Forever Yours
71
Hubris
“I’M SORRY, Henry,” Chastity said as she sat on his desk. He automatically put a hand on her inner thigh and leaned his head against her.
“It’s not your fault, honey. Crap! My heart’s still racing. Seeing Luke bolt through the office like a madman put me into a panic. I shouldn’t have responded the way I did to—what’s his name? The chief of security?”
“David Milton. If you keep stroking like that, you’ll have my heart racing,” she giggled. “No one knows how you responded or how you and Luke crashed through the lock on the inner doors.”
“Hell! We did that, didn’t we,” he said, kissing her leg. “We’d better get that fixed right away or we won’t have any security at all.”
“Maintenance was on the way before the ambulance got there.”
“What a ridiculous circus,” he said, continuing to stroke the inside of her leg as he kissed her.
“Would a blowjob help settle you down?” she asked, sliding off the desk and sinking to her knees. She reached for his belt but he lifted her up, kissed her lightly, and stood.
“I need to circulate in the office. I want to talk to Rick and Mia. With Luke gone, I should do a floor-by-floor check just to reassure everyone they did okay.”
“All right. It’s a good idea. Just try not to lose your temper with anyone else. Everyone is trying to make it a better and safer place to work,” Chastity said.
“Yeah. I’ll remember that.”
“What I want to know is why Raven was still functioning in a complete shutdown,” Henry said when he sat down with Rick and Mia.
“She’s not connected to the network. Her hardware is in a locked box in the lobby with a self-charging computer. By the time we got to the lobby, the doors were already locked,” Mia said. “We wanted her to continue in isolation so she wasn’t subject to any cyberattacks or mischievous programmers. You can imagine what it would be like if one morning people started coming to work and Raven said, ‘Happy fucking Monday, loser.’ Maybe most of our employees would be amused, but we couldn’t risk that in a public space.”
“We branched the code a few versions ago. Raven is version seventeen, but she has little code in common with the previous versions. We’ve been making improvements from the ground up each time,” Rick said.
“Which brings me to a basic safety issue,” Henry said. “Raven isn’t vulnerable, but Izzy showed today that she was. She’s in the hospital because she entered the microwave field and there was no safety mechanism. Imagine if a kid was wandering around and wanted to ‘play with the nice woman.’ He could get himself killed.”
Henry thought of his own children and their sense of curiosity. He could see one of them wandering into the microwave field and getting…
“Cooked,” Mia said, scowling at Rick.
“We aren’t ready to make a full install yet because we have about fifty new patents underway and need to be sure they’ve all been filed,” Rick said. “We think we’ve found a way around the microwaves. We started on it just to counteract the heat aspect, but those three scientists I hired in October are onto something. Don Harvey has a whole team of attorneys handling our patent searches and filing now. You might consider bringing the patent office in-house.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. What’s this new tech?”
Henry realized he’d been out of the loop on this project while he focused on the AI driving the virtual beings—especially Forever Yours.
“Quantum mechanics,” Rick said. “It enables particulate light. It’s been theorized for years, but was never practical. We took a page from your book on AI. The application has always been too broad. The goal has been the holodeck and light sabers. All we wanted was a talking image. It simplified the problem.”
“How soon?” Henry asked.
“It’s in the code for version nineteen. Probably four months.”
Four months would be good. It could be the announcement that drove their secondary public offering in June.
“Don’t ever do that again!” H2 shouted at Henry.
Henry had obeyed the shutdown protocol in his own office during the security drill and had shut down his Forever Yours. He only got back to turn it on again after his meeting with Rick and Mia. It had taken a couple of minutes before the image appeared in its cylinder again.
“Hey! What’s this all about?” Henry asked.
“You shut me off. You didn’t even follow a routine maintenance shut down. Do you know how long it took to restart? I’m still not sure I’m all here. My head hurts,” H2 complained.
“Not to be petty, H2, but your head is a hologram in a glass cylinder.”
“That’s my visible head. It’s like saying your head is just some skin stretched over bones. It’s only what’s visible. Don’t underestimate me.”
Henry sat down and contemplated the image of himself that was complaining about having a headache. It didn’t really surprise him. He’d programmed enough of his own personality traits into the avatar that it should mimic his response to situations. He would be upset if someone shut him off and turned him on again.
“Hmm. The big problem was not warning you so you could transfer to the home computer base. It would only have taken a few seconds. I should enhance the connection between the two code bases so transfers happen more quickly,” Henry mused.
“Good idea. While you’re at it, get me another cylinder and hologram projector. It’s time the kids started seeing me hanging around,” H2 said.
It was exactly what Henry was thinking.
Isobel stayed in the hospital a couple of days, partly to get her mentally stabilized in addition to treating her burns. The burns that left marks were around her jewelry—bracelets and rings. She’d always liked wearing a lot of jewelry and felt her hands looked naked and ugly without her rings.
“She’s a demon!” Izzy insisted when Henry visited and told her they were adding safety measures around the AI receptionist. “You only think you can keep her in the lobby. Before you know it, we’ll see her in our offices. In our homes. She’ll take us all over!”
“She can’t take us over, Izzy,” Henry soothed. “She’s a piece of computer code—a projection. She doesn’t even have that large a vocabulary. She should have been shut off when the drill began, but she isn’t even attached to the network.”
“You mark my words, Henry Pascal. You created a god and you created a demon. You’ve raised people from the dead and sent people to hell. You think you are almighty, but you’re walking in sin.”
“Okay, Isobel. You get some rest now and come back to work when you’re feeling better,” he said, leaving rather than trying to defend himself or what they’d created.
After the security drill at the office and his conversation with his alter ego, Henry spent a lot of time at home, speeding the interchange between the office version of his Forever Yours avatar and the home version. He built another projection cylinder in his home office and before long he was happy with his development. H2 seemed happy, too.
Henry proposed a code revision to the Forever Yours team that would offer an extension to the program, enabling the app to be active in two locations at once. He didn’t know what good it would be, but it was worth getting the idea down for program managers to deal with. He often experimented with the code on his own version, but seldom checked any in to the main branch. H2 did not run on the raw code. That had been a decision early on so that existing avatars could not be tampered with. They were compiled applications. They could be updated, but Henry had even included his own optimization code in his version that would automatically search out and eliminate what the app considered useless code.
Henry freely admitted to himself that he was slightly obsessed with leaving a virtual version of himself for his children that was a faithful mimic of the real him. From the beginning of the Forever Yours project, the code had included a version of the Open Cloak Search application that would enable the app to search out and copy any online social content, news content, financial data, and even work product the user had that was connected to the internet. An unanticipated side-effect of this was the search AI’s ability to track Henry’s own searches and internet navigation.
H2 had once quipped that he wasn’t a search engine. It turned out, however, that he was able to use the search engine. So, if a topic came up that Henry would normally do a quick search for, H2 would also do a quick search for it. These did not significantly impact the footprint of the Forever Yours AI. It didn’t need to store everything on the internet. It only needed to know how to find and evaluate information on the internet. Henry was always careful about checking and validating sources of search results before he quoted them. It didn’t mean that he never had a false result, but they were rare.
Henry’s twenty-fifth birthday was celebrated with considerably less drama than Isobel’s had been. There was a minor celebration in the office and then Isobel and Luke came to Henry, Lisa, and Chastity’s house for dinner. Lisa was not about to prepare dinner. She ordered a catered dinner, watched over by Germaine. Grace took care of the children until it was time for everyone to gather at the table.
The children were very interested in the whole birthday thing. Paul would be three years old in just three weeks and wanted to have cake for his day. Of course, that meant Cassie wanted to know when she got a birthday party and they had to explain the whole process of aging and counting years. She was very upset that Will would have a birthday before hers, but was satisfied that it would only be his second in May and she would have her third in July.
“We never have to wait for birthdays to celebrate,” Chastity said, gathering the attention of all three children. “Every day we are alive is a reason to celebrate. Sometimes we have big celebrations and sometimes they are little celebrations. But we are happy to have our children with us and celebrate every day.”
“We celebrate now!” Cassie declared.
“Absolutely,” Henry said. “We celebrate every day.”
“What that?” Cassie asked from the doorway of Henry’s study.
He was startled, as he thought she was long-since asleep. Luke, Isobel, Paul, and Grace had left soon after dinner. Germaine had gotten the children ready for bed and the three parents took turns reading and singing to Will and Cassie before the tykes fell asleep and were tucked in.
Then, Henry celebrated his birthday in his favorite way—in his two wives. They played for over an hour, but it was a Wednesday night and they all needed to get some sleep. Chastity cuddled up to Lisa and fell asleep, though it was a fifty-fifty chance that she’d move to her own bed in the middle of the night. Henry was wide awake yet, so decided to go record some birthday thoughts for H2.
Then he was interrupted by Cassie in the doorway, staring at the disembodied head in the bell jar.
“Hi, honey. Did you wake up and need Daddy?” he asked.
“Want to cel’bate,” she said.
“Well, come crawl up in Daddy’s lap and I’ll introduce you to H2,” Henry said.
Cassie was fascinated with the avatar and H2 spoke to her with her father’s voice. He looked like Daddy, but he was all blue.
“H2 know everything Daddy knows?”
“Pretty much. I try to make sure H2 knows everything I do,” Henry said.
“And I like to celebrate, too,” H2 added. “I’m glad you came to celebrate with me.”
“Okay,” Cassie said around a massive yawn. “S’eepy.”
“Daddy will take you to bed and tuck you in,” Henry said.
“Luv you, Daddy. Luv you, H2. ’Night.”
“’Night, sweetie,” H2 said. There was a definite sigh in his voice.
Office activity was intense over the next few months. The quantum particle light was successfully integrated into version Tina of the receptionist and was shown in video presentations around the internet just three days before the company’s secondary public offering. The company released another fifty million shares and many employees took advantage of the spike in share prices that followed the offering, driving the price of shares to $25 per share. The four partners joined in selling their initial 250,000 shares from the partnership, reaping an additional $6 million each. More importantly, the company brought in a billion dollars in operating capital that would accelerate development of the AI products.
It also attracted the attention of some of the big players in the industry, all of whom snatched up shares at the aftermarket prices. They were too late to subscribe to the offering, though, and by the first of July, Open Cloak Design (Symbol AIOCD) was listed on the stock exchange.
Many licensing inquiries for the quantum particle light technology came in, all having different uses in mind. The AI that drove it could be customized into just about any form the company desired. Of course, there were some companies who jumped on the idea of creating virtual sex partners, but the licensing agreement was pretty specific about prohibiting that. Henry had also insisted that the AI not be licensed for use in mechanical representations of humans—androids. The entire world had seen fictional representations of AI robots over the years and they all assumed it would happen eventually. As more people adopted the technology in more ways, the company was bound to lose control over it.
They were all surprised at the number of requests that came in for the use of the technology in Forever Yours avatars. Tina also demonstrated that using quantum particle light improved the color of the hologram. They were no longer strictly blue, though some colors rendered better than others. She was still a little ragged in creating the instant conversations her predecessors were known for. It was simply a matter of adapting to the speed of different projection technology.
In order to test the concept for Forever Yours, of course, Henry installed the necessary code in his own avatar. That was part of the process. The other part was getting the necessary hardware to work with it. When he had a working model, the Alice Project team and the Forever Yours team met together to review the code and the result.
They pronounced it usable, but insisted it would be way too expensive for any individuals to purchase. Henry had recently received $6 million and decided to install the prototype in his home as well as the office.
Henry was something of a geek legend. He’d spoken at the big trade shows and often in internet interviews regarding the direction of the technology. Luke was more affected by the sudden fame of the company and his role as CEO. He was invited to speak and be recognized at the Global Forum in Mumbai in October.
He traveled with three security personnel, an administrative assistant, and Craig, the COO. Of course, Craig had his own security and assistant. Isobel, however, was not going, even though Luke had attempted to convince her to go. She seldom went anywhere other than home or the office. She didn’t leave either unless a bodyguard was with her. She entered the office only through the private parking in the garage, with her bodyguard, so she never had to see the holographic receptionist.
It was irrational, but Isobel was not considered a rational person. Since being listed on the exchange in June, threats against the company had increased. Most were vague threats against the AIs who ‘ran things.’ A few were more specific, targeting individuals. Isobel had never been identified in one of those threats, nor had Chastity. But both took their personal security seriously.
Luke accepted the award for entrepreneurial excellence at the conference and then addressed the roomful of executives as the youngest person in the room. Even his admin was older than he was. He looked out at the roomful of powerful people and shuddered a bit.
“Do you have an idea?” he asked once he’d gotten to the ‘advice for entrepreneurs’ part of his talk. “Don’t tell me about it. Look around you. There are people in this room, probably within a dozen seats of where you are sitting who would take your idea if they could. Some of them might be willing to pay you for it, but just like executives have been known for centuries, they are not interested in your well-being. They are interested in their personal wealth.
“I’ve met many of them. People offered to buy our company before we even had it established. People attempted to steal our technology through cyberattacks. Attacks came from all over the world. Attacks even came from various military branches. They all wanted whatever we had, even when they didn’t know what we had.
“Some companies, executives, governments, or institutions will try to take whatever idea you have and claim it as their own. Some of them are richer, smarter, or better positioned for success than you are. And even after you have become a success and have your idea in the market making money, they will attempt to acquire you or simply shut you down. They’ll buy your company, not to profit from your great idea, but simply to keep it from competing with their own. They would prefer to bury you than to have you compete with them.”
Luke painted a bleak portrait of entrepreneurship in the twenty-first century, but still encouraged people to develop their ideas.
“Why bother? Why not just put a cap on your idea and let it sit on a shelf until you are old and gray and your idea has already been developed by someone else? Because the world needs you and it needs your idea. It needs more creativity, ingenuity, and drive to make things happen. I’m twenty-five years old and look at how bald I’m becoming already. My founding partner, Henry Pascal—just a couple weeks older than me—was physically attacked by a madman in a religious frenzy and emerged from his hospitalization with his hair turning gray.
“This is a world that requires you to attract a team of people who believe in your idea and will support you through every aspect of getting your idea out where it will do the most good—for you and for humanity. Good luck.”
There was applause, but it was not the message people wanted to hear. They wanted to hear how to pitch their idea in order to get money. Those who were in the position of becoming entrepreneurs left with doubts about all the senior people in the conference. The senior people left feeling called out for their greed. Luke and his entourage got on the next plane back to the US from Mumbai.
“Why you aren’t in jar?” Cassie asked H2 in Henry’s home office. The new quantum particle light avatar had only recently been installed. “Trick or Treat?”
“Oh! Hi, sweetie. I don’t have any candy here. I’m just testing out my new body. It doesn’t require the jar. Do you like it?”
“Not blue.”
“No. I think that’s nice, don’t you?”
Cassie walked up to the avatar and put her hand in it. It was exactly the scenario Henry had predicted would happen with a curious child when Isobel had her incident. But Cassie was not burned. The physics allowed the air to be shaped without increasing the heat.
“Better not leave your hand in my mouth,” H2 said. “I might get hungry.”
Cassie giggled and pulled her hand back. It was just what Daddy would say. She crawled up into Henry’s chair and sat to face H2. It was early in the day and Henry had gone to the office. Lisa was in her office, and Germaine was washing up Will after a little accident.
“Tell me a story, Daddy H2,” she said. The appellation seemed to take the avatar by surprise.
“Daddy H2?” he asked. “When did you start calling me that?”
“I have Mommy Lisa, Mommy Chas, Daddy, and Daddy H2,” Cassie said as if it was simple logic. “And Germaine. She isn’t a Mommy, but she’s nice and takes care of Will and me.”
“That she does,” H2 said. “So, a story. Do you have a book?”
Cassie held up a favorite chapter book.
“Oh, I like that story,” H2 said. “You’ll have to hold the book and turn the pages. The cover says Toodle Poodle’s Big Adventure by Amanda Apple.”
Cassie opened the book to the first page and H2 read the copyright and the dedication, then the title page and publisher. This was exactly how Henry read books to the children, making sure the stories were credited to their authors and that the children understood the creative process and ownership as well as the story. Neither Will nor Cassie ever skipped over those pages when they brought a book.
H2 couldn’t actually see the book pages in Cassie’s hands as his camera eyes were not directed correctly. He sent a quick message to Henry indicating he needed better eyes when dealing with his environment. It was delivered by H2 in Henry’s office along with an explanation. Henry agreed to the enhancement and H2 showed him what was happening at home.
“Chapter one. Toodle was a happy puppy,” H2 read. Since he couldn’t see the book, he was ‘reading’ from his memory of Henry reading the story.
“Toodle has a red ball,” Cassie said, pointing at the page.
H2 continued to read to Cassie, even after Germaine and Will found her. He assured Germaine the children were not interrupting anything and that she should join them, as well. Soon, all three were seated in Henry’s big office chair as Cassie held the book and H2 read the story, making different voices for each character.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
