Chapter 31
I spent the rest of the flight thinking things through.
Also kicking myself in the ass. Agent Rao had been a little snide and likely jealous that I got to talk to his celebrity crush, but he wasn’t wrong.
I wasn’t part of the FBI, I wasn’t an agent, and I certainly wasn’t part of this team.
Maybe Rao wasn’t the only one to get wowed by people in high places.
When we got back to Tiki, I headed straight to my room and fired up the news networks, flipping through channel after channel.
Reflecting on the things I should have been thinking about all along brought immediate insights bubbling up from my deeper mind.
Apparently, even though my conscious mind had been wrapped up in unsolved crimes and missing people, my unconscious mind had been working away diligently.
And I had already provided it with plenty of raw material.
I slept just five hours, then got up for the early news, flipping from one provider to the next, frustrated with my lack of internet access.
When Red arrived early like most mornings, I was already waiting for her at her station. Dr. Chen came in with her, and they both paused when they saw me.
“Cassie, what’s up?” Dr. Chen asked.
“I need to do some searches immediately. Or have Red do them.”
“Did something happen?” Chen asked.
“Yes. I got my focus back.”
Red looked at Chen, a clear question on her face. Chen studied me for a moment. “It sounds… important?”
“Urgent.”
“And it involves?”
“Everything.”
Chen nodded to Red and put down her messenger bag to watch. Red moved over and started to power up her systems, clearly a bit put out by my presence in her space. When she had the first monitor up, she turned to me with her brows raised.
“Um, this will work fastest if you put four or five windows up on the big touchscreen, one next to the other. And it’s going to get… busy,” I told her.
Red frowned but Chen started to look a little fascinated.
“Okay. What are your first four searches?”
“William Cramer, MIT publications. Second search, cybernetic neuroprosthetics news. Third, SEC filings for Dropseer, Inc and Seeress Inc. Fourth, stock performance results for Hardscale Corp.”
Red blinked at me and then, in a testament to her own sharp intellect, proceeded to fill four different windows with the results of those searches without asking for a repeat.
I stepped close to the screen, using my fingers to scroll down the first windows results till I found a paper written by Cramer, tapped it to open, and then flicked through fast enough to memorize the pages for later review.
“Okay, new search in this window. Amy Shipley ancestor hints from about 1975 to 1980.”
“Your Amy Shipley?” Red asked.
“Yes,” I said as I moved over to the neuroposthetic results.
I scanned, opened, and closed articles, memorizing a few, including one very important one.
Then I moved to the SEC filings and spent a couple of minutes working through various filings till I had what I needed.
The Hardscale Corp stock information was just a glance.
“Okay, three new searches. Dropseer current prediction topics, Seeress topics, current members of both Senate Appropriations and Rules Committees as well as the same search for the House of Representative list for their same committees.”
I looked at the Amy Shipley results, which were few, but enough for my purposes.
Then I studied the rest of the search windows. “Okay. Thank you,” I said, turning around to find the audience now included Agents Steele, Rao, Carmine, and Kessler.
“That was… a lot,” Steele said, giving me a look of intense curiosity and maybe a little shock.
“I need to process it for a minute or two,” I said.
“You expect us to believe you absorbed all that information in seconds?” Rao asked.
He was easily slipping into top spot on my shit list.
“I don’t really care what you believe, Agent Rao. I’m not an agent on your team or part of your Bureau, am I?”
“Cassie,” Steele said, managing to chide me with tone alone.
“No. Rao’s comments from yesterday were on point, Special Agent Steele,” I said.
He raised his brows at the formality of his title.
“You feel like enlightening us?” Rose Carmine asked.
“You should bring in Director Brown, as well as Agents Sherman and Frayer,” I said.
“Dramatic,” Rao said, tripping my last switch. Instead of firing back at him about the fact that his newest favorite spank bank celebrity was married to last year’s People sexiest man alive, I went silent. Well, I had one last thing to say.
“I assume you have a decent SCIF somewhere in this place. You should make sure we have enough chairs in it.” Then I moved to the team coffee station and filled a mug in the resulting silence.
Fifteen minutes later, the Special Compartmented Information Facility was crowded with the team, the director, and the other two team leaders.
“All right, Cassie. The floor is yours,” Director Brown said evenly.
The first ten minutes had been enough to compile my thoughts and the last five, I spent trying to figure out the best way to explain. I stood up and moved to where they could all easily see me.
“The efficient market theory postulates that financial markets price assets accurately with all known information at all times. The more knowledge and the faster the dissemination of that information, the more efficient the market. This levels the fields and makes individual selection unproductive. A system where knowledge is not widely spread is inefficient and rife for opportunity to make gains. Current markets are highly efficient, with the exception of the prediction markets. Huge money swings are a daily occurrence on Dropseer and Seeress platforms for a wide array of topics, from sports betting to political outcomes to celebrity marriages,” I said, pinning Rao with the last bit.
He frowned, but the three team leaders and the director were now fully interested.
“William Cramer was an early researcher into artificial intelligence, which by definition seeks to replicate human thinking in machines. He started his research back in the seventies and made enormous money working on algorithmic software for the government, particularly Homeland Security. In the last few decades, he has branched into synthetic intelligence, which is the search for nonhuman methods of thinking. American Vigilance has spent a lot of money on researching people on the outer edge of the human intelligence bell curve, particularly those who could be called neurodivergent. In 1973, American Vigilance purchased ownership of the Mallows State Hospital near Lansing, Michigan, which was a troubled psychiatric facility that treated or mistreated a wide range of mental illness. My maternal grandmother was apparently a patient in 1977. I haven’t found any record of why, but a newspaper article from 1975 showed a picture of her among children attending a special school in Traverse City for students with learning disabilities.
“There is no mention of her ever leaving the state hospital nor of giving birth to a daughter. But a birth certificate was filed in the local county offices for a Kaitlyn Shipley, mother listed as Amy, no father listed.
“In1985, William Cramer wrote an article for his alma mater, MIT, about cybernetic neuroprothesis, which is the connection of human nerve tissue directly to the circuitry of machines.
Much has been made of the idea of replacement limbs, so-called bionic technology, but Cramer was focused on linking the human mind to computers.
His goal was not so much to teach humans but to teach the machines.
“His most recent iteration of advanced predictive technology, CATMAP, failed to alert Homeland Security of the attack in New York by the merc team.
However, after the attack, Hardscale, Incorporated, the manufacturer of the armored vehicles that survived the attack, went up seven percent in one day.
Stock trading volumes indicate large purchases made just prior to the attack.
Also, prediction market leader Dropseer had a topic for follow-up attacks, betting on likely locations, with the US Capitol listed.
When that was thwarted, Dropseer put up a topic regarding the odds of capturing the final mercenary, Oscar Wymer.
“Public comments by three of the members of both the Senate Appropriations and Rules Committees indicate that they favor leaving prediction markets unregulated. Also, Cramer is on the board of Dropseer,” I said, then shut up and sat down.