“I strongly doubt that,” Ainsley said.
“Well, it’s true. We’re the only programmers you have left. Who else will keep working on Gen C for you?”
Ainsley Irons fixed a cold gaze on me. For all the world it looked like she was memorizing my features. “Young lady, if you haven’t figured out that Gen C is programming itself now—and much faster than a scraggly group of college interns can—than you are in the wrong business and the wrong company. This is how artificial intelligence works. I don’t need programmers anymore. And I definitely don’t need interns. See yourself out. I hope this has been a rich educational experience for you. Ask the computer for a reference if you need it.”
And with that she turned and left.
Of course, sitting under her watchful gaze in her kitchen, it’s clear that she didn’t memorize my features. Because she has no clue who I am. Her face is plastic-y again. A mask when she needs to project calm.
“Mom, this is Pen,” Keir says. “Pen, this is Ainsley Irons.”
I gulp and try to avoid stuttering. “Pleasure to meet you,” I finally say.
She nods. “How long have you known Keir?”
My eyes dart to Keir’s. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to lie or not, but Keir’s eyes don’t give anything away. “Not long,” he says.
Ainsley’s about to say something when her phone rings. “Never a moment’s peace,” she mutters and looks at it. “Order me one of those salads, would you?” she asks. Then she picks up the phone. “Hi, Walker. Late in New York for you to be calling, isn’t it?” My ears perk up. Her voice sounds forced, I think, but she wanders away and I can’t hear any more of the conversation.
Before I can say anything to Keir—something like Did you know your mom laid me off from her company?—he says urgently, “Gene, lock down my morning. Everything from the time I left to go on the run.”
“It’s done,” Gene answers.
“What does that do?” I ask.
“Privacy lock,” he says bitterly. “Or something close to it. She has…parental controls. If she wants to, she can ask Gene about everything that’s happened so far today. And everything he found out about you.”
I’m stunned into silence. (Again.) I really really don’t want Ainsley Irons knowing anything about me.
“Locking down the morning means that Mom has to confirm that she actually does want to pry into my life,” Keir continues. “I mean, it only takes a password. Usually she lets me have my privacy lock enabled when I activate it. But not always.”
“There’s no way to keep it from her?”
“You think Gene works for me? Hardly.”
I purse my lips, trying to think of a solution.
“I know what you’re doing here,” Keir says quietly.
My back straightens. He’s looking at me with mischief in his eyes. “Full disclosure, I looked in your bag. And I found a thumb drive.”
“It’s encrypted,” I say automatically. He cocks his head and I realize how dumb that is. “You gave it to Gene,” I say with understanding.
Keir nods. “I found the plans,” he says. “I worked out what you’re going after. And I have to admit—you don’t seem like the cat burglar type.”
“Gene knows all that?” I ask.
He nods.
“And all Ainsley has to do is enter a password and she’ll know all that too?”
He nods again.
I take a deep breath and try to think through my options. “Wait,” I say after a second. “You hid the information from her.”
He nods. “So?”
I lean forward on my elbow and get close to his ear. “You didn’t turn me in. Why? Why would you help me hide that?” I ask.
Before he can answer, Ainsley walks back into the room.
“Don’t let me interrupt you,” Ainsley calls.
I scoot away from Keir and go back to my salad. I can tell my cheeks are beet red, which Ainsley must notice.
There’s a ding and a cabinet slides open to reveal a steak salad. It must be a dumbwaiter from the kitchen downstairs. I realize that when she said to order her a salad, she hadn’t been asking Keir, as I had assumed, she had been asking Gene.
Ainsley retrieves her salad. “What have you been up to this morning?” she asks.
Keir shrugs, and I notice his shoulders are hunched further over his plate.
“Gene?” she asks.
“Would you like to override Keir’s privacy settings for me to answer your question?” Gene asks.
I can’t breathe as I wait to see what she’ll say.
“Ah,” Ainsley says knowingly. She eyes me and then looks back to Keir. She elbows him. “I guess it doesn’t take all that to figure out what would keep you two kids busy all morning.”
I gulp with a mix of relief and embarrassment. Keir isn’t meeting anyone’s eyes.
“Well, that and the color of your friend’s cheeks is quite the giveaway too.”
Keir looks up briefly to see me blushing and in his eyes I see years of humiliations like this one. He looks down at his hands again.
“How did you meet Keir?” she asks me.
“While running,” I say quietly.
She nods, like that’s at all meaningful. I consider that maybe she just doesn’t care what my answer is.
“He asked you out?” she asks.
I nod, because what else am I supposed to say?
“Good,” she says decisively. “I like to see Keir taking the initiative. What do I always say?” she asks, turning to him.
“That if I want to create the future, I need to take active steps to make it a reality,” he answers as if by rote. His face is still downcast.
“Exactly right,” she says. She looks at me expectantly, like I’m supposed to tell her how I’m doing the same thing. Which, now that I think about it, I totally am taking active steps to create my future, if you count trying to steal something worth forty million dollars as an active step. But I really don’t want her to know about that. “Did you grow up with any family mottos, Pen?”
“Do you know about the miracle of compound interest?” I ask.
Ainsley looks puzzled and Keir looks like he’s choking down a laugh. “Why don’t you show Pen your collection?” he suggests, breaking what is threatening to become an awkward silence.
Ainsley seems surprised. “Are you interested in computers?” she asks me.
I’m surprised as well by Keir’s suggestion, but I nod. “I went to MIT.”
“Did you now? I guess Keir’s taste is finally changing. The last girl he brought home was something of a bimbo.”
“Mom,” Keir groans. “Just because a girl doesn’t know computers, doesn’t mean she’s a bimbo. That girl is studying English lit at Stanford.”
Ainsley rolls her eyes. “Anyone who goes to Stanford and then wastes their time in the humanities”—the way she says “humanities” makes it sound like she’s talking about a career in being a garbageman or migrant worker—“is wasting their time. And their parents’ money.”
“Are you going to automate reading books too?” Keir asks.
Ainsley’s eyes flash hot but she doesn’t reprimand him. “Well. You might appreciate my little museum,” she tells me. “Can I steal this girl from you for a few moments?” she asks Keir. “If she’s going to be a special person in your life, I’d like to get to know her better.”
This time it’s Keir who looks like he’s getting redder. He nods, though.
“This way,” she says.
I stand and as I do, I put a hand on his shoulder. Out of sympathy. Out of empathy—because, man how I hate it when adults ask me about boyfriends. But maybe my hand is there out of attraction too. He takes it without hesitation and squeezes. He lets go a second later and I’m off down a set of stairs after Ainsley.
I start to mentally prepare myself for a lecture. Things I Need To Know Before I Date Ainsley Irons’s Son. But she doesn’t say anything.
When we reach the bo
ttom of the stairs we start down a hallway—or rather a tunnel. The red walls and floor are made of some material I can’t quite place. Like a weird rubber or synthetic structure. A few feet into the tunnel, there’s a frosted glass wall with a door in it that blocks our way. Ainsley approaches it and looks into a retinal scanner next to the door frame. The door unlocks and she holds it open for me.
“This is my way to work most days,” she says.
“We’re that close to your headquarters?” I ask politely.
She looks at me like I’m an idiot but she nods. “I guess it’s not really visible from the ground level, but above us now is the nature preserve. The T-Six campus is on the other side. The tunnel connects my home to a private elevator that takes me to my office.”
We walk a few paces and we come to a frosted glass door set in the side wall of the tunnel. She opens it with another retinal scan. Inside is a room full of big refrigerator-sized boxes with white panels. There’s an omnipresent humming.
“Do you know what this is?” she asks. It’s now very clear to me that she has no interest in giving me a talk about dating Keir.
“A server room,” I say. “But not like any I’ve ever seen in real life. Maybe in the movies.”
She nods. “I guess Keir knows how pick a smart girl. Yes, you’re right. It’s a mainframe computer. Originally built in the 1960s.”
My eyes widen. “And it’s still working?”
“It took a team of conservationists who help me with it, but yes. It’s a working mainframe, even decades later.”
“But…why?” I ask.
She almost smiles and presses her fingertips against the white paneling of the supercomputer. “The launch of T-Six’s first-generation artificial intelligence was a turning point for our species. Humanity may as well start recounting our years from that moment, it’s that important to human history. Never again will we see computers that are dumber than people. Have you thought about that? This computer…well, a card that sings ‘Happy Birthday’ when you open it is more powerful than this behemoth. That’s how fast technology changes.
“I want people to remember. Maybe not the current generation—they are still reeling from the effects of AI, so it’s going to take everyone a while to sort this out. But when people are ready, I think they will like to see this collection. They will want to remember when computers were more like pets, not fantastically powerful beings.”
I’m watching her carefully. “You think people will be able to sort this out?”
She looks startled, and I see the glimmers of the plastic-y face. I wonder if she’s about to launch into the speech she read on television. Instead she nods toward the door. “Let me show you the crown jewel of the collection,” she says.
We leave the server room and she takes me past other classic computers. A Xerox Alto from 1973. A Commodore from 1977. An Apple IIe from 1983. A Gateway PC and an iMac from 1998. An original iPhone from 2007.
And finally the tunnel leads us by another room behind a frosted glass door.
She holds her eye open for another retinal scan and the door pops open. She pushes it forward and we enter.
Where the room with the mainframe computer had a constant hum, this room is unnaturally quiet. The floor is soft and pliable. There’s nothing in the round room but a single pedestal in the middle. And on that pedestal is a suitcase-sized stack of metal gears and knobs and trays. A steampunk vision of the future like something out of Jules Verne. It’s made of brass and copper. Near it are files of punch cards.
I step inside with something close to reverence.
“This is the first computer,” Ainsley tells me. “Ever. Charles Babbage called it the Analytical Engine. He came up with it in 1837. Logically speaking, it’s the foundation that all computers have been built on ever since, even if he was a hundred years before his time. And these,” she says, running her finger over the tops of the punch cards, “make up the first computer program. If you put them into the Analytical Engine in a certain order, it will spit out a calculation. It’s a computer program, basically. A woman named Ada Lovelace wrote it, making her the first computer programmer in history.” Ainsley flashes what appears to be a true smile toward me. “It does make me feel good to know a woman was there at the beginning. Isaac Newton once said, ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ He was thinking of the scientists who came before him, of course. So for me, it’s nice to know that if I have taken computer programming further than anyone before me, it’s because I’m standing on the shoulders of a giantess like Ada Lovelace.”
I nod. “It’s beautiful,” I say sincerely.
“I’m glad you think so. Some people see it and just see something old. But it’s where everything in the modern world began.” There is silence and then she smirks at some private joke. “Most of the computers down here…they aren’t worth anything except for scrap. Computers lose value over time. That’s the way of the world. But this computer… Well, I don’t mind telling you, it’s one of the only computers in the world that is getting more valuable with age. Any guesses what it’s worth?” she asks.
I don’t even need to guess. Because I know.
“About forty million dollars.”
Thirteen
Is it wrong to steal something worth forty million dollars if it’s from the person who is single-handedly causing everyone in the world to lose their jobs? Who is wrecking the global economy? Who can siphon so much money out of the world that she can buy off congress with five billion dollars for a sham like her so-called job training centers?
I’m pretty ok with it. Or, I was.
Because now I know her son. And he knows me. And—because he has the world’s most advanced AI that can apparently break an encrypted thumb drive—he also knows my plan. So that definitely complicates the issue.
I’m back in Keir’s room. I headed here as soon as the tour was over. Ainsley probably thinks we’re having sex, given how eager I was to get back to him. But I don’t care about any of that now.
“You saw it?” Keir asks.
I nod. My head is in my hands, my eyes closed tightly inside them.
“Was she suspicious at all?” he asks.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Although, who can tell? I can’t read her.”
“I can. Better than most, at least. And I don’t think she suspects anything.”
There’s silence in the room. I take my hands down from my eyes and look at him clearly. “I’m so sorry, Keir.”
“Was finding me part of your plan?” he asks. Now he’s the one not willing to make eye contact.
I shake my head. “Never. You have to believe me.”
“That’s quite a coincidence,” he says. His voice is soft. I know what he must be thinking. Was he my access point? A mark?
“Listen,” I say. “Whatever else you think of me, I want you to know that I wasn’t using you. Whether it was you who found me or someone else, I was coming for the Analytical Engine which is in a museum attached to your house. It’s not exactly a coincidence that I might run into people who are close to it.”
He sort of shrugs.
“I even gamed out what would happen if I ran into an old coworker or someone connected with T-Six,” I add.
“What was your plan?”
“To tell them I was trying to start a protest,” I say sheepishly.
“Like those people on the freeway overpasses?”
I nod and he snorts derisively.
“Instead you ran into me. And I invited you into my home,” he says.
“That makes it harder, not easier. Really. I’m ready to throw the whole thing out. I don’t…I don’t want people to get hurt because of me anymore.”
“Anymore?” he asks.
“Long story.” I think of Lara-B and James but this isn’t the time to let anything more about them slip to Keir—or Gene. “My point is, I don’t need another wakeup call. It’s clear I don’t have the…I don’t know…th
e ability to switch off my feelings to be some master criminal. This isn’t who I am. This plan was a…a crazy moonshot idea. I’m sorry I brought you into it. But I’m done. I will leave forever and you will never see me again.”
There’s another silence. I’m holding my breath. Will he turn me in? Or is there some way that I’ve swayed him to let me go? He’s looking at the ceiling, not giving anything away.
Finally he says, “It’s too bad to want to give it all up. It’s the start of a decent plan.” He meets my gaze and now he’s smiling fiendishly. “Though it would be a lot easier with two.”
I’m stunned into silence. Then my chin darts forward and down like a chicken. I can’t help it. “What are you saying?” I ask, still stunned but at least able to talk again. I mean, I think I know what he’s saying. But it’s so improbable I need to hear it.
“I’m pretty clearly offering to help,” he says.
“Why?” I demand.
“You saw my mom earlier. I’m like a caged animal here. Her pet more than her son. I can buy anything I want with her money, but I can’t have my own. I’m trapped. And I want out.”
“But—”
“Plus, you could use a partner,” Keir continues. “I think you know your plan well enough to realize that. Not to mention that while it’s evident you did your homework—and probably paid some less-than-wholesome folks on the dark web for some of your information—I count three major problems with your plan.”
“What problems?”
He smirks. “That’s something for partners to talk about.”
There’s a brief standoff. He’s coy. I’m serious.
“I’m guessing this means you want a cut,” I prompt.
“I want half,” he says, and I immediately snort. “Half,” he repeats forcefully. “I could turn you in to my mom and then you’d get nothing. Worse than nothing, since you have nothing right now. Half is fair.”
Semi-Human Page 12