‘Well I didn’t need ESP to figure out what’s going on with Eldon,’ Ethan said when he next met with Jimmy and Dawn.
‘Yeah. What’s going on?’ Jimmy asked anxiously. ‘I noticed you got called into see Eldon.’
‘I did get called in’ Ethan replied. ‘He wants me to kill you.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah. Which means he suspects me too. Oh and he knows about your wives, and what we’ve been doing there too, so we’re really tied together’.
‘I never thought Eldon would have me killed,’ Jimmy said, starting to freak out a bit.
‘Really?’ Ethan asked. ‘Come on Jimmy. We all knew this was coming’.
‘Yeah, I guess’.
‘So, lets figure out all we know now, and decide how to proceed’, Ethan continued. ‘Everything he’s saying is legit. He’s starting a war against Zhang. I’m running the logistics, and Johann Schneider’s the muscle. I am suspect, but needed. Still, Jimmy, you’re going to have to go down hard if I’m to gain trust. What he’s not telling anyone is he’s starting the war as a diversion. He’s making his move. Those reactors have to get into position. He’s planning on going to war with the world. Everything must be in position, and no-one, not even our allies must suspect what Eldon’s building in space.
‘From post-singularity times, we also know Zhang was aware of Eldon’s plans and had built an AI system that would infiltrate Eldon’s network, rendering StarForce inoperable. As far as I know, Zhang wasn’t successful, but I have to be honest, I never paid close of attention to this part of my history. I do know, that at the end, Eldon had the upper hand because of StarForce. What have you figured out about the attack on your AI Jimmy? Are you going to be there for us when we need you?’
‘It’s hard to say with any certainty,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Two AI’s have never gone to war before. In a way, the outcome is beyond those who created them.
‘As far as who created this other internet AI, it was the Albino. She’s the only one capable of discovering me, and I’m really surprised I didn’t detect her first. I’m still trying to figure out what happened, but there are many complexities with AI. I knew I wouldn’t be the only one building AI inside the internet, so I put up protocols to avoid detection. The problem is, it just takes one little string of unanticipated code, and you’re in like there was no firewall at all. The attack is advancing and I’m in a reactive state. She came in guns blazing, and she’s right inside, but my AI is blocking her quite well’.
‘Are you going to win?’ Ethan asked.
‘I don’t know. I thought I could kick the shit out of anything, but that’s not happening here. It’s a fight’.
‘Who is this Albino?’
‘A sadomasochist working out of Hell’s Kitchen’.
‘Really?’
‘I don’t know. She’s weird. Pretty hot though. She’s an albino, but she’s got these paisley tattoo’s with really bright colors covering her entire body, right up to her temples. The only part of her still albino is her forehead, and it’s kind of like the tattoos are taking you to this place and when you see it, it’s like seeing the sun, or something. What’s really cool, is she colored her eyes so they’re a bright yellow with a clear blue orb around the outer edges of the iris. It’s pretty cool’.
‘Thank you Jimmy,’ Dawn interrupted. ‘I think Ethan wanted to know about her skills’.
‘Oh, her skills,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Yeah, she’s messed up. A definite threat’.
‘Is she your equal?’
‘The Albino? Nooo. Well she’s young and these kids kind of work in a different architecture. It’s all about perspective these days, She does some pretty amazing stuff. But I’m more experienced’.
‘You mentioned she’s in Hell’s Kitchen,’ Ethan said. It surprises me she’s working out of Upper Manhattan. Aren’t they all rebels up there?’
‘Well they are, but they’re all broke rebels. She probably stumbled onto me while playing with her own system, and figured someone would pay for it. Probably shopped it out through word of mouth. Can’s sell that online. Eldon would hear about this before us. I don’t have people out there anymore, do you?
‘No,’ Ethan replied. ‘Eldon’s taken away all my people too’.
‘Okay then,’ Ethan continued. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘I vote we stay in here until the war is over,’ Jimmy said.
‘I wish we could’ Ethan replied. I think we need to put a few things in motion here. The number one thing is Dawn you have to have this crowd of yours ready to jump. If they don’t leap at the right time, nothing good happens.
‘My numbers say we’re okay, but with all things there will be unexpected variables,’ Dawn replied.
‘You know what you’re doing. Let us know if we can help,’
‘Dawn nodded.
‘Next we have to figure out a way to kill Jimmy. Can you make that robot of yours be you? I can’t see how it could possibly compress down to your size’.
‘If you must know, I created Da in my own image. I did change out the legs to make him your height, but he looks exactly like me when he has normal human legs’.
‘Hmph. Good to know’.
‘Are going to kill him?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What about this albino woman. Is there any way we can talk to her?’ Ethan asked.
‘She hangs out at the Pinball Wizard Emporium in the Kitchen. It’s just a bunch of gamer wannabe hackers.
‘I don’t think either of us could get into Upper Manhattan without Eldon noticing,’ Ethan mused. ‘He’ll be watching us now.’
‘We could do an encrypted video conference,’ Jimmy suggested.
‘Any down sides to that?’
‘Naw, she might record me and show Eldon if things don’t work out, but you’ll be killing me sometime this week anyway, so who cares.’
‘Good point,’ Ethan replied. ‘Call her up’.
‘It took her a couple of hours for the Albino to respond to Jimmy’s message, but she did agree to talk to him.
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They set it up so she would only see Jimmy. Ethan and Dawn watched from a monitor out of site.
‘Jimmy,’ she greeted.
‘Get the fuck out of my AI, bitch,’ Jimmy screamed.
The connection went dead.
‘Well she seems in a bit of a mood,’ Jimmy said, unperturbed. ‘Must be on her period’.
Dawn jumped out of her chair and started swatting Jimmy around the head. ‘You start showing women some respect you little turd,‘ she said, while trying to hit him wherever he wasn’t covering up’.
Ethan watched as Dawn swatted at Jimmy. ‘Have you two ever got along?’ he asked. Dawn varied her attack and gave Jimmy a hard kick to the shin.
‘No,’ they answered in unison.
‘Jimmy that was really stupid. You better say you’re sorry to this Albino and get her back on the line. If we can somehow get her onside with us, it will remove a lot of uncertainty. What’s her name?’
Alicia. ‘I’ll message her.’
Three hours of begging later and she still no reply. While they were waiting, Jimmy received an alert from his AI. ‘You had your chance Tiny Dick’!
‘How the hell did she do that?’ Jimmy wondered, after he read out the message.
Ethan looked over at Dawn. ‘Do you think you can get over to Hell’s Kitchen and talk to her?’
‘My parents live in Hell’s Kitchen. I go there all the time. I was going to suggest I go if Jimmy couldn’t patch things up’.
‘Well, you could have told us that sooner,’ Jimmy exclaimed.
‘Well, you could have taken care of your own business,’ Dawn countered.
‘So you wouldn’t be drawing attention to yourself? Ethan asked. ‘If you went over there?’
‘It should be okay. The guards are used to seeing me come and go.
‘Well. Let’s give that a shot.
Dawn made her way to the Pinball Wizard Emporium. She knew the people inside would be some version of herself when she was younger. Highly functional Asperger's with nowhere to go. When she arrived, it was what she thought it would be. More of a hangout than an arcade, but there were a few pinball machines, and some pretty sweet gaming stations for rent, with surround sound chairs. Mostly though, kids were lazing around on sofas, playing on their laptops and plugged into their headphones.
There was no sign of the Albino. Dawn hung out and waited. Eventually Alicia did appear from a private backroom to get a soda from the canteen.
She was beautiful. Spectacularly beautiful because she was so unique. She was tall, slim, and confident in her bearing. She wore a short clingy dress, and any skin that Dawn saw, which was considerable, was covered in paisley tattoos. Reds, blues, purples and yellows all blending together in swirling harmony. The only way you would know she was an albino was from her forehead as Jimmy had said. The rest of her body was color. Vibrant color. Even her long hair which she wore in a ponytail was a bold sky blue. She was eighteen at most.
Dawn approached her. ‘Alicia?’
Alicia looked at Dawn. ‘Do I know you?’
‘No. I’m from the resistance. I came to talk to you about your AI’.
‘And how exactly would you know anything about ‘my’ AI?
‘Jimmy’.
‘I knew it. Fuck Jimmy! Tell the old timer it’s time to retire.’
‘Alicia. Look at me,’ Dawn said. ‘I’m from the resistance’
‘Yeah. Well. What do you want?’ Alicia asked, looking like it did matter a little bit that Dawn was part of the resistance.
‘Just to talk for a few minutes. Give you some intel.’
‘Yeah, we can talk,’ she Alicia said after a moment. ‘Come on,’ she said, waving for Dawn to follow her into her private room.
‘Do you know who you’re working for?’ Dawn asked, once they got inside.
‘Nope. I have what you might call an agent. More of a middle man, really’.
‘Eldon Whitehead’.
‘Yeah, well, big business man. So what?’
‘He’s going to use it to take over the world, and you know I guy like him can do it with your AI.’
‘Yeah, well, you’re telling me this too late. He paid be bucks for the entire system. It’s his now. His people are training it. I don’t have anything more to do with it’.
‘Really? You gave him everything?’
‘Yup.’
‘No embedded whistles to call your AI home when you want it?”
‘Nope’.
‘Right. Are you getting what I’m telling you here. The whole world is going to end if Whitehead takes over Jimmy’s AI’.
‘I don’t even know who you are for sure,’ Alicia countered. You could be anyone. I’ve already told you more than I should have. Besides, I doubt the dude’s planing to end the world.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, grow up. Dawn said with frustration. You know damn well what your AI can do, especially in the hands of Whitehead’.
‘Well, I didn’t know I was selling it to him,’ Alicia replied defensively.
Dawn thought for a moment. ‘I guess you’re right. I can’t just walk in here and tell you I’m from the resistance and expect you to tell me all your secrets, so ’m going to tell you something I know, that only two other people know. I’m telling you this because I know you of all people, will know it’s possible, and believe me. I’m sure you’ve imagined where your AI will take the world, well get this, it’s sending people from the future back to our time, and there’s one I’m working with in South Manhattan right now.
‘Wow! That is fucking trippy.’ Alicia replied, looking shocked and amazed. ‘Wait!’ she said. She grabbed a pipe siting on a table, filled it with pot, lit it and took a big draw. ‘Continue,’ she said.
‘That means you’re living in a simulation’.
Alicia looked around the room and up at the ceiling. ‘Wow.’
‘The real you is living, or dead, in the future.”
‘Shut up.’
‘It’s true. This man I’m working with confirmed the world is going to go through a transition in a year’s time. The world will end, or it will change into something else completely different. The opposite of what we have now. Your AI is going to have a major role in which outcome it will be’.
‘Shut the fuck up!’
I’m serious. AI becomes aware in a year’s time and it’s your system and Jimmy’s that will decide if it’s friendly or not. If the world is to transcend, your AI has to cooperate with Jimmy’s. The must form a duality and synchronize in harmony, if it going to benefit humanity. Jimmy’s AI is pragmatic and functional. Yours is elegant and exploratory. Together, they’re complete. You know in a way, your AI is like your tattoos. A swirling blend of vibrancy in a never ending pattern of recursive harmony’.
Alicia was taking a toke on the pipe when Dawn said that, and her eyes lit up and she started choking.
‘That’s exactly why I have these tattoos,’ she said when she regained her breath.’They represent the recursive potential of my AI.’
‘Well you think about all this,’ Dawn said. I have to get back to the other side, but I’ll be back, and maybe by then you’ll remember a way to take back your system.’
‘Maybe,’ Alicia replied, a little distracted. She was thinking about the paisley.
When Dawn got back, she was confident Alicia would be there for them. ‘I stopped at Mom and Dad’s,’ she said to Jimmy. ‘They sent some pictures of the girls you have boarding with them.
She threw an envelop at Jimmy. ‘They still haven’t figured out you can take pictures on a phone’.
‘That’s cool,’ Jimmy replied. ‘I like pictures.’
‘What girls?’ Ethan asked.
‘The girls he’s supposed to kill after your parties,’ Dawn said as she was passing him to get a drink.
‘Really?’ Ethan said, relieved to here this. ‘Let me have a look.’
Jimmy sorted through them and handed him all but one.
‘Why can’t I see that one?’ Ethan asked.
‘Ah, it just didn’t turn out that well,’ Jimmy answered. ‘Those one’s are good’.
‘Why can’t I see that one, Jimmy?’ Ethan asked again.
‘It’s the girl you were with’.
‘Show it to me’.
Jimmy looked at Ethan. He was very serious. Jimmy handed him the picture.
It had been two years since the rape. With the rest of her, the girl’s face had filled out and she was taking on the features of a young woman.
Ethan stared at the picture. ‘Leita,’ he said softly.
‘That’s right,’ Dawn said, pausing to look at the picture on her way back from getting the pop. ‘How did you know?’