Chapter Eight
Eight
At first, Max didn’t see Cherry.
He was too busy trying to keep a straight face and not roll his eyes while Miles gave a flowery speech about how Yellow Sparks was a family that was about to grow. If this was AIX and Max was introducing a new partnership to his employees, Max would simply come right out with it.
“Good afternoon,” he’d say. “I’m excited to introduce a brand-new project that we’ll be doing in partnership with Yellow Sparks.”
Simple, straightforward, and to the point. It was, in fact, exactly what he’d said to the group of engineers he’d pulled to create what his brother insisted would be called Sparky, the new AI assistant for Yellow Sparks.
Despite a name that made their tech sound like a dog on a sitcom, Max had to say he was proud of what his team and his brother were able to create.
AIX had already been working on a similar text-based system, but Max hadn’t been prioritizing it because they were having much more success creating voice-recognition tools and no one was able to compete with ChatGPT at the moment anyway.
But when Miles asked if it was possible to use AI to increase Yellow Sparks’ writers’ output by taking their ideas and creating the content for them, cutting down on their writing time, Max liked the challenge of it.
It took work to get Sparky to understand the Yellow Sparks voice and then differentiate when it was making a list or quiz.
Currently, that was all it could do. Max told Miles that while the AI could write an essay based on what someone put into it, it would take a lot of input from the writer, because their personal stories weren’t something Sparky could gather from the internet.
“Bringing Sparky into the Yellow Sparks family,” Miles was saying now, “is my own family! My flesh and blood. My big brother, Max!”
Miles started clapping, and a few people half-heartedly joined him, snapping Max out of his thoughts. This was his cue, but as he opened his mouth to give his prepared speech, he looked over and saw her.
Cherry.
He did a double take. She looked different.
Her face was completely bare of any makeup, and she was, of course, wearing far more clothes than she’d had on the last time he saw her.
But those were the same soft lips he’d kissed, and when her mouth parted slightly, perhaps in a gasp although he couldn’t hear it, he was sure it was her.
But what was she doing here of all places?
“Max.”
It looked like Cherry was saying his name, but it was Miles who elbowed him in the side.
“Bro, speak,” Miles hissed while simultaneously trying to give a reassuring smile to his employees, whose faces ranged from confused to downright pissed, which Max couldn’t understand, although perhaps Miles hadn’t explained Sparky correctly. He should’ve been paying better attention.
Max cleared his throat, keeping his focus on everyone except Cherry, whose gaze he could still feel. He would talk to her later. Right now, he had to get this presentation back on track.
“Hi, hello, I’m Max,” he said. “CEO and founder of AIX, an artificial intelligence research and deployment company. And I’m very excited to introduce you to Sparky.”
Max stepped aside to let someone push through the SMART Board he’d set up his presentation on beforehand and then he did what he did best.
He started talking.
Although Max had always been interested in science and math, he was never the stereotypical shy, nerdy kid. When he was interested or excited about something, there was no shutting him up, and thankfully, so far anyway, people seemed to actually care to listen.
Today, though, as he went on and on through his presentation, allowing himself to get lost in explaining how Sparky worked and how it would only continue to improve as the Yellow Sparks staff used it, he didn’t feel the confidence he usually did.
Instead, he could see people leaning over and whispering to each other or looking at their phones or computers.
He was pretty sure the woman next to Cherry was simply glaring at him, but Max couldn’t let his eyes linger over there for too long, lest they get caught on Cherry and stay there.
Max started going through the slides quicker, and he cursed Miles for having him do this at the end of the day, when people probably just wanted to leave. Surely that’s why they were looking at him like he was the spawn of Satan.
“And so that’s it,” Max said, closing the presentation.
“Sparky will appear in the Yellow Sparks CMS tomorrow morning, and you’ll get an email with steps on how best to use it when creating content.
When you first start using it, there may be some errors, such as typos, or it might pull in an image of Michael B.
Jordan instead of Michael Jordan, so you want to keep an eye out for those, but again, the more you guys use it, the more quickly it’ll learn and adapt. ”
Someone’s hand shot up, and Max looked to Miles, unsure if they were doing questions. Miles quickly stepped forward.
“Unfortunately, it’s about five o’clock, so we’re going to have to wrap it up there,” he said.
“But Max and his team have graciously offered to hold office hours for Sparky tomorrow at three p.m. right here in the office, and after that they’ll be here every Monday afternoon, so if you have any questions or issues, they can help you out then.
“Have a good night, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
Without another word, Miles quickly guided Max out of the office.
Max tried to look for Cherry, but people were beginning to pack up their things even though when Max looked at his watch, he saw it was closer to four thirty than it was to five.
He did not see her as his brother hustled him into an elevator away from what was obviously a very unhappy crowd.