Crow's Gambit, page 8
part #1 of Sylphan Revelations Series
>>> That’s it until yesterday. Lizzy added.
>>> You looked like hell in the picture btw. When did you change your name to unidentified female passenger?
Ah crap. She hadn’t considered some of the flicker drones belonged to the press. At least they didn’t have her name ... yet. It wouldn’t take the pattern recognition algorithms long to identify her if anyone were curious. There was a knock on her room door. Checking the time, she realized it was already seven o’clock. Time for dinner.
<<< Thanks Lizzy. Let me know if you find anything else.
Thinking twice before putting the tablet back in her bag she instead slipped it into the safe for security. If she had the money, she would have gotten enhanced contacts or a wrist skin display to interact with her IPU. As it was, she had to settle for the slightly antiquated tablet and couldn’t afford to lose it. When she opened the door, she found Gloria waiting outside.
“Hi again. Are we going far? Do I need a jacket?”
“Nope. Mr. Darrow is staying in the hotel. I’ll take you up to his room.”
Gloria led her to the elevator. She swiped her forearm across the security pad and pressed the button for a private floor. She obviously had a subcutaneous implant if not a full-blown tattooed processor sheet with security protocols. Stepping out on a floor a couple levels above they went to a door labeled the Morgan Room. Gloria knocked twice, then swiped her arm to open the door and let Cassie enter.
“I’ll be outside if you need anything.” Gloria retreated to the hallway and shut the door.
Cassie took several steps into the room. It was smaller than she would have expected but still larger than her apartment. A small table already had dinner set. Violin music played softly in the background.
“Please have a seat Miss McIntyre.” A smiling gray-haired man appeared from the bedroom, shutting the French doors behind him. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I’m Peter Darrow.” He pulled a seat out for her, then walked around and sat in the chair across from her.
“I thought Neil was going to join us too.”
“I’m afraid he won’t be able to. He has several projects underway which need his attention. He will be meeting you again in the morning if you decide to take me up on my offer. Please,” he motioned toward her seat, “the food was just delivered, and I wouldn’t want it to get cold.” He took a bite of the pasta and chewed slowly, waiting for her to start eating.
“Neil probably told you a little about Crow Research Industries. I’d like to tell you more. We contract to do a variety of things ranging from actuarial studies to engineering design work. I’ve been fortunate during my career, so I no longer need to worry about the bottom line too much. I have a certain freedom to only take contracts that interest me.”
“That would be thanks to your alien insider information, correct?”
Darrow laughed. “Yes, exceptionally good, Miss McIntyre. Can I call you Cassie?”
She nodded her permission.
He took a sip of his wine and reflected before continuing. “You were young on Net-Day, only three or four, yes? The world was different yet still the same in many ways. Many of the financial institutions were using complex algorithms to gain microsecond advantages in the stock market. They competed to own the fastest computers and networks. Getting a stock order processed through the market even a fraction of a second faster could mean millions of dollars.
“This was before the financial regulations on autonomous trading were enacted of course. It took a little time, but I was able to amass a considerable investment portfolio. You see, my programs were just a little bit faster than the competition.”
He stood and walked over to look out at the New York skyline. “And then Net-Day changed everything. The thing you need to understand is what they called artificial intelligence programs back then were stupid algorithms with simple pattern matching. They could only recognize and predict what they had been trained to recognize.
“The appearance of the Sylph and how people would react to them wasn’t something the trading algorithms understood. I did what they couldn’t, made leaps of intuition. I anticipated what the future might become.” He turned to look at her again. “It turns out my investment choices were much more right than wrong.” He returned to sit at the table.
“So, you were able to use Net-Day to get even richer?” She might not know the specifics of Darrow’s past, but she had heard the rumors about him and those like him.
“I believe the name you are searching for is extortionist. Black mailer. No, let me guess. Robber baron.”
Cassie blushed. Insulting your potential employer wasn’t the best interview strategy. Darrow shrugged it off, however.
“Businesses and industries were collapsing left and right. Much of the world’s wealth had been lost overnight. The banking industry and U.S. government were broke.” He tapped the table with his fork. “The investments I had preserved allowed me to save several companies by buying the assets they couldn’t support anymore. We were able to save thousands of jobs but more than that. The research from Darrow Industries helped rebuild the electrical grid. We designed critical components for the Puma system. We helped reconstruct the country.”
Darrow paused before spreading his hands in a gesture of acceptance. “In the process I was able to guide the future of several industries. The return on my investment in the country has been large and it’s true I have been fortunate. However,” his eyes focused on something in the distance, or the past, for a moment, “there are days when I picture the world before. When I remember being a small boy with dreams of the future. Days when I would give it all up to have had that future instead.”
Cassie was quiet for several seconds. “Why are you—”
“Telling you all this? If you are going to join our little organization, you have a right to some insight into its founder and the company’s core values.”
“Mr. Darrow, I appreciate the trip, the hotel, the help, and the ... interest. But I still don’t see what I can do for you. What would I be hired to do exactly? What do you need from me? I don’t see how I fit into this.”
“Let me show you something.” Leaning back in his chair Darrow addressed the room. “Hal?” A short projection of a featureless, silver man appeared on the tabletop. “Turn on the table display.”
“One moment sir.” The silver man replied.
A glow appeared over the table in front of them. The images automatically oriented themselves both to Cassie’s and Darrow’s point of view simultaneously. A trick Cassie admitted was very neat. Definitely not running on the hotel AI core. Darrow probably had a dedicated neural core for his own personal use.
“You named your AI Hal?”
“Yes, it’s from an old movie. You probably wouldn’t know the reference.”
“No, that’s not it. I was just wondering why you would name it after something that went insane and tried to kill everyone. Kind of seems like tempting fate.” Artificial intelligence had moved past the days of pure neural networks over the last several decades and into the new fields of compartmentalized intelligences. The topic of what AIs represented, or were capable of, was still an open debate, though.
Darrow chuckled. “And what would you have preferred? And please don’t say Cortana or Siri.”
Not having the resources for a true AI, she had never really considered the question. She gave it a few moments of thought before answering. “Robby. No wait. Zen.”
“I know that reference. Old school. I should have guessed.” He gestured toward the projection. “If I’m correct you recognize this?”
Something like a drone’s heads up display was projected. Altitude, orientations, thruster controls. A small globe in one corner with a line tracking above it. It looked familiar but she couldn’t place it at first. The interface didn’t look like any she had used. She knew this display though. Then it clicked.
“It’s a game. I used to play it with my Grandpa.” The memories were clear now. Sitting in front of the computer screen. They both had headsets on pretending to be pilots on a mission. They had played the game for hours and hours. Games and play time had been one of the things that bonded them while she grew up. The thought made her smile.
“Actually, it’s not a game,” Darrow replied. “It’s a training simulator for a very special vehicle called the XS-9E.”
“No,” Cassie was confused. “It’s just a game Grandpa got somewhere. You fly missions into orbit to deploy and fix satellites. And sometimes destroy satellites. I always thought that was the best part.”
Darrow switched the screen to display a series of photos instead. Each showed a different angle of a small sharp-nosed plane. It had two angled fins on its tail. Its top was white, its belly a deep black. She recognized it from a schematic in the game, but these were pictures of an actual plane. The images morphed into a solid model representation that slowly rotated in front of her.
“The XS-9E was the last in a series of drone space planes developed for the Department of Defense. It never flew. Wasn’t ready before Net-Day. Your grandfather helped develop this training simulator for it while employed at NASA.”
So, that’s how Grandpa is connected to this. This was his work. But what did that have to do with Darrow? Or me?
“Okay. That’s true. Grandpa did work for NASA. This still doesn’t answer the big question. What does this have to do with me?”
Darrow switched the image again and it changed to a large building with what looked like a partially assembled XS-9E. “A few years ago, some kids found this in an abandoned hanger that used to belong to Boeing. The Smithsonian heard about it, grabbed up all the pieces, and shipped them to the Air and Space Museum. They planned to restore it for historical study and then display. There’s just one minor problem.” He smiled broadly now. “They couldn’t figure out how to put it back together correctly.”
Cassie considered the images. The outside of the plane seemed familiar to her from the game. The inside, however, was fascinating. Some components she recognized. Flaps, elevons, landing gear. The RCS thrusters looked standard. The intakes on the front were different though. She didn’t remember seeing any shaped quite that way before. The main engines were a mystery. Somehow, they managed to look completely familiar and baffling at the same time.
“If you have these diagrams can’t you just, I don’t know, follow the instructions?” She still didn’t understand what the big challenge was.
“Actually no.” Darrow propped his head on his fist watching the image rotate slowly. “This is just public relations information. The project was funded by the Department of Defense through a black budget. After Net-Day, the project got cancelled and the designers were laid off. The plans sat in a corporate database at the research center, untouched and forgotten. That is, until the Purge Riots.”
“I was too young to remember. Grandpa told me about them though.”
“People were scared. Looking for someone to blame.” Darrow’s eyes focused on something in the distance, or the past. “They couldn’t take their frustration out on the Sylph, so they went after what they thought caused the Sylph to attack. Anything related to flying and space.”
“The databases were destroyed during the riots?”
Darrow nodded with a shrug. “We lost a lot during those few days. Knowledge. History. A piece of who we were as a race.”
“And this is where your company comes in? You’re trying to rebuild the plane?”
“Exactly. I like interesting challenges. Reverse engineering and building a space plane? That’s interesting and fun. Now, where do you come in? I have the luxury of being able to bring in all kinds of experts when they’re needed. And in this case,” he spread his hands pointing toward her, “my research indicates you are the only person alive with anything resembling flight experience on the XS-9E.”
“But I’m not an engineer. I can’t design a space plane.” Cassie paused, thinking out the situation. Did they think she knew something about the XS-9E? That Grandpa had given her information about it? “Before you ask, my grandfather never showed me any designs for this plane, either. So, I can’t help you with that.”
There was a twinkle in his eyes. “I have engineers, Miss McIntyre. What I need is a pilot. You see I don’t just plan to rebuild the XS-9E. I want to learn how to fly it, too. And you’re the only one I know of who can help with that.”
Chapter 12
CASSIE’S MIND RACED. Darrow didn’t want her to pilot a drone. He wanted her to fly a plane? Correction. Not a plane, a spaceplane. Something her grandfather had designed.
Bill McIntyre had been an old school engineer. Well respected in his field with an extensive list of technical accomplishments most people would never know about or understand. While he was in college, he had interned with one of the commercial space companies and gained technical experience as well as a firsthand view of how industry ran a company.
After graduating, he had offers from several of the best private space flight firms. Contrary to popular wisdom, however, he had set his sights on working for NASA and becoming an astronaut. Jobs with NASA were scarce. Slots in the astronaut training program were even fewer. Undeterred he had developed a plan to achieve his goal.
Initially he took a position with Boeing and managed to get assigned to a project for NASA. He worked hard, made a positive impression with coworkers, and constantly cultivated his contacts within NASA. In time he was able to get a temporary position there. One that turned into a permanent position as a liaison to many of the companies NASA contracted with.
Taking lessons and gaining flight time on the weekends and holidays he eventually became a certified pilot for both rotary and jet aircraft. However, his dream to become an astronaut was not to be. The risks associated with being an astronaut were significant. Taking a long hard look at his young family William decided the risks were not worth it. He set that dream aside.
Cassie knew for the rest of her grandfather’s career he put every ounce of his knowledge, skill, and willpower into perfecting his designs so those who relied on him had the best technology available. That included the astronauts whose lives depended on him. Which brought Cassie back to this moment.
The thought of working on one of Grandpa’s unfinished projects was an unrealized dream come true. Helping make sure his work was remembered would be a way for her to thank him, even now, for everything he had done for her.
There was just one small issue.
“See, here’s the problem. The barnstorming I do is illegal. I acknowledge that. But really, barnstorming is mostly harmless. This, this is a whole new level of illegal. What you’re talking about is a violation of international law.” Following Net-Day the U.N. enacted tight restrictions on the research and operation of aerospace vehicles. The reasoning went that a species that could never get off the ground was better than an extinct species.
“You’re asking for something that will stick us both in the Hague Tribunal.”
“Not at all, Miss McIntyre.” Darrow leaned closer to her. “I want you to fly the XS-9 in a simulator. Nothing illegal about that.”
“A simulator, that’s it?” She cocked her head sideways. “All of this effort is to get me to fly a simulator, because you want to put an old plane together for a museum?”
Darrow grew animated, gesturing with his hands. “It’s not just a plane. The original drone spaceplanes were aircraft based on the old Space Shuttle concept. They were launched into orbit where they would hang out for over a year doing whatever their mission was. Then they’d fly back down and land. The XS-9E was something completely different. It didn’t need a rocket to launch on. It was an actual spaceplane.” He looked as giddy as a kid on Christmas morning. “The Sylph may have grounded us but our accomplishments as a species have to survive. Future generations need to know what mankind is capable of.”
Cassie had to admit Darrow seemed passionate about it. That didn’t mean he, or this project, wasn’t dangerous, however. “If this is just a museum project for kids to see on school trips, why is the FBI so interested in me?”
“I thought their interest had something to do with a drone and a train. A drone I paid for, by the way.” His smile remained but the giddiness behind it had faded.
“I’ve been thinking about that.” Cassie leaned back with crossed arms and a frown. “They showed up far too soon after the drone got shot down. It was too fast to have tracked me down. They were there for another reason.”
Darrow stood and started pacing quietly while she continued.
“And the agents following me in O’Hare? That seems like a lot of effort just for a drone that exploded near a train. So, I have to ask myself, what else could it be?” she paused. “The only other new factor in my life is you. What’s really going on, Mr. Darrow?”
Darrow stopped pacing and slumped back into his seat. “Ah, well. I’m afraid it is my fault. I apologize. I was afraid the truth might make you reluctant to join our little team. You see we had a security breach at Crow Research and certain electronic documents were compromised. One of those documents was our profile on you.”
“I don’t understand. Are you saying the FBI was investigating the hack to your system?”
“No, we know who breached our system. Well, we think we know. The NSA. They were instructed to break into the system.”
The NSA had gone from obscurity in the last few decades to a household name. With the explosion of data enabled devices and artificial intelligence the NSA had become the benevolent protector of industry and the public alike. While the organization had become immensely powerful Cassie wasn’t aware they had any agenda other than serving the nation.
“The NSA stole the documents which included your profile.” Darrow gave her a sheepish smile. “What they managed to get, however, didn’t explain why I was interested in you. Therefore, the FBI was assigned to find out what they could about you. They were concerned you might be a potential security risk.”
