Sean lay in the darkness as sleep eluded him. The pain had subsided but lingered enough to keep him awake. Silence reigned in the Fuller household. The only sound was waves breaking on the rocky beach outside. Presumably everyone had retired to sleep. Fatigue mixed with a pinch of depression descended over him like a wet cloak. He couldn't quite believe he had kicked up a row with Judith's dad. All because his pain had burned the fuse on his temper. It was unsettling how fragile one's core personality was. People liked to believe otherwise, of course, to claim there was an unchanging self that defined them. Perhaps it was even true. But all it took was some threshold of pain or stress to strip away that veneer of civilization. All his carefully laid plans would come to naught if he couldn't learn to hide his true feelings behind a mask of civility. No way he was getting invited back to the Fuller residence, now that he'd revealed himself. Nice going idiot, he berated himself.

He'd rather lay there in bed till dawn, but his bladder had other ideas. Sean got off the bed grumbling, careful not to make any sound that might wake up his mom sleeping on a couch by the window. She had given him an earful over his behavior and Sean didn't want to risk a repeat lecture. He quietly padded out of the room on bare feet, pausing when he passed Susan's locked office doors. Parts of the office brightly illuminated by moonlight were visible through the glass panes. One more piece of his failure, another element of his "master" plan that he'd failed to carry out. Well... he still had time to break into Susan's office if he really wanted to. Even Elliot the butler-security-chief had to sleep sometime. Probably. With Sean's recent luck all of Susan's sensitive documents were probably locked up in cabinets. Wait... the moonlight was on the desk at the center of the office and there were a few scattered documents clearly visible. But was it worth the risk? They might turn out to be nothing worthwhile. If Susan had been reviewing them they were probably important to her, but were they useful to Sean? Could he really use whatever scraps of information gleaned here to make a quick buck on the stock market. Sean didn't even have a discount brokerage account, but that was fairly easy to set up he was sure. He didn't want to just walk away having gotten this close. Besides he was pissed with Richard. What of security measures? The gleaming no-expense-spared bunker ER where his broken arm had been tended to had startled Sean. He knew enough not to underestimate the Fullers when it came to protecting their family and property. He'd seen cameras outside the house, but none inside. The rich apparently didn't care to be watched by their own security guards. But that didn't mean Susan's office didn't have defenses. Sean could easily imagine a hidden camera that might activate when the office wasn't in use. Indecision gnawed him. And his bladder was even more insistent. He sighed and moved on to the bathroom at the end of hallyway. 

He was looking through the bathroom cabinets hoping to find a packet of dental gum when he came across a heap of party supplies including ribbons, paper strips and rolls of adhesive tape stuffed into a drawer. Had Judith's party been only a few hours ago? It felt like an age. Sean felt a little sorry for Judith, the birthday girl whose party had ended so horribly with her friends' safety put to the test. She was probably traumatized. He might have gained her confidence with not the best of intentions, but he had grown a bit fond of her as the most likeable one in her family. He was about to close the drawer when he paused to pull out a narrow roll of colored paper. He gave the strip an experiemental tug to test the strength of the paper, an idea growing. There was a bottle of decorative pebbles on a shelf that he unstoppered to retrieve a tiny stone. A piece of sticky tape sufficed to wrap the free end of the paper strip around the pebble. He walked out into the corridor with the makeshift paper sling. Moments later he at Susan's office door, punching in the combination he remembered into the keypad. The deadbolts clicked open and he turned the handle pushing open the doors. Sean breathed to calm himself and gauge the distance to the desk. He slipped the ring of paper roll over his left index finger sticking out of the sling. He readied the pebble end in his right arm and then lobbed it in an arc. The paper strip spooled out behind the projectile as it landed on the desk.

The pebble lay on a bare patch of desk between scattered documents. No problem. Sean tugged on the paper strip till the pebble slid over a sheaf of papers. Barely a tingle. Sean frowned. He'd hardly gotten anything from it except an impression of cryptic jargon, a wall of text that had gone over his head. He spooled back the paper strip, the pebble falling off the desk and dragging along the floor until it was in his hand once more. He flung it again and the paper-wrapped stone landed on another set of documents. Sean shuddered from the information overload and nearly passed out, but managed to hang on to awarness through sheer dint of practice.

This report was from an AI provider that Susan's firm had hired. Excursion Net rented out artificial intelligence services that specialized in equity trading (the report listed three other competeing AI firms that did the same). If Sean still harbored silly dreams of coming up with a stock market predictor that could match the best of the best, this report put those dreams to rest. The most proactive of the hedge funds had already started moving towards mutable AIs that could spot and exploit market inefficiencies far better than any static model. It was the logical end game as hedge funds arbitraged away the very profits they pursued as they sought to beat the market. Like shooting the goose that laid the golden egg, the very act of milking profit eliminated it as other firms jumped into the feeding frenzy. And what better way than to make artificial life that could evolve with the market, for that was what Excursion Net and its competitors had achieved, electronic predators that hunted trading opportunities with single minded ferocity. And Sean didn't have a snowball's chance in Venus of duplicating that. It would take him a lifetime of learning to come close to the complexity of the genome in these trading algorithms, and even if he did he could not hope to catch up with the Red Queen's Race, parasites that constantly evolved just to stay in the game featured a distinct first-mover advantage. Late comers could not compete. For a time Sean lost himself in the sheer elegance of the a-life schematic he'd witnessed. And in the cold light of the rising moon he felt a growing conviction that the Age of Man was drawing to a close. Sure the human story would play out for a while before the curtain closed, but all the decisions that mattered would be made by AI. Not by a robot revolution or some such Hollywood trope but by sheer economic necessity, for hedge funds that didn't use AI would wither and fail. Asimov had been right. The ashes of defeat tasted bitter. Sean had crossed an ethical line when he'd picked the lock on Susan's office. And even that transgression was for nothing, for the machines had already usurped that which he'd sought to steal. Wait... perhaps he was looking at this the wrong way... perhaps there was a way to salvage this...

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Fishing for something, sir?" Elliot's voice made Sean give out a little scream. The butler emerged from the inky shadows of the corridor, holding what looked like an iPad.

"How... how did you know..." stammered Sean.

"I'm afraid you are in no positition to be asking questions, sir," the security chief's tone was emotionless, "but I will indulge your curiosity just the same. There is a motion-activated thermal imaging camera hidden in the chandelier."

Elliot pointed to the ceiling of Susan's office and then held up the screen of his iPad. The photo was a little blurred with a greenish tinge typical of IR images, but there was no doubt of Sean's identity in the picture as he stood at the open doorway casting his 'fishing line.'

 "This isn't what it looks like," mumbled Sean, hating the quaver in his voice, "the door was unlocked when I stumbled against it...please... just forget this. Don't tell anyone, please."

"I'm afraid I can't do that, sir," was that a tinge of regret in Elliot's voice, "it is my duty to inform my employers of a break-in, since this is unlikely to have been an accident. You were literally fishing for confidential documents in Mrs. Fuller's private office, I might point out. Even if I were so inclined to break the vows of my employment - and I assure you I'm not - events have already moved beyond my control. The alarm system is still in an elevated-threat mode, and all security footage is automatically transmitted to Portsmouth PD in real time. I hope you understand."

Sean nodded, his throat suddenly dry. It made sense to ensure the police received all photo evidence in case the residence was destroyed by a GORGON attack. Sean groaned as the pain in his arm spiked again. The weekend just kept getting worse.

#

Sean stood in Susan's living room before his mother and the Fullers. Breakfast was laid out on the adjacent dining table, but no one touched it. The house staff, Elliot included, had discreetly retreated. Sean felt defeated, his eyes downcast. There was no fight left in him. His mother still looked like she wanted to strangle him. Winona's eyes were red from a bout of enraged tears. Richard looked cool and composed seated on a Louis Vuitton couch. Susan simply looked outraged. Judith just stared at him, her eyes glimmering with mositure. But what tore at Sean's heart more than anything was Priscilla's look of shocked disappointment. He could handle anger, but not the look of sadness on the old lady's face.

"People who steal from me or my family go to jail," Richard spoke conversationally, "usually..."

"...but," he continued after a pause, "I'm willing to make an exception out of consideration for your mother... if your parents are willing to sign a binding agreement not to pursue any legal action against the Fuller family or corporations with regard to injuries sustained in the GORGON attack. In return for us not pursuing charges."

He glanced at Winona, who nodded jerkily gritting her teeth, "I'm sure my husband can be convinced."

Sean suppressed a groan. His mom wasn't the litigating type, but his dad would be pissed at forgoing the chance to stick it to his ex-management.

"I hope so for your son's sake, Mrs. Cook," Richard said gravely, "Make no mistake, all it takes is one juvenile record for any decent college to close its doors to Sean. I could ensure that Sean has no future if I wanted. I am on speaking terms with most college deans in the state, after all."

Asshole, thought Sean, careful to keep his expression neutral, nothing like kicking a man when he's down.

"I thought you were my friend, Sean," Judith spat, then turned on her heels and ran upstairs.

"You hurt my baby," Richard's voice turned cold as he leaned forward, "Do that again and I'll crush you... consequences be damned. Do we understand each other?"

Sean nodded.

"Then I believe our business is concluded," Richard leaned back, "Elliot will conduct..."

"Dad! Mom! Grandma!" boomed a familair voice, causing Sean to wince, "I'm baaaack... crazy weekend huh... what the heck... WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY HOUSE, PUNK?" 

Sean barely turned before Jason slammed into him throwing him to the floor. Sean's chest took the impact of the tackle even as his good shoulder impacted the floor. Miraculously his sling arm had taken no damage, but even his good shoulder was sore from slamming into doors when Sean had fled the rogue drone. That also meant that Sean was unable to raise an arm to defend himself from Jason whose face twisted with rage as he landed punches on Sean's face. Winona and Susan screamed. Judith yelled from an upstairs balcony for her brother to stop.

"Jason," Richard's voice twisted with suppressed fury, "Step away from him. THIS MINUTE."

Jason froze and then got to his feet, as Sean cowered on the floor whimpering.

"Go to your room," Richard snarled, "you are grounded for a month. We will discuss your lack of impulse control later."

Jason left without a word. Elliot who had arrived to check on the commotion, helped Sean to his feet. Sean imagined  there was a flicker of pity on the stoic butler's face. Elliot politely escorted Sean and Winona out to the gate where their car waited. Winona cried all through the drive home and Sean just buried his face in his sling.

END OF CHAPTER