I wasn’t really expecting a call from Malcolm but since I had been dodging him all week, I had to eventually talk to him. He was the highest-ranking company guy in the system and I had signed on to stick with them indefinitely, so Team Oni was on it.
“The protocol officer, yes, you’re going to have to talk to her eventually. One of us has to and you drew the short stick for this one,” Malcolms' voice was clear and steady.
“I don’t really think that we need a seat at the table.”
“Let me be clear. We need a seat at the table and Seraphina is only not here because she decided to keep working in the belt. Jennifer herself nominated you to do this.”
“She’s older! Have her do it!”
Malcolm rolled his eyes. He’d had his hands full training pilots and optimizing a build for a stable long-haul spacecraft. Serephina, the only clone of Stevie, was our resident diplomat but she was playing logistician out in the asteroid belt.
The thing about those distances and the way it took so much time made it so that I was the one that had to take a meeting. When some cabinet member called on the Badger Company, we had to send a rep. That was me because I spent so much time in orbit.
“I don’t understand why you need me to talk to this person.”
“It’s the State Department, Wanda. They probably want to craft some high-level strategy. Or they need you to be a prop. Or both. You weren’t there for the senate's inquiry, so I can’t really speak to that particular time, but it's a high risk, perhaps high reward for us moving forward.”
“I still don’t see why.”
“She’s cute, and you’ll like her.”
“I don’t, hey come on I’m not that lonely.”
Malcolm’s normal smirk showed me everything.
“This is long term for the Company. We have to think about this generation, and how they’re going to look at us. We’re already looking at if we want to upload other people and we’ve gotten a ton of inquiries from very rich people trying to buy their way into immortality.”
“The technology is very possible, they could just pay a mad scientist to make another upload machine.”
“Either way, it looks like we can forestall a bunch of potential problems by just working within the system here. I respect that you have a lot going on, I really do, but I think you’re going to be the right lady for the job.”
Malcolm's dad-like stare made me feel like I needed to clean the dishes or I’d be grounded.
“Okay, I’ll do it, I’m not going to like it, but I’ll do it. And she better be cute.”
Malcolm laughed before he ended the call.
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Angela Lieu was a strong looking asian american woman in her forties. To all accounts she looked like she could be leading an international firm that did ‘consulting’. She wore a power suit which made me all kinds of jealous. I had gone with a flight suit as that looked fine over video.
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She along with one aide sat in a large meeting room with a table that was far too big to have been shipped up in one piece to the high secure floor we were in.
“Ms. Wanda Jones?”
I’d called in to chat, working with her aide Gregory to make sure that she didn’t have to worry about silly things like hooking up cables to large screens.
“Please call me Wanda, Ms. Lieu. It’s good to meet you.”
“Charmed. Would you care to talk a bit before we begin or should I just cut to the chase? I’m told that you’re fond of whiskey, but now you lack the ability to appreciate it?”
“Thanks. I don’t know who told you that but they’re absolutely right and you should probably give them a raise.”
“I can’t give a government employee a raise so easily, as you well know, Ms. Wanda, but I’ll give them a note. You work in intelligence now?”
“More like really bad photos taken from really high up, but yes,” I said, “Or what you’d know as geospatial intelligence.”
She flipped a page and made a mark.
“Well, that’s not really what I called you in for, because your commander? He keeps dodging my inquiries.”
“He does have a lot of things to do, but I’m the Team Chief for my little team. I might be able to help, but no guarantees.”
“Good. We’re glad that congress pushed through a bill to give you all citizenship, and though the public is increasingly skeptical about that, we think that ignoring the trend might start to bite us in the ass.”
I smiled.
“Sounds good. What did you need me for?”
“The United Nations wants to hold a few meetings on AI and the future of General Artificial Intelligence, which is how they’re classifying us. You understand that most bureaucrats and politicians don’t know what a USB cable is and most can barely send an email despite help so, we want to work on your image to make it a bit more palatable to the public.”
I waited for the other shoe to drop.
“What do you want, something like a publicity tour?”
“No, nothing so dramatic. Well, perhaps this is as dramatic.”
I was beginning to think that she might never get to the point.
“Is this about representation? Because I’m not big about speaking in public.”
“Saudi Arabia has a GAI that they have granted citizenship to.”
I paused, trying to think of where this was going.
“What are you trying to do?”
“The Ambassador wants to help write an AI bill of rights and present it to the UN.”
I paused to look at Gregory briefly.
“This is about controlling the narrative. You know that we’re untouchable up here, so you want us to agree to some rules that you set.”
“More or less.”
“Look, we came back because we wanted to help humanity. There’s a mess of whatever conflict is going on, and we’re counting on you to sort out a lot of it. I’d rather the company have as light a touch as possible. In particular, Team Ghost wants no one to even know that they’re there and since we’ve been pushing our team to print more and more of what Earth wants we haven’t really done the things that we want to do as much. What Malcolm is doing is giving the Space Force the tools to do what we think needs to happen, I’m just trying to prevent something stupid from happening. So if that is in line with your thought process, we’re on board.”
Angela brightened.
“Preventing stupid things from happening is our entire purpose in life, Wanda. I think that we can agree on that.”
Gregory nodded furiously. We’d had a few pleasant words while we were setting everything up, and I was glad to see he was at least a little bit supportive.
“Good. We can start with that, I suppose. I should add that I do have a stupid thing that could potentially happen which might radically change this entire discussion.”
Angela leaned in.
“Go on.”
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End Part One