EDGAR WALKED THE LENGTH of the compound to the area where Sara’s team worked. He passed his face in front of monitor at the entry door. It scanned his retinas and the Vistachit embedded in his forehead.

Edgar was particularly proud of the Vistachit, given that he and his team had developed it. At the time it was invented, it integrated a novel new technology to use the energy from cellular mitochondria to power its processors. When Edgar proudly informed Ron of his new creation, Ron patented it and bragged globally that the invention was of his own creation. He licensed and sold the technology to oligarchies across the world, providing another perennial source of funding and power for his own pockets.

To embellish this accomplishment, Ron insisted that Vista’s logo had to be clearly imprinted on the front of the chip, facing outward for all to see. The logo was comprised of three hexagons, one stacked atop the other two. Each hexagon represented one of Westrich’s key mantras – growth, genetics, and glory, with a large capital ‘G’ emblazoned on each.

Vistachits were typically applied in the sub-dermal layer on a person’s forehead, just above the nose bridge. This allowed its microscopic wires to be connected directly onto the optic nerves of each eye. Although the chip was dime-sized and relatively obscure, one could view it unaided when in close visual proximity to the wearer.

Sara was meeting with her team in a conference room. The AI bot interrupted their conversation.

“Edgar is at the entry door and needs to speak with you immediately, Sara.”

She grimaced to her team, then walked into her office to take the message, not wanting to have the discussion in front of them.

“Tell him to fuck-off!” she shouted at the wall.

“He’s insistent on meeting only with you.”

“I don’t care what mentally unstable state he’s in right now. I’m in the middle of critical team meetings. He can find a spot on my calendar just like anyone else.”

“He says he’ll go to Ron and force you.”

“Screw the little bastard! Going to mommy,” she exhaled. “What’s his pointless topic?”

“Reactions to your misinformation campaign.”

“Oh, my,” she grunted facetiously. “What could that mean?”

The AI responded back to Edgar, and she waited a moment for the reply.

“His words. ‘The quantum shit. You’re going too far overboard. Creating a critical imbalance. Fucking things up, in other words.’”

“Tell him if he’s going to be that cryptic, he can waddle his baby-ass diaper directly up to Ron’s den of iniquity and complain there. I’ve got better things to do.”

“He says Ron can’t be involved. Not at this moment. Your ass will be juiced, and he’s only here to ensure it doesn’t extend beyond you to the other ministers or Ron himself.”

Sitting atop her office desk, Sara stared at the moving images of her team leaders through the opaque glass of the meeting room across the floor. They had been working through a critical evaluation of responses to the comms executions, and she needed to get back to them.

“First he says he’ll go to Ron, and now he says Ron can’t be involved? What an idiot. He must be talking about Southern’s reactions to our announcements, among others. Well, fuck. Can you inform my team I’ll be delayed for fifteen minutes? Let that son-of-a-bitch know he’s only got fifteen with me, then allow him through the door – but open it very slowly to piss him off.”

Sara was not intending to let Edgar’s taunts upset her. She believed he was wholly guided by his AI, and everything he did or said was an intentional calculation, an estimation of her reactions. It was not unlike games of chess she used to play with her sister, unaided by any intelligence beyond their own. No AIs in that case, but a convolution of decisions, endless tree-branch probabilities, responses, countermoves, and logical loops.

Edgar had access to far more resources than she did. In fact, since he was responsible for all the non-military systems and data structure in Ron’s domain except for Imp, it was a futile effort from the start for anyone to challenge him. The best she could ever do was to come to a draw and slowly lower weapons to the ground simultaneously. That’s how most of her interactions concluded with him.

He strode into her office, bursting with conspicuous bravado. She laughed in disgust.

“Do you really think your display of machismo, your pathetic swelling antics and rapid movement of your mech-tech scare me in the least, you little shit? How many times have you done this in front of me and others? You’re like a cowardly male pheasant. All show and no substance. Yet you still try, don’t you little guy? You and that AI-corrupted brain of yours get so confused when your remarkable algorithms don’t work in the real world. Can’t you control your fucking scrawny ego?”

“Shut up,” he growled.

Edgar recalled that he hated Sara almost as much as he hated his long-dead father. “Cut-that,” he thought. “Step-father.”

“You’re accusing me of carrying your idea too far?” she laughed. “You’re saying I’m responsible for the pus that spewed from your own mouth, or was that your AI talking? Has it finally rendered complete control over your gray matter, whatever’s left of that nominal piece of you that is not machine?”

“You aren’t listening,” he exhorted in frustration. “I came here to save your ass, not mine.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Bullshit. You know that if the idea you generated and took such visible pride in creates real problems for Ron, your butt is on the line and not mine.”

Edgar scratched his head with his mech arm. Although it was the latest tech, it still wasn’t perfect. Sara was able to discern the slightest shaking in his hand that indicated he was truly concerned for himself.

“Leverage,” she reflected. “Nice to get this asshole backed against a wall for a change. He’s always doing this to everyone else.”

“My AI wouldn’t have done this,” he claimed. “It wouldn’t have let loose an overly expansive message. My AI would have muted this with hundreds of other messages so no single narrative could slip above the verbal sewage that is your job. But you and your team over there, that emotional deadwood reeking of ovaries and estrogen, couldn’t develop any other decent narratives. As a result of your laziness, this minor idea I suggested in passing was naturally highlighted.”

She knew he was working to flip the conversation and get her on the defensive, particularly with the misogynistic remarks.

“I’ll not describe the efforts of my team to a novice, thank you. Go analyze your own cluttered stats factory you take so much pride in. You’ll see we executed no differently than any other misinformation campaigns from the past. Dozens of discontiguous stories across hundreds of alternative channels. No one narrative to elevate above the others. No, not me, buddy.”

He despised her use of that colloquial term with him. It meant she felt she had the upper hand.

“No what?”

“No, this is not about my execution plan, buddy,” she emphasized. “It’s not my comms that are at issue. The problem is something else, isn’t it? The problem is that you didn’t vet your idea with your own AI. My oh my! With all that computing power at your disposal, you failed to take the proper steps before proclaiming the righteous glory of your suggestion, right? You didn’t ask the algorithms to cycle through the possibilities, the alternate paths, and assess the risk in this narrative.”

Edgar was unusually silent, and she knew this confirmed her leverage.

“Okay, we have the picture now. You come up with this stellar idea, unaided by your golden shithouse data systems. Then you’re so anxious to prove you’re creatively superior to everyone, especially me and my ‘estrogen’ team, as you state, that you fail to run it past your predictive models. Oh, ha ha ha,” she taunted.

“You fucking don’t get it, do you?” he snorted.

She loved this banter. “Upset, buddy? A tail of snot just shot from your nose, dude, telling me your anxiety juices are working overtime. Oh, I get it indeed, down to the last detail. You were so proud of your little achievement that you exposed it to the world. To Ron and the ministers. Ass-bared. And now, now you’re beginning to see that the other domains and nation-states are taking your idea a bit too seriously. Now you’re concerned you might have created a real imbalance, that Eddie-buddy-boy went too far this time. That you opened your fat mouth and bragged about something that may never be possible, and that’s got both our enemies and friends all riled-up.”

Edgar was hissing audibly through his teeth. She was getting to him.

“Yeah. I’ve seen the comms. That’s my job! Now they’re all engaged. They’re aggravating and sniping at each other and us. Worse yet, you have no way out. You failed my boy, you failed to do what a domain CIO is supposed to do. You forgot to use your AI’s predictive abilities to make a prediction about advanced predictive capabilities! That’s just hilarious! And now poor, baby Eddie needs my help.”

She laughed aloud at her play on words. “Christ, if I had known this is the reason you came to my end of the compound, I’d have let you into my office immediately. Damn, too bad we didn’t do this in front of my entire hormonal team!” she screeched, pounding her desk with joy.

“Oh, you think you’re clean, missy? Your own comms models should have predicted this, but they didn’t. Not my issue. They failed. You failed. And you know, you’re the checker of last resort. You run comms for the whole fucking domain. You are supposed to double-check everything. If your incompetent sows over there had any talent, they would have caught the first whiff of overexposure. Of excessive reactionary comms. But you and they didn’t. You failed big time.”

“Bullshit. We responded when we first saw them.”

“That was what? Twelve hours ago? My AI tells me you should have alarmed us a few hours after our meeting with Ron. That was well enough time, and you had ample evidence of overreaction across the globe. You guys just sat on your bovine asses.”

He raised his chin with a smirk. “Maybe too much time talking about boys. Or girls. Or sex with animals. Hell, or hybrids. Whatever you piglets do to palpate your underdeveloped genitalia when you should be on the job.”

Sara took a slow breath and rolled her fingers on the desk. She stopped immediately, knowing Edgar’s AI would pick that up and conclude she was pondering the truth in his statement.

“Thank God,” she thought. “At least I have no mind-reading or monitoring tech directly in my office. At least he can’t really know what I’m thinking. He can only predict.”

She stared at the camera that peered directly into her office, then turned her back to it. Beyond what his own eyes saw, she wanted to expose no other facial or body expressions that would alert Edgar’s AI, be interpreted, and allow him to have a superior position.

“Oh, I have no doubt Ron will kick both our asses,” she confirmed. “But I was just doing my job. Executing with excellence, as usual.”

“No, you weren’t. Did you listen to me, or are you that stupid? You and your team were slow.”

“Fuck off! It was your bad idea. Never vetted. Never evaluated. Maybe your fragile, exhausted AI was taking a much-needed day off?”

“We’re not getting anywhere,” Edgar conceded. “Let’s agree to this, though. We are both in deep shit if these global reactions continue to escalate. We need a plan. We need to keep Ron out of the spotlight, or at least we should take advantage of him being in the spotlight. What about your ‘with Ron, any attention is good attention’ motto?”

“So?”

“Then I suggest you and your team do whatever it takes to make this ‘good attention’ for Ron. Right now, he’s getting heat.”

“No. I’m sure you know where he is right now, as do I. He’s getting his sensual pleasures maxed in his secure bungalow upstairs. Right now, he’s not being bothered, even by Imp. You and I both understand his repulsive proclivities and indulgences, and he’s in the middle of another long episode of ecstatic, orgasmic playtime. The constant teat at which he suckles.”

“All the better to give you the time to develop your plan, my dear,” he smiled viciously.

She closed her eyes and rubbed her chin. “We’re straight, then. Your bad idea. Your nonexistent vetting. My excellent execution. Market meltdown in early stages. You, the incapable one, have no further responsibilities. ‘We need a plan’ is bullshit. This is all on me to clean up. All on me and my team of sows to pull your microscopic gonads from the muck and mire. I love that. And what is your role, if any? What do I get if I pull those tiny, useless sacs of yours out of this hell pit?”

He shook his head. “Oh, my dear, you get my undying gratitude. Now, we may not get along so well, although that’s typical among this dunghill of deviants he calls ‘ministers,’ but I do provide proper payback, whether good or bad. If you need my help, just whistle.”

Sara was staring at the floor. “I think we’re done here,” she stated flatly, not wanting to provide the courtesy of looking at him as he rose from his chair.

“Keep me apprised, missy,” he chuckled as he opened her office door.

“Go fondle yourself, buddy; it’s the only thing you’re good at doing without consulting the AI that controls you,” she countered.