Chapter Sixteen
“TELL ME YOU have video of your fight,” Vann said to me, when I got back into the office.
“I’m fine,” I said, coming around to her desk. “Thanks for asking.”
“I didn’t ask because I knew you were fine,” Vann said. “You were in a threep. The worst that could happen is you get a dent.”
“That’s not the worst that could happen,” I said. My last moments in the Los Angeles area consisted of handing my insurance information over to a very annoyed manager at the Pasadena Avis, so they’d deal with the threep I had brought back with a cracked and dented head.
“You survived,” Vann said.
“The other threep got it worse,” I allowed.
“And do we know who the other threep was yet?” Vann asked.
“No,” I said. “The L.A. forensics team is looking at it now. But when I was looking at it I didn’t find any make or model information on it.”
“Which is weird,” Vann said.
“It’s very weird,” I said. “Every commercial threep carries that information by law, along with a vehicle identification number.” I raised my arm to show where my threep’s number was etched, just below the armpit. “There was none of that.”
“Theories?” Vann asked.
“One, it’s a prototype model,” I said. “Something that’s not on the market yet. Two, it’s a market model with aftermarket modifications, including stripping off make and model numbers and the VIN. Three, it’s a ninja.”
“Ninja threep,” Vann said. “That’s funny.”
“It wasn’t so funny when it was trying to bash my head in with a pot,” I said. “The L.A. team said they will let me know when they find something. I told them to pay special attention to the processor and memory. They looked at me like I was an asshole.”
“No one likes to be told how to do their job, Shane,” Vann said.
“I’m not hugely impressed with the L.A. office, I have to tell you,” I said. “But maybe their trying to put me in a threep in a wheelchair set me off a bit.” A fleeting memory of a very annoyed call from Agent Ibanez, who waited ten minutes for me to return before figuring out I was gone for good, surfaced in my memory. I won the argument when I pointed out that if I had showed up at the Bradbury Park Apartments in a wheelchair, our mystery threep would be long gone, and with important evidence.
Which reminded me about the evidence. “I need to go back to Arizona this afternoon,” I said.
“Random shift in conversation, but okay,” Vann said.
“It’s not random,” I said. “Johnny Sani left a data card for his sister and grandmother. It’s what the ninja threep was there for. It’s got data on it but it’s password protected.”
“Whatever password Johnny Sani is going to think up is not going to be that difficult to figure out,” Vann said.
“Probably not, but it will still be easier to ask his family first,” I said. “Pretty sure it was meant for them. I made a copy of data. I need to take the copy to them and see if they know what to do with it.”
“Are you going to ask them if they know why Johnny was living under an assumed name, too?”
“I will, but I don’t expect they’re going to know,” I said, and thought about it a bit. “What’s weird is that Oliver Green doesn’t seem to have any ID, either.”
“What do you mean?” Vann asked.
“When I was talking to the lady at the post office, she said that Sani wanted to rent a P.O. box, but when she said he’d need two forms of identification, he lost interest,” I said. “And the apartment wasn’t rented by him, it was rented by Filament Digital. He didn’t need any ID there, either.”
“What is Filament Digital?”
“It’s a component manufacturer for neural networks,” I said. “It’s a Chinese company. I called and no one answered. It’s the middle of the night over there right now.”
“They don’t have a U.S. office?” Vann asked.
“As far as I can tell that apartment was the U.S. office,” I said. “I have the L.A. office looking into that, too.”
“The L.A. office must love you right about now,” Vann said.
“I don’t think I’m their favorite person, no,” I said. “What have you been up to?”
“I cleared out some more of the Hadens from Metro’s holding pens,” Vann said. “Most of them took the ‘get the hell out of D.C.’ option, but there were a couple who didn’t and a couple who really needed to be prosecuted, so they’re all now guests of the federal government for the next few days. We’ll deal with them after the march. The Metro people tell me things are getting a little tense out there. Oh, and I shook up that Integrator.”
“Which one?” I asked. “Brenda Rees?”
“Yeah, her,” Vann said. “I called her up and identified myself and said that I would like her to come meet with me to answer a couple of questions. She asked why and I said we were following up on the Loudoun Pharma explosion. Then she asked why I’d want to talk to her about that, and I told her we were just following up on an anonymous tip.”
“We didn’t get any anonymous tip about her,” I said.
“No, but it made her nervous when I said it, which I thought was interesting.”
“Anyone would be nervous if you told them you were following up an anonymous tip about a bombing by talking to them,” I pointed out.
“What’s important is how they get nervous,” Vann said. “Rees got all quiet and then asked to meet this evening.”
“We bringing her here?” I asked.
“I gave her the address of a coffee shop I like in Georgetown,” Vann said. “Feels less formal, and will get her to relax and open up.”
“So first you make her paranoid and then you want her to feel comfortable,” I said. “You don’t need me to help you play ‘good cop, bad cop.’ You can do it all on your own.”
“This is the sort of thing your pal Trinh calls ‘sloppy,’” Vann said.
“I’m not sure she’s wrong,” I said.
“If it works she’s wrong.”
“That’s a dangerous philosophy,” I said. Vann shrugged.
A call popped up in my field of view. It was Tony. “You didn’t tell me I would be working in an actual morgue with an actual brain when I took this gig,” he said, after we got our greetings out of the way.
“I had to be circumspect until you were vetted,” I said. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Tony said. “I’ve just never seen a real live brain before. Also I had to dial back my sense of smell pretty much down to zero.”
“Have you found anything?” I asked.
“I’ve found a lot of things,” Tony said. “I think maybe I should talk to you about them. And your partner too, probably.”
“Let’s meet,” I said.
“Not in the morgue,” Tony said. “I think I need to get away from all this meat.”
* * *
“Okay, here’s the first thing,” Tony said, and he popped up the image of Johnny Sani’s brain, still in its skull, peeking through the veil of tinsel that was the neural net. We were in the imaging lab: me, Vann, Tony, and Ramon Diaz, who seemed amused at Tony taking over his imaging console.
“It’s a brain,” Vann said. “And?”
“It’s not the brain I want you to look at,” Tony said. “It’s the neural network.”
“Okay,” Vann said. “What about it?”
“It’s totally unique,” Tony said.
“I thought every neural network was unique,” I said. “They adapt to the brain they’re in.”
“Right, but every model is the same before it’s installed,” Tony said. He pointed at my head. “The Raytheon in your head is the same as every other version of that model. Once it’s in your head the tendrils and receptors are placed in ways that will be unique to your brain. But it’s still the same hardware and the same initial software.”
Vann pointed at the network on the screen. “And you’re saying this one isn’t any of the current commercial models out there.”
“I’ll go further than that,” Tony said. “This doesn’t match any model ever created. All neural networks have to be submitted to the FDA for approval, or to the matching agency in other countries. All submitted designs are pooled into a single database for those agencies to use, and for people like me to use for reference. This design isn’t in the database.”
“So it’s a prototype,” Vann said.
“We don’t put prototypes into people’s brains,” Tony said. “Because they’re prototypes and they might kill you if they screw up. We model them extensively on computers and animals and specially cultivated brain tissue before they’re approved. By definition if it’s in someone’s brain, it’s a final design.” He pointed at the network. “This is a final design. But it’s not in the database.”
“Can we see the network without the blood and gore?” I asked.
Tony nodded. The image of Sani’s head was wiped away, replaced by a wire-frame representation of the network. “I didn’t have time to pretty up the model,” Tony said.
“That’s fine, it all looks like spaghetti to me,” I said.
“Then why did you want to see it?”
“So I didn’t have to look at someone’s head all opened up,” I said.
“Right,” Tony said. “Sorry.”
“You said this isn’t any version you’ve seen before,” Vann said.
“That’s right,” Tony said.
“Well, then, does it look similar to any you’ve seen before?” Vann asked. “Every car maker I know of has a ‘house look.’ The same thing might apply for neural networks.”
“I thought of that,” Tony said. “And what I see is that whoever made this took a lot of design choices from existing models. The default filament spread looks very much like a Santa Ana model, for example. But then the juncture architecture is pretty much a straight rip-off from Lucturn, which is the Accelerant company I was telling you about this morning, Chris.” He looked at me for acknowledgement. I gave it. “And there are lots of other little touches that come from other manufacturers past and present. Which maybe tells us something.”
“What is that?” Vann asked.
“I don’t think this is meant to be a commercial model network,” Tony said. “It’s a really good neural network. It’s really efficient and elegant, and just from the design I’m guessing that the brain-network interface is really clean.”
“But,” I said.
“But, that’s because this brain is a lot of best-of-breed architecture from other existing designs, designs which are patented to hell and gone,” Tony said. He waved at the image of the network. “If someone tried to put this design on the market, they’d get their asses sued by every other neural network manufacturer out there. This thing would be in litigation for years. There’s no possible way this would ever get to market. None. Whatsoever.”
“Does it matter if it’s a network for an Integrator?” I asked. “It’s such a tiny market, relative to the Haden market. You could argue that it doesn’t represent a commercial threat.”
“Not really,” Tony said. “There’s no real difference in the architecture of a Haden network and an Integrator network. The major difference is how they array in the brain, because Haden and Integrator brain structures are different, and in the software that runs the network.”
“So why make it?” Vann asked. “Why make a network you can’t sell?”
“That’s a good question,” Tony said. “Because the other thing about creating a neural network is that it’s not something you’re going to do in your spare time at home. The first functional neural network ever made cost a hundred billion dollars to research and develop. The costs have come way down since then, but it’s a relative thing. You have to pay for simulations and testing and modeling and manufacturing and everything else.” He waved at the network again. “So this will still have set someone back somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion dollars.”
“A billion dollars right down the hole,” Diaz said.
“Right,” Tony said. He seemed a little surprised that Diaz was still there. “And that’s the thing. You don’t spend a billion dollars on a neural network you can’t sell. You especially don’t spend a billion dollars now, because up to now Haden research costs were heavily subsidized by the government. Abrams-Kettering ends that. The Haden population in the U.S. is less than four and a half million, almost all of whom already have networks in their heads. Even if this architecture were legally viable, it still doesn’t make sense to spend that much money because the market’s already saturated and the number of new Haden’s cases that pop up every year in the U.S. won’t get you into the black. Even worldwide you’d have a hard time with it.”
“It’s a boondoggle,” I said.
“It really is,” Tony said. “As far as I can see, anyway. Maybe I’m missing something.”
“Let’s look at it from the other side,” Vann said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Let’s stop asking why someone would do this for now,” Vann said. “Let’s ask who could do it. If we have some idea of who could do it then maybe we can come back around to why they would do it. So. Who could do it?”
“Lucas Hubbard could do it,” I said. “A billion isn’t nothing to him, but he’d have to lose several billion before he would seriously feel it.”
“Yeah, but you’re describing every owner of a Haden-related company, aren’t you,” Tony said. “We threw a shitload of money at Haden’s because the first lady had it. Hell, Chris, that old picture of you with the pope probably kept Haden funding rolling for a year or two. I’m no big fan of Abrams-Kettering, but one thing they weren’t wrong about was that Haden’s funding’s become a long trough a bunch of piggies are feeding from. Hubbard’s one. So is Kai Lee, who runs Santa Ana. So are about twenty other people in the C-suites of these companies. Any of them could have funded something like this without it hurting them.”
“Yeah, but Hubbard’s got a connection to Sani,” I said.
“The dead guy,” Tony said. I nodded. “What’s the connection?”
“Accelerant owns the company that’s licensed to provide health care to the Navajo Nation,” Vann said. “And Sani’s Navajo.”
“It’s not a really great connection, is it,” Tony said, after a moment.
“Working on it,” I said.
“Hubbard wouldn’t want to toss a billion dollars away at the moment anyway,” Tony said. “Accelerant is trying to merge Metro with Sebring-Warner, and might just try to buy it outright. If he does that, a cash payout is going to be part of that deal.”
“You’re strangely well versed on the business dealings of Accelerant,” Vann noted.
“I keep up with all the companies I do work for,” Tony said, looking over to her. “It’s part of how I know which clients are going to have work for me. And what I know right now is that all the companies in Haden-related industries are getting ready for the crash. They’re either merging or buying each other outright, or trying to diversify as fast as they can. Abrams-Kettering’s knocked over the trough. It’s done.”
“So we’re saying that even if Hubbard or Lee or anyone else could fund something like this, they wouldn’t,” I said.
“Not right now,” Tony said. “That’s my guess. I mean, I’m not an FBI agent or anything.”
“Who else is there, then?” Vann said, looking at me. It was apparently time for a test again.
I thought about it for a minute. “Well, there’s us, isn’t there,” I said.
“The FBI?” Diaz said, incredulously.
“Not the FBI, but the U.S. government,” I said. “A billion dollars wouldn’t matter to Uncle Sam and it’s possible we’d build something we wouldn’t commercially exploit, either for pure research or just because it’s pork for some congressperson’s district.”
“So we have this developed in some NIH institute as busy work,” Vann said.
“The U.S. government has been known to pay farmers not to plant crops,” I said. “No reason that principle couldn’t go high tech.” I turned to Tony. “Any maybe that’s why it’s not in the registry, since it was never intended to be commercial.”
“That’s great,” Tony said. “But it still doesn’t explain how this”—he gestured at the network—“got into someone’s head.”
“Working on it,” I said again.
“Work harder,” Tony suggested.
“What about the software?” I asked.
“I’ve only glanced at it,” Tony said. “I was going to get to that next, but I thought you might not want to wait for a hardware report. From what I can see it’s programmed in Chomsky, which makes sense because that’s the language designed specifically for neural networks. The software’s got substantially fewer lines of code than most Integrator software I’ve seen. Which means it’s either really efficient, or that whoever programmed it only wanted it to do specific things.”
“When will you be able to tell us which it is?” Vann asked.
“I should be able to give you a general report this evening,” Tony said. “If you want more specifics, you’ll need to let me take the code home with me tonight.”
“That would be fine,” Vann said.
“Uh, I should tell you that when I work in the evening I get time and a half.”
“Of course you do,” Vann said. “Just as long as you have an early report ready for us by seven.”
“Can do,” Tony said.
“And you,” Vann said, looking at me. “You think you’ll be back from Arizona by then?”
“I should be,” I said.
“Then fly, Shane. Fly.” Vann walked off, reaching into her jacket for her e-cigarette.