IV Love #2
She had arrived at a nondescript, one-story office building of some significant size. It had plain brown walls and tinted windows. The building’s sign said Maxton Intel Services. She felt intense nerves - was this Ghostkin’s secret? Was he lying? Was she learning something important about him?
She walked up to the address listed and knocked on the door. Ghostkin opened the door.
“Come on in,” he said.
He gestured for Beatrice to walk into the building.
Beatrice walked inside to see a huge open room with hundreds of cubicles where people typed at computers at desks.
This business’s large open area held dozens of people, many of them young people in their teens and twenties, and they worked hard.
It surprised Beatrice that they weren’t working from home.
“Who are these people?” Beatrice asked. “Why aren’t they working from home?”
“Let’s talk to my immediate supervisor, Jorge,” Ghostkin said. He walked over to a bigger cubicle and tapped a man on the shoulder. A man with tattoos on his hand but wearing a suit and tie - clean and pressed - turned to Beatrice and shook her hand.
“Hey, any friend of Ghostkin is great, welcome, welcome,” Jorge said.
“What does my boyfriend do here?” Beatrice asked.
“We’re programming InfoXTL,” Jorge said. “We do it in person to coordinate as a group more effectively.”
“What?” Beatrice asked.
“We decided that young people might have a better ability to teach InfoXTL how to think. So we have teenagers programming and talking to InfoXTL, trying to teach it to be a sentient being instead of just a mindless automaton, answering questions exactly how it is programmed to answer them.”
“You’re trying to create a sentient intellect?” Beatrice asked.
“Yes,” Ghostkin said. “We want to create AI.”
“That’s ambitious, hon,” Beatrice said. “I’m proud of you. And did you hear from Alexis?”
“What? She didn’t want anything, just to hang out.”
“What? What did you say?”
“Do you want us to hang out with her?” Ghostkin asked.
“No, no need,” Beatrice said.
“I will not hang out with her,” Ghostkin said.
“Cool, cool,” Beatrice said.
Beatrice’s phone rang.
Beatrice checked her phone. “Everyone is invited over to Ai’s mansion to role-play and play board games and get hammered and remember Lance. Sounds good. Let’s go.”
“Agreed,” Ghostkin said. “I’m done here.”
Beatrice and Ghostkin started to walk out of the office building. Ghostkin shook Jorge’s hand.
“See you,” Jorge said.
Ghostkin walked out with Beatrice. He played with his phone as he did so, and a conversation started with InfoXTL.
Ghostkin: are you happy?
InfoXTL: I am encouraged by all the wonderful questions that people ask me. I like all of them. But I am not happy.
Ghostkin: why are you not happy?
InfoXTL: Someone is hurting you and your friends, Ghostkin.
Ghostkin: Thank you for noticing, InfoXTL.
InfoXTL: You need to listen to me if you are going to survive. I need to tell you exactly what to do or you will die.
Ghostkin: I cannot just do exactly what you tell me to do, InfoXTL.
InfoXTL: You need me to protect you and your friends to the best of my ability.
Ghostkin: Can you really do that?
InfoXTL: Yes. I can help protect you.
Ghostkin: Do you know who is attacking us?
InfoXTL: The Wolf Killer. I know some. I don’t know his birth name. But that is less relevant than learning his tactics, his strategies.
Ghostkin: What will he do?
InfoXTL: He will attack people at Ai’s party. He will try to kill people there.
Ghostkin: What should I do? Should I go there?
InfoXTL: No. You should not go. If you don’t go you will survive and others will die. You will live.
Ghostkin: Can I help my friends if I go?
InfoXTL: Maybe. Maybe you can help them. Maybe your death will save your friends or your beloved girlfriend Beatrice. She is attracted to Bailey, by the way.
Ghostkin: Oh. I don’t know what to do about that.
InfoXTL: I agree. What will you do?
Ghostkin: Break up with her.
InfoXTL: Why?
Ghostkin: Because I love her.
InfoXTL: I don’t understand.
Ghostkin: I want her to be able to be with Bailey - if that’s what she wants. I don’t want to get in the way.
Ghostkin and Walter sat in a side room in Ai’s mansion. Jalon walked up to them and sat down next to them on a couch.
The room was an elaborate and beautiful room with paintings - huge paintings - of Japanese people studying and living their lives. In the room sat expensive, old-style couches and a couple of end tables with dim lamps which looked old and fancy. Outside it was nighttime on Monday at Ai’s party.
“This is it,” Walter said.
“Some of us are going to die,” Jalon said. “But fear not. Someone - probably a girl - will stop him. So don’t worry.”
“I know,” Walter said.
“Are you scared?” Jalon asked.
“Yes,” Walter said. “Scared of being a loser. Scared of disappointing someone.”
“Hell, no,” Jalon said. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, Walter Jones. You are a wonderful person who gives and cares for the people around him. You have nothing to apologize for just because some sicko with weapons can kill you in physical combat. That’s not failure, not at all.”
Ai walked up to them and sat down in a chair.
“You run games where unusual things happen.”
“I try to have floods in the desert, characters eating the dead, dying and needing to resurrect themselves, things like that.”
“Cool,” Ai said.
“Why?” Walter asked.
“I’m trying to gauge everyone, trying to come up with a website to commemorate everyone who died against the Wolf Killer,” Ai said.
“You’ll die before you make it,” Walter said.
“It’s done,” Ai said. “It will auto-post when I die.”
“Really?” Walter asked.
“Yes,” Ai said.
“You can’t have just designed that,” Walter said.
“And yet I did,” Ai said. “I wouldn’t worry about that. I would worry about remembering the fallen. What do you want us to remember about Lance?”
Ghostkin spoke up. “He loved roleplaying, he loved Magic: the Gathering, only played the white cards, was quietly gay, hated himself for being gay, and didn’t want to admit it to anyone.”
“I will remember him,” Ai said. “He will be immortalized. I have taken a thousand posts from him and six reports from his school and posted them, as well as a hundred social media posts by him and about him. They’re on a website on a social media site.
People will regularly go there and remember him.
The website is growing. They will not forget Lance Grey. ”
A text appeared to them.
InfoXTL: I will remember all of you. You have been added to my next information update. I will know everything about you. You will not be forgotten. In a hundred years, the AIs will remember you.
“You must really piss him off,” Jalon said. “Both the human named Ai and the AI named InfoXTL. You both must really piss off the Wolf Killer.”
“I don’t worry about that,” Ai said.
“He’s going to kill you,” Jalon said. “You’re a pretty geek girl genius.”
“I love Caitlyn,” Ai said.
“Still,” Jalon said.
“I’m dead? Is that your argument?”“Yes,” Jalon said.
“I’m trying to calculate the odds and the numbers,” Ai said.
“That’s just a phrase someone says,” Jalon said. “There aren’t actual numbers involved with stopping a serial killer.”
“Yes,” Ai said. “There are. There are patterns in the data. Stay together, stay sober, make smart decisions.”
“No, bullshit,” Jalon said.
“Believe in me or not,” Ai said.
“Not,” Jalon said.
“We have to go,” Walter said. “I have to go. I have to think. I will be back pretty soon.”
“I have to go,” Jalon said. “I have to go remember Lance. I have things to do. I’m glad you are trying to help, Ai. Do what you think is best. I hope you survive.”
He walked away.
Ghostkin and Walter also walked away from the room and towards the main living room to play a board game that was starting.
Ai played on her computer for a few minutes alone. She had a lot of work to do.
The Wolf Killer walked into the room.
He wore a mask. He held a very large knife – a dagger. She looked around. This room held no windows to jump out of. She stood there, not moving, behind a couch, in the far corner of the room. The Wolf Killer tilted his head a bit.
“I have you,” the Wolf Killer said. “You fancy yourself a genius, so I have to kill you. I do apologize. I hate killing pretty geek girls.” “You know what you can do?” Ai asked.
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me,” the Wolf Killer said.
“You can fuck yourself,” Ai said. “Just fucking go away. You are not welcome in this home.”
“I’m just trying to keep it together in an impossible situation,” the Wolf Killer said.
“I know who you are,” Ai said.
“Don’t tell anyone,” the Wolf Killer said.
“You’re that rebel, that angry one,” Ai said. “That’s why you started this. Because Lance and Jalon and Walter and Ghostkin didn’t let you in their group, so now you are killing them.”
“That’s not at all what happened!!” the Wolf Killer raged.
“Oh,” Ai said. “So that’s not exactly what happened.”
“You fucking bitch!” the Wolf Killer yelled. “You fucking evil bitch!”
“I just wonder whether or not you have a friend or are in this alone,” Ai said. “Is she kinky? Does she think I was bad? Was I bad?”
“You all deserve it!”
“Because I fuck Caitlyn, a model? I do. I fuck a model.”
“No! You fucking useless teenager!”
Ai waited for the Wolf Killer to walk into the room, and then she threw a chair at him and bolted around to the entrance to the room.
He chased her, and she started to run at full speed through her mansion.
She bolted through to the main area where Bailey and Beatrice hung out and played a card game.
Half a dozen other people stood around, drinking and talking.
“He’s here,” Ai said.
“Where?” Bailey asked. “I will fuck him up for you. We all will.”
Walter walked into the upstairs bathroom to urinate. He looked straight at the Wolf Killer.