The Loop

by Wesley Cross

  “I’m sure he does.” Connelly chuckled. “I’m a chauffeur for a bigwig in a corporation. Nothing exciting.”

  “A company man, then.”

  “I guess.” He shrugged. “It pays the bills. What about you? You’re a journalist, you said, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m a deputy editor for the New York Gazette. I wanted to play the piano when I was younger, but who can pay rent these days by playing the piano? I got lucky. I got a job there right out of college. I was at a small paper at the time, and then they were bought out by the Gazette during the purge of small businesses, or what they called it on cable—the great consolidation wave. Then I worked my way up.”

  “I know some people call it the last independent newspaper in the city, maybe even in the country.”

  “Some people do,” she agreed. “I don’t know for how much longer, however. There’s a rumor that some corporate interests are trying to buy us and putting some pressure on our chief. Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “What?”

  “That everything is going down while people like you and I are sipping drinks, watching the sky.”

  He watched her face. The question took him by surprise and somehow struck a nerve.

  “I’m sorry,” she said before he had a chance to answer. “I don’t know why I went there. I think Uncle Jimmy is to blame as—”

  “Nice tits,” a voice said. A clean-shaven young man walking past their table slowed down and then stopped, staring at Sofia. He was short and barrel-chested, with thick arms stretching the fabric of a tight black T-shirt. A line of tears was tattooed under his left eye.

  “Why don’t you keep on going,” Connelly said without getting up.

  “You shut the fuck up before I break you in two,” the man said, scowling. Two more men joined him, flanking the table. Both had exaggerated bodies of amateur bodybuilders, with thick torsos and arms that seemed to be hanging at a wrong angle.

  “The name’s Eric. Here’s Pete, and Billy.” He pointed at his companions. “We’re heading to a party. Why don’t you come with us instead of hanging with this douche?”

  “I’m not interested,” she said.

  “You haven’t lived until you were spit-roasted, baby.” The man named Billy moved his hips obscenely.

  “I’m not interested,” Sofia repeated in a level voice.

  “You will be,” Eric bent over Sofia and placed his meaty hand on the table in front of her, “when I stick my thick—”

  He cried out in pain and surprise, staring at the handle of a dinner knife that materialized out of the back of his hand. Connelly flew out of the chair and struck the man in the temple with an elbow, knocking him out. The man collapsed, pulling the table now attached to his hand and knocking it to the ground.

  “The lady said she wasn’t interested,” he said to the two goons. “Are you going or should we—”

  The thugs backed away, their eyes darting between Connelly and their friend on the ground.

  “He’ll be fine. I promise.”

  The brutes turned around and disappeared into the night, leaving their unconscious friend behind.

  “Call an ambulance,” Connelly said to the waiter cautiously peeking out of the restaurant’s door. Then he threw a few bills on top of his chair and offered a hand to Sofia. “I think we’ve overstayed our welcome at this establishment.”

  “I’m afraid you might be right,” she said, taking his hand and standing up. Then, she rose on her tiptoes and planted a light kiss on Connelly’s cheek. “Why don’t you walk me home, Mr. Chauffeur?”

  5

  Hong Kong

  “I feel like a spy,” Helen whispered as she and Mandy took a booth in the cafeteria. “So many people work here, and we are a secret squad hiding in plain sight.”

  “Yeah,” Mandy said, unwrapping her sandwich. “A secret squad indeed. What’s your take on all this?”

  “On what exactly?”

  “Our work. You know, the AI. Do you ever wonder where the road ends? Does it ever occur to you that we might open Pandora’s box? Something we will not be able to close?”

  “Well.” Helen took a sip of coffee, mulling over her friend’s words. “To a certain extent, I guess. But if you asked my opinion—”

  “I just did.”

  “I don’t think we’ll ever get true AI,” Helen said. “I know Edmund is pushing for the test, but Turing’s test is nothing but a gimmick.”

  “How so?”

  “Because fooling somebody into thinking they are talking to a human being rather than a program is not a true test of intelligence. That will happen eventually, with or without Edmund. It’s more in the eye of the beholder. Video games used to be these primitive two-dimensional programs, and now you have these new virtual reality apps that can almost fool you. But it doesn’t make them real because they look closer and closer to reality.”

  “Fair enough,” Mandy said. “But what’s the true test of intelligence then?”

  “Self-awareness,” Helen said without hesitation. “And, frankly, I don’t think it’s possible. We can write a program that will act as if it’s self-aware, but I can’t fathom a situation where it will happen spontaneously. And, of course, you have the issue of the Three Laws of Robotics.”

  “Asimov’s laws?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just to play devil’s advocate here,” Mandy said. “Nobody’s programming the Three Laws into current AI at this moment. First, a lot of tech has the opposite of the Three Laws as it’s built specifically to hurt people, such as drones, self-driving tanks, and so on. But most importantly—how do you even program the Three Laws into an AI? It sounds good for the non-programming types, but how the hell do you program the part where it’s not supposed to injure a human through inaction? That’s bollocks. You can’t program that.”

  “Sure, I’ll give you that,” Helen agreed. “It’s impossible the way Asimov wrote it because you’d need to give it infinite processing abilities to analyze every possible scenario that may lead a person to come to harm. And even if you could do that, the result would likely be a robot that frantically roamed the world, trying to prevent harm to all humans.”

  “Then what?”

  “It’s funny how you’ve turned it around. I said I didn’t think true AI was possible, and now here I am figuring out how to program the Three Laws of Robotics into one. In a way, I guess that proves my point that we’ll never have self-aware AI. We should ask Edmund’s opinion on the Three Laws.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Mandy said and returned her attention to the sandwich. “Maybe we should.”

  “Are you all right?” Helen watched her friend’s face. “You seem subdued lately.”

  “Oh, sure,” the woman replied. “Tired, that’s all. Edmund’s been driving everybody pretty hard as we’re getting closer to this stupid test. Are you happy here?”

  “That’s a weird question.” Helen took a few sips of coffee, considering the answer. A series of unpleasant images invaded her head, and she drew a deep breath, trying to get rid of them. They went away like spiderwebs in the wind. Mostly. But even after they were gone, some sticky pieces of their nets were left clinging to the dark corners of her mind.

  “You don’t know if you’re happy here?”

  “Happy is a big word,” she finally said. “I’m not there yet. For a lot of reasons. I’d probably use a different term—content. And for now, it’s as close as it comes to being happy. I don’t want anything different—I want to work, hang out at lunch, and at the end of the day have a cold beer while watching TV from my own bed.”

  “That is pathetic,” Mandy said, laughing. “You sound like a ninety-year-old.”

  “I am a ninety-year-old who happens to be trapped in this gorgeous body.”

  Mandy laughed so hard she got hiccups. “You got anyone?” Her friend finally managed.

  “Like who?”

  “Anyone special. Like a boyfriend.”

  “I d
on’t want one.” Helen shook her head. The ghostly images returned, and this time refused to go away. “The last one I had screwed with my head so bad I had to move across the globe. I’m not sure I’ll be ready for another try anytime soon. An occasional fling is all I need.”

  “There are not a lot of candidates for a proper fling around here.” Mandy made a sweeping gesture with her hand. “Only nerds.”

  “If everything else fails, there’s always ice cream. There’s the man we wanted to ask.”

  “Who?” Mandy turned around in time to see Tillerson approach their table.

  “Ask what, ladies?”

  “You don’t believe in a truly intelligent AI, do you?”

  “Why not?” He fixed the glasses on his nose and cocked his head. “You don’t think we can produce true AI?”

  “We can code an AI that will act like one,” Helen said. “As for a truly self-aware AI, no, I don’t believe so.”

  “Let me ask you something.” Tillerson moved an empty chair from a table nearby and straddled it next to their booth. “What makes a human—human?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

  “If you made a person in a Petri dish, and have machines take care of him or her, will he develop true intelligence? No. He’ll learn the needed skills to find the food they give him and use the shelter they provide, but that will be it.”

  “What then?”

  “Other humans, obviously,” Tillerson said. “That’s the secret ingredient that makes us who we are. We teach our young not just the skills, but empathy, the ability to separate right from wrong, and so on.”

  “So, to create a true AI, you need humans? I’m not sure I follow.”

  “No.” Tillerson smiled and leaned closer. “I’m going to tell you a secret I haven’t shared with anyone else, but since you’ve asked the right question, you deserve the answer. To create a true AI, you need another AI. The trick is to build an environment where they play specific roles, and neither of them is aware of the fact they are playing at all.”

  “But then it’s a-chicken-and-an-egg kind of problem.”

  “How so?”

  “Well,” Helen said, “because you’re saying you need a self-aware AI to create an intelligent AI. It defeats the purpose.”

  “You’re missing the point.” Tillerson smiled. “You don’t need a truly intelligent AI to create one. What you need is two AIs who think they are intelligent and interact with one another in the right environment.”

  “Which is?”

  “Conflict.” Tillerson raised a finger to make a point. “Conflict is the engine of progress.”

  “And that will trigger them to become self-aware?”

  “Precisely. One of them, at least. Who knows? Maybe both. You have to throw some unknowns in the mix. Make it glitchy. Complicated. Well, you get the point.” He got up and moved the chair back to the table. “I have to go, so I’ll let you finish your lunch. I’ll see you around, ladies.”

  Helen watched the man walk away and turned to her friend. “Does it make sense to you?”

  “Who knows.” The woman sighed and looked away. “He’s smarter than you and I combined, so what do I know?”

  “What is going on with you today? Did something happen between you and Edmund?”

  “What?” Mandy sat back straight. “No, nothing like that. I’m tired, that’s all. Excuse me, I have to use the bathroom.”

  Helen watched in surprise as her friend stood up and rushed to the bathroom without looking back. She frowned. Come to think of it, Mandy’s always acted oddly around Tillerson. When they worked together, it was almost as if she avoided any unnecessary contact with their boss. But until now, it didn’t register enough to start questioning the reasoning behind her friend’s behavior.

  She felt a familiar itch that always started in some dark corner of her mind. The need to know, no matter the cost. She drew a deep breath, trying to suppress it. She had it good here, she wanted to remind herself. It took a long time to get over the horrors of the encounter with Victor Ye and his minions. She still occasionally woke up in the middle of the night, covered in cold sweat, seeing things in her mind’s eye that she’d rather forget.

  “Shit,” she whispered to herself, looking around the cafeteria and seeing familiar faces engrossed in their lunch conversations. Blissfully unaware of her internal struggle.

  Screw this, she thought. Last time she didn’t want to dig deeper, she ended up dating the son of a brutal criminal enterprise, lost two close friends, and almost died herself. Maybe she was paranoid.

  Maybe.

  But this time, for better or for worse, she needed to know.

  6

  New York

  It was still dark outside when Connelly opened his eyes. The alarm clock on his nightstand read 4:50 AM. He turned to one side, trying not to disturb the bed, rested his head on his right hand, and looked at the woman next to him.

  Sofia was fast asleep. Her lips were slightly parted. Her face, framed by a wave of wild red hair, looked soft and relaxed. The sheets moved during the night, and Connelly’s pulse quickened as his eyes traced the contours of her full breasts rising and falling with each breath. He gently pulled the covers up and then slipped out of bed.

  “Wait,” he heard. “Come back here, please.”

  He turned around to see her looking at him.

  “Good morning.” He smiled. “I’m sorry to wake you. I’m afraid the alarm will go off in ten minutes, anyway. I’ve got to get ready for work.”

  “In that case,” she moved the sheets to the side and stretched her arms toward him, “we still have ten more minutes.”

  He took her hands, knelt on the bed, and let her pull him into a kiss. She smelled like sunshine and strawberries.

  They had breakfast together—he brewed a pot of coffee while she rummaged through his half-empty fridge looking for ideas and finally settled on utilitarian sunny-side-up eggs and a slice of bacon.

  While she cooked, Connelly checked the draft email. There was a new set of instructions from Contact. He frowned, reading the list of items his handler at the ISCD was asking for. Over the past few months, the requests had gotten increasingly more complicated, and Connelly found himself taking greater and greater risks to fulfill the tasks. It seemed that the string of successful operations emboldened his superiors as time went on. At times, Connelly wondered if his own success would be the source of his untimely demise.

  Sofia’s phone vibrated, and she picked it up, giving Connelly a guilty look. “Sorry.”

  “That’s fine. Go right ahead.”

  She read the message, and as she did, a deep line creased her forehead.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Um, I’m not sure,” she said, putting the phone down on the table. “My boss sent me a message to my private email. Apparently, he resigned last night.”

  “So, that makes you the new editor-in-chief, right?”

  “Right.” She glanced back at her phone.

  “Congratulations are in order, then? Though you don’t look that happy.”

  “He’s advising me to step down.”

  “Why?”

  “Brian and I have been vocal against being acquired, and I told you he’d been under a lot of pressure to cave in.”

  “You think he’s changed his mind?”

  “Quite the opposite.” She frowned. “But he says he fears for his life and the life of his family.”

  Connelly’s heart skipped a beat. “He thinks you might be in danger too?”

  “That’s what his message said.” She shrugged. “Unless I decide to hand over the keys to the kingdom.”

  “Do you know who was trying to buy the Gazette?”

  “It’s probably going to sound weird, considering I was the second-in-command, but no. He kept that part to himself. Even before this, Brian told me the less I knew, the better. I pressed him a bunch of times, but he’d shrug it off and tell me nothing would happen. I probably s
hould’ve looked into it, but it’s not like I’m sitting on my hands in the office trying to figure out what to do. Things are pretty hectic most of the time. Eventually, I stopped asking.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I have no interest in resigning. First, I love what I do. And, if I stepped down, Melinda Harris would take my place, and that bitch would sell her soul to the devil if she got enough money.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out. It’s not so easy to pressure a newspaper.”

  “Maybe that’s the play,” Connelly said.

  “What play?”

  “Maybe that Harris person is the one whoever is trying to buy your paper wants at the helm. If you and your boss have been heading the resistance, and she’s a known sellout, it’s not a complicated thing to figure out that if you and Brian are out of the way, the paper is as good as sold. If you know she’d sell out, I’m sure other people did too.”

  “It makes sense,” Sofia said. “But that’s not going to happen. I don’t have any serious skeletons in my closet, so there’s nothing I can be pushed with, even if they want to play dirty. A couple of ugly break-ups, maybe a few party pictures when I was back in college, but nothing scandalous that could be used as leverage.”

  “Anything on social media?”

  “I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “I have a minimal online presence by today’s standards.”

  “Be careful, okay?”

  “I’d say you have more to worry about than me.” She reached over the table and patted his hand.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I’m sure as hell old McAllister somehow knows that I ended up here last night. I don’t know how, but the old bastard always knows.”

  “Your uncle is a good man. He’s being protective. Here.” He put a key on the table and moved it across. “Don’t freak out. It’s a spare, so you can get ready at your own pace and leave when you’re ready. Just give it back to me when I see you next time.”

  “I’m not freaking out.” She cocked her head and gave him a serious look as she plucked the key off the table. “Who said anything about the next time, though?”