Ch. 74 – Guessing Game

Wilbert, the young boy, released his grip on the backpack and unzipped it, bringing out an old set of augmented reality glasses. You could tell it was an older generation model because of the cord running to a battery pack that stuck out of the top of his backpack. The older units sucked a bunch of power in order to run all the complicated software.

He held the glasses with his fingertips, keeping a bit of frayed rubber in place as he slid them on. They were too large for his young face, and he had to keep pushing them up his tiny nose-bridge until they stopped slipping off. After they’d settled on his face, pinning his long, shaggy hair in a state of disarray, a subtle, previously unnoticed tension—which was strange to see in a kid so young—left his body. The boy’s left hand reached towards his side, as if he were holding hands with someone, and he gazed off to his left. Xian, Tony, and Derrick stared at the boy, who seemed off in his own world. They cleared their throats, grunted, and shifted their weight, but Wilbert just kept staring to his left.

Jane tugged at Wilbert’s other hand, until he jerked to attention, and looked at his mother, as if he hadn’t expected to see her there.

Wilbert nodded at his mother, and let his left hand fall to his side. He scuffed at the ground with dirty white and red tennis shoes, and spoke in Xian’s general direction, without looking him in the eyes. Wilbert mumbled. He spoke as if he was reciting a script: his tone was even, and without a hint of distress, despite his mother having just just freaked out a few minutes ago.

Tony remarked.

Wilbert nodded again, his little head bobbling back and forth. Wilbert said.

Tony said.

Wilbert looked at Xian’s, then Tony’s, and finally Derrick’s faces in turn. Some tiny, indecipherable writing floated across the transparent glass on his augmented reality glasses’ screen, and Wilbert’s eyes flitted around, presumably trying to read all of the characters. There were other splotches of color on the transparent glass’ edge, maybe some other helpful information, or pictures of a sort, but they were cut off at the edges of the glass’ display.

The lines of indecipherable writing stopped flowing through Wilbert’s screen, and settled into place. Wilbert gave a quick nod, and then pointed at Xian, Tony, and Derrick in turn. the boy said, pointing at Xian, Tony, and Derrick in turn.

Tony grinned at Wilbert. Tony asked.

Xian slapped Tony’s back. Xian made a grand sweeping gesture with his free hand, and Tony nodded appreciatively.

Derrick said, before catching himself. Wait. If the computer vision model in the kid’s glasses predicted allergies based on facial features, and if Derrick’s facial features had been modified—which they were—then it was no surprise the model would be wrong.

Tony’s face perked up and brightened, apparently also realizing that misanalyzing Derrick’s face wasn’t really a strike against Wilbert’s allergy detection model. Tony said.

Derrick muttered. He spat out the words without realizing it. Calm down, Derrick. Try to seem pleasantly intrigued by this little boy genius. All the better to convince Wilbert to help decipher the mysterious image from Maxine’s hideout.

Like Tony had said, Wilbert’s facial scan wasn’t dark magic; it used machine learning: a data analysis technique that relied on computers to spot patterns in humongous data sets: patterns that humans couldn’t hope to spot, because the hints were very subtle, and spread across millions and billions of pieces of data.

It was the sort of cool computer stuff that Derrick might’ve studied in school, if life had taken a different turn. The sort of thing that took lots of late nights of studying to understand. Maybe he’d be puzzling out an algorithm on a whiteboard, surrounded by friends who were just as red-eyed and exhausted as he was. They’d go through hard times and struggles, but get to play with the most powerful computing clusters at their top notch school. And eventually, when they graduated, his friends would journey to different parts of the country, working at prestigious jobs, and living in fancy, safe homes, far away from the superstorms that devastated the coasts.

But Derrick hadn’t been able to learn this cool computer stuff, so here he was, trying to figure out if a little kid was really that much smarter than he was.

Tony asked.

Wilbert slipped the glasses off, and nodded, a slight smile on his face, and bounced on his feet a few times as he met Tony’s eyes, as if waiting for the mod-doc to ask more.

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Derrick asked. The skeptic inside him insisted that it would have been easy enough for Xian to figure out Tony allergies beforehand, and then feed Wilbert the info to regurgitate, in an attempt to impress Tony. Then he could claim to have helped find a computer vision expert for Hack Alley, and Tony would owe him another favor . . . ugh.

Wilbert’s eyes were still wide as he looked at Derrick, but he didn’t cringe like his mother had. His expression seemed more curious than contemptuous, but the rapt attention still shone like a scorching spotlight on Derrick’s misshapen face. Wilbert mumbled.

Derrick said, thinking out loud.

Tony said, with a wicked grin.

Derrick’s ears grew hot, and were almost certainly flushing red.

Wilbert said, nodding his head. He kept looking up and towards his left, as if he was getting approval from some tall person standing next to him.

Jane said.

Wilbert whined,

Jane asked, her eyes narrowing as she leaned over Wilbert.

Xian said. he said, winking at Jane.

The concept was absolutely insane. Your genetics play a big role in what allergies you have, but how could you tell how many girls a guy had kissed, just from his face? What if he had won the lottery one day, and picked a bunch of bar girls up? He’d have a bunch of notches on his belt, but totally by chance. There was no way to account for that random possibility. But then again, machine learning was surprisingly powerful . . .

Wilbert looked at Xian’s, Tony’s, and Derrick’s faces again. —Wilbert made a face— he said, speaking to Xian, Tony, and Derrick respectively.>

Xian and Tony looked at each other and smiled. they said in unison, before breaking up into laughter.

Zero girls, huh? With Derrick’s new face, of course the machine learning model would say that.

Xian said to Derrick, the hint of a smirk on his face.

Tony’s laughter died down, and his eyes opened dangerously wide.

Sweat had beaded—in uneven blotches—all over Derrick’s uneven, misshapen, ugly, repulsive, UN-KISSABLE face, but he cracked a smile. Derrick nodded at Wilbert, who was still staring wide-eyed at Derrick’s face.

Tony broke into laughter again.

Wilbert grinned, bouncing on his toes again. he said, looking up towards his mother. Just as the tiny, indecipherable writing started moving across his glasses’ screen again, Jane ripped the glasses off Wilbert’s face. It was her turn to flush a deep scarlet, which stood out on her otherwise pale face.

The three men stared at Jane, looked at each other, and then bit back laughter, waiting for the moment to pass.

Tony had fought down his chuckles first, and turned to Xian.

Xian, who’d been quiet and tense since Tony had stared daggers at him, shut his jaw, before laughing nervously through slightly parted lips.

Tony said, waving a hand in dismissal. Evidently, even a man who loved flattery almost as much as he loved steak had his limits.

Jane’s face had brightened too, upon hearing all the praise Tony and Xian were heaping upon her son. But she shook her head, and the frown was back again, as if she’d remembered something horrible.