Elsa was irritated by all the rich old people traipsing through her lab. She knew she had to play nice, so they would make a lot of money once they started selling this service. Still, she wished she didn’t have to meet everyone. Melinda was excused because of her personality disorder, and Dr. Chaikhot was playing mad scientist on volunteers in Thailand. That left Elsa as the only option to give the tour. They had at least outsourced making an information video, so she could get a break from fake smiling while the customers watched the slick computer graphics explaining the processes and the obligatory before and after pictures.
With irritation, she thought about how her best friend Adriana was probably hanging out drinking Margaritas at the new swimming pool. Scott had helped her find employees to handle almost all her grunt work, and now she only needed to work about 20 hours a week unless there was a fun new project. So unfair!
Elsa called Scott.
“Hey Scott, I need your help on some HR stuff!” Elsa demanded. Scott agreed to head over.
Once he arrived, Elsa started complaining.
“I have to keep giving tours to these V.I.P.s. It’s super painful, and keeps interrupting my research. I had to restart three experiments today because some Senator or Governor wanted to pretend they understand what we do here. Two of those geezers hit on me, and one was offering suggestions about how I should open up a clinic in his home state.”
“Well, I can get one of the security guys here to give them the evil eye if they get handsy, but I don’t think we can just toss them out.” Scott said.
“You aren’t listening! I don’t need security. I need someone else to give them the tour. Also, I want some lab assistants to run all my experiments, so I can hang out at the pool with Adrianna.” Elsa rolled her eyes and huffed at how dense Scott could be.
“Right, I can probably help with that. Shouldn’t you have asked Melinda?” Scott said. It seemed like hiring people was a CEO decision.
“When I call her,
“I’ll help you make a list, but I’m not hiring them for you. Send Melinda a list and let her handle it.” Scott said.
“She’s totally just going to assign it to you!” Elsa laughed.
They worked together for about an hour. Elsa had picked three bilingual PR people who could work in shifts. Hopefully she would never, ever, have to talk to another politician. She was delighted to find 3 PhDs who published articles she was familiar with who were looking for work. Several schools had shut down due to security issues. There were also some highly rated lab technicians. Scott dreaded having to track down all these people, explain the company, and arrange transportation.
So, he opened Glitch_HR and instead called someone who it recommended for recruiting and hiring. He sent an email updating Melinda, who called him shortly afterwards.
“So, Elsa wants to hire someone to do all her work, and you want someone to actually handle all the HR work?” Melinda asked.
“Yes. What’s the point of making all this money if we don’t have time to enjoy it?” Scott replied.
“Ooh, the new leadership training you’ve been doing is working!” Melinda gushed.
“Thanks! Do you need any assistants?” Scott asked politely, remembering that Melinda worked harder than any of them.
“That’s sweet of you to ask, but I’d like to interview the new cabana boys myself.” Melinda cackled. Only Melinda would say something like that to the HR department!
“Gross,” Scott replied, making a face. “Right, you can figure it out yourself and I want nothing to do with that!”
“Don’t worry, Angela is here again, and she’ll be happy to help me. I swear that girl spends most of her time here now. She doesn’t want to give up her New York condo because it cost so much, but maybe she’ll buy one of the condos in the new luxury section of Proteus when we finish it. She’s getting a couple treatments at the Spa right now. Don’t worry, she’ll leave you alone.” Melinda laughed, enjoying how nervous Scott got when she mentioned her friend.
“Luxury section?” Scott asked.
“Yeah. So we’re getting a lot of rich people coming through here for the Spa treatments. The first section of Proteus is nice, but it’s not exactly going to wow these billionaires. Adriana hired some architects and people who designed nice hotels. The next section is going to target ultrarich visitors - people who can afford a $100 million vacation home.”
“Sounds like we aren’t going to be low profile much longer.” Scott said with a sigh.
“It was bound to happen once we became successful. It will probably be another year before we open all that. There are a lot of other moving pieces to sort out first, so we can’t just hand all our work off to new employees.” Melinda teased.
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The next few weeks passed with the young Genysis owners spending more time by the pool or at the beach. Matt had already mastered using Glitch_HR to dump unwanted work on grateful new employees, and he had shared this immediately with Zaliha. Adriana grumbled a bit that Matt was a more thoughtful boyfriend, but she couldn’t stay too mad, considering a year ago they were living in a dorm and attending boring classes all day.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Poor Barry was the last one working 50-60 hours a week, and he always looked stressed when he wasn’t working. Eventually, Elsa took pity on her sometimes boyfriend, and he had finally managed to dump some of his work. This was the first day Barry had joined Scott hanging out at the pool. They were going to meet up with the girls later, and Scott had brought his laptop to keep up with some of his projects.
The pool was a sprawling expanse of blue with an infinity edge, several hot tubs, and surrounded by small cabanas. A couple swim up bars were always popular. In the past month, there had been a large increase in good-looking young people hanging out here. There were also a number of people Barry called mummies who were often wrapped in bandages recovering from Spa treatments. These poor souls would stay in the shade of cabanas or under the deck below some large fans. Scott wondered why they would subject themselves to this, since they couldn’t even get in the water.
It became obvious they were watching the young people who had been hired by the Spa to take care of the rich visitors. Melinda could have found employees who gave them what they wanted, but instead she delighted in finding employees who could tease but still avoid the grabby senators and other entitled rich visitors. Scott idly watched one group flirt with a mummy while keeping just out of reach. Another person, who had been introduced as a US congressman, was passed out - probably someone drugged him when he became too needy.
Scott usually avoided the pool. Too many women (and men) flirted shamelessly with him. He only came when his friends would be there.
“How come everyone smiles and bats their lashes at you? When they look at me, they turn away and giggle!” Barry complained. Barry could admit he understood the attention Scott was getting these days, but why was no one interested in him?
“Don’t be stupid! You know they all work for Elsa, right?” Scott laughed.
“Oh!” Barry realized that Elsa probably thought it was funny to embarrass Scott, but she would make it clear to her employees that Barry was off limits. “Well, that takes all the fun out of this place.”
Scott rolled his eyes. “Right. It’s been nice taking it easy the past few weeks. I’m glad most of my employees work remotely, so they can’t see me lazing around.”
“We’ve been working like crazy for almost a year. I think we deserve a break! “ Barry argued. “I know what you mean, though. I’m already thinking of five things I want to try in my lab. We’ve got a project to turn limestone into marble. We want to put that stuff everywhere in the new luxury section.”
“That sounds good. Hopefully Adriana doesn’t put it in the next round of project housing, or someone will get jealous and start rioting again.” Scott said, remembering how Trinidad’s lighting and plumbing fixtures had been blamed for the Baltimore riots.
“Did she get more projects? I remember she thought they would pass laws to exclude us from participating.” Barry asked.
“Yeah, our lobbyist managed to get a couple staffers to remove the restriction on using robots. With our high rating from previous work, we got eight contracts this time and the price went up about 20%. Our costs only went up a little, so it should be a good profit margin.“ Scott continued, then realized he was starting to sound like Melinda.
“Nice. Speaking of huge profits, I’ve been wondering what to spend all my money on. Yeah, I know it’s a tough problem to have,“ Barry laughed. “Naturally I bought a Ferrari, I’m sure you’ve seen it in the garage. I can’t afford a luxury yacht or a private jet yet. Anyway, I would probably want to wait until we start building them.”
“Right, you wouldn’t want one that runs on gasoline when you can wait and get it fusion powered,“ agreed Scott, but he couldn’t resist rolling his eyes.
“Exactly! Also, I was kind of disappointed when I had to take my Ferrari to the gas station. I’m Mr. Fusion, why am I driving a gas guzzler?” Barry said.
“Mr. Fusion? Isn’t that what Doc Brown put in his time machine?” Scott was not going to allow Barry to pick his own nickname.
“Whatever. Anyway, I’m going to get that Carl guy to help me convert my Ferrari. He loves working on cars, right?” Barry asked.
“I guess.” Scott agreed. He had heard the stories about Carl’s battle vans. “You should probably talk to Zaliha since she has already designed fusion powered vehicles. She’s a mechanical engineer, while Carl is a former homeless guy with no training. Carl’s ideas aren’t even practical! He makes decisions based on what his 1980s brain thinks is cool, instead of understanding how much effort it would take.”
“Nah, it’s too weird talking to Matt’s girlfriend when he’s not around. I’m just going to wing it with Carl.” Barry shrugged.
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The mysterious agency Theofanis worked with had been running a beta test of SPAI for a couple of days when one of the bosses sensibly decided that they needed more visibility into how the program was making decisions. They had added a lot of options to override certain actions and insert short term objectives, but the program’s internal decision-making was a black box.
The overall mission for the system was to improve the security and economic strength of the United States. Short term priorities could override the primary mission, so politicians could play games that would benefit their interests while still claiming the system was for the greater good.
It was a terrible design.
Theo had just finished a module that could decode some of the deep weightings in the neural networks, which allowed the controllers to get some visibility on what was going into the decisions the system was making. The core mission assigned tasks based on an internal ranking of threats, but until he finished this module, no one really knew what threats the system was targeting. It was a very tricky piece of code to decode this information, but he could hardly believe they almost activated the system without it.
Theofanis looked at his screen and laughed. He looked at the report of what SPAI rated the top threats to the security and economic strength of the United States.
1. Congress
2. The President
3. The Supreme Court
4. Texas
5. Russia
6. Proteus Base, Mexico
Their list went on from there, but Theo was highly amused at the top three. The beta was already running, so he wondered what plans were already in place to topple the current government. When his handler saw the list, he had accused Theo of treason. Theo calmly explained he was only reporting the priorities, not setting them. The handler had sprinted away and was currently having a frantic call with his boss.
SPAI’s beta program was shut down after this. It would be a few more weeks at least before they could patch the core heuristics to exclude the current government as a threat to the country. Getting back to work, Theo idly wondered what Proteus Base was.