Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) (13 page)

“That machine’s name was Watson,” Jacob continued. “I did a lot of the programming for it.” His broad chest swelled with pride. Watson was a project he had been working on with IBM, an advanced artificial intelligence system that could understand and respond to questions posed in casual language; it could decipher natural speech. Puns, cryptic references, quotes from songs and movies; Watson could handle it all. And because it had access to every piece of digitally published information in the world, the system could answer virtually any factual question it was asked.

The culmination of the project, publicly speaking, had been Watson’s appearance on the game show “Jeopardy.” Watson had won the game by a comfortable margin, beating out two previous champions recruited especially for the event. The show was billed as a sort of humans vs. computers challenge.

“My system did well,” Jacob said to himself, remembering.

George looked up at this. He squinted. “
Your
system?”

Jacob came out of his reverie, and he shrugged. “No, you’re right. It wasn’t mine. But I created most of the main algorithms.”

George bit his lip.

“I made most of its brain,” Jacob said.

“
Fine
,” George said, returning to his canvas. He was now trying to steady the strut he had put into place. There were two nails sticking out of the corner joint, and a large staple in the center of the strut. “I’m proud of you,” he added, trying to sound enthusiastic. And failing. Because there wasn’t much to be really proud of, George’s quiet tone said. Where was the thing itself? Where was the elegant tower-and-globe structure that he had seen on the television? Everything Jacob was talking to him about, everything he
ever
talked about, seemed to be hidden in some inaccessible netherworld. Even the things in this room that had been invented by Jacob – and there were dozens of them – had been constructed by someone else. Many of them had been constructed by George, who could put together almost anything if you gave him a set of well-annotated blueprints.

He began trying to work one of the canvas nails into place. His thumbs were nearly equal to the task.

“Wait,” Jacob said. “I’m not done.”

“Still listening.”

“Watson was very advanced, and the system worked well. So we made a bunch of money, just like before. Which is why we get to live here together. It’s why you get to build whatever you want, paint whatever you want. You get that, right?”

George looked up silently. He raised an eyebrow. Whether this expression was due to the actual point Jacob was making or to Jacob’s patronizing tone
was not clear
.

Jacob paused. “You disagree?”

“Well,” George said slowly, “would you still program if I weren’t here to build prototypes?”

“Of course,” Jacob said, looking confused by the question. “Other people can build prototypes. You know that.”

George nodded. “Same with me,” he said. “I would still build and paint things if you weren’t programming. Because other people are willing to pay for well-made prototypes and good paintings.” He looked meaningfully at his brother. “And you get
that
, right?”

“Don’t do that. I didn’t mean… that.”

“Yes
,
you did. But it’s okay.” George put his head back down. The nail in the canvas strut was resisting his efforts. “I could use a hammer,” he said quietly.

Jacob let out a breath of air. He smiled kindly, as though acknowledging a clever point made by a child. “Okay,” he said gently. “Okay. You’re right, you’d be fine on your own. But listen.” He put his hands flat on the desk, and with a great effort he pushed himself up slowly to a standing position. “
Listen
.” He tried to put some drama into his voice. He made his face into a mask of dread. “This is serious. There’s a man out there who wants to take away both our jobs. Make us obsolete. My inventions, your paintings and prototyping. He’s working on a system that would jump right past Watson.
Way
past it. The government’s got him locked up tight, deep in a research facility somewhere, because he thinks he’s found a solution to a problem with NP complexity.” Jacob shook his head. “And
that
would send us diving straight into the singularity.”

George eyes went dark. He hadn’t followed any of that last business, but the idea of making inventing obsolete – or painting, or building things, for that matter – was absurd. Absurd and also worrisome. His brother was given to making dramatic statements, but he was also no fool. If he was this worked up, there was something bad going on. He had George’s attention now.

Jacob sat back down, letting out a relieved breath as his legs were allowed to relax again. “Yes,” he said. “And this is real.”

“Explain.”

“It’s too difficult. You have to trust me.”

George shook his head. “No. Try.”

Jacob sighed. He looked around the room, as though searching for something on the walls that could help him begin. Then he looked back at his brother.

“We have to start with the idea of NP.”

“Which is?”

Jacob narrowed his eyes. “NP is the thing that keeps humanity from becoming absolutely useless.”

George rolled his eyes. Dramatic proclamations again. “Please.”

But Jacob pressed forward, undaunted. “No, listen to me. NP is the whole thing. It’s the boundary between life as we know it and a life of idle nothingness. If they get past NP, we may as well not exist.”

George sighed. “I’m going to need a little more detail on that,” he said, trying not to sound sarcastic.

“NP is a type of problem, it’s – ”

One of the computer terminals on the desk bonged softly.

Jacob stopped talking and frowned at the screen. He made no move to answer the call; unscheduled communications were not part of the protocol. But then he saw the call’s origin, and he decided that the NP discussion would have to wait. The Organizer was calling him back, and the Organizer knew Jacob’s protocol rules perfectly well. Which meant this was something truly important. Jacob reached out and hit the key to accept the connection.

The Organizer’s face popped into view, and George took the opportunity to get back to his work. He got up from the chair and headed for his work area in the far corner of the room.

“Talk,” Jacob said to the screen.

“We’ve got some information on one of the undercovers. Got it from a mole in the main training facility.”

“This couldn’t wait?”

The Organizer shook his head. “My guy says they’ve got a scrubbed agent in place.”

“Scrubbed?”

“It means it’s a guy whose been trained, but then partially wiped,” the Organizer said. “Doesn’t know he’s been trained. Doesn’t even know he’s secret service.”

Jacob frowned. “Then what good is he? He’s not even a sleeper. If he doesn’t know, he’s the same as one of the regular teachers. He’s back to being just a guy in a cheap tie.”

“Well, yes and no. There’s no way to spot him, which worries me. There’s no record of him; they would have put him through a different training center, because this is a brand new program. And then they’d make sure only one or maybe two very high-level agents know who he is. So our guy on the inside can’t make an I.D.; the agent is completely invisible.”

Jacob squinted at the screen. “I still don’t see what you’re talking about,” he said. “I don’t care if you can’t spot him. He’s not a threat. He’s just a guy with a memory problem.”

“That’s the other thing,” the Organizer said. “First, he’d still have any physical training they gave him, though he might not even realize it. But way more important is that scrubbed agents pick stuff up. They reacquire the rest of their training – and pretty much any other information they come across – almost automatically. Without even meaning to. Something about the wiping process turns them into learning mach
ines. They’re like sponges. So i
t doesn’t take long for them to get back to where they were. They learn
fast
.”

Jacob turned away from the computer. He peered out the window that looked out over Park Avenue. Bits of sky were visible between the buildings across the street, and wisps of blue were starting to appear. The sun was coming up.

“How fast?” he said, turning back to the screen. “In time for Parents’ Day? Fast enough to be in our faces by next Friday?”

The Organizer shrugged. “No idea. Like I said, it’s a brand new technique. Whoever this guy is, he’s probably just one of their backup plans. But if he comes up to speed in time, he could be a real pain in the ass. We’d never see him coming. He can’t even see
himself
coming until the last second.”

“How do they turn him on?”

“What?”

“When it’s
time
,” Jacob barked. He was growing angry. This was an unexpected development, and he didn’t like surprises. Especially not surprises made of securely cloaked undercover agents with unlimited aptitude and who-knows-what other capabilities.

God, I hate the government.

“When something goes down,” Jacob said, “how does this scrubbed guy even know that he’s supposed to be an agent? How do they turn him on?”

“Again, no idea.”

“Jesus.” Jacob shook his head. All at once he was not simply angry. He was furious. This was not the way it was supposed to go. “You have
nothing
,” he said. He was controlling himself, but with difficulty. “All you have is a scrap of questionable intel from an unreliable source – ”

“My source is not the – ”

“A
completely
unreliable source who’s making up horseshit about phantom agents with super learning powers, and I can’t believe I’m even listening to this.” Jacob jabbed a finger at the screen. “It’s
nothing
,” he said again, his voice turning to a hiss
of
anger. “And it’s obvious you’re trying to renegotiate or squeeze some more money out of me for padding or for extra personnel, or maybe you’re trying to back out all together, I don’t know. But I don’t care what angle you’re trying to play, and I want to make this clear right now,
none
of that is going to happen. We’re going forward exactly as we planned, as
you
planned, right on schedule for next Friday, and you’re going to take care of business just like you said you would. And if you don’t, I’ll strip you. If you blame your failure on some fairy-tale, ghost-in-the-machine crap about secret agents hiding on the grassy knoll, I’ll put the word out that your unit is an empty suit. I’ll tell everyone that you can’t be trusted to take out an old lady in an empty parking lot, and then you and your team of freaks can go back to snuffing out drug lords in Venezuela or hunting down lost cats or whatever you do when you’re not risking the success of an incredibly simple, incredibly important job.”

The Organizer did not respond. He kept his mouth shut and his eyes forward for the duration of this little diatribe, which had taken on the tone of a general’s rebuke.