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Nico's eyes widened as he followed Lakshmi and Stephanie through the warehouse. All of the building structures were flexible, even the robot corral. The walls moved. seemingly of their own accord, to create meeting rooms and private call rooms as needed. While he walked, he realized that the walls were controlled by small armies of drones working together to shape the company's workspace.
It was a neat trick, but it set Nico's teeth on edge for some reason. He'd think on it later that night when he got back to his room in Palm Springs. Meantime, the robot corral currently occupied the building's center, an atrium where several dozen even smaller drones hovered, awaiting commands.
In their center, a programmer wearing goggles and what looked like a falconer's glove stood. The glove's a data port that allows Cameron, Stephanie pointed at the programmer, to quickly update the software. It's not perfect, and we won't have the luxury of using it in trials, but for fast rollouts and on-the-fly development here, she paused, letting her terrible pun soak in, it's useful.
From within the gyre of hovering drones, Cameron waved. They are our best programmer by far, and their team's also top-notch, Lakshmi said. The trio kept walking to the desks beyond the atrium. Rows of tablets and their programmers. Lists of to-dos and cascading trouble spots on floating whiteboards. Drones everywhere, hovering. The watch over lamps were open plan, and like in open plan spaces the world over, some programmers sat on couches and mats on the floor. Some stood.
A few drones perched on a charging wall beside the desks, occasionally twitching as their software was updated. Has it coming, Tama? Stephanie said in a low voice to a programmer covered with tattoos. It's alright. The man replied, his voice intensely kiwi. I figure we'll be able to keep ahead of the time delay problem pretty well. He shrugged then, and Stephanie looked frustrated, Lakshmi even more so. Tama.
We need to be perfect, not pretty well, Lakshmi said. I'm not sure how much I can impress upon everyone how our funding is driven by how well we... Stephanie put her hand out, hovering in the air over a drone, and Lakshmi stopped. We'll do all right, she said. Right, Tama? The New Zealander nodded and relaxed. We will.
He turned back to his keyboard, his gaze focused. As they walked away, Nico assessed Stephanie with new eyes. You know your people really well, he said. I like to think so, she agreed. Then she shifted the subject. This is the sterile room where the drones are made. Our strategy is flexibility, as much as Trey's is control. Or it was before we left. Lakshmi lifted a drone in one hand.
This one was tinier than the others Nico had seen, or at least the ones he'd noticed, and looked like a moth with rotors for wings. We think a drone swarm, essentially a hive mind, is more amenable to the rigors of Mars than a single station controller with worker robots. If one part of the swarm is damaged, the other parts can take over.
WatchOver programmers have taken familiar logic languages, Lisp and Ros on the robotic side, Prolog, Lisp, and Arpacode on the AI side, and evolved a custom language for our company. DevLock has its own too, but they're entirely separate codebases and separate philosophies. DevLock commands. We iterate. Lakshmi Grind. Amenable. Rigors of Mars. Robotics philosophy. Nico shook his head. Who spoke that way? But Lakshmi's point about a swarm's flexibility made sense.
Over here, we have the simulation control room. Stephanie guided him deeper into the building. Her enthusiasm was a balm in the face of the earlier tension. Nico looked into the simulation room. It looked like mission control from JPL, with cameras on a desert area. Nico had spent a little time visiting JPL Albuquerque in preparation for this gig. He grinned. This at least was familiar.
That's where we test the components, Stephanie said. One's about to go on trial now. Watch. As Nico looked, a group of drones rose off the desert floor and began extruding additional robots. A gray shape slowly formed, then began digging, even as it was being finished. Lakshmi said, Mars requires several main behaviors. Dig and build, adapt and reuse.
This digger satisfies the first set of requirements. Once the robot had dug the hole, the drones repositioned themselves, took the robot to pieces, and rebuilt it into a construction machine. They're capable of designing any component on the fly, based on need, Stephanie added. That's what got us the patents. Watchover had applied for six patents in the second week of its founding.
None of them bore any hallmarks of DevLock's published code, Stephanie reassured him. You'd been thinking about this a long time. Nico was admiring. But he also couldn't take his mind off the fact that if he had drones like these, his historic home in Santa Fe, his pride and joy, would be painted in far less time. He saw the appeal, for sure. Stephanie shrugged.
Maybe if Trey had decided to go with a less totalitarian build, Lakshmi grinned. Never in his life would he do that. Hey, you all? Cameron emerged from the atrium, pulling off the data glove. Do you have a minute to look at the code I just finished? Lakshmi nodded, but Stephanie put her hand on her co-founder's arm. Wait, we can't keep doing this for them. Cameron, we trust you.
We don't need to validate your code line by line. If it compiles and solves the problem and your team has vetted it, send it up to compliance and we'll get it on board. I know, Cameron said, but I still would like you to see it before the machine runs. You're going to need to get used to being part of management over here, Cameron, Lakshmi said. Watchover's a different company, and Stephanie's right. We trust you.
Neither woman looked at Nico for approval, even though technically he was part of the decision tree on code and whatnot. But this time, he figured he'd let it slide. Watchover's co-founders seemed to have things really well in hand, at least for the moment. And Nico's job was to help them do their jobs, nothing more. He was already making lots of notes for how to do that, starting tomorrow.
Meantime, Nico followed Lakshmi and Stephanie across the warehouse, hoping that, at some point, the building would create a space where he could hang up his jacket and plug in his tablet. So far, no one had offered to make a space for him. He was sure that was an oversight. Instead, the two conspired to lure him out at day's end. You can sleep in one of the company pods, watch us crunch tonight, get the robots ready for tomorrow. But first, some downtime.
The challenge won't arrive until midnight east coast time. Downtime? Nico wondered what that looked like out here. He'd heard there wasn't a lot of culture. We're all going to the moonshot. You'll see. Come with us. Cameron, the lead programmer, emerged from the unisex bathroom. Their outfit shifted from camp utilitarian to cyber goth. Come meet the dog, at least. I do like dogs, Nico acknowledged.
He missed his own pair of Bouviers who ruled the house back in Santa Fe. Ipso and facto. Okay, so why not? It was a good way to break the ice with the new team. He piled into Stephanie's three-row SUV along with Lakshmi, noting the two car seats in the back. How are the twins, Stephanie? Like any good venture cap guide, he'd done his homework.
They're wonderful, Stephanie beamed as she drove down the empty desert road toward the moonshot bar. Pride and joy, joy and pride. Even as she spoke happily about her kids, There was an edge to Stephanie's voice. Nico could easily guess what or who caused it. It was a hard edge that had been there since Trey burst in. His reading of that situation had eased things a little, and Nico hoped a few more days would soothe the difficulty of having a new executive added to the company.
He'd done it before and was sure he could make his way through to helping watch over too. Wonderful, he said as the bar's silver structure appeared in the distance, a bright gleam in the desert's arid landscape. The California desert sun sank lower in the sky, turning the part of the moonshot bar that was once Smith's own silver airstream to gold.
The metallic entrance and softly arched front seating area looked like a spaceship embedded in a larger metal building, the larger space constructed out of shipping containers lined with NASA heat shielding. A new sign with antique light bulbs powered from the solar array out back read, Moonshot, beside an arrow pointing up. Inside, the bartender readied for guests.
It was nearing five o'clock, and, though the high desert's AI innovators didn't usually start appearing until after six, it was good to be ready. At the moonshot, Smits had always thought of himself as the bartender. It was a simple, easy way to shift roles to his job here. To address himself as if he was a program, running menu items, recipes.
The bartender put out a fresh round of avocado-flavored cheese puffs. He stacked glasses. He oiled the dog. Briefly, he considered going up to the roof to check the telescope, but it was far too bright outside still. Occasionally, the bartender would shift the screens behind him to night mode, so they wouldn't, even with the glasses he sometimes wore now, bother his eyes.
The old screen door squeaked authentically as a few early birds from town straggled in. Water, please, one said. A young sunburned woman wearing climbing overalls, round wire-rimmed glasses, and thick boots. Her companion, a dark-skinned guy with a shoulder full of climbing gear and a chalk bag hanging off his hip, waved a calloused hand. Two, plus a whiskey. Here for game night? The bartender guessed.
These two, Becky and James from University of St. Louis, as he recalled, hadn't been in for a year. Of course, and bagging some B6 boulders now that school's done. Games are on Thursdays now. Ever since the main company in town had split in two, game night was on Thursdays. It wasn't that Tuesdays were viewed as bad luck, just that DevLock had become DevLock and WatchOver on a Tuesday, and Tama Fakide, who ran Game Night, hadn't come in that night.
The following Thursday, Tama had set up tables full of pandemic and terraforming Venus like everything was normal, and the bar had rolled with it. Programmers got set in a pattern, and it took a major event to deviate. But once that happened, it was good to just keep running on the new track unless there was a reason not to. And Smith saw no reason to upset the new balance.
People needed a constant, a safe place. The bartender and the moonshot existed to provide both. Well, crap! Might hang around anyway, said Becky. A friend who delivered lunch to DevLock today said everyone was wound tighter than usual. We were hoping to find out what's going down. The code overload livestream isn't telling us anything.
The bartender had a good guess as to what had gone down on this particular Tuesday, but chose to keep quiet. Tell the dog what you want. James looked surprised. Really? A whirring and stomping sound came from behind the wood packing crate bar, and then the dog appeared. It was a robot dog, barrel thick around the middle, stocky legs, metal parts covered in a dark canvas, with a newer head tacked on. Isn't that one of those antiques from the robot challenges a while ago?
Sudo's a rescue from Boston Dynamics, the bartender said. It's polite to say hello. Hi, Sudo, James said obligingly. The dog's eyeband pulsed, and woof appeared in glowing amber letters across his main faceplate. Cute, said Becky. She did some sort of electronic art in St. Louis. You should have named it Beta, James said. The bartender shrugged. It named itself. A car's wheels ground the parking lot's gravel outside the bar. Pseudo.
The bartender turned away from his guests. We'll take your order. Whiskey sour, James said. The dog didn't move. What gives? The bartender wiped down the counter again slowly. You have to give the proper command. It's name plus a verb, then the drink. James chuckled. Pseudo, make me a whiskey sour. The dog gave an audible bark and bounced loudly off behind the bar, its pistons and fans whirring. That's hilarious, James said. I think it's sweet, said Becky.
She sipped her water from a metal straw, even as the glass sweated a puddle onto the copper bar. The light shifted in the moonshot as several young programmers wearing DevLock company gear entered and sat down. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy, customizable themes that let you build your brand. Marketing tools that get your products out there.
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fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. If I play you something... We'll promise not to tell anyone about it. What is it? There's a thing in the sky. You've got to get someone down here quick. It's fucked.
It's buzzing. It's getting closer, I think. I need to talk to someone senior. What are you through now? No, no, Poppy. It's getting louder. I can feel it. I can feel it inside my head. Listen to Hovering, the latest fiction horror show on Realm's premiere horror channel, Undertow. Hovering is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Blue shirts were for programmers and engineers. White for executives. Gray for everyone else. One of Trey's organizational ticks. This team spoke quietly.
A few moments later, more came in, cramming into the booth, then pulling up a few metal chairs for the overflow. When a small group of watchovers team entered, wearing whatever they wanted, sarcastic t-shirts, organic tunics, leggings, overalls, their boisterous laughter filled the bar, raising the hair on the bartender's arms.
Jay took seats at a table halfway down the shipping containers, in the shadows. The bartender made the drink and held it out to the dog. A robot arm extended from the dog's back and gently cradled the glass. Then the dog began walking again toward James and handed him his drink. Perfect, thanks. A bit slow, though, don't you think? It's a work in progress, Smets acknowledged. Hey, Cameron!
A devlock programmer shouted to the watch over team. You going to come back once Trey crushes your company into oblivion? Hey, the bartender shouted. He pointed to a sign plastered across the copper bar's front. It read, in large, sans-serif type, No work banter. No trash talk. No poaching. The moonshot is neutral territory. Sorry, Smits, the offender said. It's been a rough day. I forgot. The others looked chagrined, but returned to talking in low tones.
The ginger-haired half-Japanese reporter from Code Overload slipped through the screen door next and handed his cameras and recorders to the bartender as agreed. Off-duty? The bartender asked, only half-kidding. For now, Hiro Watanabe said. Can I have a coffee? Something hot? The kid was nearly shivering in the middle of the desert. Trey put you in the freezer. The bartender winced. That was not a good sign.
The bartender instructed Sudo to circulate, taking drink orders from the tables as they filled. Mostly caffeine-based drinks, as if the coders were expecting to go back to work. A lot of fries. He attached a wide platter to its back and placed drinks there, shoved an order through to the automated kitchen for fries and tofu tenders. As he worked, he gathered the threads of today's drama, listening as intently as the locals.
The IARPA bid had dropped. They were waiting for the first challenge to be delivered. Since the disaster in LA, they'd been working to save humanity. And now, it was happening. Smits felt the old pull of a problem set on his ex-programmer's hands, and on his still-a-programmer heart. Now, he couldn't. He absolutely could not get pulled back into this. He'd lose much more than his ability to look at screens. It hurt too much to even think about. Instead, the bartender focused on what he could do.
Keep trying to build a community out of intense, hyper-competitive rivals. He'd taken a play from the book of another California desert bar, which had offered Air Force pilots who visited the nearby dude ranch a free steak dinner when they broke the sound barrier. It had been thought impossible. Soon, everyone was doing it. The bartender put a sign on the bar, encased in Lucite. Free drinks for a month to the creator of an unbiased algorithm.
A few of the coders read the sign and shook their heads, laughing. It was a good joke, at least. Hey, that's cool of you. Like Poncho Barnes, right? A young woman wearing DevLock blues smiled at him across the bar. She wore a soft yellow headscarf that complemented the blue shirt. Kid knows the finer details of Air Force pilots and sound barrier history. How interesting. You got it.
Smits wiped the already clean bar, trying to remember if he'd seen her at DevLock before he retired. Yeah, but just by a few days. He'd never seen her in the bar before today. You're Noor, right? How are you holding up? The young woman smiled shyly, but her gaze remained intense. You have pineapple juice? Can you heat it? You're a singer? He'd known a couple of singers.
Hot pineapple juice was a favorite. Want anything else in it? Nothing, thanks, Noor said. I don't drink. But she didn't answer his other question. You were in the freezer too? He finally asked, handing her the warm glass. Yeah, working with the AI. Nora's face lit up. I think I finally had a breakthrough with it. You can't have a breakthrough with a robot.
Watanabe muttered crankily into his tea. Well, we did anyway, Nora replied, then went back to her table. Humanities Major thinks she can code, Watanabe said. Now the bartender remembered. Trey had hired a sociologist in an effort to give his AI resiliency, thought that would be better than the ideas Stephanie and Lakshmi had put forward to duplicate systems.
Apparently, Trey's sociologist had been teaching herself to code. Smits winced. That wasn't likely to go over well with the pros. She seemed happy enough at her table of devlock staff, though. The bartender began to relax. Soon enough, someone put a dollar in the jukebox. Someone else called the dog over to their table. Tama from Watchover said, Sudo, make me a sandwich.
Sudo sat next to him. Sudo did not make sandwiches. Sudo, come, Cameron said quietly. The robot dog rose and approached Watchover's lead programmer. Cameron Davidson was goth femme today. A lace collar and dark fabric bustier, fingerless gloves laced up to their elbows. Looked a bit like armor. Sudo sat obediently at their side, similarly dark, its fans whirring expectantly. Ah, here we go, Watanabe said, smiling for the first time since he'd entered the bar. He leaned forward to watch.
Do you know, Cameron said, pressing dark cherry lips together and waiting, as if the entire room would listen, and listen it did, that you can train any dog, even olds. It's all in the way you ask. Cameron wasn't speaking to the whole bar, though. They were addressing an older man in a suit, who didn't look very comfortable among a team of young programmers.
Lakshmi and Stephanie, who the bartender hadn't seen come in with the group, nodded and elbowed the man. Watch and learn, Nico, Stephanie said. This was a game the bartender had thought up as a way to make the moonshot more friendly to the rival programming teams after the split. He jokingly called it his one best idea, ignoring all his patents and designs prior to this. You were only as good as your next best idea in this part of the desert, and Sudo was his.
He let a few people in on the secret. Cameron was one. He poured Cameron a beer and watched what they did next. Cameron pulled out a piece of e-paper, recycled, and wrote a series of alphanumeric phrases on it with an electronic pencil. They're writing ARPA code commands from memory, someone half-whispered. That's hardcore. Then Cameron fed the paper to the robot dog. The dog digested the paper, a visual reader hidden inside its mouth doing most of the work.
Its eyes lit up and the display read, compiled. It barked once. Everyone looked at the dog. Pseudo, sit, Cameron said. No way. Someone at the dev-lock table whispered, that's too many moves for just a quick piece of code. But Sudo sat. The bar exploded into applause. Oh, can I try? Noor had never been in the bar before, and some around her scoffed. No, really, I've been practicing. You've been learning oper code? Thomas said, his forehead wrinkling.
He looked like he didn't know whether to laugh or get angry. You're a sociologist. But Cameron grinned. Of course. Their eyes lingered over Noor's face. Noor might have blushed as the robot dog rose and lumbered over to her. She lifted the electronic pencil from the can on her table and a piece of paper from beneath the can and wrote fast. Her hand flew across the paper.
When she was finished, the bar waited quietly as she fed the paper to the dog. Sudo chewed, barked once. Sudo, Noor said. Lie down. Never gonna work. The reporter scoffed. A few others muttered agreement, including Tama. Noor's code didn't even use normal line break standards. She had no clue what she was doing. But Sudo barked again. Then... lay down, rolled over and went to sleep, its fans slowing to a quiet whirr. Wait, I wanted a drink, Tama shouted. Noor was trying not to laugh with joy.
The rest of the bar looked on in silent shock. Cameron stared at the young woman, stunned. Pseudo, Cameron said. Come here. The robot dog barked and got up, then trotted, joints and pistons squeaking over to Cameron. The watch-over programmer grabbed the pen and another piece of paper, covered it with their arm, and wrote madly for a moment, then fed the paper to the dog. Sudo barked again and lay down. Cameron groaned theatrically and the bar crowd whispered, Give it a minute.
Watchover's lead programmer said, a bit more confident than they'd let on. A second later, Sudo stood up and walked over to Tama. Text scrolled across its eyeshade. I dreamed you a sandwich. The bartender watched as his dog padded to the bar and printed an order from between its teeth. Amazing, Smits said to the silent room. How much a drink recipe is like code. Garbage in, garbage out, the reporter joked. The two townies laughed. The recipe compiled nicely.
A beer pour for the bread, plus a side shot of bacon vodka for the meat. A celery stalk for the garnish. One sandwich, he shouted, and sent the drink to Tama. The entire bar erupted in joyful laughter. Sudo carried the drink over, and a tattooed programmer drank the shot, then sipped the beer approvingly. Only the bartender noticed that Noor and Cameron had locked eyes momentarily, and were now attempting to ignore each other. It wasn't working.
Whenever Noor moved, Cameron glanced around the room to see where she'd gone, and vice versa. What's up everyone? It's Noah Daniels. Hey y'all, I'm JJ. Hey guys, it's Kat. We're your hosts of the Real Hauntings Podcast. We bring on guests who share their first-hand encounter ghost stories and supernatural experiences. Now on to the trailer. I've been warned to not tell this story, but I think because of the way it ends, it's okay to tell this story.
Because some people say that with certain entities, to speak of them or talk about them or in any way portray them as powerful will attract them to other people. The creepiest thing about it to me is a lot of times it would wait for me to notice it. Like it would just lay its arm out like this and then I'd be like, where is it? Where is it? And then I'd see it and then it would just slither back.
For more information on the Real Hauntings, Real Ghost Stories podcast, make sure you check out real.fm to learn more about our podcast and many other amazing podcasts. Welcome to Sagas of Sundry Goblin Mode. It's a brand new fantasy series that uses tabletop role-playing games to tell an ever-evolving story. Goblin mode follows a group of underdogs. Okay, more like underlings, who suddenly find themselves the masters of their own destiny.
The adventure begins September 9th. Join Geek and Sundry in Rome for Sagas of Sundry Goblin Mode. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Embedded Reporter Private Message to Producers. I know you all worked out some airtight agreements with DevLock, and legal will hate me, but I really think it will make a better story if I somehow cover the watch over angle as well.
There are a few candidates, even. Check out Tama Fakete and Cameron Davidson on LinkedIn. Both have amazing skills and excellent flaws besides. I know there's no way I could get close to bask or sing. They're too locked down. But maybe I can try to crack someone in the lower echelons. Let me know what you think. Hito, out. And transmission.
Before Stephanie entered the moonshot, she'd scanned the parking lot for Trey's car. She swore she'd never let him get to her like that again. But he always got to her like that. Even at college, he'd egged her on, annoyed her. He'd made her better, made her think harder, goddammit. That was the worst part. Because he enjoyed it, and she didn't.
He liked the game called Make Stephanie Blow Up. She just wanted to build things, so she had to think twice as fast as him. Now he was trying to break her again by claiming she'd stolen code. When she and Lakshmi had been so diligent about that from the start, documenting everything, he wouldn't stop.
Not until she lost her shit in front of everyone again, and this time, with the goal in sight, Stephanie would not fall for it. She sat in the bar, glaring at the door, daring Trey to come in here too. Of course he could. No one would stop him from walking into the moonshot. But that night, he didn't. She sipped at her beer and texted Marta back at the house. The twins were in bed. She'd said goodnight over video.
And Marta was sleepy too. Who wouldn't be after minding two toddlers all day? Do you want me to come home before the challenge drops? You stay. Do what you need to do. I believe in you 100%. Marta texted back. Kick Trey and the entire patriarchy in the pants for me. Stephanie planned to do just that. She looked around the bar.
listening to her team laugh and tease Nico gently, watching DevLock's programmers slowly finish their drinks and leave as their pagers went off. Soon, there were no blue shirts in the bar at all. Only gray and white. Stephanie was about ready to head back to her desk, too. The stars were out. It was almost midnight on the East Coast. The challenge would drop at midnight DC time, and they'd have 48 hours to start the robots running. Yes, Trey was absolutely 100% wrong about their disagreement.
and he was likely very wrong about the AI too. Soon enough, out in the desert, they'd see whether Watchover's swarm philosophy outdid DevLock's more traditional single AI philosophy. The ground truth would sort everything out. As long as Trey didn't screw things up for watch over at IARPA. Marta texted again. You know you're better than him, code-wise. You and Lakshmi both. And Watchover's innovation on the AI problem is revolutionary. You're going to be great. Stephanie smiled.
Marta always knew what to say, reassuring Stephanie that she believed in Watch Over 2. But it almost hadn't mattered today when Trey got in her face. He just made her so mad, and Stephanie knew that she could not afford to get that mad. Her tablet buzzed again. 9 p.m. on the dot. She tapped the message from Wynne Mallory at IARPA and read the challenge. Time to lead the way to the future. Stephanie stood as Lakshmi moved away from the bar.
Side by side, they walked out into the parking lot with Nico in tow. They didn't look back or page anyone. They knew their team would follow them back across the desert. Beyond the Moonshot's main rooms, a service hallway wound through the Airstream's hull and the shipping container walls, to the bar's pantry and coolers, a rooftop access ladder, and the restrooms.
Cameron headed that way as soon as their bosses stood to leave the bar. While Stephanie, Nico, and Lakshmi climbed into the eco-car with the toddler seats in the way back that Stephanie insisted on driving even though Marta took the kids everywhere. Cameron lingered. No way did Cameron want to ride with the bosses going over their checklists right now. They'd get a ride back in his self-driver.
Besides, the minute they walked inside Watchover, all the tightly wound pre-launch tension would return, and Stephanie's nerves and Nico's questions in the car would interfere with that process. Tension could be a useful tool if released at the right time, Cameron knew. They didn't want to burn theirs up before the first IARPA Marsight test began. Timing was everything.
Another ten minutes at the moonshot would be perfect. Besides, they had to use the can. They looked down the hallway in order to make sure that kid from Code Overload magazine wasn't lurking somewhere. He wasn't. Cameron finished up and touched up their lip palette, then faced the mirror. Launch time, they said. Then they pushed open the restroom door with emphasis and stepped back into the hallway.
colliding with Noor, who was coming the other direction. In the blue safety lights, Noor's eyes sparkled like stars. She put her hand out to the wall for balance, but didn't step aside. Neither did Cameron. Oh, sorry. Cameron's stomach clenched, nervous, but not for the usual reasons. For a moment, Noor stood so close. The thin layer of her corporate shirt, the only thing keeping her shoulder from touching Cameron's bare arm. The air in the service hallway seemed to crackle with electricity.
But that, Cameron decided, was nothing more than the usual pre-test tension. Still, ever since Noor reprogrammed the dog, stealing Cameron's spotlight, She'd been the most interesting person Cameron had met lately. Though, if they were honest with themselves, Cameron did remember her from those last days at DevLock. A little. More than a little.
They remembered hearing her laugh. Now, Noor peered up at them, her headscarf shifting to reveal dimples set to each side of her puckish grin. She looked like she was almost ready to laugh. Ready for a little competition? She asked instead. And then, amazingly, she blushed. Sorry, that's trash talk, isn't it? Strictly forbidden in the moonshot. Not exactly trash talk.
Cameron said. Was their heart beating faster? How could someone this naive about tech life have done that? Ah, then I'll have to practice, the young woman said. She still hadn't moved. Hey, you'll know the answer to this. Is there really a telescope up on the roof? Can anyone go up there? I wanted to see if I could spot Mars.
Cameron was deeply tempted to offer themself as rooftop tour guide to the sociologist. It would give them time to ask where Noor had learned to code. But Cameron had to focus now. On the watch over AI, that was. They nodded carefully. There is, and you can. They pointed at the ladder. Just don't get locked out.
They drew a breath, trying not to babble at Noor. I go up there a lot. It calms me when I get too stressed at work. Overclocked. Noor chuckled at that. I understand overclocking completely. Cameron chuckled, too, and tried to think of something more interesting to say about Mars, about giving humanity a chance up there. Something. Their tablet buzzed right then. A message from simplicity.
All watch over staff report in ASAP. The challenge has been delivered. Cameron bit their black cherry lipstick, smearing it. They stammered, I have to go. The last thing Cameron wanted to do suddenly was leave the moonshot, then or ever. I know, Norr smiled, but we'll see each other again. Go be great.
Cameron chewed their lips some more, tasting the lipstick. They wanted to say something more in return, but nothing was coming out. They felt like a fish in the desert, their mouth opening and closing. To Cameron, Noor's words seemed to echo melodically in the close hallway. Then Noor turned to the ladder and began to climb, the fabric of her scarf brushing the shoulders of her ocean blue corporate watchover shirt.
whispering soft goodbyes. Cameron's throat finally made a sound, too, almost a, see you, but it was less musical and more strangled at the end by their nerves. Focus, Cameron. They fixed their eyes on the hallway's end, the bar, and getting back to headquarters. When they stepped outside into the nearly empty parking lot, a breeze carried a few notes of music from the bar. A melody.
A lullaby, almost. Cameron realized that wasn't the bar's jukebox. It was coming from the moonshot's roof, where Noor had gone, to look at Mars and, apparently, to sing. They listened for a moment, then somehow got themselves into one of the remaining watch over self-driving cars and back to headquarters. The minute they walked through the door, Simplicity greeted them with,
Watchover employees are now on IARPA competition lockdown. No communication with anyone outside the company regarding Test 1 competition matters will be allowed. No interactions outside of designated neutral zones will be allowed. Please sign this document acknowledging. And Cameron signed in a daze, then got to work preparing the drone swarm to operate through IARPA's stated first trial signal delay, 17 minutes of light speed.
That was 34 minutes for each instruction confirmation series. 34 minutes per cycle with the robots where things could go wrong, and then, with each command, continue to cascade into greater wrongness without ceasing. Cameron felt panic rising at the possible outcomes and worked even harder to offset the risks, coding all night long. Drones flew in small flocks around watchover headquarters as Cameron's team put them through their paces.
Lakshmi came through the labs, looking at data on various tablets, checking things off. Stephanie stared out into the desert, occasionally reviewing models of swarm behavior in various weather conditions. The challenge. to build a shelter, half dug, half raised, that would withstand a storm on Mars in 48 hours. They'd prepared for this. The drones had practiced.
Only once had a build gone wrong. Back when Cameron still worked at DevLock. And then it had gone really, really wrong. No, Cameron wasn't going to think about that. Their eyes focused on the task at hand. Their thoughts would not stray to the place where the Mesa had been. They checked and double-checked the swarm's code. It was independent, but it wouldn't decide to completely disassemble. No, Cameron wasn't going to think about that either.
Not now. Not so close to the test. They still shuddered when they thought about the loss of ecology, even in the desert. They couldn't think of any of that. They couldn't think about anything but success. Cameron hummed to themselves, the tune they'd heard coming from the moonshot. Slowly, surely, they felt better.
It wasn't until the next morning, when the robots were ready to go out in the desert and the teams were sipping coffee and watching the sunrise, that Cameron groaned, realizing they'd been so focused on getting back to watch over and so stunned by the night's events that they hadn't gotten Nora's contact information or even tried to pass her their private key. Back at DevLock, Trey was on the static Strider again.
The dark desert ranged before him as the last of the devlop cars but two left the parking lot. A quiet noise. Denise Cho stood next to the strider, clearing her throat. Her white shirt and gray skirt looked as well-pressed as they had this morning. Her hair was still perfect, too. Denise was a quality employee. You going to be here a while still, boss? She asked.
All night, likely, Trey said. It wasn't like he had much to go back to. His ex had the kids most of the time, and his desert apartment looked exactly like the office. The same designer had done everything. Besides, he wanted to be focused for the test implementation. I'll make sure Facility sends up another suit, Denise said. I'm heading out. See you in a few hours, Trey answered. Crunch time was for everyone.
A few minutes later he watched her headlights shine across the purple desert and wind up into the hills. As more and more stars slowly came out, a river of light filled the sky. The desert before Trey looked as empty as the red planet far above them, the one they were preparing everything for. Trey knew DevLock needed to win. Humanity's future depended on it.
More importantly, his future and his legacy depended on it. And he'd been so certain he'd win. None of the other company's research had come close in recent years, even after the split. But now, alone in the dark, he felt a small doubt. He'd prove to IARPA that they'd stolen code. He had to. But what if he couldn't?
Trey worked out on the Strider faster, feeling like he could launch himself into space if he moved fast enough. He'd win, even against his own former teammates. He had to. The Strider gave one polite ping. His secure line messages. A text? This late? It was four o'clock on the East Coast. Maybe someone as hungry as Trey was trying to get the jump on the morning rush. He stepped off the strider and looked at his watch.
The message came up, originator unknown, which wasn't possible. Not for access to Trey's system, anyway. So, of course, that intrigued Trey. He grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat off his forehead and the back of his neck. His system was the most secure in existence. He didn't need to worry. Any virus would die a nasty death, he thought, as he pulled the message into an isolated window and opened it. If you really want to win these trials, the note said, we can help you.
Yeah, for how much? Trey muttered. Who the fuck is this? He engaged a mail server tracing program and fed the message to it. No source, the program responded. Whoever it was... They were smart. For now, there was no answer for that besides unknown. Didn't matter. Trey wanted to win this competition the right way. Not interested, he texted back.
I write clean code. He hit send, and the message disappeared into the black. That interaction wasn't even worth a data point in his journal, Trey thought, as he wiped the logs clear. He was glad that the reporter had stayed at the bar, that he'd written that into the contract. He wished he'd written a review of the live logs before they were sent out into the contract. Yesterday had been slightly embarrassing.
The first day of DevLock's future hadn't gone at all like he'd planned. Trey put his earbuds back in and turned up the soundtrack, a triumphant rock score. That was what he needed right now. Today would go much better. He was sure of it. You're listening to Machina, narrated by Natalie Nottis. Produced by Realm. Your portal to another world. Realm. Listen away.
You should listen to the GameStudy.biz microcast. More people are playing games than ever before. They've never been more popular and the business behind it is facing some real challenges and changes. There's been tens of thousands of layoffs, hundreds of studio closures as major companies face rising costs.
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for Switch 2 and GTA 6, and that's just 2024. Two leading business journalists with a combined 35 years of experience offer you a weekly guide through all of this and more. I'm Christopher Dring, Head of GamesIndustry.biz. I'm James Batchelor, Editor-in-Chief of GamesIndustry.biz.
And you can join us every Monday for the GamesIndustry.biz microcast. The most important stories. Expert guests. Exclusive market data. And all in less than 30 minutes. Usually. The GamesIndustry.biz microcast every Monday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When San Francisco is rocked by a series of brutal slayings, the case falls to homicide detectives Brian Clouser and his partner Pookie Chang.
It falls to them because Brian is always first on the scene, driven there by dreams that predict the killings in exquisite detail. Meanwhile, a shadowy vigilante. seemingly armed with superhuman powers, is out there killing the killers. Brian and Pookie's superiors, from the mayor on down, seem strangely eager to keep the detectives from discovering the truth, doubting his own sanity and
Stripped of his badge, Brian begins to suspect that he stumbled into the crosshairs of a shadow war that has gripped his city for more than a century. A war waged by a race of killers living in San Francisco's unknown underground room. emerging at night to feed on those who will not be missed. Nocturnal is a complete serialized novel with 45 episodes, available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or...
or wherever you get your podcasts. Machina is written by Fran Wild, Maka Older, and Curtis C. Chen. Produced by Marco Palmieri. Executive produced by Julian Yap and Molly Barton. Audio production, sound design, editing, and theme music by Amanda Rose Smith.