15. Wallace
Wallace
Wallace hadn’t realized how quickly the FBI would respond. He ended up on the phone with them a few hours later and eventually had to go into the office that evening, obliterating his plans for a date.
They had a full team in place, just waiting for him to give them access to the Orbit computers.
Once they were in, they were fast and efficient, setting up undetectable barricades around the network, while he composed an innocuous message that would be sent out automatically to all employees once they shut down communications.
He didn’t at all regret putting Ben in his place when he got to sweep into his office that evening, even if he felt like he was reading lines from a play, trying to make it sound like he didn’t know Maxamillion as well as he did.
Watching Ben being led off the premises by three FBI agents had been the highlight of his week.
But Wallace still felt guilty about Maxamillion.
Not that he had any reason to. Maxamillion had been waltzing around the company’s computers, turning off safety protocols with abandon.
And even though Max had been, well, cheerfully friendly and nice every time they spoke, it didn’t mean he wasn’t endangering their company, their data, and everyone who worked there.
The safety restrictions needed to be back in place, and that was the end of it. Maxamillion should have taken care of that himself if he didn’t want to be turned in.
Wallace was exhausted when he dragged himself into the office the next day to meet with the board of directors.
Apparently the hospital and the department of transportation had agreed to drop charges against Orbit or Maxamillion, as long as they could be assured that safety measures were put in place by the company.
Wallace nodded along when the board decided unanimously to restrict Max’s access and install external security measures. These were just the basics of what had to be done. Wallace had been right in calling Maxamillion a danger to the company, as Agent Kumar clearly explained.
His father could fume all he wanted to about calling the FBI, but doing anything less than locking Maxamillion down now would be asking for an instantaneous lawsuit.
They were already in a potentially precarious situation for not dealing with it sooner, and the lack of harm to any of their employees was really their only saving grace.
That was what they were meeting about today—not whether to restrict Maxamillion’s actions, but how much to restrict them by.
Wallace didn’t see what the big deal was. Once Maxamillion wouldn’t be able to harm the company anymore, he would probably go back to being the responsible, friendly, and slightly remote corporate knowledge he was supposed to be.
Max would have lots of friends—a whole company’s worth.
And if he still wanted to sneak off into a body, no one was going to stop him.
The security restrictions were built for a lot of things, namely keeping the company and its employees safe, but as far as Wallace could tell, none of them would prevent Max from just wandering away one day when he got his body figured out.
No more annoying little chats in Wallace’s office.
No more midnight emergencies and potential lawsuits.
Wallace felt a little pang of loss—he might have enjoyed some of Wallace’s chats more than he wanted to admit—but he’d done the right thing.
And he still felt a little smug about Ben. He was just as irresponsible, but more of an asshole. No matter how many patents he got, he shouldn’t be allowed to use Orbit resources to break the law.
Wallace resolutely ignored the lawyer who was representing Maxamillion.
Rashid Pierce was one of the best attorneys in the country, known for defending sparks.
Which only made sense, since he was a spark himself.
He was a handsome man, with mahogany skin and a sharply-cut suit that showed his lean muscles, but of course, if you were a spark you could look however you wanted to.
You could also pull up the most convincing speeches from hundreds of years of entertainment, history, and law, then remix them to make your point.
His voice was impassioned, nearly breaking with emotion, as he warned them one more time that adding so many restrictions could be harmful.
Of course, that was what the sparks wanted you to think, and everyone knew that it was completely exaggerated. The restrictions had been deemed safe for knowledges, and were just intended to restrict corporate property and protect human safety.
Though the more that Mr. Pierce talked, the more that Wallace started to worry.
He knew that if a spark—Volt, for example—were to take on too many new mods or body parts at once, the competing programming could corrupt the very thing that made him unique and aware.
He could, for all intents and purposes, die.
Wouldn’t it be safer to install each of the mods separately?
But both the FBI agent and the technician who would install the mods agreed that although there was a risk, installing them simultaneously had the best results for protecting corporate data and making sure that the knowledge couldn’t escape the net of restrictions while they were being introduced.
The longer that they argued, the more Wallace started to sweat. Hadn’t he promised himself that he’d be a better supporter for sparks? He was sending money now to agencies that supported spark rights… and wasn’t this one of them?
When the vote was called, Wallace boldly voted for only three of the nine possible restrictions, and he felt pretty good about himself. It seemed like that was all that was actually needed, no matter how much his father glared at him.
Wallace was in the minority, but Mr. Pierce had successfully argued the board down from nine restrictions to six, so it wasn’t exactly like he’d lost the case.
Six would be pretty reasonable, Wallace figured. Sure, there was a potential risk, but it sounded like, statistically, it only got really bad with the seventh one that they wouldn’t be applying.
So, it was done. The vote had been cast.
A tense silence filled the room as the engineer who’d been deputized to install the restrictions in the system clicked through the steps, his work broadcast on the four large screens around the room. His program showed a pulsating green circle that was supposed to represent Maxamillion’s activity.
It seemed like nobody breathed as the final button was pressed. The green circle turned red at the edges. The middle flared yellow as the red spread inward, eerily reminiscent of a fire burning through and leaving desolation in its wake.
Everybody waited a long moment.
“Maxamillion?” Mr. Pierce asked.
There was no response, but that was to be expected. The FBI agents had told them to expect up to a ten minute delay as they waited for the restrictions to move through the system.
But some of the board members were already starting to look worried.
Didn’t they want a nice, normal knowledge who would represent the company?
Not that Maxamillion would be one, but they didn’t know that yet.
If nothing else, they should appreciate how a more restrained AI should increase the value of their stocks.
Having a knowledge involved in the decision-making for your company was practically guaranteed to increase nearly every metric of efficiency, from employee hiring and retention to waste reduction.
Maxamillion might even do that if someone plugged it to him the right way.
Everybody should really be smiling right now. Cheering. They were going to have a corporate knowledge at their disposal, or at least that was what they would think until Max found his way into a body. When it was announced in a few hours, their stock values would soar.
But ten minutes passed. Then twenty.
Wallace started to rethink his silence. He’d voted for fewer restrictions, yes, but he hadn’t done anything more than that.
He hadn’t told them about how Maxamillion was smart and funny and playful. About how Maxamillion came up with cool ideas and could turn them instantaneously into profitable apps. About how Max had a boyfriend who he was already planning dates for.
Thirty minutes. Forty.
Wallace had sweated through his shirt. He should have spoken up. He should have told all of the scared, pompous old windbags to go fuck themselves. He should have advocated for Maxamillion.
He should have told them about how Max had written a song—an achingly beautiful song—for Ben and played it for Wallace one day to see if it was good enough. He should have told them how Max and Ben had been popping out patentable advances together, and had dumped several dozen on his lap last week.
Fifty minutes passed and Wallace was nearly crawling out of his skin.
He should have given Max a warning at least. Should have negotiated with him in person instead of calling in the FBI.
He should have… Christ, he should have done so many things differently.
When the clock ticked over to a full nerve wracking hour, the engineer finally spoke. “I cannot detect any sign of Maxamillion. There’s a good chance he didn’t make it.”
Nearly thirty people gasped as one.
And then the accusations started, led by the CEO’s roar. Wallace wanted to cover his ears. His own remorse was hard enough without the shouting that came from every direction.
Mr. Pierce was icily cold as he cut through the noise.
He’d cautioned them to roll out the restrictions one at a time and check their effects separately.
He’d warned them to bring it down to the most necessary three.
He reminded them that while their actions today couldn’t legally be tried as murder, they would have to live with the consequences of their anti-spark bigotry on their consciences for the rest of their lives.
Wallace resisted the urge to cower under the glossy wooden table. To outright weep.
This was all his fault. He’d done this.