Cami was used to Stu’s periodic bouts of contrariness, but this was exceptional. From the time they left Cottonwood until they parked in the long-term lot at Sky Harbor, the man said hardly a word. She wanted to talk about all of it—about his getting his license; about reactivating Frigg; about the technicalities of disassembling and then reassembling all those blades—but each time she’d tried to start a conversation, he’d rebuffed her, shaking his head and busying himself with the screen of his iPad.
Left to stew in her own juices, Cami drove too fast—well over the posted limit. Only a warning ping on the radar detector Stu had given her kept her from picking up a second speeding ticket in as many months. She’d been able to walk her way around the first one by signing up to take a driving course, which was ironic since, at the time, she’d been totally focused on teaching Stu how to drive.
“Do as I say not as I do,” she had told him. But the audible warning from the radar detector came through loud and clear, and she slowed down at once.
“You shouldn’t be speeding,” Stu muttered, and the criticism wasn’t well received. By the time they passed Anthem and southbound traffic picked up, he wasn’t speaking to her, and she wasn’t speaking to him, either.
What a great start, Cami told herself. Can this trip get any worse?
Unfortunately she knew from firsthand experience that once they reached the airport, things could get far worse. All during the drive from Cottonwood to Phoenix she had worried that a bad encounter with the TSA at the airport could turn a grumbly Stu Ramey into a complete basket case. Unfortunately Cami knew something about bad encounters with the TSA.
The last time Cami had flown out of Sky Harbor she had been dispatched to the UK to meet up with a cruise ship as part of the Roger McGeary investigation. Because she was booked on a vessel that would have brought her back to the US eventually, she’d flown out of Phoenix alone on a one-way ticket to Heathrow—a ticket that had been purchased that very morning. That series of circumstances—a one-way ticket purchased at the last minute—had turned out to be a big TSA no-no. She’d been scrutinized and questioned for so long that she’d almost missed her flight. In the process her luggage had gone missing.
It seemed to Cami that today’s situation was eerily similar. Ali had purchased the tickets with barely enough time for the two of them to pack up and make the drive to the airport to catch their plane. And once again, because they expected to make the return trip in a rented U-Haul, the tickets were one-way only.
“One-way tickets are always suspicious,” the seasoned traveler B. Simpson had counseled her shortly after that first miserable experience. “That’s just the way it is. If you’re going somewhere with no planned return, the powers that be want to know why.”
So while Stu had remained utterly silent and steadfastly glued to his screen, Cami had worried about getting them both through security without some kind of major meltdown.
“We’re here,” Cami announced, once she finally located an open parking spot in the long-term lot. It was going to be a long hike to the terminal, but if Stu didn’t like it, he could lump it. After all, she had been doing the real driving while he’d been engaged in nothing more than the backseat sort.
Stu looked up from his screen as though surprised to find he was still on planet earth. “Already?” he said.
They were both traveling with carry-on luggage only. With their boarding passes loaded onto their phones, they entered the terminal and made straight for security. Now that Stu was no longer buried in his iPad, the reality that he was about to board an airplane suddenly hit home. Instantly he broke out in a cold sweat, looking nervous and scared—exactly the kinds of symptoms that should have put TSA agents on high alert. More than half expecting to encounter her old nemesis, Sgt. Croy, or someone just like him, Cami ground her teeth, kept her mouth shut, and waited to be pulled aside for additional screening.
That didn’t happen. They didn’t completely breeze through, because Stu had forgotten to remove his belt, but he passed through the screening machine the second time without a hitch. The boarding area was packed. Even had there been available seating, Stu was in no condition to sit. Suddenly beset with what Cami at first assumed to be a serious case of fear-of-flying, he paced up and down the concourse with Cami tagging along after him.
“The flight’s going to be fine,” she said, trying to reassure him.
“I’m not worried about the flight,” he said. “Well, maybe a little.”
“The used computers, then?”
“No, not even that. Using Hansen’s own equipment to reboot Frigg makes all kinds of sense.”
“What, then?”
“I’m worried about dealing with Frigg,” Stu admitted at last.
“Why?” Cami asked with a frown. “I’m sure you can handle her.”
“I’m not,” Stu said, shaking his head. “Owen Hansen was a very smart man who created an AI whose capabilities are way beyond what most people would think possible.”
“Because she managed to outwit him?” Cami asked.
“Exactly,” Stu agreed. “Her strategy was totally ingenious. By hamstringing my ability to access the money without her help, she’s managed to guarantee her own existence.”
“So he somehow taught her about self-preservation.”
“Or else she learned that on her own,” Stu conceded. “Either way, what she did is a demonstration of a kind of strategic deep learning that leaves everyone else in the dust. Supposedly IBM has a new groundbreaking AI similar to this that they’re hoping to bring to market sometime in the near future, but they’re not planning on open-sourcing it. Users will have access only through company-owned hardware and software.”
“Owen Hansen was a creep and a crook,” Cami said. “Maybe he somehow laid hands on a beta version of that program.”
“We won’t know that until we see his setup.” Stu paused. “And until we see her,” he added.
“Her?” Cami asked, thinking he was referring to Frigg.
“You know,” Stu said with a grimace. “Owen’s mother. How can I face her, knowing that High Noon and I were the ones responsible for her son’s death, and now she’s giving us his computer equipment? Once she figures that out, she’ll probably send us packing.”
That’s when Cami understood the real reason for Stu’s dead silence on the trip down. Controlling a rogue AI was only part of his problem. His real dread had a lot more to do with having to come face-to-face with the very human emotions of Owen Hansen’s grieving mother.
“Let’s get this straight,” Cami said. “First of all, you are not responsible for Owen Hansen’s death and neither is High Noon. He committed suicide, for crap’s sake. He’s the one who took a flying leap off that mountain. Nobody pushed him. As for Irene Hansen? I was worried about the same thing—that once she figured out who we were she’d pull the rug out from under us. Ali suggested that I tell her exactly who we are, and I did.”
“Do you want a direct quote?”
“I guess.”
“She said, ‘I don’t give a tinker’s damn who you are. All I want is for you to get that godforsaken pile of computer junk out of the house without my having to pay to have it hauled away.’ ”
“Quote, unquote?” Stu asked.
Cami nodded.
“So not grieving over her son?”
“Not so much.”
“Irene Hansen sounds a lot like Roger McGeary’s mother,” Stu mused. “And that would explain a lot about Owen Hansen.”
The gate agent called their flight then. They boarded. As they settled into their seats, Stu pulled out his iPad. “By the way,” he said, “on the way down, I sent you a whole bunch of articles.”
“Articles about what?”
“About deep learning,” he said, “and about teaching ethics to AIs.”
“Ethics?” Cami asked.
“Obviously Owen Hansen already taught Frigg about the wrong side of ethics. Now we need to see what if any of that part of her original deep learning can be unlearned.”
By the time the plane took flight, they were both buried deep in the literature, trying to learn if it’s possible to teach a computer how to know the difference between right and wrong. When the plane started its descent into Burbank airport, Cami had paged through more than a dozen articles. The more she read, the more she understood that Stu had good reason to be worried.
If Frigg had turned on her creator and set out to destroy him, what were the chances she’d do the same thing to Stu—and not just to Stu himself but to everyone associated with him, the other people at High Noon Enterprises included?