Invisible Symbiosis: An Artificial Intelligence Thriller Read online

  I looked away, unable to look into her eyes any longer.

  A light sea breeze was picking up and a blanket of fog covered the Golden Gate Bridge, the damned bridge that got me into this terrible situation.

  I was out of arguments.

  Out of ideas.

  Out of words.

  Out of everything, in fact.

  Inside, I was bursting. I couldn’t fix this. In seven days, I would be in prison or on the run and everyone would be talking about me as the greatest con artist of the early 21st Century. Maybe even the entire century if I was lucky.

  I turned back to Laura. She had also turned her gaze back out to sea, pensive. Her long black hair fluttered in the wind and covered her almond-shaped eyes.

  I already said it, but I’ll say it again, she really was beautiful. Very beautiful.

  But we’ve really gotten off on the wrong foot.

  A lump in my throat, I extended my hand to her awkwardly.

  “Laura, I think that it would be best if I just say goodbye to you now.”

  Interrupted from her thoughts, she turned toward me, confused and troubled.

  “Uh, yes, yeah I think that would be best.”

  “So goodbye then.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Goodbye.”

  A few seconds passed.

  A few seconds too many for a normal goodbye.

  A few seconds during which we could have said: “I’m sorry.”

  “Please forgive me.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Stay.”

  “I love you.”

  And even if our hearts exchanged these words, nothing came out of our mouths.

  After one last look, I turned and left, leaving the lump in my throat behind me - my only lifeline and, who knows, maybe something more.

  The Dark Side of the Moon

  “I bet everything on this kid. And I’m not about to lose it all now.”

  At the brand new headquarters of NewMind, in his spacious office overlooking Silicon Valley, Mark had been pacing back and forth for over an hour. His door, which was normally always open on the developers’ floor, was closed, an implicit signal that he should not be bothered for any reason.

  Whenever he found himself in a delicate moment, Mark always looked at the wall to the right of his desk. There were two large photos hanging there that always inspired him in these kinds of moments. The first one was of a little boy around seven-or eight-years-old playing in the spray of an open fire hydrant in the ghetto of Los Angeles. The little boy was him. And the photo reminded him of where he came from and of all of the things he had overcome and sacrificed to get where he was today.

  The Los Angeles ghetto. It was there where his grand-parents settled after losing everything in the Crash of 1929.

  He was well aware of the fact that he did not have the pedigree nor education of the Silicon Valley youth. His slicked back hair and pinstripe suits were a bit old-fashioned, but it was like that and it worked. In constructing his identity brick by brick, he progressively became one of the best “nannies” of Silicon Valley. These experienced managers, much older than start-up founders, are the ones who the investors call when they’ve detected a high potential company. The “nanny” is not a visionary, but rather an excellent manager capable of taking a company from zero to billions of dollars in revenue in just a few years. Harnessed to their founders, they can often seem like a mismatched couple, but they are nevertheless indispensable for transforming a great idea born in a dorm room into a real business with thousands of employees. Mark was one of them and he was not about to let Leo ruin his reputation, regardless of how much respect he had for him. He was never going back to the ghetto.

  The second photo was of Neil Armstrong on the moon.

  This photo was signed by Neil himself. It symbolized the fact that the human genius and spirit for adventure could triumph. The grumpy, pessimistic, negative people in the world would always say that it was a small step compared to the size of the universe (just 239,000 miles), that the space conquest had drained the economy of tens of billions of dollars for nothing (obviously, we found nothing on the moon and haven’t returned for over 40 years). But we sent three men up there in a tin can with rudimentary computers. Two of them opened the airlock and walked out wearing just a half-inch of canvas to protect them and walked on unknown ground for a few hours. Then they came home safe and sound eight days later.

  It’s fun to imagine this surreal meeting when the NASA engineers presented their plan to the board; “Okay, so we are going to stuff three guys in this little capsule, 13-feet in diameter and 10-feet long for five days and put it at the tip of a 360-foot-long rocket weighing 3,000 tons. Then we are gonna put enough explosives in this rocket to create a seismic wave five miles around, but don’t worry - we believe that the rocket engines should resist and create enough pressure to reach a speed of 17,400 mph. Then the rocket will enter into a four-day trajectory that will take them within a dozen yards of this crater, 186,000 miles from earth. That crater is called the Sea of Tranquility. For navigation, we have these calculators with 32 KB of memory, it’s the best we’ve got. And regarding the stay on the moon, well, we don’t know what the ground is made of, so if there’s a lot of dust, our take-off module could sink a few feet. In this case, it would be impossible for the men to leave and we hope that the engines will start back up. If the ground is hard, the men will have two hours to go out in a very hostile environment. If they fall, they risk tearing their suit and being exposed to extreme temperatures, 257 degrees Fahrenheit in the sun and -283 degrees in the shade. Furthermore, it will be pretty much impossible for them to get back on their feet because of the weight of their clothes. If they return safe and sound from their walk, they will have to restart the engines to once again meet up with a vehicle in orbit, 10 miles overhead. Then they will have to return to Earth within three days with just one last little problem, the module will be 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit when it re-enters the atmosphere, and the braking parachutes will have to automatically release…”

  It would be crazy for anyone to accept such a plan today! And yet, it was accepted and everything went according to plan, on live television, in front of 600 million viewers. This event, already an old memory for an entire generation, was really not so ordinary. It took courage and extraordinary imagination. If it was possible to walk on the moon, then anything is possible. Mark would never forget it. He was filled with that sense of possibility every minute of every day.

  The LA ghetto. The moon.

  From where he came from to where he was going.

  Leo’s amnesia and radical change in behavior was a major obstacle in the path he had set out for himself.

  He was going to have to come back in full force before he lost everything.

  A Lost Heart

  As Leo walked away, out of arguments and certainly embarrassed and lost, Laura had to suppress a pang of emotion. How did they get to this point so quickly, so brutally? And now, what was she left with? The idea of meeting Leo had given her new energy, a mad hope. What was left of it now?

  She raised her eyes to heaven. What were they playing at? For so long they had supported her and now this?

  The only response she got was the song of the seagulls, slowly turning overhead.

  “Excuse me…”

  Wait, were the seagulls talking now?

  “Excuse me! Are you Laura Della?”

  Laura lowered her eyes. No, it wasn’t the seagulls... before her stood a young woman, about 20-years-old with a hippie look, wearing a jacket straight out of Sergeant Pepper, blue with gold shoulder pads, red bell-bottom pants, giant glasses with yellowed-lenses. In her left hand, the young woman was carrying not one laptop, but two ultra-thin ones.

  She gave a forced smile, but she really wasn’t in the mood to meet with fans.

  “Uh, yes, that’s me.”

  “Yes! That’s what I thought. Wait, wait, don’t move!”

  The young woman opened one of he
r laptops with a slight-of-hand that Laura had never seen before and that she could have never copied herself. Then, still holding the computer in one hand in front of her, she typed on the keyboard at a frenzied speed.

  “Excuse me miss, but what are you doing there?”

  The young woman didn’t answer, her eyes were glued to the screen, totally absent. Only the tapping on the keys filled the space between her and Laura.

  “Wait…. Wait….”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing… I’m waiting… but I must admit that I don’t understand…”

  “Just a second… wait...okay! We’re there…”

  “We’re where? Where might that be? I’m in a restaurant in San Francisco, no idea what you’re talking about… where are you?”

  “No, you’re not there. Not at all.”

  This conversation was taking a very strange turn for Laura, who was starting to get annoyed.

  “No, I’m right here! I think I know where I am!”

  The young woman suddenly stopped typing, raised her eyes from the screen and looked deep into Laura’s with a disconcerting confidence.

  “Where are you really, Miss Angel Singer?”

  “You are looking at me! I’m right here in front of you!”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  The young woman let out a sigh and shook her head.

  “No.”

  Was there something in the San Francisco air that made people crazy? Between Leo’s bizarre behavior and the surreal conversation that she was having right now with this girl, Laura was completely disoriented. No, the seagulls weren’t talking, but this was just as weird.

  She rested her hand compassionately on the girl’s shoulder.

  “I’m really sorry, but I can’t do anything for you.”

  Then Laura turned and walked away.

  “They are 75,458,250.”

  She stopped dead in her tracks and turned around.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your fans. As of today, you have 75,458,250 of them. They talk about you on average three times per day on 245,323 forums dedicated to you. They’ve posted 453,456 YouTube videos of your songs, making for a total of 2,450,543,739 views. And the two most frequent comments about you at the moment are ‘Why’ and ‘Where is she?’ So I’ll ask you again, where are you right now?

  Laura felt a chill down her spine. She didn’t know what to say.

  So the woman asked another question.

  “And what matters most? Personally, I don’t really care that you are standing in front of me right now, even if I do know all of your songs. No, the real question, is the others. What are you doing for them?”

  Laura had left life behind her, a certain life, trying to run away from the fiasco of her last concert. But she realized now that this life was going on without her, with a strength and vigor that surpassed anything she could have imagined. Her fans were still out there, millions of them on the social networks, talking about her, singing with her, crying over her, day after day…

  While they wait.

  One sad day after another…

  For her.

  For themselves.

  “Sing…” a small voice was whispering in her ear.

  “Sing…”

  “Sing…”

  “Sing for them….”

  “Sing for yourself…”

  “Sing for us…”

  She closed her eyes and smiled softly to herself, taking a deep breath. She knew this voice. She had forgotten it, relegated it to the realm of illusion, dissolved into the fog of a happy past or at least the happy memory of it.

  “Sing…”

  She could do it.

  Yes.

  She knew how to do it now.

  She opened her eyes again and stared deep into the eyes of the girl standing before here. With a near perfect joy, she said to her, “Are you able to speak to them? I mean, to all of them?”

  The young woman smiled. She knew instinctively what was going to happen and it was going to be extraordinary.

  “Talk to the right person and you will be talking to all of them. You have no idea how quickly news spreads nowadays.”

  “It doesn’t matter who you tell, here is what I am going to tell you…”

  At the Speed of Light

  Time 0

  Number of people reached: 234,000

  Internet forum: “Laura Della Fans - Official #1”

  Message contents: “I met the singer today. She wants to sing live on the internet in two days. This is no joke. Believe me. I have proof! This is incredible news! Spread the word! More info on the time and place to come!

  Time 5 seconds

  Number of people reached: 1,456,658

  Twitter account: @lauradellaforever - All the official and unofficial news about the star

  Contents: “Just in! Laura Della returns to the stage in two days - live on the internet!”

  Time 5 minutes

  Number of people reached: 15,437,229

  Facebook account: “Official Laura Della”

  Contents: “Laura Della invites you to an exclusive concert live on YouTube in 48 hours. Click here to sign up!”

  Time 3 hours

  Number of people reached: 45,657,000

  CNN.com

  Contents: “After one month of absence, the Angel Singer is ready to return to the stage, virtually this time, to give an exclusive concert on YouTube. The Google teams are preparing for an explosion of connections and are already planning to strengthen their bandwidth in order to accommodate tens, even hundreds, of millions of fans waiting to finally see their favorite star.”

  Time 36 hours

  Number of people reached: 250,000,000+

  Every newspaper on the planet

  “WORLDWIDE CYBER CONCERT - 1 billion viewers watching Laura Della’s great comeback tonight?”

  Sing

  At Trilogy Studios at 8 Henry Street, San Francisco, things were on the brink of chaos. This was nothing new, of course. Their red brick walls had hosted the likes of singers like Led Zeppelin, Celine Dion, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones - they had all made their mark on the recording studio, unleashing hundreds of hysterical fans before the large iron gates in front of the studio.

  But never in the owner’s memory, had there been such a wild frenzy as there was now, for the arrival of Laura Della, the Angel Singer, for her first live concert on the internet tonight.

  Yes, before the studio’s great iron gates, masses of fans were gathering by the thousands, blocking several streets, all hoping to catch a glimpse of the singer.

  And yes, Laura’s entrance in the studio through a secret door sent through the crowd a wave of murmurs and whispers; barely controllable cries of excitement burst out among the studio personnel and other groups who were recording that day.

  But this couldn’t explain the feeling in the air.

  A feeling of absolute.

  Of wonder.

  Of truth.

  Deep.

  Exact.

  Perfect.

  Yes, this moment was perfect. Long-awaited, loved by all, here and all over the world.

  In her dressing room, Laura had only ever allowed two people, the ones who had always supported and loved her - Louis, her manager, and Stephanie, her loyal assistant. When it was announced that she was going to give a concert, this time live on the internet, they didn’t ask any questions, but jumped on the first flight to San Francisco.

  Together they picked up their conversation where they left off… except they knew that all of this could be over in an instant, that Laura could give out, cower before the challenge, run away from the spotlight, hide in the shadows and never come back again. Tonight, the tens of thousands of fans weren’t out there, on the other side of the big black curtain waiting for their idol. Louis wouldn’t have to face their fury, their disappointment, their tears if the nightmare were to happen again. But there would be hundreds of thousands this time, maybe millions,
watching behind their screen, waiting to see the woman who had transported them to new dimensions over the years. In Paris, Rio, London, Beijing, Tokyo, they were setting up giant screens. The shock of Laura not showing up would be more cataclysmic than anyone could imagine.

  Laura would have to hold it together tonight. Keep her promise.

  In his usual red and gold suit, Louis watched Laura get ready in front of the giant dressing room mirror from the couch. Tonight, she had opted for a long white dress that perfectly matched the sweet glow of her skin. No makeup, or just a little bit. Pure simplicity. He didn’t want to disrupt the special moments before a concert, but he couldn’t help but strike up a conversation, at the very least to see how she responded and if her soul was going to be okay.

  “You look magnificent, my dear.”

  Laura turned her eyes toward Louis.

  “Thanks, Louis. Thanks for being here tonight with me. I’ve never told you before, but thanks for being my friend, my confidant, my punching bag sometimes. But most of all my light.”

  “No, I’m the one who should be thanking you for everything you are, Laura.”

  A shadow swept across her eyes and Louis sensed a moment of panic.

  “You know, I am really so…”

  “Don’t say anything, Laura, especially not tonight. The past is in the past. You are here now. And you are going to sing again. For you. For them.”

  “Yes, I’m going to sing again. But how many more times? I don’t even know what to make of this concert tonight.”

  “It doesn’t matter, sweetheart! Don’t worry about it. Sing. You’ll see.”

  “I don’t want to disappoint them again.”

  “They don’t expect anything from you anymore, Laura.”

  “Will they ever forgive me?”

  “They already have. You’re giving them a gift that they never could’ve hoped for. A new chance to hear you sing.”