Nowhere to Hide (23 page)

Delamarre's face seemed to go blank for a moment, and then he leaned forward. “How about we make a deal that might save your job? Now that I've got the video I need to protect myself, you go back and tell them you found a way to force me to give you the computer code and sign a deal that delays me going public with the intellitar software for general industry.”

Mundie sighed. “Just when I was thinking about golf, you go all suit on me. Look, it's a bad deal for the CIA. I can't go back to anyone with it.”

“Sooner or later the technology is going to bust loose,” Delamarre said. “You'll only be able to use it a few times until rumors become facts and everyone knows about it anyway. If I give you the code, you'll at least have that window to do as much as you can with it.”

“Two years,” Mundie said.

“Huh?” Delamarre said.

“Two years before you go public.”

“Eighteen months,” Delamarre said. “I'm the one in control now. Take it or leave it. Plus I'll cover scholarships for all these kids if they sign a confidentiality agreement for that eighteen-month period.”

“Taken,” Mundie said.

“And,” Delamarre said, “I'll find a way to spin it so it looked like you guys trapped me, and I'll back you up on all accounts.”

“Golf course is sounding better and better,” Mundie said. “So tell us about intellitars.”

CHAPTER 57

Delamarre faced his small audience in one of his two home-theater rooms. This one had a dozen seats. The big one had sixty.

“This is where I first gave life to my own intellitar,” he said. “And this is where I set up the FaceTime conversation between Amanda's intellitar and Mr. Moore to convince him she was in danger.”

“I didn't know,” Amanda was quick to say. “Really.”

“She didn't,” Delamarre confirmed. “I was able to get the information I needed for the intellitar without her knowledge. That's one of the reasons my software is so incredible. All I really needed was for her to be gone a while so the danger seemed real to Moore. After that, it was a simple matter of tapping into Moore's phone to hear his conversations with Evans and all their plans to try to find her, including the location of the hotel room, and intercepting the email he tried sending to his lawyer. I am, after all, the T. rex of software.”

King was fascinated, not necessarily by Delamarre, but by the digital 3-D clone speaking to them. King had a difficult time believing it was not actually Delamarre. And yet the real Delamarre sat beside him, enjoying his own show and watching the intellitar Delamarre.

“Years ago, it began with special effects in movies,” the Delamarre
intellitar said. “At first it was clumsy, but when technology and software improved, much of the acting was done in front of a blue screen, and the background was put into place behind it. That, of course, is old technology.”

Delamarre's intellitar patted his face, and the soft slap of his palm against his cheek was audible in the quietness of the room.

“As you can see,” the intellitar said, “it looks real. And sounds real. Unless you walked up here and pushed your hand through me, you'd never know.”

“Sir?” came MJ's voice.

“Let me guess,” the intellitar said. “You want to try it?”

“Um, yes.”

MJ was such a child. King loved him for it.

“Go ahead.”

MJ got up from his seat. He walked toward the intellitar. Then through it.

“Cool,” MJ said.

“It is cool,” the real Delamarre said beside King. “Very cool. Worth hundreds of millions in the real world once the CIA gets through with it.”

MJ whirled on the intellitar. “Fist bump?”

“He's going to do the idiotic starburst,” King whispered to Delamarre. “He does that all the time.”

Sure enough. MJ finished the fist bump with wiggly fingers. Looking satisfied, he took his seat in the theater with everyone else.

“So here's what goes into creating an intellitar,” the fake Delamarre said. “Voice recordings. As much information as possible about the person. A complete video scan from all angles. Unfortunately, at this point, we are limited to an intellitar that is clothed the way the real person was clothed.”

Evans spoke in King's direction to the real Delamarre. “But the intellitar is reacting up there without any direction from you. How's that possible?”

“Let me take that question,” the intellitar said. “Think of iPhone's Siri, and then ramp that up three more generations. AI is at the point where —”

“AI?” Mrs. Johnson said. She was sitting at the back. Probably knitting.

“Artificial intelligence,” the intellitar said. “Computers are now at the point where a human can have a typed conversation on a screen without knowing whether the response is coming from another human or from a computer. Our software is similar to how Siri handles it. A giant mainframe computer, responding through the cloud. It stores information about the intellitar, it has access to everything on Google, and it uses the voice of the person set up as the intellitar.”

“How mobile is it?” Moore said.

“We're at the first generation of this,” the intellitar said. “Not very mobile at all. To make the sound seem as if it's coming from my mouth, directional speakers are triangulating the sound at about where my face is. We also need dozens of small microphones in the room to catch any conversations. And of course, we need the dozens of projectors lining this room to send light rays to come in at 360 degrees to give this digital clone the three-dimensional effect.”

King spoke. He found himself directing the question to the intellitar instead of the real Delamarre beside him—that's how mesmerizing all of this was. “There weren't any projectors in the room where I was speaking to you in downtown Seattle. And I don't see any here either.”

“That's because each projector's lens opening is about the size of a dime, and I've built them into these walls. And I knew you were going to be curious about the conference room in Seattle. That's an easy answer. After I set up the prototype here, I leased that conference room permanently and did the same there. I needed a place to demonstrate the intellitar. Somewhere close to my own software company location. I could have asked you to show up immediately, but I waited so it looked like the real Delamarre needed time to fly in and meet with you.”

“So at this point,” Moore said, “the use will be limited to those who can set up a place dedicated to the intellitar.”

“Yes,” came the answer. “At a cost of three hundred million per prototype. Easily affordable to governments. Or businesses that can afford to purchase a personal jumbo jet.”

The intellitar became more animated, like a salesman. “With the next-generation prototype and something that is portable, government figures can address the public without fear of being assassinated.”

Blake said, “And you could make it look like one of the terrorist leaders in the Middle East is telling all his followers to put down their guns.”

“Yes.” This voice came from the real Delamarre, who stood and walked to the front and faced them with his intellitar. They were identical twins, differing only in the clothes they wore. “But it won't fool people for long, and that's when its value to governments as a weapon or a defense will be diminished. I want this to be available for the world to use. It can help people in so many different ways. Real-life hologram meetings—stuff like that.”

“And help the value of your stocks,” Moore said.

Both the intellitar and the real Delamarre grinned.

“Of course.”

Both bowed.

When the real Delamarre stood, he clicked a remote hidden in his hand, and the intellitar faded away.

CHAPTER 58

King sat in a poolside lounge chair. Wrapped in a luxury robe, he held a drink with a little umbrella in it. As he watched the bottom edge of the sun creep down to the ocean's horizon, he reflected on what he'd learned earlier.

Intellitars.

What Delamarre had been able to accomplish through compartmentalized research divisions was in essence a form of digital cloning with new hardware and new software.

King suspected this was just the beginning.

And King also believed Delamarre was right about another thing. Soon enough, the technology would leak out no matter how hard the CIA fought it, and the CIA would lose the effectiveness of it. In the public world, people would find plenty of applications for intellitars.

And, King thought sadly, plenty of misuses for it.

He was getting sleepy again. He knew why—he was finally at the end of the roller-coaster ride of the past few days. And he hadn't felt any panic attacks during the afternoon.

He didn't feel the need to be near his parents. It might have been
because he knew they were safe. Or maybe because he knew he could handle the stress.

King thought, however, it was more than that. In the final numbers of the countdown of Delamarre's intellitar, King had fully believed he would die. When the digital revolver was fired, he'd accepted that his life was over. And he'd been granted a peace he didn't expect. It was like a certainty that leaving his body was the beginning of a journey he didn't need to fear. A warmth still filled him and drove away any sense of dread. The warmth would fade, he expected, but he'd still be able to remind himself of it, just as he could always remind himself of his father's last words on the cliff.

As King began to drift away into his sleep, he smiled at one thing Delamarre had told him privately after the meeting with Moore and Evans and Mundie.

Delamarre had already developed a type of laser beam that was harmless to people but would cut through intellitars to expose them as digital clones. Of course, Delamarre had said, he was going to wait six months or so before he offered it to the CIA.

That might have been his final thought before falling asleep, except Mack strolled up to the chairs.

“Mind if I join you?” Mack asked.

“Was hoping you would,” King answered.

Both watched the sunset in friendly silence. As the final piece of the sun dipped below the horizon, Mack let out a sigh of contentment.

“Glad everything is good,” Mack said.

“Me too,” King answered.

“How good?” Mack asked. “And I'm not looking for an answer where you try to hide from me your phobia of leaving the island.”

King straightened in surprise.

Mack answered the question before King could voice it. “King. We're your parents. It's our job to know stuff about you that you think we don't know.”

“And hide from me that you know it?”

Mack refused to get drawn into an argument, and deflected the
question with a laugh. “Like you were hiding it from us? Our physician told us it was probably panic attacks, based on what we could report to him about you. Was that your conclusion?”

King slumped back. Then a thought hit him.

“Hey,” he said. “That's why you worked so hard to get me off the island with MJ and Blake.”

“Didn't know what else to do. Wasn't going to leave you in the nest forever.”

“Huh,” King said. “It's kind of like you betrayed me, making me get on a helicopter.”

“Harsh,” Mack said. “I'd rather you didn't think of it that way. From our perspective, Ella and I wished you would have opened up about what was bothering you.”

“Didn't want you worried,” King said. “It was already bad enough, getting through the time that she was in a coma. You mad?”

“Son,” Mack said, “in a perfect world, none of us would have to wear masks. But there's a part of being human that makes it irresistible to spend so much time pretending to be something we are not. I'm as guilty of it as the next person, and there are days it feels like old crusty skin. When you love someone, and you are loved back, that's the best chance we have of being who we are, and even then, we have to fight wearing a mask. The situation makes me sad, but no, I'm not mad at you. Let's both try to build on that and do better in the future. You good with that?”

“Yup,” King said, feeling drowsy again.

But sleep was not to be his. Mack patted him on the knee. “Your friends are on the way, so I'm out of here. Last thing I need is MJ to ask me another question, like have I ever wondered about a world with no hypothetical situations.”

Mack bolted. If MJ wasn't telling knock-knock jokes, he had his list of weird questions, like why 7-Eleven stores had locks on the doors if they were always open.

MJ and Blake plunked themselves on chairs beside him.

“Kinger,” MJ said. “You grooving it out here?”

“Grooving it,” King said.

“Hey,” MJ said. “I was wondering. If nothing sticks to Teflon, what makes Teflon stick to the pan?”