Artificial Intelligencia by Richard A. Clarke

Author:Richard A. Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Published: 2022-03-24T18:05:19+00:00

22

Cafe Boulud

Four Seasons Hotel, Toronto

Wednesday, November 26

1930 hours

They split the duck. Diana said it was what the professor always ordered when he took her to the café, once a month or so to discuss her work for him over a good meal. It was a whole rotisserie canard, breast and leg, with black truffle, roasted beetroot, frisée endive, and canard jus. The menu warned that the cook time was forty-five minutes, but she assured Wei it would be worth the wait. He welcomed the long appetizer course, not just for the tuna tartar, but for the opportunity to gauge Diana’s reaction to all that had happened.

Earlier Wei had walked back to the hotel from the university library, trying to remember the measures he had been taught to discover surveillance. He spotted no tail, but there were cameras everywhere, some public on light posts, others privately owned on buildings. Despite the evasive moves he took for practice and the fact that he had turned off his mobile, he knew any skilled operator would have had only a little trouble following him, losing him, and then recovering him. In Dalian, he had minimally skilled clerks do it. And he had AI software that did it better than the humans.

Diana McPherson looked more like her old self from grad school days, but with more expensive clothing and makeup. She looked better than she had at any time since their reunion in front of the inferno of Pandry’s house. Finally, she said, she had gotten some solid sleep. She insisted when she ordered the canard, and added an expensive Zinfandel, that she would be picking up the tab. “I met with his estate lawyer this morning. He had done everything as trusts, so there is no waiting for probate. It turns out that he left me something, far more than he should have. Five million Canadian. And I will still be employed by the estate for two years to wrap up his affairs and investments, liquidate some of them, and see to it that the proceeds are distributed to the charities.”

“I’m delighted for you, Diana. You deserve it for all of your hard work and devotion to him.” Wei held a glass of the dark purple wine in a toast to her. “You were like the daughter he never had. But if he left you that much, how large do you estimate the overall estate to be?”

“Using our search software, from what it found, I was able to recreate some of the information we lost when the devices in his house melted.” She withdrew a flash drive from her purse and handed it to Wei, the results of her searching the professor’s financial records. “He had stocks worth over thirty million US, plus shares in startups that are still maturing but will likely be worth many times that before long. He was on the board of directors of six companies, on the advisory boards of another four.” She sipped the zin and smiled. “Now I will be on three of those boards representing his estate and trusts.

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