Forever Yours
60
Friendly Investor
HENRY TRIED to put the office out of his mind on Friday. It was an important family day. Chastity, however, felt she needed to go in so she could handle the issue of physical security. She should have been notified of the office closure so she could coordinate with the security company.
Dr. Mikesel, Cassie’s pediatrician, arrived for her promised home visit. While weighing and measuring the baby, she discussed issues of breastfeeding, sleep routines, parental care, and environment. She expressed some concern about the stairs.
“You’ll be surprised at how fast time flies,” she said. “Start childproofing your home now. Think of all the danger points. The stairs, your offices, locking cabinets, and sharp corners. I guarantee you that when you have done everything, Cassie will find something you missed.”
“We know this house isn’t the most child-friendly place,” Henry said. “We hope to be in a new home by the first of the month. It has fewer steps and even room for expansion. And Germaine will become our nanny and will live with us.”
“Don’t lose track of the baby while you’re packing. You wouldn’t be the first parents to have to open and unpack every box in order to find a missing child.”
“Oh my God!” Lisa gasped, holding Cassie tighter.
Dr. Mikesel considered her visit to have been successful.
Germaine arrived from taking Chastity to the office in plenty of time to pick up Henry, Lisa, and Cassie to go to the airport.
They weren’t traveling today, but were meeting Cassie’s great grandparents, Beau and Solange. Lisa’s grandparents really weren’t very old. Henry had never had grandparents he could remember, so he enjoyed Beau and Solange as if they were his own Grandma and Grandpa. Beau often talked about retiring, but complained that he couldn’t collect Social Security until he was too old to enjoy it.
It wouldn’t really make a difference if he could. Beau didn’t depend on anything for an income. Benoit Intracoastal was one of the largest privately held companies in the South. Beau was among the billionaires on the Forbes list.
“Grandma and Grandpa!” Lisa waved as Beau and Solange approached the baggage claim area. “Come meet your great granddaughter!”
People in the airport smiled as the older couple rushed to see the baby. Solange immediately took Cassie from Lisa and Beau hugged his granddaughter. Finally, Beau got a chance to chuckle over his granddaughter and then motioned to Henry to join him at the baggage carousel. He motioned to a bag about the size of a large briefcase. Henry picked it up and checked the tag to be sure it was Beau’s. Beau had already turned back to Lisa and Solange.
“What else, Beau?” Henry asked.
“Oh, that’s all. We’re only spending the weekend,” Beau laughed.
Henry looked at his in-laws. Solange had a large purse over her shoulder and Beau carried a paperback.
“Pack light,” Henry said under his breath. He led the way to the exit, carrying the suitcase. Germaine pulled up just a minute later.
“I just hate carrying things on the airplane,” Beau said. He sat in the back row with Henry. Solange sat next to the car seat in the second row and Lisa rode in front with Germaine.
“So, where is Chastity?” Solange asked.
“She had to go in to work this morning for a bit. She’s reviewing security measures with our team. There was a failure yesterday.”
“A hack on your system? Not encouraging after your big IPO.”
“No, not on the system. It was a physical attack. The security team wasn’t where they were supposed to be.”
“Are you putting our grandchildren in danger?” Solange asked, putting an arm around the seat where Cassie was sleeping.
“It was company security,” Lisa hurried to assure her grandmother. “Germaine is always vigilant over the family.”
“I’m surprised you aren’t at the office as well,” Beau said.
“I’m on parental leave. We have good people at the office,” Henry said.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Beau said. “I’d hate to think I invested in something risky.”
“You invested, sir?” Henry asked.
“Don’t sir me now! I wanted to be sure my great grandchildren would be provided for in the future, so I set up a trust and put shares of your company in it. Wanted to be sure control stayed in the family.”
“Well, we have the largest investment within the partnership. I haven’t looked at the breakdown of the public sales yet, but I’m sure we no longer have a majority.” That irritated Henry a little. He didn’t want to lose control, but to progress to where they wanted to go, they needed a lot of cash.
“With my shares and those of your venture group, I’m sure we’ll maintain a majority. Let me know if we need a seat on the board.”
Henry looked at his grandfather-in-law in shock.
“If I may ask, Beau, how many shares did you buy?”
“Ten million. The underwriter was very helpful.”
Henry was struck silent. He knew Lisa’s family was wealthy, but to invest $150 million in a startup? Sure. He’d happily recommend a board position for Beau.
About the time the family had finished lunch and were headed home, a very different scene was playing out at the office.
“I’m sorry, Colonel. Mr. Pascal is not in the office today,” Chastity said to the officious officer.
“Are you one of these artificial things, too?” he demanded, reaching toward Chastity.
A burly guard stepped between them. Chastity had just finished her meeting with the security company and was preparing to leave when the colonel and his specialist entered the lobby.
“Sir! Your uniform is not a license for assault,” the guard said. The colonel stepped back a step.
“Of course not. Misunderstanding. I’m here to see Henry Pascal. Now!”
“As I attempted to tell you before, Mr. Pascal is not in the office. He is on parental leave,” Chastity said.
“Parental leave? Who’s in charge?”
As soon as the colonel had walked through the door, Deena had activated her emergency protocol, based on her previous encounter. When fully operational, that would connect directly to authorities, but at this stage of her development, it only connected to the Alice Project upstairs. Mia immediately called Nathan. He stormed into the lobby behind Chastity.
“Jamison! What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” Nathan yelled.
“General!” the colonel snapped in surprise. He quickly regained his composure, knowing Schwartz was retired. “Well, it’s good to know there is a human adult here to talk to.”
“Human adult male,” Chastity growled. Nonetheless, she realized Nathan was a better choice to deal with the situation. She stood her ground with the security guard and made the colonel step around her to talk to Nathan.
“What are you doing barging in here acting like you’re leading an assault team instead of a spec four?” Nathan demanded.
“I’m here to collect all code and computer files related to the Open Cloak security system and to have all such files removed from the premises. This is by order of Admiral Jonathon Graves of the Pentagon Cyber Defense Department.” The colonel announced.
“Tell the old swab to come and get it himself. If you want to speak to the chief technical officer of the company, you’ll need to send someone of equal rank. And while you’re at it, remind him he doesn’t have the right or power to walk into a publicly owned US enterprise and make any kind of demands.”
“This is a privately owned company. We’ll offer the market value of $25 million for it and close it down.”
“Believing and using accurate intelligence has always been a shortcoming of the Pentagon,” Nathan snickered. “The company went public on Wednesday and has a current market cap of just under a billion dollars.”
“What?” The colonel snapped around to his specialist. “Why didn’t we have this intel?”
The computer hacker just stared dead ahead as if he wasn’t in the room at all.
“Go home, Colonel,” Nathan said. “This isn’t a battle you or your man should be in.”
“We tried to do this the nice way, Schwartz. I’ll put our best team of hackers on it and rip the code out by the guts. We’ll declare the patents top secret and prosecute anyone who uses them.”
“Simple piece of advice from someone who once did your job far more effectively. Don’t run your hackfest from the Pentagon. You don’t want all the computers in the building corrupted.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“It’s automatic. The defense system is run by AI. We keep our hands off,” Schwartz said.
“We’ll just see about that,” Jamison snarled. He turned and stormed out of the lobby. The specialist hurried after him.
“Deena, send the transcript of this encounter to the corporate officers. Copy me so I can respond with a message.”
“Yes, Mr. Schwartz. Or should I call you General, sir?”
“Don’t be a smartass, Deena.”
“The good news is Deena is developing a personality,” Chastity said after she’d rejoined the family and greeted Lisa’s grandparents.
“If that’s the good news, I hesitate to ask what bad news brought it about,” Henry said. He and Chastity had stepped away from the others so she could fill him in on the happenings at the office that morning.
“The Army showed up again today.”
“Oh, shit. We let Deena handle it again?”
“No, though I played the part well enough that the colonel attempted to pass a hand through me because he thought I was a hologram. The security guard with me put a quick stop to that,” Chastity laughed. “Nathan showed up right then and told the colonel off. He told Deena to send the recording to all corporate officers. That’s when she responded, ‘Yes, Mr. Schwartz. Or should I call you General, sir?’”
Henry laughed at that.
“I might need to give her a raise after that.”
“Nathan told her not to be a smartass. I think she grinned at him. Regardless, it doesn’t require immediate response on your part, but after you love your wives tonight, you’ll find the recording in your inbox.”
“Yes. After. I’m presently on parental leave and we’re taking Beau and Solange to get their opinion on the house tomorrow.”
“Do you think they’ll approve?”
“I’ve already put earnest money down. Oh, you should know that Beau bought ten million shares this week. We might need to get him a place on the board.”
Chastity gasped.
“He's giving us $150 million?”
“Held in trust for his great grandchildren.”
“We should go be charming to our grandparents.”
Beau and Solange loved the house. Ryan and Sylvia joined them for the tour and for dinner that evening. Solange went through the with Lisa, describing every detail of how it should be decorated. Then she warned Lisa not to let Jackie control how it was decorated, but to keep her individuality.
That evening after dinner, Henry poured a Wild Turkey for Beau and himself as they sat on the rooftop patio. The women were falling over each other trying to get Cassie ready for bed.
“So, what is the real condition of my investment?” Beau asked.
“We have big plans,” Henry said. “Now we have the capital to make them real. First, we’ve made an offer to buy Agora Fuel Cells company. We are deep into protecting our networks and computers from power monopolies. The floods this year in Nevada knocked out power to a huge server farm in the desert. Even with its backup generators, cities as far away as Reno and Las Vegas had brownouts. Believe me, there are few people as dependent on power as casinos. They’re demanding action and we’re in the perfect position to provide solutions.”
“Okay. What about the AI development?”
Henry described each of the big projects, their intent to double the size of their development and marketing teams, which included acquiring more space. Finally, he described development of the Alice Project.
“You’re not much of a company if you don’t have threats to your profitability. You don’t need to sell me with market appeal. I already bought into the company. Now tell me the problems,” Beau said.
Henry hesitated to talk about the biggest problem on the horizon, then decided to share the recordings of the colonel’s two visits. Beau nodded and was silent for a minute.
“I’d like to hire that receptionist. Is she available?”
Henry was surprised that Beau skipped over the significant part about the Pentagon.
“We could get a prototype installed. We’re not really ready for a commercial release yet.”
Beau nodded. He pulled out his cell phone and pressed a contact.
“Juan. I want every barge, ship, and tug on the Intracoastal cut to one half its current speed, loading, and unloading immediately… Yes, I’m aware there is a parts shipment for Pensacola in transit. But I can’t just slow delivery of that. It has to be everything… Yes, immediately. Just do it.”
Henry looked at his wife’s grandfather in awe. The order he’d just given affected far more than his own equipment and company. He wondered again just how rich and influential Beau was.
“Hope you don’t mind if Solange and I extend our stay by a couple of days. I’ll need to respond to a couple of emergency calls Monday morning.”
The weekend passed pleasantly. Of course, having a baby as the center of attention helped. Cassie was endlessly entertaining to all five adults. Sunday evening, Henry spoke to Nathan.
“Massive attempt on the company servers,” Nathan reported.
“Are we okay?”
“Oh, yes. They have some top-notch hackers, but they are no match for Porcupine. I hate to see them escalating, though.”
“Who is it? As if I didn’t know,” Henry sighed.
“The Pentagon,” Nathan confirmed.
“Nathan, are we at war with the United States?” Henry asked.
“A little skirmish is all. We wiped about two dozen computers, I’d say. I don’t think we’ll have another attempt online. I’d expect Colonel Edinger to show up again with a squad to demand access. We’ll probably have to let them copy all the dev files. Darrel is making a full backup tonight at midnight and getting it off-site.”
“What happens then?”
“They go home happy until they try to launch anything. Then everything disappears. They will have to get a court order if they want keys. The courts are still trying to find where they left their balls during the last administration and will likely use the opportunity to deny access.”
“I don’t think it will go that far,” Henry said. “I just have a feeling this is going to disappear.”
“I hope you’re right. By the way, Major Bernard has resigned her commission and was dismissed immediately when she refused to follow the illegal order of hacking private computers. I expressed an interest in having her return to my team. Hope you don’t mind.”
“She’s welcome,” Henry said. “Keep me informed tomorrow.”
“Will do.”
Germaine took Chastity, Henry, and Beau to the office Monday morning. Beau asked if he could tour the office and meet Deena personally. Germaine returned to pick up Lisa. Lisa and Solange wanted to do a little shopping for the new house and Cassie would be held by Germaine as they shopped.
“This is good,” Beau said when he met Deena in the lobby. “Can you speak in a Southern accent?”
“That ability has not been programmed into this AI,” Deena said. “It would be possible to learn.”
“What are your goals in life, Deena?” Beau asked.
The AI paused.
“Life has not been programmed into this AI,” she responded.
“Well, thank you for your greeting.”
“Welcome to Open Cloak, Mr. Benoit.”
They went into the office and Henry gave Beau a tour. They ended in the Alice Project office. Henry led him into the secret testing lab where the engineers were working on the spatial hologram.
What Beau saw was Deena. Only there was no screen between the image and him. Otherwise, he saw and heard the AI receptionist.
“This is a future generation,” Henry said. “We have a lot of development to do yet. You’ll notice the refresh rate is nowhere near the hologram in the lobby. And there’s a lot of heat in the room. Also, you’ll see a drop off in resolution as you move behind her. We’ve filed nearly thirty patents on this tech. We have a list of needs for the project that starts with fifteen more developers with very specific skills. Chastity has been working on getting candidates, but until we get a new space opened up, we don’t have any place to put them.”
“She’s amazing!” Beau exclaimed. “Why haven’t you revealed this? Stock prices would have doubled!”
“That’s part of the reason. We didn’t need to expose this primitive version to get the capital we needed. Plus, when we unveil her next year, shareholders should see a nice return on investment. We’ll launch a secondary offering and have enough cash flow to be listed on an exchange. Probably NASDAQ.”
A soft alarm began to pulse in the office and engineers came alert.
“Deena is signaling an emergency,” one of the engineers said. “Security notification launched.”
“Let me see the lobby monitor,” Henry said.
A screen was turned toward him and they watched as Colonel Edinger and half a dozen subordinates were met by Nathan.
Nathan delayed their entry as long as possible, but ultimately, he led them into the inner office and up to the third floor dev area.
“What’s going to happen now?” Beau asked.
“Now we’re going to let his little team of hackers copy everything on our development servers,” Henry said. “We’re assuming they’ll destroy everything on the network and leave.”
Beau looked at Deena.
“We run multiple independent networks,” Henry explained. “Deena is not connected to the corporate network and has no outside connection to the world at large. She is essentially offline. The same is true of the robotics lab.”
“What happens then?” Beau asked.
“When they launch the development platform back at base, it will self-destruct. It has to be verified by an AI monitor when launched. A lack of verification triggers immediate erasure.”
“Very clever,” Beau said. His cell phone rang an old-fashioned bell like a desk phone. He thumbed it open. “Benoit,” he said. Then there was a long pause.
Henry turned to the images on the security camera as they shifted to the conference room where the military hackers were connecting to the network. Edinger was giving them instructions to locate and download all code related to computer and network security. One hacker was ordered to copy all internal email.
“Yes, Admiral. I’m aware of the slow-down. We’re working on getting things up to speed… I don’t have the specifics, but it seems to be related to the security software from Open Cloak Design… Yes, I’ve contacted the company. They report that a Pentagon team has made repeated attempts to hack into their network and is even now in their office removing their proprietary systems. A Colonel Edinger, I believe. Who knows how badly this will slow Intracoastal shipping, or what other shipping lanes could be affected. If anything happens to that company, it could shut down everything that moves by ship… Certainly, Admiral. I’ll keep watch on the situation. I hope no permanent damage is done.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
