The Loop

by Wesley Cross

  The car shot out of the clearing and onto the airstrip like an arrow. The two guards were still there, crouching behind a parked Jeep with their rifles on the hood of the vehicle. The pilot was nowhere to be seen. A lone shot came from one of the guards, glancing off the side of the Bentley, and then Connelly saw him jerk the rifle up to the sky as the man recognized the car.

  “It is a nice car, isn’t it?” Connelly yelled as he slammed the two-and-a-half-ton vehicle into the Jeep, sending it cartwheeling.

  He grabbed the AK-47 and was out of the vehicle before it came to a full stop and sprinted toward the other side of the airstrip where the Cessna was parked. The little plane appeared to be empty, and Connelly considered dropping the rifle to pick up speed, but the roar of two Suzuki SUVs coming from behind changed his mind.

  He dropped on one knee, aimed for the closest SUV as the two cars bore down on him, and squeezed the trigger. The driver collapsed at the wheel, and the vehicle careened off the airstrip, missing Connelly by a few feet, and plunged into the trees. The other SUV flew past him, the tires whooshing on the dirt track as it tried to make a sharp turn. A few bullets buzzed next to Connelly’s head as the men in the back of the vehicle started firing.

  He sprinted after the SUV and shot two narcos through the glass, then rolled on the ground as the car turned its side to him. The man riding shotgun fired but missed, and Connelly put two bullets through his chest. Before the driver had a chance to react, Connelly rushed forward, jumped on the hood of the vehicle, and put a round through the windshield, killing the man. Then he threw away the rifle and catapulted himself off the car toward the Cessna.

  He was inside the little plane, steering it onto the runway, as two more SUVs appeared from the jungle and Connelly released the brakes and pushed the throttle forward. He blew past the two cars as the men spilled out on the runway, trying to aim at the speeding aircraft. There were a few sharp knocks on the fuselage as he started to take off that sounded like hail, but the Cessna continued to climb, and a few seconds later, there was only the green rainforest under the long white wings.

  “Fuck me,” Connelly said, realizing that he had been holding his breath since the plane started its run on the airstrip. After a few more minutes, he reached the cruising altitude and headed toward the Viru Viru International Airport. The beauty of flying a plane as small as the Cessna was that he could land it virtually anywhere and then make it to the Guardian’s private jet on foot.

  Neither of his bosses would be happy about his trip to Bolivia, he thought. Engel would be furious that the deal fell through and Wallace was dead. The ISCD contact would reprimand him for not taking out Flores when he had a chance. But, at the moment, Connelly couldn’t care less. He escaped the hornet’s nest unscathed, and for now, his only priority was to make it to the company’s jet. Everybody’s disappointments would have to wait.

  19

  Hong Kong

  “Can you open it?” Mandy asked.

  Helen glanced at the screen with a progress bar and shrugged. They were sitting in the kitchen of Helen’s apartment in TLR’s campus in front of a laptop, as Helen filled in the woman on her break-in into their boss’s office. It was warm despite the AC working on full blast, and the air had a stale taste of metal and roasted coffee.

  The Callisto folder that Helen retrieved from Tillerson’s computer was encrypted, and while it wasn’t military grade, there was no way to tell at this point if it was possible to crack it. If the little program she’d written for this occasion were going to fail, she’d have to take a step back and figure out something else. After seeing the schematics for the TLR building in Edmund’s office, she knew she wouldn’t be able to rest until she found out exactly what was going on.

  “Have you looked at Minerva’s files?” the woman asked.

  “Yeah.” Helen shrugged again. “Most of the files there are videos. They are interesting, but nothing shocking. At least not the ones I’ve scanned so far. Edmund apparently records a lot of videos of himself where he talks about the progress he’d made and what new steps need to be taken. There are gaps, though.”

  “What gaps?”

  “Sometimes he refers to videos with actual technical details, but I haven’t seen any. Either he hasn’t created them yet, or he’s already deleted them. Granted, I haven’t watched each file in its entirety, but he states the topic each time in the beginning, and there wasn’t anything that piqued my interest. And there’s a whole list of other stuff there that I haven’t looked at yet.”

  “How many videos are there?”

  “Two hundred something. I’ve skimmed about half of that.”

  “What I don’t understand is how the people get there,” Mandy said.

  “What people?”

  “There’s got to be people who work on those lower levels, right?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t need a lot of people. But the lower level has a parking garage, and there’s a small tunnel that leads somewhere from the building. I’m guessing there must be a secret entrance on one of those side roads in the jungle you see when you drive to TLR.”

  “You’re quite something,” Mandy said. “I’d never have the guts to break into his office. What do we do now?”

  Helen’s laptop beeped, and they both looked at the screen. The decrypting program had run its course, and now the folder sat on the home screen, unlocked.

  “I left the best for last,” Helen said and double-clicked on the icon. There was a long list of subfolders with coded names and a single video file, titled without much creativity: Progress_Summary. Helen launched the video and moved the laptop to make sure Mandy could see it as well. A tired Tillerson appeared to be standing near the computer terminal in the sub-level housing the quantum computer. He wore his lab coat as usual, but a bright-pink bow tie sat crookedly on his neck, and his auburn hair looked even more unruly than usual. He moved the camera around, setting it down, and stared directly into it.

  “I’ve deleted all previous instructional videos,” Tillerson started. “Recording them seemed like a good idea at the time, but realizing now what’s at stake, I think it’s probably best to keep it entirely in my head. This way, if anybody ever got access to my work, they’d have to start from scratch. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why I’m documenting the progress either, but there has to be some kind of record if it ever came to proving that I was the first to accomplish it. Some may call it professional pride, while some undoubtedly will call it hubris, but there’s a reason everybody knows what Neil Armstrong said when he first stepped on the moon’s surface while nobody’s got a clue if Buzz Aldrin said anything at all.”

  He paused and moved the camera again, causing the image to jump around and shake for a few seconds.

  “Of course, unlike Neil, I didn’t have the luxury of being sponsored by the United States government. But the enormous amount of trust,” Tillerson gave a small chuckle, “and even bigger amount of money, Mr. Ye poured into this project, requires certain accountability and I understand that. But I didn’t explain or even know the potential of the project when the first meeting took place.”

  Helen recoiled and paused the video. The hairs on her neck stood up.

  “Wait, what?” Mandy said, looking at the frozen screen. “Who the hell is Mr. Ye?”

  “Mr. Ye is a lovely gentleman who skins people alive who disagree with him. If you ever want to stop sleeping, I can tell you a story or two,” Helen said and resumed the playback.

  “At the time,” Tillerson continued, “I thought about enhancements. Integrated computers, wet-wired weapons, and so on. There’s a lot of potential and those things are still very much on the table. The commercial applications are enormous, and I’m sure shareholders are going to be happy even if only a small percentage of it pans out. But after seeing Asclepius tech in action, I started to realize that if I could bring the computing power to the equation, this could change everything. And, of course, after Callisto passed the Turing test, I can see
how this could give us such an enormous advantage—”

  Helen paused the playback again and looked at Mandy. “We ought to take notes.”

  “Wait. Did he say passed the Turing test? Passed as in past tense? If he has a different version of the AI that passed the darned test, why on earth was he putting on the show with Minerva? It makes no sense to me. This is revolutionary.”

  “I don’t know,” Helen said. “But if I had to throw a wild theory out there, I’d say it sounds like TLR has two fronts—one that is visible to the general public, and another that caters to the lovely Mr. Ye.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “I’ve seen this before,” she said and shivered as she tried to suppress a memory of a mutilated face with a missing eye. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. One summer, a few years ago, her life was upended after she stumbled onto a giant conspiracy. It started with the murder of her sister, and before she knew it, Helen had to flee the United States under a made-up name with only a suitcase, leaving a trail of bodies behind.

  “Seen what?” Mandy looked at her with a strange expression on her face.

  “Companies pretending to do regular business as they act as a front for a criminal enterprise. To make it work, you still need to be successful as a company and produce an exciting product, whatever that product would be. That would keep the public and regulators from scrutinizing you too closely, and regular shareholders are happy. But your true loyalty is to those masters who control you from the shadows, and they get the best you can offer, not the public.”

  “You think Tillerson has two versions of the AI—one, which he calls Minerva, that is shown to the world, and Callisto is Minerva’s more sophisticated sibling that he keeps to himself?”

  “Precisely.”

  “But why? This technology is going to be worth a lot of money. Tens, maybe hundreds of billions. He could be richer than God if this is not a gimmick, and he had an AI that’s passed the test.”

  “He probably doesn’t have any choice. Imagine if you worked for a drug lord and figured out how to make purer cocaine. Where are you going to go? You’re stuck with your employer, regardless.”

  “And what’s Asclepius?”

  Helen opened a browser and typed the name into a search field.

  “It looks like a small biotech company out of Brooklyn, New York,” she said, reading the page. “Sounds cutting edge. Neural connection research, cryogenics, cloning and transgenesis, genome engineering. The location makes sense, too, as Mr. Ye is based in New York.”

  “I’m not crazy after all,” Mandy said. “He is experimenting on humans.”

  “Let’s continue watching, then.”

  Helen closed the browser tab and brought the video back.

  “—advantage, especially if we can weaponize the technology. I was being cute, of course, when I named them Callisto and Jupiter,” Tillerson continued. “I couldn’t have known at the time what two mindless strings of ones and zeros could become. But now it almost seems like destiny. I don’t know who will prevail in this little experiment, Callisto or Jupiter, and I will update the video when I know the winner. But for now, as I watch them struggle, I’m convinced that as they battle, they are laying the groundwork to the birth of a new species. A blueprint, if you will. Something new and so powerful it would make the Manhattan Project look like a high school science project.”

  20

  New York

  Ignoring the honks of angry taxis speeding down Fifth Avenue, the limo pulled up in front of the Guardian Manufacturing main building. Connelly thanked the driver and stepped outside into the hot, muggy night. The thirty-foot bronze statue of a winged angel working a forge was looming over the sidewalk.

  Connelly wasn’t a big fan of the installation during the day. He thought its polished bronze bulk meant to imitate gold was pompous and ugly. At night, drowning in the pool of colorful projector lights from below, the statue looked decidedly demonic to his eye. He walked around the statue’s foundation, dodging strolling couples and obnoxious tourists with selfie sticks, and entered the building. He nodded to the front desk and headed toward the elevator that would take him to the upper floor.

  There was no way to predict what kind of welcome he would get from Engel after his daring escape from Bolivia. Tapped for the trip after he had eliminated the top two contenders, he felt there was a certain amount of expectation that came with the mission. Something that he had to prove to Engel and others that he had what it took to fulfill that role.

  “Follow me, please.” Engel’s assistant motioned to him as he stepped out of the elevator. She led him through the maze of empty cubicles to the corner office on the other side. The overhead lights were dimmed, and the bright red EXIT signs glowed ominously in the darkened bullpen. She opened a heavy mahogany door and ushered him into a reception room and without stopping brought him to another set of doors to the executive office.

  “Go right ahead,” she said. “He’s waiting for you.”

  Connelly walked past the woman, turned the doorknob, and entered the room.

  “Connelly,” Engel said as he got up from behind the desk. Despite the late hour, the man was still dressed in the three-piece custom suit and his salt-and-pepper hair looked as if he was ready to go on air to discuss his company’s future with a TV anchor. “Boy, do I want to hear the story from the source. Take a seat. Want a drink?”

  Connelly settled on a couch and glanced at the infamous half-moon table by the wall where Engel kept his liquor and shook his head. His boss considered himself a whiskey connoisseur, and some of the bottles crowding the polished silver surface cost more than most people’s annual paychecks. There was the Macallan 1947, fifty-year-old Dalmore, and Engel’s favorite—Mortlach 1935. “I’m okay, thank you.”

  “Suit yourself,” the man said and poured himself a two-finger portion into a tumbler. “Tell me about the meeting.”

  “It wasn’t much of a meeting,” Connelly said. “Flores met us at the airfield himself, and the first question out of his mouth was whether we’d take him as the sole supplier and Wallace told him we weren’t interested. It felt like a test, to be honest. After that, it was all small talk and pleasantries while we were driven to his villa.”

  “He told Flores even before the meeting took place that it wouldn’t be possible?”

  “Yes,” Connelly said, meeting his boss’s stare.

  “For fuck’s sake.” Engel sat at the opposite end of the couch and took a sip of his drink. “I should’ve sent somebody else. What happened after that?”

  “Maybe it was a mistake,” Connelly acknowledged. “But to be fair, it felt like it didn’t matter and Flores already made up his mind when he came to meet us. Whatever Wallace told him was the last nail in the coffin. And then they killed him in his room and tried to kill me too, but I got away.”

  He watched as Engel swirled his drink and downed the rest of the whiskey in one go.

  “What do you know about GA?”

  “GA? As in General Armaments?”

  “Yes.” Engel stood up and walked back to the drink table to pour himself another round. “You see, ever since I’ve made a decision to move Guardian into the weapons space, there hasn’t been a day that I didn’t contemplate whether it was the best or the stupidest decision of my life. Until recently, they used to be a dominant player in cutting-edge small arms, but they never could compete with the size of our bank accounts, which was something they didn’t care about at the time. The general opinion in the industry was that no one could swoop in and start competing with a player like GA, regardless of the number of zeros they wrote on their checks. But it turns out we could.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “While we are squeezing GA on all fronts, the bulk of our profits still comes from our pharmaceutical arm. Our bread and butter. And if we made a pact with the Flores cartel, diversified our suppliers from the Chinese—well, if you were in their shoes, the math is simple.”


  “Hurt our pharmaceutical division and the money for our weapons program will dry up,” Connelly offered. “You think they somehow turned Flores against us?”

  “Exactly. That’s why we need to hit them and hit them hard. I’ve thought about this for some time. The best thing to do would be to hurt their research. There’s an R&D facility in Rockland County, about an hour outside of New York City. It’s small, but as far as we know it houses some of their important small-arms research. I want you to draw up some plans on how to destroy it. Burn it to the ground. I’ll have my assistant send you the names of their two key people who work at that location. It would be helpful if they went down with the ship.”

  Engel stood up, indicating that the meeting was over, and Connelly followed suit.

  “I expect the plan to be done promptly.” The man stretched out his hand, and Connelly shook it.

  He took a taxi back to Brooklyn, paid with a corporate card, and left a tip almost as large as the charge itself, but the small act of rebellion only intensified his bad mood.

  The apartment was hot. A pungent smell of moldy bread he’d forgotten on the kitchen table seemed to have permeated every nook and cranny of the place. Connelly opened the windows and turned the split system on, putting it on the highest setting. Then he fished a cold lager out of the fridge and took his usual place on the couch with his laptop, waiting for the time when his ISCD handler would come online.

  “We have to pull the plug,” he typed into the body of the draft email when the time came, skipping the small talk. “Pull me out.”

  “Negative.” The message appeared after he refreshed the screen. “There’s not enough information.”

  “Engel wants me to destroy a facility that belongs to General Armaments.”