Kaitlyn's mom pulled up in her crossover-wagon outside Sean's driveway, promptly after breakfast as promised. She looked flustered, her blonde hair damp, but nodded absently as Sean slid into the passenger seat. The vehicle shot out of the subdivision, navigating turns, accelerating onto the main road. They sped up the eastbound I-95 entry ramp joining the throng of commuters toward New Haven. Mrs. Lambert scowled at slowing traffic that flared up in a constellation of red brake lights. She spun hard on the steering, weaving in and out of lanes in a squeal of tires and honking horns.
"Go take a joy ride elsewhere, asshole," Melissa snarled at a driver she passed, directing her ire at each and every car that dared slow her down, "Watch your blindspot, fuckwit."
Sean gripped the door handle tightly. Melissa suddenly blushed mortified, "Sorry, Sean. I'm kind of distracted having to rush from gym. My schedule is less tight from tomorrow."
"Hmm," Sean grunted with the bare minimum response that manners dictated. The thought of Judith in hospital was a dull gnawing ache at the back of his mind.
"...to quit gym," Melissa muttered almost to herself, "Working out like a maniac for months and nothing to show for it."
"Hmm," Sean acknowledged.
"...workout had no effect," Melissa sounded frustrated, "...my weight keeps going up though I watch my calories. Maybe I'll go on a diet... do I look fat, Sean? Be honest now. I can't get a straight answer from my husband."
"Uhh... what, um..." Sean desperately searched for a response that would spare him from answering a question that had no safe answer, "What makes you think gym has no effect, Mrs. Lambert?"
"My weight has been rising," Melissa repeated slowly as if to the dim-witted, "even after I started working out. I keep a log..."
"Is the rise rate the same after starting your excercise regimen, though?" Sean wondered aloud.
"Rate?" Melissa frowned.
"Imagine water in a can," suggested Sean, "the volume of water represents your weight. You add some water each day which is your calorie intake. You make a hole on the bottom which leaks water at a fixed rate which are the calories you burn from excercise. The water rises at a net rate that depends on inflow and outflow rates. If the outflow is less than inflow, the water will still rise but at a slower rate than without any outflow. To stop gaining weight, the outflow must match inflow. A crude system dynamics model, but you see the point."
"Oh," Melissa paused, giving Sean an odd look, "I never thought of it that way... but it's obvious, isn't it. And I thought you were going to say something deep. Hmm... maybe I should continue working out and cut down my calories a bit."
Sean shrugged, staring out the window at passing suburbs, unable to stop thinking of Judith fighting for her life in hospital... cordoned off from her family with only the buzz of life support equipment to keep her company.
"Have you been acquainted with my daughter for long?" Melissa demanded suddenly.
"Kaitlyn?... not really," Sean shook his head, surprised, "only since this school year... at Judith Fuller's birthday party. Kaitlyn's quick thinking saved my life at the Fuller factory. So when she asked me to help maximize her team's odds of making it to soccer finals, I couldn't very well refuse."
A light bulb went off in Sean's mind. He suddenly understood the real reason Mrs. Lambert had offered him a ride to his impromptu internship. She was concerned his friendship with Kaitlyn might not be as platonic as it seemed and like any good mother had decided to grill him in person. Sean suppressed a snort, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. He wanted to reassure the woman that he had no designs on her daughter, but wondered if she might rescind her offer of a ride if her fears were allayed.
"Randy has been coding really hard over the weekend," Melissa noted, "He mentioned it was for his sister's soccer game and blamed you for using up his weekend."
"Then perhaps he shouldn't make tall claims on my behalf," Sean grinned, "He's the one who got me involved, so it's only fair he share the pain."
"But what exactly is he doing?" Melissa glanced at Sean curiously. Sean gave her the two-minute version, reliving the weekend’s meeting in his mind...
#
“But, what is it?” Susan Kaminsky had to raise her voice above the food court’s background teen-babble. She frowned at the paper sketch Sean had unfurled. Dirty styrofoam plates scattered on the cafe table reminded her that Wok stir-fry wasn’t conducive to staying awake after Saturday lunch.
”Yeah, what's it, bonehead?” Phyllis Gibbs stared dubiously at Sean, appending an insult on principle despite being noticably nicer to him of late. She absently swung her Goyard satchel which terminated with a satisfying thunk against the side of Randall’s head.
”Ow,” Randall glared, rubbing his skull, “what did you do that for, bi...”
”Stop leering at me, code monkey,” Phyllis pointed a finger dismissively. Mei Ling rolled her eyes, while Kaitlyn gave her brother an annoyed look.
Sean grinned sourly. Kaitlyn looked as exhausted as he felt after their ordeal at Chem Lab last night. His mind still felt like molasses from the effects of whatever amnesia drug the Collection Agency had allegedly used on him. The police had questioned him all morning, again, shortly after their release from ER. He’d been tempted to skip this appointment with the varsity soccer captain, but didn’t feel like pissing off Susan. Not to mention disappointing Kaitlyn. Mrs. Lambert had initially refused to let her daughter out of the house, so soon after being discharged from ER. But Kaitlyn had thrown a tantrum and her mom had relented if Kaitlyn was willing to be chaperoned by her brother.
”Thanks for dragging me here, dude,” Randall muttered to Sean. Sean’s grin widened. Phyllis looked stunning in Sean’s eyes. The raven-haired heiress was fitted in a textured white peplum dress, no doubt the latest from Chanel. Probably purchased from Upper West Side during weekend shopping in her family helicopter. Her bodyguard/chaffeur hovered nearby looking like Conan the Barbarian in a suit, trying to blend in near a gaggle of teens, sticking out like a sore thumb. Sean realized he'd been staring for several seconds at Phyllis who was impatienty expecting a response.
"Oh, um... it's a deep neural net," Sean stammered, tapping the A2-size sketch before him, "a simplified model of human frontopolar cortex. It's a region of our brain implicated in making choices."
"You call that simple?" Susan sounded bemused, examining the highly detailed handdrawn schematic that looked like the world's biggest shrub.
"It's doable, relatively speaking," Sean looked at Randall, "I need you to code this ASAP. Susan has compiled video clips of every penalty shootout ever scored by Seymour's varsity kickers, captioned with their names. Make a neural net copy for each kicker and train them using their respective video data. I want each copy to be able to predict where the kicker will send the ball, based on cues like the goalie's position, stance, movement, whatnot."
"Wait... wait a freaking minute," Susan interrupted, "are you telling me you can guess where the penalty kickers are going to send the ball ahead of time? That's... that's bullshit, like trying to outguess a coin flip. The goalie makes a split-second decision based on her gut instinct and whatever cues she gets from the kicker's leg. It's a stretch even for the goalie."
"It's a longshot," Sean admitted, "but the kicker's choice seems random to us because we can't read her mind. Heck, it may even feel random to her, if the choice is subconscious. But humans don't carry a random number generator in their heads, no choice is truly random. Research shows that the penalty kicker's choice is determined by visual cues that the goalie isn't aware of. The goalie doesn't realize she's standing slightly offcenter of the goal, but the kicker notices and that subconsciously affects her choice. Is the goalie standing still or waving her hands? That affects kicker's outcome too. But if the frontopolar model can map goalie cues to each kicker's choices, then we can influence Seymour's kickers by making our goalie consciously choose her stance."
"Dude," Randall screamed in anguish, "it'll take me all weekend to code this, never mind the training time..."
"Then you better get started," Sean nodded unsympathetically, "It's for your dear sister's team, after all."
Kaitlyn pouted, "Do this, Randy, and I won't tell mom what you were watching on your bedroom desktop..."
"OK, OK... I'll do it," Randall muttered hurriedly, "but I need a ton of GPUs to train the deep nets and Greg's the only one with that kind of hardware. He'll want rental fees..."
"'l'll take care of finances," Phyllis waved contemptuously with the air of someone used to thousand dollar allowances every month, "Money is no object, but don't tell that to Greg or I'll break your scrawny neck."
"About 75% of penalty shootout goals aren't saved," Sean continued, "that's three out of four. The four quadrants of the goal are roughly the choices the kicker has. Left or Right. High or Low. If Phyllis and one more Cardiff kicker can send the ball down the middle, that'll keep Seymour's goalie off balance and ensure we score all of our penalty kicks. But that isn't much better than the baseline. It may help us win a best-of-five shootout, but I'd rather not just depend on that. One lucky save by Seymour can send the game into sudden death."
"But if our goalie can consistently influence where Seymour will kick..." Susan muttered slowly.
"...we are pretty much guaranteed to win the penalty shootout," Sean concluded, "And if Seymour gets awarded a free kick from an unlucky foul on our part, then we're screwed unless our goalie can save the kick."
"Winning the match during regulation play would be ideal," Kaitlyn sounded wistful, "but we better take it to a draw at the very least, or all this will be moot."
"You came up with this shit by yourself?" Phyllis sounded impressed despite herself.
"Mei Ling composited the frontopolar model from neuroscience papers online," Sean blushed, "I... I translated it into a scheme that Randy could code. I can go over the details with you, Phyllis, if you are interested... just the two of us... I mean, if you have time.."
Mei Ling rolled her eyes again.
”Yeah, that’s going to happen, Cook,” Phyllis snorted, “you and me.”
”That’s not what I...” Sean’s face flushed. What the heck is wrong with me, his jaw clenched in self-loathing while his stomach fluttered with the all-too-familiar sensation of butterflies.
Susan stared at Sean. She found the boy disconcerting. Not on the surface, but the more she talked with him the more she saw the counterintuitive trails his thoughts blazed, like untrodden paths illuminated in a lightning storm. Where other kids sought friendship, popularity or teamspirit; Sean spoke of incentive vectors and unstable equilibriums, as if he could visualize the vector sum of people's motivations. And what Susan found unsettling was that Sean wasn't consciously trying to impress her, yet every conversation was subtly mind-altering, like a scrubber stripping away unexamined assumptions. Except when he faced a 'hot' girl - and it was hilariously obvious that Sean considered Phyllis 'hot' - it was like a switch being thrown turning Sean into a melting puddle of cringy awkwardness. Susan's lips quirked, as she wondered how much of Sean's cooperation was from trying to impress Phyllis versus his obligation to Kaitlyn whom he barely noticed despite the sophomore hanging around him like a devoted puppy.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“...so many applications if the cortex model actually works,” Mei Ling jumped in to rescue Sean from humiliation.
”Exactly,” Sean brightened, with a grateful look at Mei Ling, “dating apps for instance. A guy wants to say the right thing to impress a woman? The cortex model will self-calibrate after observing the female subject...”
Sean trailed off as the atmosphere around the table grew chilly and he noticed Randall signalling him frantically.
”What did you say?” Mei Ling, Phyllis and Susan turned in unison, their voices icy. Kaitlyn just looked disappointed.
”Um... did you know Forever 21 is having a sale?” Sean grinned weakly.
“If you ever publish an app that accurately models a woman’s feelings,” Phyllis growled, “l will hunt you down and break your legs.”
#
Kaitlyn's mom dropped Sean off at the address Mrs. Thornton had provided. A two-storey concrete core encased in glass, housed the Zero Sum Institute. Sean made his way past sculpted evergreen shrubs to glass doors stencilled in silver font with the Greek Sigma and the numeral 0. The reception desk was manned by a bored looking man with a buzzcut and ex-military written all over him. His eyes seemed to drill into Sean as he scrutinized the ID presented and then nodded toward the elevator. Sean stepped out into a fern-infested foyer surrounded by half-a-dozen glass-fronted conference rooms. Julia Thornton was in one of those addressing a gaggle of people. She spotted Sean and waved him over.
"You're late, Sean," Julia gestured at the dozen or so people around the table, "Mr. Cook will be interning with us this week. He's a junior at Cardiff High in Portsmouth."
The faces around the table glanced at Sean with disinterest. Except for Mr. Turner who gave him a wry smile that looked creepy with bug-eye glasses. Sean blinked in surprise and made his way to an empty seat beside his physics teacher. There was a pretty young woman seated two seats down from Turner and Sean had to make a conscious effort not to stare at her.
"You look surprised to see me, Sean," Turner whispered, raising an eyebrow, "I did mention that I moonlighted for Zero Sum."
"Yeah, but it's a weekday," Sean whispered back, "Shouldn't you been in class or something... sir?"
"I could say the same for you," Turner chuckled, holding up a hand, "just kidding, I heard about your... mishap. It's my day off actually."
"...with three teams deployed, we're short-handed, forcing us to prioritize," Julia pointed to a world map on the wall display on which colored lights blinked seemly at random, "Conflict hotspots have been ranked by profit potential..."
Blue and green lights faded, leaving only the reds. Julia frowned at Sean's raised hand, "Yes, Sean?"
"How exactly is stopping conflicts profitable for us... you?" Sean blurted.
"Going straight for the money, Mr. Cook?" Julia barked a laugh, followed by titters around the table, "There are many ways to profit from a credible track record. Here's one, how much would Fuller Dynamics pay us not to stop a war?"
"But... " Sean stared at Julia appalled, "that's war-profiteering. The humanitarian question..."
"Did I ever claim to be a humanitarian, Mr. Cook?" Julia snapped, "People have been slaughtering each other for ages. It benefits us to interfere sometimes, and sometimes not. If you're serious about making a difference, I suggest you keep a lid on your scruples."
There was no laughter around the table this time. Sean swallowed his disgust, glancing at Turner for support, but the physics teacher merely looked uncomfortable.
"First topic on the agenda is South Caucasus Republic," Julia clicked a remote and the map zoomed in on a spot between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, "Team Violet will present their analysis. Go ahead, Dawn."
The young woman presumably named Dawn, who had caught Sean's fancy earlier, smiled and nodded. She leaned forward to take the remote, pushing away strands of hair from her face, her fingers brushing golden locks that flared into a gleaming bell around her shoulders. A sharp slender nose was the axis of symmetry for her twinkling blue eyes. But it was the mouth that sold Sean. Wide and warm, they dimpled her cheeks in a friendly grin ever so often. Her voice dripped like metaphorical honey into Sean's ears.
"...the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was the catalyst that fractured the Caucasus into warring states over the past two decades," Dawn began clicking through talking points, "...horrendous treatment of ethnic minorities by all countries in the region... significant refugee migration both into and out of South Caucasus Republic. We expect an imminent outbreak of war between SCR and a coalition of its neighbours... which can only magnify the refugee crisis."
A flicker of sadness passed over Dawn's professional demeanor.
"Major stake holders?" Julia barked.
"The usual suspects," Dawn continued, "the Russians obviously. Unusally though, they aren't taking sides. All the players used to be part of the former Soviet Union and the Russians have an interest in a stable Caucasus. They have agreed not to interfere if we act in good faith. The US State Department has unofficially greenlighted the mission, though officially they'll deny involvement. Armenia and Azerbaijan risk losing their own ceasefire if war breaks out in the SCR. And finally GORGON."
Sean felt a stab of disquiet as an angry red circle appeared overlaid over Eastern Europe. Red and black lines grew radiating from the Caspian Sea all the way into Greece and Turkey.
"We theorize that GORGON has a stake in escalating conflict," Dawn hesitated, "to interrupt oil and natural gas lines feeding the US Army offensive in the Balkans. But... the Caucasus is well beyond their sphere of influence and it's not obvious what GORGON can do. We've shared our concerns with the SCR leadership who assure us that security has been beefed up."
You better believe GORGON can ruin your day, Sean thought rubbing his cast. It was almost time for the bloody thing to come off. It wouldn't be soon enough.
"It'll have to do," Julia nodded, "Mechanism of intervention?"
"Information asymmetry regarding SCR military capabilities," Dawn clicked briskly on the remote, "They are a new untested nation much like its rivals. And all players have plenty of cheap cannon fodder."
"Proposed action?" Julia looked impatient.
"A weapon demonstration by the SCR," Dawn finished dramatically, as a tiny region flashed within the map, "Maly-Kavkaz Valley. Artillery shelling and probing infantry attacks occur at predictable times every week, such that a decisive technology demonstration should..."
"Surely that's not effective?" frowned an earnest bespectaled young man in a plaid shirt, "when they're already skirmishing..."
"Unless its a secret weapon the other side cannot obtain?" Sean muttered, "something that demonstrably increases the cost of invading the SCR. After all, if the cost of war is relatively low as measured in military lives and SCR military capability is uncertain, then its actually rational for its neighbours to attack it instead of negotiating. They gain much by sacrificing a few soldiers."
Faces glanced at Sean in surprise.
"That's correct," Dawn looked startled, noticing Sean more carefully this time, "Team Violet has negotiated a shipment of demo units that should reach onsite... the day after tomorrow actually."
"I'm quite aware of the intricacies of game theory," the young man's voice was frosty, "but there are more cost effective ways to intervene. War is economics after all."
"Dude's got a point," Sean shrugged.
"Is that so, Mr. Cook?" Julia raised a brow testily, “How would you go about it?”
“Um...” Sean considered the question warily, “Use aid organisations to dump free food into the region... using the refugee crisis as a pretext maybe?”
Some faces around the table held confusion now. The young man considered Sean thoughtfully with a faintly unpleasant smile. Dawn's lovely face spasmed with shock, quickly suppressed. These two are no fools, Sean noted.
"I didn't think you were stupid, Sean," Julia spat sarcasm, "How does feeding refugees avert war? Are you hoping national leaders suddenly get that we all belong to one big human family?"
"War is economics," Sean repeatedly softly, "Dumping free food will bankrupt local farms, destroying the region's agricultural base. The cost of war goes up many fold. Armies march on their stomachs after all. They'll never know what hit them, because most leaders don't foresee unintended consequences. When systems are highly coupled, we can never do just one thing."
The sudden silence was broken by Julia's incredulous giggle, "How insidiously ruthless, Mr. Cook. And I thought you were naive. But I'm afraid that approach, elegant as it is, will take too long in this case."
"And there's a twist I didn't mention," Dawn piped up, "The demo weapon in question is being supplied by Gibbs Consortium who is quite eager to break into the Eurasian arms market."
No doubt Gibbs is paying Zero Sum a hefty commission for facilitating this, Sean belatedly realized, even if Dawn left it unsaid. Sean shook his head ruefully, I've no clue about the wheelings and dealings going on behind the scenes. Perhaps his chagrin showed because Dawn gave Sean a brilliant smile that triggered his stomach butterflies. She really was quite attractive, he thought transfixed. She wore a snug sleeveless sweater top that nicely accentuated her mesmerizing curves...
"...after a short break ...Sean ...Sean?" Julia sounded faintly amused, "I asked you whether you had a chance to download and sign our consent form. Perhaps you'll care to answer me, once you're done ogling Dawn over there?"
Sean's gaze snapped to Julia, his face turning a bright red, followed by chuckles around the table.
"I'll let our weapons consultant go over the technical aspects after the break," Dawn looked slightly embarrased at Sean's faux pas as she slid the remote over to Turner. Sean felt a flicker of confusion despite his burning face. When did his physics teacher become a weapons consultant? Turner grinned at Sean and got up to join the others filing out of the room. Sean was almost the last out the door, when Julia's voice stopped him.
"Just a moment, Sean," Julia seemed to be enjoying his discomfiture, "I want to have a few words in private."
Sean sighed, sinking back into his chair.
"Do you want to be the creepy guy who leers at his female co-workers?" Julia looked at him quizzically, "I can't have my male employees distracted from their best effort just because they can't keep their eyes off a pretty girl. Understood?"
"Easy for you say," spat Sean bitterly, "You know nothing about being male."
"Tell me then," Julia leaned forward with a sneer, "What's it like being male?"
"It's... distracting... demeaning," Sean took a deep breath and shuddered, "like having a magnet stitched into my brain, pulling my gaze to the nearest pretty face... what’s the point of having a brain if I spend all my time thinking of girls... what's the use of reason if I can lose it so easily by looking at a beautiful woman..."
Sean stopped feeling faintly ridiculous. He'd never voiced aloud the frustration accumulated over years of adolescence. It felt petty to whine about something that practically every boy went through and learnt to deal with eventually. Talking to his dad might have helped, but his dad wasn't around much. And his mom would have smiled sympathetically if she ever found the time to stop and chat with her son, but she wouldn't understand, not really.
"My, what a uniquely tragic experience, Sean," Julia leaned back and cackled heartily, "having to look at pretty girls all the time."
"You're not helping," Sean scowled.
"Sorry, I shouldn't have laughed," Julia's mirth trailed off, "But jokes aside, I expect my field personnel to be on top of their game, even interns. I can’t have you distracted by a pretty face. Hmmm... might have just the thing for you."
"Uh?" Sean blinked.
"Something that bypasses your... base impulses," Julia drummed fingers on the table thoughtfully.
"Wh.. what do you mean?" Sean swallowed nervously.
"Oh, nothing permanent, young man," Julia grinned and got up, "Stay here."
Julia returned some minutes later, carrying a flat leatherbound case embossed with an unfamiliar logo. She slid down back in her chair, sliding the case over to Sean who opened it. A flat metallic cuboid sized like a portable harddrive, stenciled ‘ScupltSight PreProcessor v2.1’, lay snugly within custom contoured foam along with charging accessories. A smaller transparent casing held a pair of tiny lenses that scintillated with metallic hues as Sean held it to the light.
”Contact lenses with embedded microcircuitry,” Julia waved , “a marvel of optical engineering.”
”What’s it for?” Sean’s confusion showed.
”Altered Reality piped directly onto the eyes ,” Julia explained, “with the processor core wirelessly mediating what the wearer sees. Any imaginable criteria can be specified. Don’t like the crack on your window pane? SculptSight can airbrush it away in realtime. Want to look like Brad Pitt in the mirror? SculptSight can create that illusion for you. Your 'significant other' isn't sufficiently goodlooking? No problem, he or she can look like your favorite movie star through SculptSight.”
”Where did you get this?” Sean stared, “and what’s it got to do with me?”
"Not long ago I funded a tech startup that later went bust," Julia sounded wistful, "but I never lost faith in its potential. As for its relevance to you... can't you guess? I just told you, SculptSight can change how people look to the wearer."
"I can make SculptSight render pretty girls into... not so pretty ones," Sean whispered.
"Beauty is an illusion," Julia's smile twisted into a rictus, "just as SculptSight can creat illusions it can also erase them."
Could it be that simple? Sean clamped down a flare of hope. Like most people, Sean existed in uneasy truce with his own genes whose interests did not always coincide with his own. His genes wanted only one thing, to persist and replicate through the eons, and they had shaped his mind to that end. The allure of the opposite gender was an incentive vector that dominated his waking moments, which neither his superpower nor his newfound knowledge could switch off. More than anything, Sean feared his own weaknesses... his grandiose plans derailed because he couldn't help obssessing over some 'hot' girl. More and more often, he found himself in idle daydreams featuring one of the girls in school. The gossip insinuating that he'd infiltrated the Fuller Mansion to pursue Judith had stung, in part because there'd been a grain of truth to it. He'd seen fellow students fall into that trap, pining for someone they couldn't have, pissing away their potential... No. If he couldn't defeat his genes, he needed to shut out their siren song until his dreams were achieved.
"Why are you doing this for me?" Sean looked at Julia.
"As I mentioned, I don't like my employees getting distracted," Julia got up, indicating the meeting was over, "but more than that, I wish to reshape the most promising students I can find into something better... something without human frailty. SculptSight is a small token of what ZeroSum can do for you, if you prove useful."
END OF CHAPTER