baffled, a top Authority commandant asks a colleague, “Our Chinese counterparts are brilliant—but somehow, somebody just made them look dumber than a blog! How must that feel?”

  The answer—translating loosely from the Mandarin—is REEEEEALLY FUCKIN’ BAD, ASSHOLE!!! Because it turns out that on China’s side, things actually went down within a rounding error of the scenario Kuba painted for Tarek and Tarek passed on to Mitchell. Yes, Beijing’s spymasters got a set of astoundingly accurate tips from a freakishly informed source. It included the exposure of two American spies, plus some highly sensitive US secrets, which clearly rules out a pro-American source. It also included an immaculately packaged fiction that put Beasley at the head of America’s super AI program. Which (China was ingeniously misled to believe) was just days from crossing the Omega Point! This alarms China’s leaders in precisely the ways that similar news about a Chinese AI would alarm American honchos. They love their country; they dread the dangers of a rogue superintelligence; and given the choice, they’d take a domestic creation over a foreign one.

  The stunning accuracy of the intelligence trove and its betrayal of American interests allowed precisely two possibilities: either it was authentic and furnished by someone opposing US interests. Or Washington was randomly setting up one of its own spies to be killed by China—and spilling major national secrets to trigger that! No sane motive could be imagined for such a mad act. And so, for all its risks, the Beasley assassination was correctly viewed as a highly rational option.

  And yet! It’s now blazingly clear to China’s leadership that they were duped! Into killing Beasley! And this can’t be part of a bizarre hidden coup d’état or other power play within the US government because it’s now clear that Beasley was a relative nobody! And so, the sole remaining possibility is that Washington engineered this whole depraved chain of events for one meticulously engineered purpose: making China look stupid. Not to the world at large (the Kardashian pregnancy, again). But, to the tiny community of global insiders who actually matter!

  Luckily, the leadership of China’s equivalent of the Authority is highly competent and unexcitable. But unluckily, that matters only while they have full jurisdiction over things. Which is to say, it ceases to matter after WhistleBlowings’ mocking analysis is picked up, plagiarized, amplified, then ricocheted throughout the worldwide elite commentariat. China’s equivalent of a baying Capitol Hill mob then storms its own bridge to shove its numberless hands onto the wheel. Being hereditary aristocrats like most communist leaders, they’re no more concerned about mass opinion than Henry VIII was in his day. But make them look stupid in front of their frenemies at Davos, Necker, and the Clinton Global Initiative, and shit gets real!

  So more jets scramble. Indignant spotters on the other side take note, then scramble more of their own jets in response. And so on.

  Of course it isn’t Jepson calling Mitchell. Jepson’s dead, see? It’s his assistant, Cindy, whose outbound calls fly the CEO’s colors, thereby floating past velvet ropes like a Hoboken clubber who looks juuuuust like Bruno Mars. When Mitchell answers, she divulges nothing but rather requests—nay, demands!—that he get his ass back to the office now. Somehow she slides this imperious command into an oddly deferential wrapper (a trick common to the assistants of top-ranked execs, in Mitchell’s limited experience).

  Cindy’s anxiously awaiting Mitchell when he arrives at the main lobby (which is plenty weird), and instantly sweeps him toward a large conference room in the sweet-yet-vehement manner he remembers her using to jolly Jepson around when he was running late and dragging his feet. “D’you know Steven Conrad?” she asks, speed-walking him toward a cavernous glass room that contains an unusually aged and formal-looking gent for a tech meeting. “Chairman of the board,” she says, not waiting for a reply, “and we all call him ‘Conrad.’ Way back, he led the A-round for Jepson’s first company, then later put early money into Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Uber; and these days he’s friends with Andreessen and that crowd. He was just a small player in Phluttr’s B-round, but because of his relationships, Jepson really wanted him on the board; then later, he asked him to become chairman, because of their shared history, and a couple other facts we can discuss later.”

  Cindy always speaks in the bright, easy tones of a friendly neighbor swapping gossip, but can cram more data into a single sentence than anyone Mitchell knows (apart from some other high-octane assistants, come to think of it). “Conrad’s got you for twenty-two minutes,” she continues. “Then you have four press calls—ten minutes each, and I put the Journal last so you can warm up on the others—then thirty minutes with Stacy in Legal, to discuss three board-level governance issues. And then it’s Pitch Day! Which I know is so weird, given the circumstances, but it’s been rescheduled twice.” She ingeniously times her last syllable to land just as she flings open Conrad’s door, leaving not an instant for questions (which may have included “huh?,” “wtf,” and “why is the company’s chairman meeting with me, the Wall Street Journal interviewing me, and the company’s general counsel—whom I have yet to meet, incidentally—discussing some of the company’s most sensitive issues with a lowly recent acquihiree like me?”).

  Conrad rises as Mitchell enters. Past sixty and patrician, his blazer, sockless boat shoes, checked shirt, and khakis suggest mint juleps in Charleston rather than a tech powwow discussing…what? “So there’s m’man, in the flesh!” Conrad drawls these chummy words with an affable Southern lilt—and a teeth-grinding undertone that says he’d’a sure done preferred it if Mitchell coulda gone and got hisself clubbed to death like that thar Jepson feller. “Funny. Y’don’t look like Attila the Hun.”

  “Huh?”

  “Not ‘huh,’ I said Hun. He’s this historic…never mind.” Conrad takes a seat without shaking Mitchell’s outstretched hand. “Well, I do s’pose that congratulations are in order, young man. The bo
ard vote was youuuuu-nanimous! So you got yerself a CEO job! I’m not quite sure how you pulled that’n off. But I s’pose I can guess. In light of our own little…correspondence.”

  “Our…what?”

  “Oh, right. Riiiiight!” Conrad says, dripping contempt, sarcasm, and…something else. “That wasn’t you emailin and textin me. That was Mister X! I plumb forgot. Deee-ni-ability, right?” Conrad emits a chuckle that’s a full octave above his speaking tone, and Mitchell decrypts the something else in his voice. Steven Conrad, Valley legend and hypernetworked gazillionaire, is scared to death. Of him. Of Mitchell Prentice! “There’s just one little issue I’m curious about, Mitchell. It’s this: do you really think ‘Gray Oak’ is gonna take at all kindly to this?”

  Conrad air-quotes “Gray Oak,” and Mitchell’s briefly thrown. The name’s wildly familiar, but he can’t place it, because—ah, yes. Gray Oak is the shell company the Authority used to invest in Phluttr. Mitchell now knows so many actual facts about Phluttr’s Authority’s entanglements that he plumb forgot about window dressing like Gray Oak.

  Conrad doesn’t wait for an answer. “Because—call me paranoid, Mitchell, but here’s what I’m thinkin. I’m thinkin Gray Oak’s gonna see its two board members—not one, mind you, but two!—murdered within twenty-four hours of each other, and— Oh…Oh, wait…Did that dis-comfit you? The M-word, I mean? Well, let’s try that again. A bit less…stentorian, this time.” He clears his throat. “I said, Gray Oak’s gonna see its two board members”—now he whispers, barely audibly—“murdered”—then, back to normal, “and then they’re gonna see this awfully curious youuuuu-nanimous vote elevatin you to the CEO post just hours later! In the absence of any input, vote, or by-your-leave from them! ’Cause again, their representatives have been—” He makes a silent but violent hacking motion at his throat. “And I reckon they’re gonna say…” Conrad assumes a remarkably good facsimile of Rodin’s Thinker pose. “Huuunnnhhh…” Then, very sternly, “Now, far be it from me to tell an ambitious young man what to do. But for what it’s worth, were I you—and I’m sure glad I ain’t!—but were I you, I would never want an entity like Gray Oak sayin”—back to the Thinker pose—“Huuunnnhhh…”—back to normal—“about me. But a course. That’s your prerogative!”