They arrived early in the morning, but even so, the place was humming. Situated in King’s Cross, in what was rapidly becoming the city’s ‘tech quarter’, Derkind was a futuristic building full of futuristic people attempting to shape the future, and they liked to get a head start on it. From inside the huge foyer where North stood, the building appeared to be made of shiny things – walls of rosy tinted glass folding over and over on itself, some with water running down them; arching steel girders and beams, which in turn held up sheets and columns of polished concrete and maroon-veined marble.
In her glittering Dr. Martens, Fang turned round and round in the same spot. ‘Wow!’ she said. ‘This has to be the mother ship.’
An organic shape that architects hadn’t believed they could build, until they did. Using materials that should never have twisted and curved and bent in that way, ‘The Brain’ was considered an engineering triumph when Derkind moved in. Since then, it had become an iconic London landmark.
The reception area curved outwards before it sloped sharply inwards again. Like the inside of a pyramid, North thought, staring up into the void, and nothing good had happened to the pharaohs in any pyramid he knew about. It was so high, there appeared to be large birds flying around the void. There was even a soundtrack of birdsong playing, which he imagined was meant to relax visitors, but despite the dawn chorus, he fought off a presentiment of doom. He didn’t like the place. It was impressive, he supposed, if you went for stark modernism, but it was cold, forbidding and strangely soulless. His eye snagged on an engraved sign at waist height by the doorway. ‘Under the Data Protection Act of 2018, we would like to bring to your attention that in the interests of security, CCTV is in operation. We thank you for your cooperation in this.’ Of course they were under surveillance. Maybe that was it. Maybe something in him felt the eyes of strangers on him, judging, and finding him wanting.
‘You don’t have to be here,’ he said to Fang. ‘We can get your mum out a different way.’ He’d thought about it on the drive over. Fang could hack the immigration records and he and Plug could swoop in to whichever detention centre it was and pull her out. Hone would be mad but it was doable. Fang shook her head. She’d already thought it through. ‘Mum will want her old life back,’ she said. ‘She’s uber-boring like that.’ Of course she would. Fang’s mum wouldn’t want to spend the rest of her life worrying in case Hone and his bully-boy immigration officers rocked up again.
He attempted to shrug off the bad feeling that had crawled inside of him. Maybe it was the fact he was back home and didn’t want to be. Because ‘home’ made him think of the woman he’d lost. Maybe it was simply down to the fact he needed a drink? It was only just past eight in the morning in London, but in Berlin it was nine. Fangfang tugged at his arm. She looked up at him, expectant. She was worried about her mother, but here was someone in a hurry to walk into the future. The computer scientists who worked in this building were her kind of people, he guessed. Brimful of abstract knowledge and at ease with machines, all looking to change the world.
The teenager matched her step to North’s. She was trying to play it cool but her breath came fast – as if she were climbing a mountain. This Tobias Hawke guy had her interested.
As they crossed the foyer, the noise of the falling water receded and the electronic birdsong got louder, reaching peak crescendo at a huge brushed-steel desk, behind which an exquisite youth in a black polo neck and a headset microphone tapped away at a computer. A name badge identified the receptionist as Jarrod. North’s height allowed him to see right over the desk, down on to Jarrod’s keyboard, the green juice to one side and the cardboard box next to it. Inside was a felt cactus leaning against a mug with the phrase ‘Number 1 Nerd’ on it, a golden Maneki-neko whose cat’s paw jiggled in protest and a stapler. A yellow Post-it note with the name ‘Paulie Holliday’ stirred in the breeze from the air conditioning. Paulie Holliday had clearly left the building in a hurry.
Fangfang, however, could barely see over the desk. When Jarrod deigned to look up, North figured the receptionist would have an excellent view of her fringe and the laser-like eyes behind her jam-jar spectacles.
‘Good morning and welcome to the Derkind Institute for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence,’ Jarrod said, without one scintilla of warmth, his face shiny-new as if he too polished himself daily.
Taking a step back, Fang blew and popped a bubble, and Jarrod winced.
Maybe the young man was grumpy because he had to play a supporting role to the oversized video of his black-browed, snowy-maned boss behind him? Locked in an eternal loop of scowling and pursing his lips, turning his head from side to side as if scanning the foyer for someone worthy of his attention. Derkind wanted it clear from the start who you were buying into – Tobias Hawke, the myth and the genius. Watching the strutting and posturing, North felt a primitive and immediate dislike. Even the building, he realized, was designed to represent Hawke’s superhuman genius. Any visitor was meant to feel awe that they’d been allowed to bear witness to the inner workings of Hawke’s own brain. The futuristic architecture, the backstory of suffering and bravery, the snowy mane and denim shirt – all had the feel of something curated and on the cusp of legend. This was how legends were made. Hawke was a scientist destined to go down in the history books. Albert Einstein. Alan Turing. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Mark Zuckerberg. Those who shifted the paradigm, and Tobias Hawke was going to be bigger than any of them if he had anything to do with it.
‘Michael North and Fangfang Yu – we have an appointment with Esme Sullivan Hawke.’
‘Today?’ Jarrod pursed his lips as if struggling to believe they’d have an appointment any day, let alone the day of the gala, and North resisted the urge to take hold of him by his polo neck and drag him across the desk. Instead, he stared the gatekeeper down until sweat broke out across Jarrod’s already shiny forehead and, with lips pursed, he started pecking rapidly at his keyboard.
North glanced down at Fang and winked. Whatever this was, they were in it together. She moved off to explore the foyer, trailing her fingers through the water, and turning his head, he scanned the words engraved three-foot-high across the wall behind the receptionist. ‘It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.’ By someone called Enrico Fermi. He made a mental note to ask Fang who Enrico Fermi was. Underneath the Fermi quote was a smaller, laser-cut steel plate announcing: ‘Derkind is one of 160 companies and organizations who are adding our name to the pledge organized by the Future of Life Institute to neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade, or use of lethal autonomous weapons.’
He caught the rose and vanilla scent of her first. An old-fashioned perfume, he thought later, for a woman at the helm of a cutting-edge technology company.
‘Humans are the most deadly creatures on this planet, but I don’t have to tell you that, Mr North.’ She stood alongside him, reading as he read. ‘But for how long? Autonomous weapons systems identify, target and kill without even having to be told to do so by their human masters.’ He glanced over and what she was saying ceased to matter, because Esme Sullivan Hawke was photogenic enough, but in the flesh she was nothing short of breathtaking.
She swivelled a little towards him. He put her at just under six foot but he wondered again how she’d managed to kill a man with her bare hands. ‘I signed us up to that pledge because I believe we need to get these things right from the get-go. We’re living in frontier country as far as privacy goes; same for accountability, issues of bias and unintended consequences, and questions as to what’s moral and what isn’t. At Derkind, we’re working to make the world a better place, not worse, or what’s the point of anything we do here? “Do no harm” isn’t enough for us.’
‘Sounds like a big enough ask to me.’ he said, and her sombre face softened into the start of a sad smile.
‘It’s a start, perhaps,’ she said. ‘Excuse me for one minute. We’ve had another drama this morning. Apparently it’s that kind of day.’