Chuck’s face pops up on my monitor. The head of the SynTech development team that works on our bots is still as round and jolly as my index remembers him. Something is missing though. I check quickly. That’s right, Marcus is the other development lead, he’s always on these calls.
“Hey, Chuck,” I greet him. “Where’s your other half?”
“Hey, Noah. Marcus has been out sick the last couple of days,” Chuck replies. “Said he got a bad stomach flu, or maybe some bad tacos.”
“Sorry to hear that.” I wonder for a moment if he or anyone else notices how much I’m faking having a normal memory in these social interactions. “Give him my best and tell him I hope he gets better.”
“Will do, boss. And how have you been?” he asks jovially. “It’s been a few weeks since we’ve caught up.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. It’s been a weird month. I saw that Louise put you guys to some good use lately though. She did her demo last week.”
“Oh, yeah, the VR replacement?” Chuck asks. “Did that go well?”
“Very smooth demo. And amazing tech,” I assure him.
“Good. The team worked hard on that one.”
According to the notes in my head, they certainly did. It also gives me a great opening for the good news I have for them.
“Thank them all for me, it really was great. With our first mining operation up and running and more coming online soon—not to mention our plastic islands in the Pacific selling like hotcakes—you are all due for some nice bonuses. We approved that at our last family meeting. I’m sending you the numbers now. You and Marcus will need to decide who on your team gets how much of the general pool. Then on top of that we have a little bit extra for the two of you.”
“Thanks!” I hear some keys clacking and then his smile gets even bigger. He should smile. His bonus is big enough to buy one of those new floating islands we’re making out of the ocean garbage in the Pacific, if he feels like it.
“Well deserved,” I congratulate him. “Keep up the good work.”
“Will do!” he says joyfully. “So, about the new contact interface. I’m sure we’ll need to troubleshoot some bugs and add some improvements as your tester puts it through its paces. Always happens with these things. Just log them in the system and we’ll get them fixed. The simulations all came out clean, but you know how there are always unexpected complications when you field new stuff like that. Any suggestions on improvements are welcome, too. The team has really loved working on this one.”
“Sure thing.” I nod. “We’ll keep an eye out. Oh, also, I got Louise on board with installing it on a second subject, so we’ll have two testers working on it soon. Plus, a bunch of the younger siblings are clamoring to get in on it, so in a couple weeks you might be looking at a whole lot of people putting it through its paces.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Glad to hear that, boss.” He rifles through some notes. “Hey, with that project wrapped, the tasking queue for the brain-in-a-box is ready for more work. Did you want to revert back to the default of finding new materials combinations for the bot hulls? Or did you have anything else in mind?”
My entry for the brain-in-a-box, SynTech’s machine learning supercomputer, pops in front of me, reminding me about the remnant of the sentient AI that created the precursors to our Butler bots in the original Gray Goo Incident. It can do an awful lot that conventional computing can’t do. I wonder for a moment whether there’s a way to leverage it to help find Jeff, but finally decide there isn’t. That work is way too dependent on getting new information in, and the Butler treaty strictly forbids connecting learning AI systems like the brain-in-a-box to external feeds. There’s way too much risk of it getting out of containment and recreating the experiment that almost consumed the world once. No good at all. I scan back through my logs for anything else that we should have the electronic intelligence work on.
“What about those chips that Dorothy James planted on our catamarans back when we did our Hawaii trip?” I ask. “Did we ever get those figured out? I remember that you and the reverse engineering guy you brought in never could crack them.”
“You talking about the ones that I just about lost my hair trying to figure out?”
“Yeah, those,” I confirm. “Did we ever come up with those were made to do?”
“Never did,” Chuck replies, taking a swig from his soda can. “After you decided to partner up with the Brazillians on the VR gear and then Dorothy died in that earthquake, it became a low priority. Did you still want me to feed the scans from those into the brain?”
“Yeah. Let’s figure that mystery out, if only because I’m curious.”
“I am too,” Chuck agrees. “Whatever it was those chips did, they went through an awful lot of trouble to hide it. We tried everything to crack those guys, and I mean everything.”
“I know you did, Chuck. If you couldn’t figure them out, I’m sure no human could. Let’s let the brain have a shot at them, see if it can do any better.”
“Alright, we’ll get that in there. Any other pressing problems you want it to work on?”
“Not that the AI can solve. Putting it back to the default work is fine after that. On an unrelated note, did you get my specs for the wild bot cleanup algorithms?”
“Yeah, got ‘em. Working on ‘em.” He frowns. “I still can’t believe your own brother let those things run wild. Of all the people in the world, you and your siblings should know best how important it is to be careful with them. But then, I guess I couldn’t really believe that he’d kill your dad like that either.”
I’m glad again for the absolute absence of remorse that characterizes my current brain configuration.
“You guys still helping the feds to track him down?” Chuck asks, breaking the brief silence.
“Yeah, we’re doing our best,” I tell him. “It’s not going great though. We’ve got literally no idea where he’s disappeared to. Just make sure you get that bot fighting stuff done as soon as you can. Containing that spread last time was exhausting with all the attention it required. And that was for someone like me that has as much experience doing fine control as anyone. I don’t know what would happen if we put anyone with less experience or someone with one of the new contact interfaces in that situation. If we end up needing to contain another swarm, I want every advantage on our side.”
“Will do, boss. Your basic approach when you stopped them was solid. We should be able to automate it and maybe even improve on it. We’ll have a beta version ready in next week’s update for you to evaluate.”
“Thanks, Chuck. Anything else we need to talk about?”
“Not from our end. Thanks again for the bonuses.”
“You are very welcome. Talk to you next time.”
The video chat closes just in time for another batch of CTTF incident reports to appear in my inbox. I hope against hope that one of these will actually have something that will help me find Jeff.