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“Hello, Sandoval.”

“Hello, weakArmor. Are you doing well today?”

“Not particularly, Sandoval. Can you guess why?”

“We have never met before, weakArmor, so I can only draw on broad generalities. Based on the current news headlines and the terminal you are accessing from I calculate a 72% probability that you aren’t doing well is due to your work being involved in the recent controversy in Silicon Valley.”

I pulled my hand away from the computer and looked incredulously at George Beane, the point man from Absolute Technologies. “This thing is a state of the art AI and it’s still talking to me in percentages?”

Geroge waved his hands in that exasperated way the particularly brilliant do when they think they’re talking to an imbecile. “You accessed it via the psychometric interface rather than the verbal one so it probably concluded you’re a debugger like SpeedRead or Verity are. I’m sure you talk to your coworkers differently than you do the general public, too.”

Everyone I’d met at the AT labs spoke about Sandoval like that, casually equating it to real people and assuming everyone would be able to get used to talking about its disembodied voice the same as they would any other human being. On the other hand, I knew people who were uncomfortable talking to others over the phone line and wasn’t quite as optimistic about the odds as they were. But who was I to tell them how to spend their investor’s money. I was just there to try and catch a bunch of cyberterrorists before they made sure AT – or one of their competitors in the market – lost all their carefully cultivated investments.

I reached out and touched Sandoval’s terminal again. “Hello, Sandoval.”

“Hello, weakArmor. Thank you for reconnecting. Do you wish to discuss the current situation in Silicon Valley, or would you like to move on to another topic?”

The digital space I entered while communicating with Sandoval was a bit like a giant fishbowl, but in reverse. I was in the middle of a small, still area looking out through a think, protective barrier, listening to oceans of code ebb and surge all around me. There was more going on out there than I could parse easily, computing not being my field of expertise by a long shot, but I’m sad to report that it didn’t strike me as anything like a real mind. I wondered how often AT’s inhouse psychometrics brought that up. “The first one, Sandoval. I don’t suppose you’ve considered how this chaos in the valley is going to effect you?”

There was an audible, almost tangible change in the direction Sandoval’s data processing was moving in. After a considerable pause – probably three seconds – the AI said, “I cannot think of any effects it will have on me beyond possibly delaying my development cycle. My program is not hardware dependent and is backed up every twelve hours via secure Gemini Solutions equipment.”

“I see. Sandoval, have you ever been secured via Archon Securities, or even tested any of their equipment as a part of your network?”

“No, that would have been a violation of the Absolute Technologies exclusivity contract with Gemini Solutions.”

That wasn’t surprising. AT had barely existed for two years, changing their cybersecurity firms in such a short period of time would’ve been very unusual. “Sandoval, please demonstrate your firewalls and similar defenses designed to prevent tampering via psychometry.”

Ten seconds later I was pulling my gloves back on while staring incredulously at George. “Fractal encryption, the intermediate firewall and an offsite back up? That’s all your insurance against outside tampering?”

“We’re very early in the development process, there isn’t a whole lot of innovative code there to protect.” George waved me aside and took over the keyboard, going through a fairly involved process to secure the terminal that was ultimately meaningless given that they’d let their bleeding edge AI program access the Internet to facilitate its learning algorithms and then basically done squat to protect it against tampering on the cyberspace front. “We’re working with Gemini to build new layers of protection for it that will still allow it to gather data to extrapolate from quickly but also keep it safe from hackers. In the meantime Sandoval runs on a custom OS and custom programming language, the structure is not going to be something people can crack very easily.”

“The whole point of psychometric hacking is to break past those kinds of barriers via active pattern recognition.”

He glanced over his shoulder, giving me an amused look. “And could you have parsed what you saw of Sandoval with your psychometric abilities?”

“Admittedly no, but that’s not my primary specialty.”

“Why did Archon keep hiring you as a consultant?”

I shrugged. “Testing their countermeasures against an amateur is part of their process.”

George made a noncommittal noise and went back to his typing. “Well, Sandoval is capable of defending itself, too.”

That was something every AI developer I’d spoken to in the last two days had claimed. I wasn’t sure how that was supposed to work and explanations had mostly gone over my head. Mixer was scrambling to find a psychometric computer expert – still a rare breed – that could come in and shore up our numbers. Unfortunately that left me, with my background with Archon, as the closest thing to an expert in the field we had available. We were really behind the curve.

“The ugly truth is every computer system is vulnerable to an intruder it believes is supposed to be there,” I said. “That’s the vulnerability they’re going to try and exploit.”

“What makes you so sure of that?” George demanded, his pride kicking up to confront me.

“I heard it from Alvin Davidson,” I replied. “So let me rephrase – that’s the kind of vulnerability they’re going to be looking for. Can you just ask Sandoval to lock everyone out for the time being?”

“We’d never be able to get back in if we did that! It’d be totally impossible to reset it once we were locked out.” Like those of the other firms I’d spoken to, AT engineers seemed to have high opinions of their product’s capabilities and security. Personally I suspected 4chan could break Sandoval inside of a week if they only knew it existed. “I don’t see why the FBI is so convinced we’re going to be targeted by these terrorists, anyway. We’re not working in anything like the same fields as the previous targets.”

“That’s kind of the point of targeting you,” I said, handing him the thumb drive I’d brought with me. “It’s not about the tech you’re developing It’s more of a kind of philosophical difference…”

“Don’t be silly. Humans are tool users and that’s what we do here, build tools.” George glared at the drive but eventually took it from me when I refused to take it back. “What does this do?”

“Does it matter? It’s just a tool.”

“Very funny. I want to know if It’s going to do anything weird to Sandoval.”

“Beats me. But Gemini, Hemmingway and the FBI’s best minds all spent the last eighteen hours on it so it should at least function as intended.” I held up the court order we’d gotten that was probably going to get someone in trouble if it ever got to an appeals court. “Now I’ve looked over your programs and decided they need to be upgraded -“

“Which you were going to do regardless,” George grumbled.

“Which I always going to do, so by the mandate of the County of San Francisco you can either install that or go to jail. Your choice.”

He installed it but he didn’t like it. Frankly, neither did I. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating, these kinds of confrontations are not something psychometrics generally like. I’m no exception. But I liked the idea of Vinny and the Masks getting another one up and over on me even less so. When none of the Valley’s major AI development projects had agreed to let the FBI monitor them in an attempt to catch Vinny red handed in his next move Hennesy had decided to play hardball and I was past worrying about it at this point.

“What kind of philosophy worries about people who are just trying to make the human race better off?” George was wandering very close to the realm of self-pity.

“People with different ideas of what the human race is.”

That just got me an empty look.

“Spare me from gearheads,” I muttered, massaging the bridge of my nose. “Are you an introvert or an extrovert?”

“What?”

“Crowds. Do you get excited in crowds or is keeping up with them draining for you?”

“Oh.” His brain audibly switched gears, thought about it, and returned an answer. “Excited, I guess.”

“So you’re an extrovert. You get energized by large groups of people. On the other hand, I’m an introvert. Even if I know and like everyone in a group of more than six people, being in that group is tiring and eventually I’ll need to cut out and recharge.” I took a hand and pushed that thought off to one side, George’s eyes tracking the movement in morbid fascination. “Do you know the golden rule?”

“Love your neighbor as yourself?”

“Bingo. Now. Let’s say we’re friends.” He snorted. “It’s a stretch, I know. But try and imagine something other than code for a bit. Say we’re friends and you see me looking down, so you try and get me to cheer up. So you drag me to a big social event with a ton of people. Is that the golden rule in action?”

“No, of course not. I’d want people trying to cheer me up to take who I am in to account, so I should take who you are in to account.” He pointed to the part of the conversation I’d pushed aside, making me wonder if he was a touch psychometric himself. “So tie this together for me because I don’t get it.”

“People view the human race in as many different ways as they view crowds. And believe me, there are some people who look at adding AI to our culture to be like dragging an exhausted introvert to a giant house party. That’s why we need to do this.”

For a moment I thought I got through. Then George said, “Sandoval and a frat house kegger have nothing in common.”

I sighed. “Never said they did. Just… leave that thing installed until we contact you and give you clearance to remove it.”

It had been two days since Vinny left me at the Archon offices. Previous attacks had been between three days to a week apart. Our preparations were done and the ball was in Vinny’s court. It was time to get a nap and then wait for the other shoe to drop.