The Singularity Race (9 page)

“Hardly.” Mullins smiled despite the unwanted flattery.

Brentwood pressed on. “This is Felicia Corazón. She knows everything about the place. If you have any questions, she's the one to see.”

Felicia stood and Mullins was surprised by her height. She had to be at least six-three, and with the close-cropped hair, she reminded him of a younger version of Ted Lewison's wife, Elizabeth. She walked from behind the desk with the graceful motion of a gazelle. From her right hand dangled three ID badges on braided gold cords. She handed one to each of them.

Mullins was stunned to see his passport photo between a barcode and the logo for Cumulus Cognitive Connections. “When did you get my passport?”

Felicia smiled. “When Robert needs something, I find it for him. Wear these when you're in the building. They're electronic and programmed to grant you access to the areas you have clearance.”

“Where don't we have clearance?” Mullins asked.

“You pretty much have the run of the place, Mr. Mullins. Not the private offices. You'll have your own, of course, and I can give you access to Dr. Li's with her permission.”

“Yes,” Li said without hesitation.

“Dr. Li, you'll have a lab identical to the one you had in California, but with a newer generation of hardware. Both of you will have access to the canteen, gym, and game room.”

“Game room?” Peter reached for his badge. “What kind of games?”

“Billiards, ping-pong, pinball, video games, and a TV the width of a wall. The room's mostly used by our younger techs, but I have seen a take-no-prisoners ping-pong match between the senior scientists now and then.”

“Can we see the Nats games?”

Felicia looked confused. “Gnats? Like bugs?”

“It's Washington's baseball team,” Brentwood said. “And I'm sure that will be no problem.”

“Any other restricted areas other than private offices?” Mullins asked.

“Not really,” Brentwood said. “Only the processing cores. That's where the neuromorphic chips are physically clustered into connected patterns mimicking the human brain. You wouldn't want some untrained person poking around in your head, would you, Rusty?”

“I guess not,” he conceded.

Brentwood patted Peter on the shoulder. “And I forgot to mention that we have a library. That's where you'll meet Miss Collier tomorrow.”

“Who's Miss Collier?” Peter asked.

Brentwood looked at Lisa Li. “Actually, it's Dr. Collier. I took the liberty of engaging a tutor who will be here onsite. She has a PhD in elementary education for gifted students. But if she doesn't work out, we'll find someone else.”

Li shook her head in amazement at all that Brentwood had orchestrated. “Fine. But Peter needs some outdoor exercise as well.” She gestured to the Maine coast. “Walking on a treadmill in front of a landscape image isn't enough.”

“I agree,” Brentwood said. “We'll have swimming at the lake, hiking at Chimney Rock Park, and whatever other activities you'd like. Just say the word. Now I suggest we take our tour and then call it an afternoon.”

Felicia took her cue and walked to a section of the wall directly behind her desk. She tripped some sensor and a panel slid to the left. Instead of a clear doorway, a metal frame filled the opening. Mullins recognized a sophisticated body scanner.

“We'll pass through one at a time,” Felicia said. “A precaution to make sure we don't carry in anything that could create a magnetic field, no matter how faint. That means no cell phones, pagers, or other electronic devices.”

Mullins inadvertently patted his pants pocket where he'd kept his burner phone. Thanks to his fear that he'd have to go through some sort of security clearance, it now lay under his mattress back at the cottage.

“You don't need to worry about your change, Mr. Mullins,” Felicia said. “We're only concerned about electronics.”

Mullins lifted his arm in the sling enough to reveal the holstered pistol under his coat. “And weapons?”

Brentwood laughed. “As long as it doesn't have an electronic guidance system, you could bring in a bazooka. You're welcome to carry whatever arsenal you think you need.”

Mullins didn't need an arsenal. He needed a suspect, and unless Lisa Li could get this alleged super brain to focus on his case, all the guns in the world were useless. He'd be better off pushing the action in Washington with Allen instead of cloistered in some glorified cave.
How ironic,
he thought.
Terrorists lived in caves. That is until they set off a bomb beside you or flew a jet into your building.

Suddenly, he wondered if Brentwood had placed his staff and his beloved Apollo beneath the ground because of environmental efficiency or because they were housed in a fortified bomb shelter.

One thing was clear. Robert Brentwood was not a man to be underestimated. Not by a long shot.

Chapter Sixteen

While Lisa Li put Peter to bed in the rollaway in her room, Mullins brought two fingers of Scotch out to the front porch of the cottage to one of its three wooden rockers and took a deep breath of mountain air. The day had been a long one and he found the starry sky and night sounds to be calming. A breeze blew off the water and its chill settled first into his injured shoulder. He wondered if the wound would turn him into one of those old codgers who predicted rain based upon some aching muscle or joint.

Mullins took a sip of his drink to warm himself from the inside out, and then set the glass on the floor. Somewhere an owl hooted, one of the creatures whose nocturnal vision enabled it to seek its prey where others saw only darkness. Mullins wasn't so much troubled by the darkness of his investigation as by his ignorance of what tools Brentwood's facility offered that could shed light onto his case. He'd been impressed with what he'd seen in its sheer size and scope, and he thought Lisa Li seemed pleased by the extent of the resources. She would throw herself into her work, of that he was positive, but he needed her as an ally willing to carry out his research as well.

The screen door squealed as Li stepped outside. “Mind if I join you?”

“Please. Can I fix you a drink?”

Li looked at Mullins' glass on the floor. “What are you having?”

“Scotch.” Mullins stood. “But there's a full bar in one of the upper kitchen cabinets.”

“Scotch is fine. I can get it.”

“No. Sit. I know where everything is.” He gestured for her to take the chair beside him. “On the rocks?”

“Neat.”

Mullins nodded his approval. “Back in a few minutes. Enjoy the quiet.”

He pulled the bottle of Glenfiddich off an upper shelf and then a clean glass from an adjacent cabinet. He noticed a dirty glass on the counter with traces of milk coating the inside. Li had evidently given Peter a drink right before bed. Making a spur of the moment decision, Mullins found an identical glass, rinsed it, and set it in the sink as if he'd washed out the milk glass. Using a clean handkerchief, he quickly took Peter's glass to his room and tucked it in his suitcase. Then he poured Li's Scotch and took it out on the porch.

“Here you go.”

She took the drink and raised it to him. “To my knight in shining armor.”

Mullins sat, picked up his glass, and clinked hers. “I think you mean your knight in Rusty armor.”

“Then I'll just have to keep you well-oiled, Rusty.”

Her comment threw him. Was it simply a second pun or was she proposing something else? Their age difference was less than ten years. He was definitely attracted to her. They both had lost their spouses. His pulse quickened but his brain reeled at any response that could be embarrassingly misread. She was his charge, not his bedmate.

“Then oil me with knowledge. There are some things I need to know.”

Li sighed, as if disappointed by the turn in the conversation. “Ask me.”

“Did anything surprise you about what you saw today?”

“Surprise me?” She took a healthy sip and thought a second. “No, not surprise. Stun and shock are more appropriate verbs. He's at least a year ahead of where we were at Jué Dé. I don't know who his researchers are but the configurations they've created are the closest mimics of the human brain I've ever seen. Thousands of interconnections and cross-processing neuromorphic chips. I was amazed by some of their system schematics and I've barely scratched the surface of what they've done.”

“That must have been while Peter and I were hanging out in the game room.”

“Yes. Sorry to turn you into a babysitter but he would have been bored.”

Not half as much as I would have been
, Mullins thought. “So, are you familiar with anyone on his team?”

Li cocked her head and stared at Mullins over her glass. “That's the peculiar thing. I didn't meet them.”

Mullins rocked forward. “What? Brentwood said he was going to introduce you to them.”

“He did. Virtually. They're offsite in other locations and we spoke through an audio connection.”

“If they're not onsite, why do you have to be?”

“They were at one time, but they're far enough along that they can do their programming work remotely. Robert says I'll go through the same stages and eventually we'll go back to D.C.”

“So, you didn't actually see anybody?”

Li laughed. “Oh, yes, it's not like we're all alone. I met the team of technicians and assistants. Some do physical installations, some run tests and diagnostics. I meant the scientists who conceptualized the whole thing. They're offsite.”

“How many did you speak with?”

“Two. A Roger Stanovich and Luther Cathcart. One came through Cal Tech and the other's worked for Robert since he started his company.”

“I'd have thought you'd be in one of those elite circles where everybody knows everybody.”

“In some ways it's the opposite,” Li said. “People come to AI research from a variety of backgrounds—neuroscientists, engineers, programmers. There are no gatekeepers declaring ‘here's the academic degree you have to have.' It's who has the best ideas. That's why I like it.”

Mullins raised his glass. “I'll sure as hell drink to that. I've seen enough posturing and turf-guarding in the government.”

“And Stanovich and Cathcart have to be tops in their fields. It will be a challenge to keep up with them.”

Mullins started rocking slowly, sensing the time was right to pursue his real agenda with her. “Indulge me in a few more layman's questions.”

“Whatever you need to know.”

“Who is supervising your work?”

“Robert.”

“Not Cathcart or Stanovich?”

“No. Especially not them.”

“I don't understand. Aren't they your colleagues?”

Li ran her finger around the rim of her glass, generating a faintly ringing note. “Look, Rusty, we're colleagues, but we aren't to collaborate. Those men have done an unbelievable job of creating Apollo's brain. So much so that it feels only right to call it Apollo. My function is to create a mini-brain within.”

“Apollo's subconscious?” Mullins ventured.

“Yes. And right now, this moment, are you aware of your subconscious?”

“I know I have one.”

“Yes, but do you know what it's thinking?”

“If I did, it wouldn't be subconscious.”

“Give the man a prize. So, if Apollo became aware that he had a subconscious, what do you think he'd try to do?”

“Control it?”

Li laughed. “I don't know. That's why my work is kept isolated from the others. They've given me a part of the brain. In effect, I have to encase it behind a two-way mirror. Imagine light, in this case visual, aural, empirical, and any other form of information coming in through all Apollo's sensory and data inputs. The subconscious has access to everything including Apollo's own analyses. But, the subconscious processes the information in a different way for a different goal—not to problem-solve but to learn for learning's sake. This is the ultimate achievement of the deep learning field—let him follow his curiosity, and when an idea reaches a certain threshold, it surfaces, masked as if Apollo consciously conceived it.”

“Okay, I understand the subconscious works in isolation, but can that brain within a brain you're devising give you any output that won't go through Apollo?”

Li stared out over the lake and contemplated the question. Mullins studied her profile. The moonlight cast a soft bluish glow over her face, removing a decade of time and stretching the gap between them to such an extent that Mullins cringed at the idea she'd be interested in him.

After a few minutes, Li nodded slowly and turned to him. “You want to use the computer but not let anyone know what you're investigating.”

“I have no idea where things are heading. I'm not saying Brentwood and his associates aren't exactly who and what they claim to be. But when somebody's pulled a gun on me, they have to earn my trust.”

Li laid a hand on Mullins' wrist. “And you trust me?”

“Is there a reason I shouldn't trust you?”

“We have a window, a month or two, when my section of the computer will be completely independent of Apollo. I'll have a secure master server and password that will bypass him. We won't have Apollo's full intellect, but we'll have access to all the information and resources that he has.”

“Why the timeframe?”

“Once I've run all my tests, we'll make the one-way interface to merge the conscious and the subconscious. At that point, my work will be more delicate. I can leave no trace of the subconscious existence. Any output will come through the masking that keeps Apollo unaware of the source of his so-called inspirations.”

“Has Brentwood given this subconscious a name?”

“Yes. Asimov.”

“That's the author of the book he gave Peter. Maybe I'd better read it. See how it ends.”

Li took a sip of her drink and turned toward him. “I'm more interested in beginnings. How'd you get into your profession?”

Mullins shrugged. “My dad was a homicide detective in D.C.”

“Like father, like son.”

“No. When I was thinking about going into law enforcement, he discouraged me from following in his footsteps.”

“He didn't like being a detective?”

“No. He liked it and he was good at it. But he told me I wasn't cut out for his job. That not solving a case would drive me crazy because behind each investigation lay a murder victim. And those victims would haunt me. My father could live with an unsolved case. He said I couldn't.”

“So, you keep people from becoming victims.”

It wasn't a question and her statement surprised Mullins. She'd summed up in one sentence what made him tick. Here was a woman who understood him like someone who had known him for years. “I guess you're right. Dad had a poker buddy in the Secret Service. I saw his job was keeping people from being murdered. To me, that's the greater priority.”

“Peter and I are very grateful you made the choice you did. There's nothing more important to me than protecting my nephew.”

“Then wouldn't he be safer back in China?”

“Maybe that would be best. But it's a long way for a seven-year-old to fly alone. And my sister and her husband are traveling. He has no one to meet him.”

Mullins swallowed the last of his Scotch. “Then I'll make sure nothing happens.”

Li reached for his glass. “I'll clean that. Peter left a dirty one on the counter.”

“Already rinsed. Why don't you use the bathroom first while I do these and then lock up.”

She didn't argue, but took a last swallow and gave him the glass. “I'll see you in the morning.”

They stared at each other for an awkward second. Finally Mullins said, “Yes, in the morning.”

He watched her return to the house. Instead of following, he sat back down in the rocker, a glass in each hand. Of all the questions he'd asked, she'd only avoided answering one: “Is there a reason I shouldn't trust you?”

Twenty minutes later, Mullins wiped the toothpaste off his chin and put his toiletries back in his kit bag. A shelf beside the bathroom's small vanity held a few items belonging to Lisa Li and Peter. Some basic makeup, shampoo, and two hair brushes, one with a back of pewter and the other with a back featuring Superman. Easy enough to determine the owners.

Mullins took two tissues from a box on the rear of the toilet and pulled hair from each brush, using the tissues to keep the strands separate. He rolled the one for Peter into a tight ball and then put it inside the second along with Lisa Li's hair. He wadded that tissue, tucked it into his pocket, and turned out the light.

He closed the door to his bedroom and lifted the mattress. The burner phone was where he'd left it. As it powered up, he felt one vibration signaling a missed text. Three words:

Chimney Rock Noon.