Forever Yours
62
Surprise!
LABOR DAY weekend, Henry invited Luke, Isobel, and Baby Paul to the new house for a holiday cookout. Isobel had just started the last two classes for her degree. She’d skipped the spring semester while she was pregnant. She was eager now to get her degree. Luke, on the other hand, was in the final year of his combined BA/MBA.
Henry looked at his friend and noticed Luke had a rapidly receding hairline. His father had a full head of hair, but Henry seemed to remember genetics didn’t work that way when it came to hair. They went to the patio and Henry started the new grill for the first time.
“Have you ever noticed things like this grill are only bright and shiny when they’re brand new?” Luke asked. He seemed in a pensive mood. “Once you use it the first time, the new starts to wear off. You won’t notice it much the first time—especially if you clean it good after you use it. Make sure all the grease is off it and anything that got charred is scrubbed clean. But the damage is done. It will never be new again—never quite as bright and shiny.”
Henry waited to see if there was a point to the story. When Luke didn’t go on, but stood staring at the meat cooking on the grate, Henry ventured into the conversation.
“Sounds like you have something on your mind other than my new grill,” he suggested.
“I’ve just started seeing atrophy all around me,” Luke sighed. “Think about the office, for example. Two years and two months ago we had the third floor built out to our specification and moved into a brand new space with a brand new company. Then we took over the second floor, and then the first floor. Of course, the first and second floors weren’t brand new. We replaced the former tenants and re-arranged things to suit ourselves.”
“Nothing stays brand new,” Henry said. “It’s the way of life.”
“But look at you! Tomorrow, we’ll have another brand new shiny office next door to the old one. You’ll move all the development over there into space that is just as new as ours was two years ago. But in the original office? We’ll get the carpets cleaned. Retouch the paint and patch a few holes. Then we’ll fill it and go on with the business. It just won’t be new anymore.”
“It sounds like you’re really talking about the business and not the office,” Henry said.
“Hmm. The office as a symbol of the business. I guess. Your new projects are over a year old, too. Your original products are all being worked on and advanced by other people. Aren’t you feeling like you need something new?” Luke asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve got a new baby,” Henry laughed.
“Mmmhmm. Like me. But my baby is six months old tomorrow. He’s no longer brand new. And yours is a month old. Every diaper you change, every burp you pat out, every lullaby you sing, it’s a little less new.”
“Are you okay, Luke? Problems?”
“Oh, I suppose they are nothing new, either,” he chuckled. “I knew when I married that it would be a little difficult. We never expected the company to take off so fast or so soon. In a way, I’m glad it did, because it shielded us from some of the other problems. I love Izzy. I’ve loved her since we were in junior high. I loved the manic Izzy and the depressed Izzy. I loved all the other Izzys I met along the way. Sometimes, it’s just a little hard coping with the company and the baby and her all at once.”
“You guys should take a vacation this winter—just the two of you. Go someplace warm where she can put on a bikini and tantalize you on the beach,” Henry said.
“Uh… Child,” Luke said flatly.
“We’ll keep Paul,” Henry said immediately. “You don’t even need to keep Grace on for the week. She can have a vacation, too. We haven’t spent nearly as much time with him as we wanted to. Having our own child kind of put a dent in that plan, but we’re still his godparents and we’d love to have him for a while.”
“I hope you can sell your wives on that, because I’m going to sell Isobel. You’re right. It’s just what we need,” Luke said.
Henry took the meat off the grill and they joined the women and babies for dinner.
Every box, piece of furniture, and bit of equipment had a tag on it, indicating what office or space in the new building it was to move to. The moving team had worked on the holiday—for double pay—to move everything from Building A to Building B that was supposed to be moved. Darrel supervised the move, making sure nothing moved that wasn’t supposed to.
Germaine took Henry and Chastity to work, then returned to take Cassie from Lisa so Lisa could make an appearance in her new office. She’d be on limited hours, but had decided she needed to save some of her parental time for use later. She might need time to take Cassie to a doctor or just to play with her daughter.
Henry’s office in the old space was bare. He hadn’t been into the office more than a couple of times in the past month, so seeing the office empty and dust in the corners was a little disconcerting. All the development area was cleaned out with the exception of Darrel’s IT group, which would be working from the old office to maintain the network.
In the lobby, a smiling young woman greeted them from the hologram.
“Good morning, Mr. Pascal and Ms. Pappa. I hope you had a good holiday,” the hologram said.
“Yes, thank you,” Henry responded, approaching the screen and examining the new look to the virtual receptionist. “What is your name?”
“My name is Emma. I am the fifth generation of Open Cloak virtual receptionists, commonly referred to as the Alice Project. How may I help you, Mr. Pascal?”
The tones were relaxed and casual, but Henry thought the phrasing of the answer was a little mechanical. He needed to talk to Simon about personality development for the holograms.
“Have you been informed about the number of new people coming in today?” Henry asked.
“Yes, sir. Audrey has the name tags and will register each person as he or she comes in. She’ll make sure each new hire then waits for their escort. Badges will be issued at orientation,” Emma said.
“Good. Thank you. And as this is your first day in our lobby, welcome to Open Cloak Design,” Henry said.
“First day? Oh! So it is!”
The hologram looked surprised.
“Nice work on Emma, Simon,” Henry said. “Deena showed some signs of a personality and Emma is… interesting if a little mechanical. She sounded surprised this morning.”
“It will be a miracle if she doesn’t sound surprised at everything anyone says,” Simon laughed. “Why didn’t they teach us anything about computer personalities in school? The hardest part has been finding where little things can be added that don’t mess up big things. We’re getting closer.”
“You know, both Pythia Speaks and the Forever Yours singularities are developing the appearance of personalities. I wonder if some of the learning experience there is adaptable to Alice,” Henry said.
“I get it with Forever Yours, because it has the entire life and personality of the model to work from. The Alice learning model is far more limited. We record the same stuff for each version. I’m surprised Pythia Speaks is learning a personality,” Simon said.
“I’m guessing it has to do with the number of queries she gets each day. She was based on a small language model, but she adds content to her wall based on the queries she receives and even the answers she gives,” Henry said. “How does the new recording studio look?”
“It will be fun. We’ve been recording in less than optimum conditions. Now when we have an Alice model come in to record, we have eight cameras and a fully neutral background and lighting. It would be cool if we had full body, but head and shoulders is all the receptionist needs.”
“Keep up the good work.”
“Oh, that reminds me. This woman named Virginia Amundson from Niagara Falls contacted us. Slightly southern accent. I guess she called Chastity and Chastity hooked her up with me. She said you suggested she call when she lost her job?”
“Oh! I didn’t expect her to remember where she’d put Chastity’s card. We met her at the front desk at our hotel. She has a kind of clueless bubbly demeanor and I thought she might be a possible for your library of models. Make up your own mind. It was just a thought,” Henry laughed.
“I’ve learned that your random thoughts are often laced with genius, Henry. I’ll talk to her.”
Henry wasn’t sure the clueless desk clerk from Niagara Falls would be laced with genius, but he left Simon to figure that out. He was sure, however, that he wanted to do more work on Forever Yours, and that it would involve branching the source code. He didn’t want to experiment with the commercial product.
He found he was talking aloud much more when he had his daughter in his arms. It just seemed natural to tell her about everything he thought of. And that was carrying over into his work space, as well. He kept a recorder running when he was in his office and talked out loud as he recorded his thoughts and ideas.
The video in Forever Yours worked just fine as long as it was simply selecting clips to play, but the generative AI was slow at creating an image on the fly that appeared to be talking. With typical generative AI, the video was created and recorded, then played back at speed. Forever Yours did not allow for lag time to create the video. It needed to play immediately, like a conversation.
Another aspect of the program he wanted to fine tune was what the avatar could and could not say. In Pythia Speaks, Henry had set general rules regarding the use of religious terms and phrases, political activity, and hate speech. Pythia learned words used in those queries, but she did not use the terms. If she did not have a reference for an alternate term she was allowed to use, she eliminated it and constructed answers that ignored the offensive parts. Henry was certain that people training AIs for similar applications set different rules. In the past, attempting to change the way an AI thought led to unpredictable results. The creators could end up with a religious radical as easily as a benign advisor.
Forever Yours needed a different set of parameters. It had to be faithful to the character, personality, and knowledge of the progenitor. It was supposed to become a singularity, not a descendent of the person recording. Ultimately, the program had to think like the subject thought. Where Pythia had a lot of latitude in how she could create answers to questions, Forever Yours had to remain faithful to the character on which the singularity was based.
The problem occupied most of Henry’s head space at the office and he did submit several code snippets for check-in that would improve the performance of the commercial app.
Most of all, however, he recorded more and more of his life as he thought of it. He recorded his ideas and his emotions. He recorded his love for his daughter and his wives.
And time flew.
It was the end of September when Lisa and Germaine heard an insistent ringing of the doorbell. Both approached the door and Germaine pressed Cassie into Lisa’s arms and motioned her back from the door. Germaine opened the door.
“Help me!” Grace said. The Riordans’ nanny looked a little disheveled and held Baby Paul, now seven months old and squirming to get out of her arms. Germaine was instantly alert for approaching danger but didn’t see anyone. They pulled Grace into the house and locked the door behind her.
“You’re safe now,” Germaine said.
“What’s happened?” Lisa asked, rushing to Grace and Paul. They went into the children’s play room and Paul was set free. He started crawling away from the adults to investigate whatever toys he could find. Cassie was only two months old so most of the toys she played with were in her bassinet and were stuffed animals and chewables. There were other things in the nursery to play with, though, and Germaine took over watching Paul so Lisa and Grace could talk.
“Mrs. Riordan…” Grace began. “She told me that if she ever appeared to be a danger to the baby, to bring him here and stay until Mr. Riordan came to say it was safe.”
“Oh, shit! She’s off her meds, isn’t she!” Lisa said.
“I don’t keep track of her medication,” Grace said. “She came home from her class and went straight to her private space to study. Paul was fussy and I was trying to fix him something to eat. Apparently, we made too much noise. Mrs. Riordan flew out of her office in a fit of rage, screaming for me to make the brat shut up or she would. There was such fury in her face, I hid Paul behind me to keep her away. As soon as I could escape, I ran to the baby car and brought him here.”
“Grace? Your face! You’re bruised!” Lisa said.
“I must have run into something,” Grace said, hanging her head.
“Isobel’s fist?” Lisa said, controlling her anger. Silent tears leaked from Grace’s eyes.
Lisa got her phone out as Grace knelt to help with Paul.
“Germaine, can you help get Paul something to eat? I’m going to ask Henry to come home.”
“I should go get Henry and Chastity,” Germaine said, standing.
“No. I need you here,” Lisa said. “Just get some food ready and keep an eye out for us. I’ll ask Chas to have one of the other security people bring them home.”
“You shouldn’t call them away from the office!” Grace said in a panic. “We can go to a park until things settle down.”
“Grace, honey, you’re safe here. We won’t let anything happen to either you or Paul. But Henry and Chastity need to know their daughter has company and it’s Friday afternoon, so they should come home now anyway,” Lisa said.
Grace took Paul into the kitchen with Germaine and Cassie. Lisa made her call.
“Chas, honey, I love you,” Lisa said when her wife answered the phone.
“I love you, sweetheart.”
“Could you and Henry get one of the other security guys to bring you home? I need Germaine here,” Lisa said.
“Of course. What is it, Lisa?” Chastity asked immediately.
“Grace and little Paul showed up a bit ago and they are quite upset about Izzy’s behavior at home. If you see Luke, better tell him to go home, too.”
“We’ll be there in half an hour,” Chastity said. “Don’t let anyone else in the house.”
“Germaine is on duty. We’re okay, but we need you.”
Henry and Chastity reached the house in less than the promised half hour. The security person stayed close to them until he’d cleared the house with Germaine, then he stayed outside with the car.
“This is stupid,” Henry said. “We shouldn’t need to have security protecting us against our partner and long-time friend.”
“I don’t think we do need it, but we can’t convince either Germaine or Donald out there,” Lisa said. “Grace told us that Izzy once described the changes she goes through if she becomes unbalanced. Usually, her drugs keep her stable these days, but she told Grace that if she ever saw the demons chasing her to bring Paul here and stay until Luke says it’s safe. Since she designated us as the safe place, I don’t think she’d try to come here.”
“My poor sweet friend,” Chastity said. “It’s been quite a while since I saw her in a full-blown episode.”
“All I can say is I’m glad she has Luke. I would have been a lousy choice,” Henry said.
They integrated Grace into the family routine of getting ready for dinner. Paul had stayed with them on other occasions, so they had clothes, diapers, and other necessary items for the little boy. Donald, the other security person, came in to join the family for dinner but went back out to his car afterward and promised he would stay there until they received an all-clear from Luke.
The phone call came about eight at night.
“She’s asleep,” Luke said without any preface. “This was the worst I’ve seen her in a long time. To complicate matters, she’d had half a bottle of tequila by the time I got home.”
“I’m sorry, bro,” Henry said. “What can we do?”
“Would you mind keeping Paul and Grace overnight?”
“Of course we will. Will she be okay by morning?”
“Probably,” Luke said. “I’ll take her to her doctor first thing in the morning. You can only imagine how hard it was to get a psychiatrist to accept an appointment for Saturday morning. There was no way to get in this evening unless I took her to a hospital. If I’d done that, I’d need to check her in and she’d probably be there a month. Her doctor thinks it was a mistake in her meds and some kind of trigger at school.”
“Okay. We’ll take care of Grace and Paul. You take care of Isobel.”
“Thanks, partner.”
Grace and Paul spent the weekend. Grace was a live-in nanny, so when Luke took Izzy to the doctor Saturday morning, Grace went home to get a few things together for herself and for Paul. Germaine treated Grace’s bruised face with ice and a soothing cream. They talked quietly, long into the night, but Grace did not want to press charges against her employer. Germaine took it upon themself to start training the nanny in self-defense and security.
Donald, the security guy who had spent the night outside, was replaced in the morning and a rotating post was created for the weekend. The house was gated, so it was unlikely there would be any kind of infringement, but after they’d been read the riot act for not having a guard on duty when the Pentagon tried to breach the front office, the company didn’t take any chances.
The Army or the Pentagon was not heard from again except in a written notice indicating they wanted assurance that all government code had been removed from the premises. By that time, Rebecca Bernard, US Army Inactive Reserve, was well embedded in Nathan’s team and was able to give the Pentagon team assurances enough to satisfy them.
It seemed Conrad was well embedded in Rebecca as well. The couple announced they would be married in January.
As they approached the end of October, things had settled down to a steady rhythm of work on all the areas of development, marketing, and management. The company was twice the size it had been just a few months before. Cassie was thirteen weeks old and was progressing well in her development. Little Paul was a frequent visitor, though not in an emergency. He was eight months and was pulling himself up on anything stable. Cassie saw what was happening and attempted to mimic him, but didn’t yet have the body strength.
“Things have been going so well,” Henry said, yawning, on Sunday morning. He’d been up and changed Cassie’s nightwear and diaper, bringing her to bed for Lisa to feed. Chastity brought coffee in, which Henry gratefully accepted. “I just love our family. I keep thinking how useless I am at the office and how I should just stay home.”
“Not what I heard,” Chastity said. “What is this battery changer I’ve heard about?”
“Oh, it’s nothing really,” Henry said. “It was an idea that I came up with during the last paving robot review. In order to keep the machine running 24/7, they developed a charger and changer that is built into the paver. I just thought such a thing done on a personal computer scale would enable us to sever ties with the power company completely. Well, for computers. Of course, there’s other things like lights and air conditioning. So, the guys designed a docking station for my laptop that will automatically change out the computer power cell, put the old one in the charger, and never have the computer go down. If we make it work for servers, it would make a huge difference at Page Services.”
Cassie finished sucking on Lisa’s nipple. Lisa handed the baby to Henry to burp and accepted a cup of coffee from Chastity.
“I’m afraid what we are experiencing is the calm before the storm,” Lisa said.
Cassie let out a huge burp and Henry was glad he’d put a cloth on his shoulder.
“Yeah. That was definitely a storm from this little one,” he laughed.
“I’m talking about the storm of having another child,” Lisa sighed. “I think I’m pregnant again.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
