My bag arrives at my room just in time for me to change into some formal gear for dinner. Smoothing out the wrinkles with my bots as I stroll down the hallway, meeting up with most of my siblings on the way to the cavernous dining room. A dozen other guests are already there. I recognize most of them from files that Alan sent me.
General Liu greets us as we enter. He’s standing next to a tall, thin man who stands out in the room both for his height and for his unruly mane of brown hair.
“Professor,” the General says, “I present the children of the late Tom Butler.” He turns back to us. “Professor Max Braun is on sabbatical from his position teaching neuroscience at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and asked to meet you before the conference tomorrow.”
The name and face trigger in my index. He’s a big name in the field, one of the obvious picks Alan figured would be here. I’m surprised at his age; he’s forty years old, but looks young enough to pass for thirty. I read one of his books last year as part of Father’s school curriculum, though I’d have to re-read it to remember a thing about it. My index also pops up a reference to his paper from this year on human-machine neural interfaces. His research is very close to being able to replicate Father’s second generation implant, the one my siblings had when I arrived at the Butler Institute campus.
“The Butler family, what an honor to meet you!” the professor says in a light German accent. His vitals show excitement matching his exuberant tone. “I am such a believer in your father’s work. I wrote the thesis for my doctorate on his technology. I even met with him several times when I was writing some of my books, though he was always hesitant to impart any details.”
That’s not unexpected. The inner workings of the implant and bots were Father’s most closely held secrets. Even with all of Father’s notes and instructions, we’re still trying to figure out how some of it works. He’s the kind of serious researcher that could be very helpful to us if we ever decide to collaborate with anyone outside of our own campus. I scan through his biography. Like Father, he started in medicine and switched to engineering, but unlike Father, he stayed in academia.
“Please, forgive me,” he continues. “I arrived early for the conference, hoping to make your acquaintance. I hope that was not too presumptuous. The good General was kind enough to accommodate my request.”
To Louise: You know about this guy? His research is right up your alley.
From Louise: You're talking to his biggest fan! I’ve read every one of his books. I think he might be smarter than Father. Can we keep him?
“Nothing to forgive, Professor Braun,” Louise says, keeping her voice calmer than the thoughts she just sent me. “We’re honored to meet a great mind interested in our work.”
“You flatter me,” he responds, a smile stretching across his lean face. “And please, call me Max.”
The two of them quickly get into a conversation that’s way above my head. About all I can follow is that his theories already line up with how Father’s third generation implant works. I quickly forget all about them, because Lin enters the room, Yang Song at her side. I don’t know how she did it, but she’s even more beautiful now than she was earlier. She’s swapped the traditional Chinese dress from earlier for a more western-style cocktail dress somewhere between blue and green and her short hair peeks out from under her elaborate headwrap of interwoven silk and flowers.
“Please, come take your seats,” the General says, loudly enough to be heard across the room. “Our host, Mr. Wu, will not be joining us tonight, but he asked me to make sure you all felt at home.”
The crowd turns toward the large, round table at the center of the room. The General, glancing at Louise and Max, reaches over and rearranges a few of the place cards, changing the seating arrangement to put them next to each other on the other side of Lin from me. The switch puts me between Lin and her father.
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It’s everything I can do to stay calm and handle talking to both of them as they serve the tea and begin the meal.
The staff starts bringing out one exquisite course after another. I keep referring to my index for etiquette tips to make sure that I don’t embarrass myself, everything from being careful not to put my chopsticks poking upwards in my food to how to politely decline drinking baijiu, the hard liquor the General uses after a few appetizers to toast our arrival and our work on the river. As he sits down, Lin smiles mischievously and runs her fingertips across my thigh beneath the table. I try hard to keep the blood from rushing to my face.
I hope my siblings aren’t committing any major breaches of etiquette, but I’m way too preoccupied to pay any attention to them. It’s funny. I can feel every leaf and tree of jungle in an area a thousand times the size of this room, but with Lin and her father on either side of me I can hardly see anything but her, and I can’t focus on anything other than not looking like an idiot in front of him.
Lin keeps her hands to herself for the rest of the meal, which is good because I don’t think I could keep my face straight if she had decided to try anything else sneaky under the table. It’s hard enough to try to maintain the pretense of not being crazy about her as we make casual conversation. Her father, once his duties as host settle down, is very interested in our technology and asks a lot of questions about how the interface to the implant works and what the limits of the clouds’ capabilities are. I’m relieved to have something to talk about that I know well and won’t get me caught as Lin’s secret boyfriend.
He also asks about the factory pollution filters that we want to install in China. He seems optimistic that once we do a proof-of-concept on one facility, proving that they work and have no negative impact on operations, that he’ll be able to smooth out permissions for the rest of the places we want to install them. The talk gets pretty technical about how the maintainer bots on the filters work, but the General impresses me by keeping up. Lin is following along as well, asking questions that make it clear that she understands what I’m talking about better than her father does. Gorgeous, smart, and geeky. I struggle not to turn and just stare at her.
The meal goes on for a couple of hours. Across the table, Chad and his girlfriends are happily sipping the baijiu and talking quietly with each other. Louise and Max are deep down the implant technology rabbit hole. The rest of my siblings seem to be doing well at finding things to talk about with the other guests. Well, everyone except Andrea, who is mesmerizing the two scientists seated next her with a small holographic fleet of boats crewed by stick figures floating up a small river of light above her plate.
Rising, the General offers one more toast, this time to Lin, to her health, and to the family that cured her. We all applaud. Lin stands and pulls Louise to her feet, and one of the staff produces a red-wrapped gift box that Lin hands to her. Louise unwraps it to find a jewel-encrusted golden dragon clearly modeled after the one Andrea made for Lin. If the gems are real and it’s solid gold—and my bots tell me the densities are right for that—it’s worth a fortune.
The toast and gift seem to signal permission for the guests to disperse, and most of the group does. Louise and Max stay at the table, too deep in their conversation at this point to even notice what’s going on around them. Max has his napkin spread out where his plate had been and the two of them are scrawling diagrams and equations scrawled all over it.
Lin asks her father something in Chinese and on receiving his answer, she escorts me out one of the dining room’s side doors. She leads me down a hallway and out onto a balcony overlooking the river. The view under the bright moonlight is incredible with the twists and turns of the river flowing through the dark jungle below. I peer over the railing, the boats down below look so small from here.
“Come, you can see the river better from here,” she says loudly, stepping away from the balcony’s edge to a space between two pillars. I follow, stepping into the one place out of the view of either of the security cameras on the balcony. She takes my hands and pulls them to her waist. I go in for a kiss, but she moves her lips past my mouth and to my ear.
“It’s so good to see you, Noah,” she whispers, her voice no louder than a breath. “I’ve been waiting so long for this. They’re listening, but if we’re lucky we’ve got some time before anyone will come looking for us.”
“Please, Ms. Liu,” I say aloud as she traces her fingertips down my spine and her lips across my cheek, “tell me more about your home in Beijing. I’ve heard the city is beautiful.”