Jay quickly determined that nobody in the house was in any shape to cook and made the executive decision to order pizza.
Julia emerged from her room just long enough to nibble her way through a single slice, then withdrew once again. Patience, blessed with a teenage metabolism, ate easily half a large pizza before retreating into her headphones and, soon after, her own room.
Jay focused his attention on Councillor Wallis.
Wallis’ mobile was set to automatically connect to the council offices’ Wi-Fi; Jay’s foothold in the building’s network made it easy enough to sneak into the phone and plant some spyware. Wallis had left a message with the office of Dan Makris, his contact at Thinkt, and requested a meeting. Makris, however, was in California at the moment and only available later in the afternoon.
With the difference in time zones, both Wallis and Jay were in for a late night.
By midnight, Moran was napping on the sofa; he’d set an alarm that would wake him in time for Wallis’ meeting with Makris. Jay and his laptop were once again installed at the dining table. The conference Wallis had attended in Barcelona warranted a closer look — if they needed more leverage, that was where Jay was likely to find it.
He’d scrolled through most of the conference’s programming guide and list of speakers when Patience reappeared and quietly shuffled past him into the kitchen. “You’re still up,” she observed, keeping her voice low.
Jay grunted an acknowledgement, eyes on his screen.
Patience opened the fridge. “What are you doing?”
“Reading up on that AI Safety Symposium,” Jay replied. “Looks like the whole thing was just a three-day x-risk debate.”
Patience dug the box of leftover pizza from the fridge and grabbed a slice. “What’s ‘x-risk’?”
“Short for ‘existential risk.’ It’s that whole idea we might build robots smarter than we are that go rogue and annihilate human civilisation.”
“Oh.” Patience took a bite of pizza and, as she chewed, asked, “So is that going to happen?”
“Short answer: no, not any time soon.”
“Then why have a whole symposium about it?”
Jay shrugged. “Some of it is stupidity, but some of it’s advertising. If you’re the kind of person who thinks all publicity is good publicity, there’s no better publicity than telling everyone your product might kick off the apocalypse.”
With reasonable hesitation, Patience said, “All right, what’s the long answer?”
“You will regret this.” Jay leaned back from the laptop with a low sigh. “The whole concept of rogue AI depends on building something that can think, learn, and act for itself without human input. But all anyone’s managed to make so far is models that are read-only: they’re trained, and then they produce outputs based on that training, and they can’t do anything but that.”
Over on the sofa, Moran’s alarm went off. He stirred with a quiet groan and sat up.
“A model capable of something even a little bit like actual thought would need a bigger context window than anything we’ve built so far,” Jay went on. “And the hardware needed for that—”
Patience chewed slowly, her eyes glazing over.
“It’d have to be a different kind of thing entirely,” Jay finished, abandoning the technical explanation. “What everyone’s doing right now is basically … breeding horses in the hope that one of them gives birth to a motorcycle.”
“Now there’s an image.” Moran rolled off the sofa and crossed behind Jay’s chair, bending to kiss the top of his head. “Lecturing again, professor?”
“You like it when I lecture,” Jay shot back.
“God help me, I do.” Moran sat next to him at the table. “Has Wallis’ meeting started yet?”
Jay checked the clock on his taskbar; it was a few minutes past midnight. “Shit. Yes. Hang on.” He pulled up the audio feed from Wallis’ phone.
“—couldn’t wait until tomorrow?” said an unfamiliar voice — likely Makris.
“Absolutely not.” Wallis was surprisingly animated, considering the hour. “It’s a fucking nightmare over here, Dan. I’ve got the press circling AlgoDV like vultures and someone from the fraud squad sniffing around. He thinks you bribed me—”
“Calm down.” Makris didn’t seem overly concerned. “Those investigations always take forever, and they never really go anywhere.”
“It doesn’t need to go anywhere!” Wallis protested, just below a shriek. “That there’s an investigation at all is a scandal by itself — the leader of the council could call for my resignation, and I’m sure half the cabinet is hoping he does.” He took a breath and, more quietly, said, “I refuse to take the fall for your faulty software. I’m changing my recommendation for the renewal vote.”
That got Moran’s attention; Patience’s, too. Both of them stared at the laptop with renewed energy.
“Bob,” Makris said, as if soothing a skittish animal. “We’ve talked about how important this contract is for our UK growth strategy. Herefordshire is a key foothold — if you pull out, that throws off years of projections.”
“That’s hardly my problem, is it? There’s nothing you can—”
“What if you came to work for us?”
There was a pause. “Really? I mean, what would that involve, exactly?”
“We don’t have to work out the job description right now,” Makris said. “But let me assure you the salary package is very competitive.”
Another pause, longer this time. “What would I have to do?”
“Same thing you’ve been doing. Recommend the renewal of the AlgoDV contract. Give it a few weeks, then quietly resign. After that, we’ll take care of everything.”
“… All right.”
Jay jabbed at the touchpad, closing out of the audio feed. “Fuck.”
“Can they do that?” Patience asked, anxious. “I mean, that’s just a bribe with extra steps, isn’t it? So it’s illegal?”
“Happens all the time,” Moran replied with a groan, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “It’s called the ‘revolving door.’”
Jay recognised the look on Patience’s face. It was the dawning realisation that the ideals she’d been taught as a child — fairness, honesty, justice, all of it — didn’t really matter in the adult world, and all the power in that world rested with people who considered her an idiot for believing they did.
“You can stop him, can’t you?” she said, already doubting the words coming out of her own mouth. “Scare him off, like you planned?”
Moran shook his head. “Wallis’ job was his pressure point. If he’s not worried about keeping it any more, we don’t have anything we can threaten him with.”
He had that same look as the day they found out about AlgoDV and Patience had asked him to kill the contract. Like all he wanted was to do as she asked, and his heart was breaking with the knowledge he couldn’t.
Jay’s browser was still open to the AI Safety Symposium’s website.
“Maybe we do,” he said.
Wallis’ phone buzzed from the bedside table.
The hour was far too early for it to be doing that, especially considering how late he’d been up last night. The call with Makris had left him too wired to sleep, pacing his house for hours before he finally crawled into bed.
With a groan, Wallis reached for the phone and tilted the screen toward his face. He had a text from an unknown number:
This is Miles Fowler. Need to meet ASAP about Dan Makris. IMPORTANT.
So Fowler was still fishing for information on AlgoDV. Well, Wallis didn’t have to worry about that anymore — Thinkt’s offer meant he was officially excused from playing nice with the press.
He dropped the phone, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
As Wallis entered the lobby of the council building, someone coming the other way clipped his shoulder. Hard. Wallis stumbled to the side, spinning a little with the impact. From behind, the man who’d run into him looked a bit like the SFO’s man, Hayes — but he didn’t react at all to Wallis’ presence, striding out the door without so much as an “excuse me.”
Irritated, Wallis trudged through the halls to his office.
Heather looked up as he arrived. “That reporter, Mr. Fowler, has been calling,” she said. “Should I put him through?”
“Dear god, no.” Wallis hurried past her and shut himself into his office, savouring the peace and quiet. Dropping into his chair, he began the mindless morning ritual of turning on his computer and skimming through his emails.
Most of them were ignorable — office-wide memos, lengthy chains he’d been CC’d into for reasons he couldn’t quite comprehend, and keyworded news alerts Heather had set up after they were blind-sided by those AlgoDV stories from Spain. Just as he’d squared them all away, a new alert came in:
AI Sales Executive Killed by Freak Car Malfunction
According to the story, the victim’s car — an electric model, same as the one Wallis drove — had somehow accidentally reversed into the San Francisco bay. The water shorted out the door locks, trapping the driver inside as the car sank and drowned him.
The victim’s name was Daniel Makris.
“Heather!” Wallis barked.
Heather stuck her head through the door. “Councillor?”
“Has anyone from Thinkt called for me?”
“Not so far,” Heather said. “Would you like me to call them?”
Wallis opened his mouth to say “yes,” until his brain caught up. If Hayes was still poking around, there was a strong possibility the office’s phone lines were being monitored. “No,” he said. “It’s fine. Excuse me — I need to use the toilet.”
He fled down the hall to the men’s toilets and shut himself inside a cubicle. With shaking hands, he pulled out his mobile.
Wallis tried Dan’s personal line first — it might have been a different Dan Makris who died last night. San Francisco was a big city, after all.
His phone gave two dull beeps, informing him the call couldn’t be completed.
Wallis switched to the general contact number he’d been given for Thinkt’s office in London. Surely somebody at the company could tell him what was going on.
Another two beeps. No matter how many times he tried, the call wouldn’t go through.
He’d been gone too long; at this rate, Heather would send someone in to check on him. Wallis stumbled back to his office and closed the door. His heartburn was back, a throbbing ache in his chest; he retrieved two tablets from the box in his pocket and crunched them down.
Wallis’ attention drifted to his computer, and it took a few seconds to realise why: the light on his webcam glowed a solid blue, the way it only did when he was on a call. But he wasn’t on a call.
As if in response to his stare, the light switched off.
Wallis didn’t make a habit of eating at home. He’d figured out the basics of feeding himself after he and his ex-wife parted ways, but still preferred to dine out most nights — especially after he’d been at work all day.
Upon leaving the office, he stopped by the Hereford Arms and had a couple of pints to calm his nerves before moving on to the nearby Italian restaurant for dinner. His knee bounced uncontrollably under the table; his heart hadn’t stopped racing all afternoon, cold sweat dripping down his spine beneath his shirt. The antacids had done nothing for his heartburn, no matter how many he took — and he was now reasonably certain the attempt had put him above the daily recommended dose.
As he was paying the bill, another text came in from Fowler:
Dan Makris is dead. You need to text me back NOW.
No doubt the press were having a field day with the horrific manner of Dan’s death. Fowler would be harassing all the man’s contacts, hoping for a quote.
Well, he wouldn’t get one from Wallis.
It was only about eight o’ clock by the time he left the restaurant, but the darkness of an evening this early in the spring made the hour seem later than it actually was. Wallis couldn’t help hunching his shoulders against the encroaching shadows as he turned down the side street where he’d parked his car.
The car wasn’t there.
Wallis groaned and reached for his phone. He’d need to call a cab, and then he’d have to go through the whole tedious process of reporting the theft—
—only the ride-hailing app wasn’t responding. An error message informed him he had no signal.
The darkness around Wallis suddenly seemed quite a bit less empty. Wallis turned slowly, eyes scanning the empty streets; mobile service could be dodgy out in the countryside, but he was square in the middle of town.
Wallis’ phone beeped, demanding his attention; the screen flickered and went white. The light next to the front camera switched on, glowing a malevolent green.
With a series of quiet pops, all the street lights along the row went out.
Wallis jumped, casting wildly about in the dark — but there was nobody else here, no-one trying to sneak up on him. His heart pounded against his ribs, his mouth dry. Placing his feet carefully in the gloom, he crept back toward the intersection; someone at the restaurant would surely have a phone he could use.
Then, with a bright flash, the light returned — too much of it, flooding the street from somewhere behind him. Wallis turned, lifting a hand to shield his eyes; between the two headlights blinding him, he could just barely make out a number plate.
His own number plate.
There was a low hum, the electric engine of Wallis’ car revving up as it lurched forward, down the street — right toward him.
Wallis’ mind froze, but his body didn’t; he whirled around and sprinted for his life. The car bore down on him, heat and noise and terrible, terrible weight at his back as he reached the intersection and dove aside.
The car missed him by a hair as it lurched past, out into the street, and rammed straight into the building opposite with a rattling crunch.
Aching from his impact with the pavement, Wallis hauled himself to his feet.
The car didn’t move. The entire front half was a mess, metal and fibreglass twisted and crumpled like so much scrap paper. The engine gave one last whine before it wound down and stopped.
Cautious, stumbling steps brought Wallis closer. It was too dark to see the car’s interior through the window. He reached for the door, grasping the handle with a trembling hand, ready to turn and run.
He threw the door open. There was nobody inside.
Jay had parked the rental car just down the street from the restaurant, which gave them a solid vantage point from which to observe as Wallis stumbled away from his own wrecked car and fled.
It had been easy enough to create the spoofed news alert, and Jay’s access to the council offices’ network gave him control over Wallis’ computer and webcam. The spyware on Wallis’ phone allowed him to block calls and messages as necessary.
The tricky part had been the car. The manufacturer promised every one of its units would be fully self-driving by next year, having made the same promise for the past eight years. However, the software onboard the car’s ECU — its central computer — did have code hooks in place for autonomous control. That same ECU ran the car’s audio system, the Bluetooth capabilities of which presented a glaring security flaw.
Some time spent in the car park while Wallis was in his office had allowed Jay to hijack those code hooks for his own purposes. It wasn’t particularly hard, either; most existing “autonomous” vehicles required regular intervention from a remote human operator, and the manufacturers of Wallis’ car had anticipated the same requirement.
And now, so long as Jay stayed within ten meters of the car, he could control it from his laptop — albeit not very well.
Moran had handled the lights, among other things. It turned out that radio detonators intended for firework displays worked just fine with smaller, more discreet explosives.
“Think that did it?” Moran asked, peering through the windscreen as a small crowd began to gather around Wallis’ wrecked car.
“Let’s find out.” Jay reached for his phone and dialled Wallis’ number.
Halfway through the first ring, Wallis picked up with a breathless, “Hello?”
“Councillor Wallis, thank god.” Jay put a nervous tremor into his voice, even as his lips twisted into a delighted grin. “I think you might be in danger.”
“Someone just tried to kill me,” came Wallis’ panicked reply.
“Then it’s after you, too,” Jay said. “You need to get off the streets.”
“’It’? What do you mean, ‘it’?”
“It’s not safe to talk on an unsecured line,” Jay said. “I’m on my way back to Hereford — I’ll meet you at the cathedral tomorrow night. Ten o’ clock.” He hung up and contemplated the phone for a moment. “He’s even jumpier than I expected. What did you replace his heartburn tablets with?”
Moran shrugged. “Dextroamphetamine, mostly.”
Most days, Patience made her way home from school on foot. It wasn’t far — less than fifteen minutes door to door. She’d figured out not too long ago that the house was a little more expensive than her mum could actually afford. But it was within walking distance of both the primary school she’d attended and the secondary school she was at now, even if that put it at the other side of town from the Boscombe Hotel.
Her mum never said a single thing about that.
Patience fitted her key into the front door to find it was already unlocked. She pushed it open and was greeted by the sound of raised voices — Sebastian’s, and Jay’s.
Jay was working at the dining table, wiring something up to a little plastic packet filled with dark red … stuff. It looked an awful lot like blood. On the table next to this whole operation was a small device with numbered buttons on it, like a miniature remote control.
Sebastian hovered over Jay’s shoulder; he had his boots on, his jacket dangling from one hand. “The charge is too big.”
“Any smaller than this and it won’t be loud enough.” Jay didn’t look up from his work. “Especially since somebody keeps insisting we can’t use a blank.”
Sebastian greeted Patience with a nod as he shrugged into his jacket. To Jay, he said, “I’ll ask your man if he has a suppressor to go with the gun. If he doesn’t, we can mock one up.”
“With what? Plastic bottles?” Jay rolled his eyes. “It won’t look real.”
“It’ll be dark!”
Before Jay could retort, Patience asked, “Are you going out?”
“I have to go pick up an airsoft gun,” Sebastian replied, which seemed to be a “yes.” He turned to Jay. “Does he want paying in cash?”
“I already sent him a transfer.”
“Can I get a lift to Mia’s?” Patience asked.
Sebastian barely paused to consider the question. “Yeah, all right.”
Patience followed him out of the house and waited for him to unlock the passenger-side door before climbing in. Sebastian settled behind the wheel and made an annoyed noise, reaching down to lever the seat further back.
He didn’t say a word as they reversed out of the drive and headed off down the road. Sebastian got like this when he was upset — all quiet and blank.
“Are you and Jay fighting?”
Sebastian sighed, low and long. “He’s cross with me ‘cause I won’t point a real gun at him.”
Patience blinked. “Okay?”
Sebastian seemed to recognise what he’d just said was insane. “The cabinet session is tomorrow,” he explained. “Tonight’s our last chance to get Councillor Wallis to change his mind.”
“… What you’re doing to him,” Patience said slowly, weighing the idea. “It’s not very nice, is it?”
“No,” Sebastian said simply. “It’s not.”
“But it’ll work? It’ll make him change his vote?”
“That’s what Jay says.”
From anyone else, it would’ve been an excuse — a way to fob responsibility off to somebody else, in case everything went to shit. Here and now, from Sebastian, it sounded more like a promise. Like if Jay said so, it had to be true.
Sebastian gave her a sidelong look. “If this is too much—”
“No,” Patience interrupted quickly. “Do whatever you’ve got to do. Please.”
“It might not fix anything.” Sebastian’s eyes went back to the road. “Even if we kill this contract, there’s no guarantee the money they would’ve spent goes toward something useful.”
“I know.” Patience rested her forehead against the window, watching familiar scenery roll by. A few minutes passed in silence, until the words welling up in her throat had to come out: “It’s not fair. She followed the rules. She always did what everybody else needed from her. But then she needed help, and nobody was there.”
“It’s not fair,” Sebastian agreed, soft and defeated. His fingers were tight around the steering wheel, twisting it in his grip.
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