RomeCODE and JulieTEST (Startup Crossed Lovers Book 1)
Page 15
“I could lie to you, if you wanted,” said Barry. “But...no, she’s at a launch event today. Intel says that she’s not exactly there as an employee, or at least, she won’t be after today. I’m sorry that this is all so confusing. I don’t know what happened, but I’ve heard through the grapevine that it might be trouble. I’m sorry that I have to tell you this, but you need to know, Romeo.”
“This can’t be,” shouted Romeo. “Everything was going to go according to plan. There’s no justice in this cruel world. Get me my wallet, by the front door: I’m taking the first plane I can out of Austin, even if I have to get it as an Uber, and no, not the one for cars. The one for planes.”
“Please, Romeo, calm down,” said Barry. “You need to think this over.”
“No, I don’t,” said Romeo. “I know exactly what I have to do. Has Lawrence sent word?”
“No, I’m sorry,” said Barry.
“Then it doesn’t matter,” said Romeo. “I need the company credit card, stat, so I can get to her. I’ll explain it all to Ferdinand later.”
Barry left to get Romeo’s things for him as Romeo opened up Juliet’s GitHub time for the fifth time in as many hours. He rubbed the screen with his thumb, leaving no greasy marks. “Juliet...I’m coming for you, baby,” he whispered. “Let’s see what happens when Escalus sees me again, when Stratford learns that I mean business. I know someone that can help, a hacker. I know what he looks like, where to find him. He can do it all. He’s not famous, but he likes it that way. He’s going to be at NoiseBridge, he’s always there, night in, night out. I’ve seen his set-up, with laptops and monitors, cords and soldering irons, the most expensive item in his setup either the oscilloscope or the custom Herman Miller chair he has reserved for him. I’ve seen him work, I have his card, and I need something from him I can’t get in Austin, not legally, not easily. I knew I’d need him, I just didn’t know why, but I need to talk to him, baby, and he should be working right now.”
Romeo went to his contacts page and dialed the number. It rang twice before it was answered. “Who’s this?” demanded a gruff voice that sounded low and robotic, given that it was hidden behind five voice encoders, like a lo-fi indie vocalist singing in the shower who’d been put through AutoTune.
“I have a job for you, and I know you want the money,” said Romeo. “You don’t need it, but you want it, and you’ve got...a rather specialized skillset I’m going to need today. I need you to give me something that can take down a company’s files. All of them, quickly.”
“I have programs that can do that,” said The Hacker. “But it’s going to cost you...and I can’t be implicated in this.”
“You know I’m good for it, man, you know I can pay,” said Romeo. “Besides, weren’t you part of the old guard? The phone hackers, the demo scene, back before computer science was cool and trendy and paid interns twenty thousand dollars a summer? This isn’t your world anymore, don’t you want to take it down? Live a little. Live again. And I’ll make it worth your while. I promise.”
“I’m doing this for the bitcoins,” warned The Hacker. “Not because I give a shit.”
“And I’m hiring you because I have,” said Romeo. “Not because I want to.”
“I’m going to send you a file, it should be in your inbox shortly,” said The Hacker. “You’re lucky I have this ready to go. Very lucky. Execute the file once you’re connected to whatever company unlucky enough to attract your wrath, but not before. Don’t. Touch. The file. Don’t even look inside its contents.”
“Check your digital wallet,” said Romeo. “You’ll find more than enough to satisfy you. I won’t need the money, anyway, if I can’t save Juliet. You think code is cheap? Money’s easy to come by, terribly easier, and I have more than I need. It’s worthless if I can’t use it to save the girl I love. I’ve got to get my flight...don’t spend your money all in one place. Definitely not on one onion. I’ll deploy the code. It’ll bring it all down and bring everything I need back. I’ve got to get to SF.”
Romeo hung up and opened the Uber app, swiping to the plane section, and ordered a private jet from Austin-Bergstrom, before ordering a cab to take him from the apartment to the airport.
“I’m coming, Juliet,” he said out loud, looking up at the sun and wondering if she was looking at the same sky, if she could even see the sun, given the time it was in SF. “I’m coming.”
Chapter Twenty-Three: Act Five, Scene Two
Lawrence was setting up the café area in the Marina room when a man wearing a Chrome bag came up to him. “Lawrence! Lawrence, hey,” said the man, out of breath.
“Is that you, John?” asked Lawrence. “My man! You’re back from Austin already? What does Romeo say? Did he send news, or at least, documents?”
“I went to find another courier to accompany me to Austin...he was in Palo Alto, picking up a delivery,” explained John. “But when I got to the Pyrymyn apartments there, he and I were detained for questioning. Another courier, not one of us, I swear, had thrown a rock through the Pyrymyn bus windows, the bus that takes a bunch of the employees to work every day. You know how the protests have been lately. They said we had the same bag as the perp, one with a red seatbelt lock, which...is obviously true. Is there a courier in the Bay that doesn’t use Chrome?”
“Then who sent the documents to Romeo?” asked Lawrence. The plan required those documents to go according to plan.
“We couldn’t get them to him. Here,” said John, pulling out an unopened, sealed manila envelope. “There wasn’t anyone else I could give this to, given the delicate situation.”
“Holy. Fucking. Shit,” cursed Lawrence. “This wasn’t just some party invitation. This had to get to him, no matter what. If Romeo hasn’t received these documents...and he’s heard about what happened to Juliet, who knows what he’ll do? Something stupid, no doubt. John. Go back to the coffee shop, take my key. Bring me the USB drive that’s in my lower right desk drawer, beneath the false bottom. I’ll be right here.”
“I’ll be right back,” promised John, nodding and hurrying back out to his fixed gear bike.
“I’m going to have to handle this myself,” said Lawrence. “Juliet...she should reboot on her own in three hours. She’ll be pissed I didn’t tell Romeo about what’s going on, but I’ll send someone else to Austin, and keep her at Wattage until Romeo gets word, and manages to get out here. That poor doll. She’s probably already in her box.”
For the second time that week, Lawrence had no idea how right he was.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Act Five, Scene Three
Paris and his personal assistant walked to the exhibition space. “Give me my keycard,” ordered Paris. “And stay out here, and wait. Make sure nobody bothers me. Go get yourself a coffee, I’ll take my usual, but make sure that I am not disturbed, not by anyone. If you see something, text something. You know what to do, Elissa.” He looked over his assistant: long legs, blonde hair, pouty lips. To anyone else, she’d be eye candy, but to him, she was as much an accessory as his beard: something he held no real feelings for, but which had become so much a part of his persona that he had no choice but to keep young women like her around, to dispel rumors, to dismiss truths.
“It’s finally all happening,” said Paris, sighing and looking at the solitary black box standing upright on the stage like a monolith on an alien Earth.
Paris stood, unmoving, on the exhibition room stage, the curtains closed, alone with the product he’d spent millions in investment money on. Years of covert development was supposed to lead to this day, to a product that he’d have of his own: an eternal companion that would never leave him, not like William did, a companion that would be happy with him because it was programmed to be. A daughter, of his own, ironically made with the one person he wanted children with and couldn’t ever have any with. She was as much real because of him as she was because of William and his team...she just had no idea.
Nor would she ever, because this model had broken, the w
orking prototype, but it didn’t matter. Her files, her schematics, her operating system, they were all stored on the cloud, and she could be loaded into another shell, like taking an empty computer case and putting in old parts.
There was a sense of nostalgia for this one, though: the model that had come from Lawrence’s college, as enough software and CAD files as could be held on a terabyte hard drive with room to spare. She’d been pulled, as a physical drive and as data, to the Thisbia system, and finally...she’d been built. He’d received updates from William and Miranda as the girl that they’d made became something real, as she was 3D-printed, as her parts were manufactured by boutique firms. He’d watched his daughter become real. He’d watched her be born.
He’d been jealous of Miranda, for sure: they’d never been close, they most likely never would be. Although he knew William’s proclivity, he still wished he was the one that had what Miranda had: not her gender, but her lack of wanderlust, the fear of loving the world that kept her in San Francisco and at work or in her apartment, the fear that kept her at the office the same way that William’s workaholic tendencies and fatherly tendencies for his company kept him there too...with her, like two love birds without even a crush.
“Juliet...you never knew how much I was invested in you,” said Paris. “Or rather, how much I invested. Maybe it’s better you don’t know. Maybe it’s better you’re not awake to see this, to watch yourself become born again, like a phoenix from the ashes. This box. It’s nothing like you. It’s sleek and elegant, and classically simple. You’re still so young and awkward and naïve, and too smart to be distilled into something as simple as a color, or a lack thereof. I’ll never forget what you were like: still developing, still learning, still...still Juliet.”
Paris felt his phone vibrate and wanted to ignore it, to shake it off as another San Francisco earthquake, but he knew what it meant. “And of course...there’s Elissa,” he said, to the girl that couldn’t hear him, the girl that couldn’t hear anything. “There’s someone coming...but the keynote isn’t scheduled for a while. Who could be interrupting me at this time?” Paris listened. “Someone in sneakers. An intern, probably.” Paris walked to a darkened area of the sage, cloaking himself in shadows and curtains.
“Give me the drive,” ordered Romeo, entering with Barry, who had pleaded with Romeo on the plane over Phoenix. “And my phone. There’s a draft in my Gmail. Send it to Ferdinand Caliban after the keynote. Also, give me the laptop.” Barry passed the messenger bag to his friend. “Swear to me, no matter what happens, don’t stop me, Barry. I need to do what I need to do, to make sure that Juliet’s okay. I...I also need to get that bracelet from her. All I know is that there’s something that I need to use it for. That’s all Lawrence said before I left. So go, but if you come back to stop me, I swear, it’ll be the last thing you do, and you’ll be the one wishing you were blacklisted. I’m crazy. You’ve figured that out by now. And you know the rule: don’t fuck with crazy.”
“I’m out, bro,” said Barry, saluting Romeo and heading off stage. If a Thisbia employee caught him, there’d be Hell to pay. They’d had to borrow passes from a neutral third party friend Barry had, someone from SF who knew someone in Boston who knew someone in Seattle that Barry had gone to high school with, and if that person got in trouble for helping them, Barry would have worse than Romeo to worry about.
“Thanks, bro,” said Romeo. “Wait, take this.” Romeo pulled out his wallet and took all the paper bills out. “Thanks. For everything. Spend it all in one place.”
Barry walked away, pocketing the cash. You dumb motherfucker, Romeo, if you think I’m leaving you alone here, you’ve got another thing here. I don’t know what your crazy ass is planning on doing, but if you think that you’re going to do it without backup...you’ve got another thing coming. At least, Barry planned on defending Romeo...until he opened his Snapchat and saw that he had twenty missed snaps from the last few hours spent on the private plane with Romeo.
“Thisbia: where dreams go to die...and dreamers, too,” said Romeo aloud, looking at the black box on the stage. “You’ve taken Juliet...the one thing I loved in this city, the one thing I truly loved. Now I’m going to take her back, no matter what.” He opened up the laptop bag and took out the computer, booted it in seconds, and as soon as the wallpaper flickered onto the screen, he insert the smooth silver USB drive containing the file that The Hacker had sent to him, the file he hadn’t dared open, lest his curiosity sabotage the plan.
It’s that boy from Pyrymyn again, thought Paris, watching everything that was going on onstage. He’s the thug who beat up Ty. He has no idea what he’s doing...or that she’s not his, and never was. Paris walked out of the shadows towards the plain white podium with the slanted front and subtle lip. “Up to no good as usual, Romeo, aren’t you? Come to mess with Thisbia one last time? I guess you weren’t planning on seeing me, were you. So let’s just have security show you the exit, shall we? You should’ve stayed out of the city.”
Romeo turned and a chill ran down his spine when he saw he’d been caught, although he didn’t know who by. “That’s exactly what I plan on doing, and you can’t stop me, no matter what you do,” said Romeo. “Don’t fuck with me. I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. Haven’t enough people gotten hurt? You heard about what happened with Ty: I’m one crazy motherfucker. So don’t push me...I hate myself more than I hate you. I could’ve saved her. I’m taking this down for her, not for me. It’s always been for her. So go back to your island, forget you ever saw me, forget you ever saw her. This is just another week for you. Everything’s over for me.”
“Well, believe it or not, I’m not about to let you take down a multibillion dollar international company that I’m a major investor in,” said Paris. “You need to go...possibly downtown, and I don’t mean to the Haight.”
“You wanna go, old man?” asked Romeo. “Then let’s go!” Romeo pushed Paris, and Paris pushed back, until the two men were just pushing each other back and forth, shouting.
Elissa, who had walked backstage after not getting a prompt reply from Paris, took out her phone. “Fuck,” she cursed aloud. “I need to get security.” She slipped off her heels and walked as fast as she could in the tight pencil skirt to find the closest member of Escalus’s hired guards.
Romeo was distracted by the sound of someone backstage, and Paris took the opportunity to trip the young man who threatened to destroy everything he’d cared about building. That’s when something inside of Romeo snapped, the way it had around Ty, and Romeo punched Paris straight in the face. Paris pressed a finger into his mouth and felt a gaping hole, pulling his finger out and finding bright red blood.
“You fool,” he said, shaking his head at Romeo. “You fucking fool. You want to see Juliet? Then see her!” Paris pointed at the box, as he hobbled off stage to find someone to handle this situation. He was too old for this.
As Paris left, cursing, Romeo looked at him. Maybe I will. But...who is that? It can’t be...Paris, can it? The billionaire? What was it that Barry told me about the investors at this event? I should’ve listened on the plane...something about how Paris was going to acquire Juliet, as an employee, obviously...or was it something else? Or was that it? I have no idea, but...fuck. I guess none of us have had good weeks. But I guess I need to open that box.
Romeo was left alone on stage staring at the pitch-black matte box, lit by a single spotlight, the only thing on the stage that wasn’t shrouded in darkness. What was Paris talking about? Juliet...he had no idea where she was, but she wasn’t in a box.
So what was in the box?
He hadn’t come this far to turn on his heels and head back to Austin without Juliet. If there was even a chance that the thing inside the box held a clue, even if it would get him arrested, he’d have to see it. Romeo walked around the box and looked for some way to open it without destroying it...before feeling along the edges and finding a subtle indent, which fit his thumb. He pulled the box open.
The inside of the box’s lid had text that matched the Thisbia logo on the banners in the lobby: sans-serif, light and dark grey.
Project Juliet
Thisbia’s hardware division is proud to introduce the future. Through usage of “CPUlettes”, miniature CPUs, 3D printed at the nanoscale, we’ve been able to create the world’s first fully functioning android, Juliet.
Able to function as both a companion and an employee, Juliet is the ideal for consumers as well as businesses. Juliet’s CPU arrays are optimized to compensate for the usual limitations faced by robots, as Juliet uses more individual processors than any other device on the market.
Juliet will be launched in Q4, just in time for the holiday season, and will be fully customizable, from height, weight, and coloration to personality modules, skill sets, and language capabilities. With a realistic chassis optimized to avoid the Uncanny Valley problem, you’ll never even remember she’s a machine.
Assembled in the USA by Thisbia Corp.
Romeo reread the text over and over, wishing this was some elaborate prank or sting operation, a setup by Thisbia to make him look stupid or to catch him back in SF, violating the terms of the blacklist, but no. Everything suddenly made sense: the reason he couldn’t find anything out about Juliet’s past, the reason Thisbia had her on such a tight leash even though she was supposedly an adult, the reason that she’d been the focus of all the Thisbia events as of late. She wasn’t just their intern. She was their new flagship product, and just as she’d changed his life, she’d change the world.