Invisible Symbiosis: An Artificial Intelligence Thriller Page 5

  “Tell me that Laura’s coming back, tell me that she’s just stepped out for a little air,” he whispered backstage to anyone who would listen. But everyone was in such a state of shock that no one paid him any attention.

  He was alone.

  Alone he would have to face the shame, the betrayal of the girl he had always supported, who had brought him so much.

  Nervously wiping his bald head, he put on his gold-rimmed glasses and buttoned his vest, which was also embroidered in gold. He ran his fingers pensively over its fine silk and dreaded the enormous financial damage that would follow this terrible night. The successful little business that he had built up around Laura would suffer unimaginable consequences. And he could kiss his silk vests goodbye for a long time.

  But why?

  Why?

  Why now?

  A curious light gave his slender silhouette the allure of a butterfly, gracing him with mysterious wings.

  A frightened butterfly batting against the walls in incomprehension.

  “She promised me that everything would go back to the way it was before. She promised.”

  A few yards away, on the other side of the heavy red curtain, the roar of the monstrous crowd grew louder. For every minute that passed, the monster became more threatening, the monster that Louis would soon have to face. And the more threatening it became, the harder it would be to escape its gnashing teeth.

  “Just a few more minutes,” he said to himself, “She’ll be back. Just a few more minutes.”

  Manhattan, 33nd Street

  On the bank of the Hudson River

  A few yards from the river, Laura finally slowed down. The bare feet that had carried her here as if in a dream were now throbbing in pain. She was completely drenched; her long black dress was now like a heavy second skin. Her heart was beating wildly.

  “Is this what you want?” she cried out with rage, hurling her head to the sky.

  “Is this how you want to see me? For me to just bow out like this? On a filthy boardwalk on the Hudson?” Her tears turned into anger, an anger that the singer had managed to forget for a long time.

  “But why? Why?”

  One image after another came to her mind. Madison Square Garden, the roaring crowd, Louis, the accident, her hospital bed, the moment she heard the terrifying news. And then life, going back to normal, rehearsals, her joy coming back, the long, sleepless nights in preparation for this comeback concert.

  Then, the images started to blur as if shrouded by a white veil. All of a sudden, a warm feeling came over her.

  And she collapsed on the Manhattan asphalt.

  San Francisco

  Googling Myself

  For as long as I can remember, I’ve never satisfied this constant, more or less unhealthy curiosity for googling one’s own name. Or for the uninitiated, entering your own name into Google and avidly reading everything that can be dug up on you. But now, I had no choice if I wanted to continue my conversations with Eve.

  Back up on the ground floor and comfortably stretched out on the couch looking out over the ocean, I turned on my computer with my wet fingertip and typed “Leo Cameron” into Google. Before clicking Enter, I took a deep breath, overwhelmed and terrified by the idea of asking a search engine who I was. In my past life, had I been so alone that the only way to learn about my true identity was to read about it on the internet? Or was it so horrible that no one wanted to tell me face to face?

  Just as I was about to click the-magic-button-that-would-instantly-and-objectively-tell-me- who-I-was, my phone started ringing with Mark’s slimy face lighting up the screen. He looked like a 1950s movie star. How in the world did I ever start hanging out with him? We were so different. We would need a long conversation over a glass of wine soon to get to the bottom of that one.

  I answered the call.

  “Mark! What’s up, man?”

  “Are we getting somewhere?”

  The icy tone in his voice was a far cry from the honey sweetness of our previous conversations. In these few words, I felt intense tension. Since the start of my new life, I’ve been suspicious of Mark, so I decided to put a little more pressure on him without showing my cards just yet, just to see what kind of hand he was playing.

  “About what?”

  “What do you mean, about what? About Eve!”

  “Oh, yeah. Listen, to be honest, there’s not much to tell you.”

  Silence.

  “Are you there, Mark?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m here. What happened?”

  “After you left, I tried everything to turn the thing on - algorithms, secret codes, voice, digital fingerprints, optical scanners, and even a few magic words, but even I have to face the facts, it’s just not gonna work right now.”

  “That’s… that’s really unfortunate, Leo. Really unfortunate.”

  “Oh I wouldn’t worry, Mark. We’ll figure it out, but it’s going to take a bit of time, you know?”

  “How much time?”

  I paused for a few seconds to let it really sink in.

  “Some time.”

  “Could you be any vaguer about it, Leo!”

  Mark was getting extremely nervous.

  “I know, but we’re talking about my memory here, a living and immaterial thing that we don’t even really understand - despite the billions that have been invested in figuring it out.

  “You know what, Leo. That’s your problem. To be honest with you, I think that our directors are starting to get fed up.”

  “I’m in charge of what I know. And it’s not up to the Board to tell me what to do. Let’s look at this in context, Mark. I just got out of the hospital after a dramatic accident and you take me directly to a black cube that I apparently invented. You’re asking me to have all the answers, but I don’t have them. That’s it. It’s just too soon.”

  “Too soon? But we’ve been waiting for you to get back on your feet for months now!”

  “Well here I am, on my feet, why can’t you just be happy about that? Life is good!”

  He was starting to get me riled up and I could feel my muscles tightening up.

  “But it’s just that…”

  “But what? What do you want, Mark? Where do you want to go with all of this?”

  I stood up from the couch and was walking around the house in long agitated strides. Anger was festering inside me and this slimeball Mark was my punching bag. And it felt great. I loved it! Like undeniable proof of my existence, my survival.

  “And who are you to talk to me like this, huh? Why should I trust you?”

  “Because I’m your friend, Leo, your friend, your partner, your confidant…”

  “I don’t remember any of it, Mark. You don’t exist to me. At least not in this new life, you don’t!”

  “Leo! How could you even say that!”

  “Oh I can say it! I just did! I said it!”

  “But, but…”

  “That’s enough, this conversation is going nowhere. So here’s what you are going to do - when you see our Board later, you are going to invite them to the house tomorrow. We’ll have a few rounds of champagne and we’ll do some ritual dances around the cube for the rest of the night. And then afterwards, we’ll see.”

  “Are you serious? Am I talking to Leo Cameron right now?”

  I started to yell like mad man.

  “YES YOU ARE TALKING TO ME AND YES I AM SERIOUS. AND I WANT EVERYONE TO BE THERE! SO DO IT!”

  Silence on the line.

  I didn’t wait for Mark to respond. He was surely falling over the back of his chair hearing me like this.

  “DO IT!” I yelled again.

  After a few long moments, Mark spoke again in a resigned voice.

  “Alright, we will all be there tomorrow then.”

  “See, it’s not so complicated, now is it? Goodbye.”

  And I hung up.

  My hands were shaking and my forehead was drenched in sweat. My heart rate was surely much too high for some
one still in recovery. From the looks of me, you’d have thought that I had just run a 100-meter dash ten times in a row. I sat down on the couch and held my head in my hands, trying to calm myself.

  After a few deep breaths, I realized how out of control I’d been. What came over me? I had gotten all wrapped up in false assumptions and was overcome with this terrifying rage. Poor Mark. Now I was ashamed of myself. Truly ashamed. Full or remorse, I wanted to call him back to apologize, but I was too nervous that I might go off again. So I went back to my laptop and clicked on the magic Search button.

  The New York Times

  “The Laura Della Mystery”

  Confusion and outrage for tens of thousands of fans gathered at Madison Square Garden for Laura Della’s first concert since her terrible accident. After nearly two hours of waiting in a concert hall on the verge of explosion, the singer’s manager, Louis Pharelly, came on stage to announce that the star had fallen ill and lost her voice and therefore, would not be able to perform. No alternate date has been announced and tickets will be refunded.

  During the two hours of waiting, rumors started to spread on social media. “Laura had a heart attack.” “Laura had a row with her manager.” “Laura broke her leg in rehearsal.” But the most persistent rumor was that the star panicked at the idea of returning to the stage and fled Madison Square Garden before the show.

  Ms. Della’s public relations team has denied these allegations and stated that these claims were unfounded. Nevertheless, Ms. Della has made no public appearances or statements since the evening of the concert, leaving her fans to wonder while rumors continue to circulate.

  SoHo, NY

  Laura Della’s Loft

  When he first got the news from Mount Sinai Hospital early in the morning, Louis feared the worst. It was unlike Laura to be so emotionally unstable and it terrified him, which led his mind to the worst possible scenarios. The Laura that he had known these last few months just wasn’t the same. Before her accident, he and his protégée could talk about anything; she was always cheerful. Every time she stepped out in public, her long, willowy silhouette shone with an unusual glow, the kind of light that touched people profoundly. Whenever she entered a room, the air was instantly lighter, the light somehow more alive. Ever since she was young, all eyes had been upon the girl who “sang with the angels.” Her big, green, almond-shaped eyes glowed with eternal sweetness.

  How many men have lost themselves in this ocean of sweetness, in her surreal aura? Laura had always welcomed these reactions with gratitude, but had never totally given herself over to them. And that was the greatest mystery about her. Her generosity, her willingness to give herself in appearance without holding back. But to those who had known her for a long time, there was a vague feeling that somewhere deep in her heart, an even more precious vault was tightly locked and no one held the key.

  It didn’t matter to the millions of fans who followed her all over the world to share her universe and sing like her with the angels. They found her concerts so life-transforming that they came from thousands of miles away just to hear her for only a few minutes.

  To meet this enormous demand, Laura had been circling the globe non-stop for the last five years.

  And now?

  Sitting at the big wooden table where Louis had laid out an enormous breakfast, the star seemed to find her old smile and usual appetite. She devoured the eggs and bacon that her manager had made for her. He had dropped by to get her at the hospital a few hours earlier after she had finished up a series of additional tests. Everything was fine. According to the doctor on call, Laura had simply been “overcome by a whirlwind of emotion that was too strong for her.”

  But for Laura, things were never simple.

  They weren’t that complicated either.

  She was just on another plane.

  Louis didn’t dare disrupt the sweetness of the moment. It was the kind of spring day in Manhattan that he loved. The sun had just come up and flooded the table with light. The air was dry and fresh and a light breeze drifted through the propped-open windows in the loft.

  After downing her third glass of orange juice, Laura broke the silence with a big smile.

  “I screwed up, didn’t I Louis? Big time!”

  There was no sense of guilt in her words; it was just a statement. Straight and clear.

  “To say the least, Laura.”

  There was no judgment in Louis’s voice either. He had too much respect for her. It was just a statement. Straight and clear.

  Laura took Louis’s hand.

  “Tell me that I was dreaming, Louis. That this night didn’t happen. I would be so grateful to you.”

  “My dear, this night never happened. I’ve erased the memories of the 20,000 people at Madison Square Garden, and made the 1.2 million tweets, 650,000 Facebook posts and 450,000 hits on the internet just disappear. Oh, and I bought all 800,000 copies of the New York Times with your story on the cover. You see, it’s that easy in this century that we are living in. All you have to do is ask.”

  Laura exploded with laughter.

  This was the Laura that Louis knew.

  Then to his great surprise, she burst into tears.

  “I screwed up, Louis, I really screwed up…”

  She was now squeezing his hand so hard that she nearly crushed it.

  It was as if she were suspended in emptiness and her life depended on it.

  “You need to rest, Laura.”

  “But I don’t want to rest. I’ve been resting for months! This isn’t what I want. I want to find myself, to find the old Laura. The girl who sang with the angels… Where is she Louis? Oh, I think I’m going crazy!”

  She was standing now and a cloud cast over the morning sun, brutally plunging the room into grey.

  Louis knew for sure that things would never be the way they were before and that they were now headed into rough water with no idea how bad the storm was going to get.

  Silicon Valley Insider

  “All the news and nothing but the news, straight from Silicon Valley”

  The Moment of Truth for “The Next Big Thing”

  Now that Leo Cameron is out of the hospital after his heart transplant, which was followed by two months of recovery, the world is starting to speculate when he will finally launch the artificial intelligence system that he had been working on before his accident.

  Mark Walborg, Cameron’s historic partner, refuses to announce a date for the time being, claiming that the project is so groundbreaking and revolutionary that it will only be introduced once it is perfectly operational. For now, there are a number of settings that still need to be finalized.

  The entire Silicon Valley community is waiting on the edge of their seats for this date, which could completely redefine their ecosystem, change the rules of the game and pave the way for new innovation.

  Remember that NewMind Inc. shares, after a 40% drop following the accident of its founder, made a comeback of over 70%, thus propelling the company’s value to a new stratosphere of $25 billion - a level never before seen for a company that has still not launched its product!

  But it is not certain if these levels will hold if the company continues to delay the launch. History would tell us that the value of even the most promising companies can drop dramatically the longer it takes to fulfill initial promises, ultimately hitting rock bottom. A growing number of opinion leaders predict that NewMind will meet the same fate, some are even going so far as to call the whole artificial intelligence project a “grand hoax” and a “scam.”

  Numeric Regression

  A total asshole!

  That’s what I was in my past life, a total asshole!

  A little jerk, pretentious, completely full of myself.

  Totally disrespectful of everyone around me, especially my troops.

  How I ever managed to build my company is a mystery to me.

  But here I am. Apparently, my superior intelligence was still fascinating to people. I was pron
e to such bursts of creativity that I captivated thousands in the Silicon Valley, who were willing to go to any length to get close to the sun.

  As I read through the web pages about me, depicting this terrible person, I had the strange feeling of detaching myself from the screen and splitting myself in two. I read, but I didn’t understand. Was it really me that they were talking about on the forums like this? And this scathing profile in The Huffington Post, was it really objective?

  I thought that I would find the truth on these sites, but this truth now seemed so horrible that out of some kind of primal survival instinct to keep me from sinking into madness, my mind refused to read any further.

  I slammed down my laptop’s screen and closed my eyes.

  I took a deep breath, cleared my mind and opened it back up again.

  But those damn pages were still there! Thousands of pages spewing their venom and hate all over me!

  Now I understood why Eve wanted me to go to the source. Because it’s not certain whether I would have believed her if she had been the one to paint this cruel portrait of me.

  My hands were getting sweaty and I had the unpleasant feeling that the ground was giving way under my feet. It was as if I were slipping into quicksand.

  The quicksand of my personality.

  I closed my eyes again, overcome with nausea.

  I woke up a few months ago in a hospital bed, alive, with a second chance, but in reality, this second chance was more like a nightmare that I couldn’t get out of. I felt as if every cell in my body was pushing me back toward the old Leo.

  No, this asshole wasn’t me! It all felt so surreal.

  And then there was this whole life around this asshole who I didn’t even recognize and I despised.