Rod still hasn’t arrived.
I’m busy stewing over what James just told me. The Ruben Corp is collaborating with Eden Realities to take over healthcare. A coup, in essence. It seems AI is just another way of having warfare.
Everyone else has arrived. They’re dressed as elves, vampires, fairies, werewolves, about any kind of supernatural being you can ever imagine is at this party. What happened to the good old slutty bunny costumes of the ‘90s? Remember when Legally Blonde was a thing?
Honestly I can’t. Not even my mom’s generation was born when Legally Blonde came out. The movie is so vintage and Harvard is just so last millenia.
I wish. Harvard is as old school as you can get, but I’m not rich enough to end up there. Only pedigrees of old money and the nouveau rich can end up there. Financial aid policies have changed for the Ivy Leagues; essentially no need-based aid, and you have to win scholarships if you want your tuition to be deducted.
That’s why I’m going to Columbia. My mom’s a professor there so I’m automatically guaranteed admissions with full tuition, plus it’s Ivy and a top 10 school so that sets me up for career success later on in life.
Sorry for sounding like a broken record with talking about colleges and Columbia. It’s just causing me major anxiety, waiting for decisions to come out. You never know what might go wrong.
I’m sitting on Xander’s comfortable L-shaped couch with Allie dressed as Barbie by my side. She’s rocking the blonde up do and flight attendant outfit. She’s invited a couple of groupie friends and they’ve been talking up a storm and I’m just listening in, lost in my own thoughts.
“The other teams at states were so bad, their rendition of Wall-E looked like a Yeti. Literally a Yeti.”
“No way!”
“Our Dr. Chat submission was way way better. We managed to create a robot that could hold a conversation about any health issue and diagnostic issue with any patient. Courtesy of James and his Dr. AI.”
I roll my eyes. BB could do the same thing, in half the time it took for Dr. AI to start up. BB knows the answer to any question and talks more than an animated Pixar movie character. He already holds conversations with Charlie and Damien over text for hours on end.
Or maybe it’s just a robot thing. They have their own language, these special snowflakes.
BB’s zooming in and out of the girls’ conversations. I’ve put him on mute so he doesn’t annoy the crap out of these girls and all the other party-goers. Sometimes he’s useful, but I don’t need a constantly talking companion tagging along with me as if I’m a Disney character in need of a sidekick.
“James is looking so hot in his Iron Man costume.”
I almost spit out the soda I was going to drink. Hot? He looked like an overly oiled machine. With too much oil in his hair and too much sleaze in his pores.
“Who do you think the hottest here?”
“Adam’s looking pretty good.”
“He ALWAYS looks good.”
Adam came a bit later than me, dressed in a Superman costume. Being the overachiever he is, he managed to program an augmented reality image over his costume so one minute, he’s Clark Kent in a nerdy suit, and the next minute he’s an overly buff superhero with a giant trademark on his chest.
I look around the room for him. I see him talking to a girl who I recognize from the lacrosse team. As if he read my mind, he looks up and flashes his white teeth at me, giving me a thumbs up.
Guess what Superman and Adam both have in common?
Their megawatt smile.
He’s always had charm in spades.
Maybe I still haven’t gotten over my crush on him. For a certified tomboy with only (mostly) programming on her mind, I certainly have a lot of crushes.
Girls used to think I was bisexual because I didn’t dress girly enough for them. Only wearing a ponytail and glasses half the time and contacts the second half, and my dad’s vintage leather jacket over my uniform, I was kind of perceived as a girl with absolutely no feminine charm.
That’s why I’m surprised Rod even likes me.
Where the hell is Rod anyway?
It’s just like his personality to be fashionably late. What happened to the military code of conduct, being at precisely the right time at the right location?
How are you supposed to wage warfare in the Middle East with your lack of timeliness and your tardiness?
And just on cue, as if he’s read my mind, Rod shows up by the door of the living room.
He’s dressed in an outfit the same shade as mine, an oatmeal shade of linen. He’s not wearing the Jedi Master cloak, but he’s wearing the Jedi Knight outfit, which is infinitely cooler. He’s also carrying a light saber by his waist.
He sees me almost immediately and makes his way through the crowded room to me.
“Hey.” He salutes me.
I stand up and almost immediately fall down because my foot catches the edge of the sofa. I grip the leather for support and right myself up again.
Screw my light saber. It’s skewing my balance.
“Hey. Nice costume.”
His hair is tousled and I noticed shades of blonde that I haven’t noticed before, some darker, some lighter. I thought he was a white-blonde type of guy, but guess not.
I’m tempted to ask him if he dyed his hair. But that would be rude.
“We’re matching.”
“I noticed. What happened to your Jedi Master cloak?”
“It was way too heavy and I just decided to go no capes today.”
I smile in spite of myself.
“Sweet.”
Rod looks around and fidgets with his sword. He has a cool looking belt on, a gold one that’s engraved with pictures of dragons and angels. I notice too that he’s wearing his silver cross.
“Want to get some air? There’s too many people here.”
“Sure.”
I follow Rod out of the living room, weaving my way in and out of the hordes of people standing around.
We walk up the stairs to the floor above, which, unsurprisingly, just led to another gigantic lounge area with books, a pool table, and “another” kitchen. There were less people around here this time, but I could swear Xander’s house is like layers of copied floor plans on top of each other.
“Way better.”
Rod plops his body on top of a cushioned couch and I sit next to him. Not too close, of course.
I look down at my outfit and then at his outfit. Except for our hair color, we could almost pass for being siblings.
I want to make a Luke and Leia joke, because I found their relationship in the movie to be hilarious if not slightly unsettling, but I didn’t know how he would take it. So I just settle for saying,
“Favorite Star Wars movie?”
“The Phantom Menace. Yours?”
“Gotta be The Force Awakens.”
“Hence the outfit.”
I laugh and tug at my top unconsciously. It was midriff-baring, and I didn’t have a cloak to cover me the way Rod did. Obviously not Jedi Master material.
Rod’s eyes slid over me for a brief moment, so fast that I thought I imagined it. He picks up an apple from the bowl of fruit on the coffee table and bites into it. He has a mild obsession with apples, I feel like.
We sit in silence for a couple of minutes. It’s one of those comfortable silences that you don’t feel the need to fill with empty conversation and meaningless words. Where you can sit next to each other and just bask in each other’s presence and find meaning in the shared moment.
I don’t mind sharing moments with Rod.
There’s meaning here, a break from the professional world and daily grind. Often I feel like I’m on autopilot, just going through the motions of life. But here, with Rod, I can pause and finally breathe.
I feel a greater presence, greater than the sum of our parts.
But then Rod says,
“James’ kind of an asshole, don’t you think?”
Ruined it.
I put my head in my hand, leaning it against the couch. I didn’t want to bring up the whole Robo incident that happened last year, it’ll just open another can of worms that I didn’t want to dig into.
“Yeah. We have a bad relationship. Just a ton of bad history.”
“I can tell. He was glaring at you from across the room.”
He doesn’t ask what happened, which I’m glad for.
“Did you see Dr. Ai at his party?”
“Stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. It looked like Nurse Joy.”
I laugh. My thoughts exactly.
“I like what you did with BB. How did you engineer him?”
“I made him for a science fair in middle school, and just decided to dig him out and refine him a bit using some AI tech. He still looks the same as he ever did.”
BB makes a whirl and lights up.
“That’s cool. I do a bit of programming as a hobby, but nothing like robotics. I built a couple of apps and released them on the Metaverse to make some money.”
I perked up. I didn’t know that, though I could have guessed. Most everyone programs now, and the Metaverse is a huge money pot. I’ve built some apps too but they never really took off. I’m hedging my bets on Age of Atheos being the key player in my scheme to get rich.
“That’s awesome! Maybe we can work on something together.”
Rod cracks a rare smile, his eyes lighting up. He looks almost as if he’s glowing.
“That’ll be fun. Any ideas?”
“I’m working on a game right now, but it’s almost done.”
“Yeah you told me. I have an idea.”
I look at him, quizzically.
“What if we took Dr. Ai down?”
“Like down, down, or just down?”
“I literally have no idea what you mean by that comment, but I’ll ignore it. I’m thinking we build something that outcompete Dr. Ai on the market. A program for now, that can use AI to diagnose and treat people.”
“There’s a bunch of programs that do that. There’s a ton of medical diagnosis software out there. I hate to admit, but Dr. Ai is pretty top of the market.”
He pauses, thinking.
“What if we do something different then. Like with World of Eden. We could build an AI that eliminates sin.”
I raise an eyebrow. I’m pushing back way too hard, but this is getting interesting.
“Like get rid of the virus? That’s more my job, and you don’t need to help with that.”
“No I mean, like. You know how there’s so much crime in the world? What if we build an AI that eliminates crime. We can spy on people’s activities and report them if they do something illegal, like murder or terrorism or drug dealing or unleashing viruses.”
I sit up.
“World domination.”
“What? No.”
“Not no, you’re proposing world domination.”
“This isn’t armchair philosophy, I have enough of that in school, I’m not joking, we should do something about all the illegal stuff that goes on. Everyone pretends that society is advancing, but my opinion, morality is recessing.”
“How Christian of you.”
He glares at me, his eyebrows furrowed.
“You know what, forget I said anything.”
“No, it’s a good idea, and I wasn’t joking either. If we succeed in eliminating crime from this effed up society we live in, we could literally get back to Eden.”
“No one can eliminate sin, but Jesus.”
“What if we set the stage up for Jesus then. We could make this AI and make anonymous reports to the police or the bureau of justice or FBI or even Interpol and they could do something about it. The AI would do the heavy lifting, and we’ll save the innocent from the criminals.”
“Making society a safer place. The world’s corrupt and I want to do something about it.”
“What, like join the CIA?”
“I was thinking of going into military intelligence, actually. It’s all connected, there’s so many wars going on every day, in the Middle East, in disease, in tech, in politics.”
“Life’s a battle, to be sure.”
“Never stop fighting.”
He brings a fist up and I bump it. We smile at each other across the couch, and I feel like laughing out of pure joy. I think we just made a pact, implicit as it is.
I have no idea how we’re going to fight crime and put out fires in the world we live in today, but one thing I can sure of?
Sir Roderick is the coolest guy I know of, and I’m glad I’m friends with him.
