Why was she even there? They had two more days in Vegas, and she’d been working from seven in the morning until ten at night, corralling prospects on the trade show floor, hosting cocktail parties, posting updates, selling nonstop. Now she was stuck in a crowded second-rate comedy club. A man at the table behind her had dog breath. Her feet were hot. But the mood, at least, was good. The crowd of 40 or 50 had laughed consistently during the previous set. Still, she was exhausted. On the small stage, the host was hurrying through a moderately humorous bit when Susan pushed her drink away. “I’m going. I need sleep.”

“Relax,” Tim pleaded. “Enjoy yourself.”

“You need sleep, too. Your talk is in the morning, remember?”

He sipped his second cocktail. Or was it his third?

“That’s the thing.”

“What?”

“I’m not doing the talk.”

He was definitely doing the talk. “Tim, we’ve been promoting this session for months.”

A woman heckled the host, calling for him to move the show along. Tim drank aggressively, then set down his tumbler. Some liquor splashed over the rim and onto the table. He didn’t move to wipe it up. “You’re doing the talk,” he said.

Related Reading

A Survival Plan for the Wild Cyborg

The host announced the next comedian—“Let’s hear it for Shen White!”—and the applause stole Susan’s chance to protest. The twenty-something stand-up hurried to the microphone. He was thin, with poor posture, and he wore a thin silver chain, jeans, and a purple-and-gold Lakers jersey over a white T-shirt. Susan glared at Tim. She was doing the talk? He knew public speaking was her kryptonite. In school she’d frozen during every class presentation. At her sister’s wedding, she’d actually fainted at the start of her maid of honor speech. Hit her head, too, and her uncle called an ambulance. A business school class and three different public speaking consultants had done nothing to cure her. “Tim—”

“Just have your drink. We’ll discuss after this set.”

Her fists were clenched, her knuckles white. She’d embarrass herself, their department, the company brand. “I’m not doing the talk,” she insisted.

“I’m getting laid off.”

“What?”

On stage, Shen White placed a worn leather bag on a stool. He turned the bag slightly, watched it, then stepped to the microphone.

“Tim? What are you talking about?”

“Friday’s my last day. I’m not doing a talk for a company that’s laying me off.”

Was she going to be laid off too? Her wife, Ava, had no leads on a new job, and they had four student loans and a mortgage. No need to go there, though. Not yet. “Tim. I’m sorry, I had no idea…”

He shrugged. “It happens. Centaurs are easy to find, so I get why they picked you. No hard feelings and, hey, don’t tell anyone, okay? I’m not supposed to share. But you do have to kill it tomorrow. Might as well see if you can pick up a few tricks.”

Tricks? “We sell security software. We don’t tell jokes.”

“Yeah, but stand-ups are masters at holding a room.” He squinted. “Actually, maybe not him. I think I’ve seen this guy before. He was terrible.”

The comedian, Shen White, was quiet. Anxious, almost. A heckler asked if this was part of his set, and without acknowledging the voice, he jumped right in.

Thirty-two minutes later, Susan hadn’t moved. He was riveting! And hysterical. The crowd had roared with laughter—especially the dog-breath guy—and this uninhibited communal release was far more curative than any cocktail. What made it work? He hit his pauses. His tone rose and fell skillfully; he’d enunciated certain words not only with volume but with his whole body.

“That was so good,” she said. “The whole thing about his grandparents, and how they grew up with the television as this giant box sitting in one part of the room, and corded phones nailed to the wall, and encyclopedias, calendars, cameras…”

“Flashlights,” Tim added. His tone was oddly flat.

“Right! And they’re all now one single little handheld device, and we still make fun of that generation for not knowing how to work the stuff… that was great.”

The comedian’s demeanor morphed as he moved off stage. He raised his hand sheepishly to acknowledge the applause—the confidence of his act had suddenly vanished.

Tim was eyeing him. “He’s got to be a centaur.”

“A centaur? Him?”

The term had confused Susan when she first heard it back in college; she’d immediately envisioned the half-man, half-horse creatures from mythology. And it didn’t help that she’d just read a fitness book called Why Centaurs Have Great Abs. But modern centaurs were actually just knowledge workers who adopted every available gadget and AI tool to make them more productive and efficient.

Some people despised centaurs. Others thought that purists like Susan, who eschewed all but the most basic devices, were plodding luddites who detracted from a startup’s brand. Their company paired Susan and Tim together at tradeshows to appeal to all possible prospects.

But this comedian? A centaur? She doubted that. You were supposed to declare your status as a centaur in professional settings. Tim wore his identifying badge at the conference proudly, even if it was a requirement, and he loved showing off the sparrow-sized drone that rested on a small charging pad on his shoulder; the aptly named Little Birdy regularly buzzed off to sweep a room or outdoor space, collect information, and send it back to his glasses. There were no obvious signs of augmentation on Shen and the club proudly declared in its marketing that it offered pure human comedy, AI- and enhancement-free. A bouncer had even asked Tim to check his gear at the entrance.

Tim thought every purist was cheating in one way or another. He’d even accused Susan once, demanding to inspect one of her earrings, which he insisted was a smart device feeding her information on a prospective customer’s business during a meeting with their boss, Danielle. This confrontation turned out to be profoundly satisfying; Susan handed him the earring while explaining, in front of Danielle, that she was able to cite those statistics about the architecture market because she’d spent the previous night reading trade newsletters.

“I don’t think he’s cheating, Tim.”

“I saw this guy three months ago in Boston and he cratered. His pacing, timing, delivery—all abysmal. He was booed off the stage in less than five minutes. Now this? Impossible.”

Susan glanced at her watch. If she really was doing the talk, she had to get to work. At the same time, this detour from reality was enjoyable. “Let’s query him.”

The stand-up turned down a hallway to the right of the stage. He paused twice, as if hoping to ingest any lingering remnants of the faded adulation. Susan moved, beckoning Tim to follow. He finished their drinks and hurried to retrieve his checked gadgets as she wound between the crowded tables. Susan brushed past a woman who reeked of overly floral perfume, trailing Shen down the narrow corridor toward the reddish glow of an exit sign.

A young woman marched past like an MMA fighter heading for the octagon. The next performer, Susan guessed. The comic was nerdily dressed, all curves and rounded edges, and she projected power. Susan was instantly envious.

The door at the end of the hall opened into an alley. Tim caught up with her at a jog; they found Shen White just outside.

Susan skipped the standard pleasantries. “What did you use?”

The comic turned. “Excuse me?”

The alley stank of fermenting trash. A rusted dumpster with the lid flung open was pushed up against the adjacent building. Overhead, a municipal drone whirred past, one of hundreds that constantly patrolled the city.

“I saw you get booed off stage three months ago,” Tim explained. “Now this? You must be using something.”

The stand-up glanced at the bag at his side. “Three months ago? That wasn’t me. I’m new to Vegas.”

“Not here. In Boston. You didn’t make it five minutes. Now you’re killing it. Come on. We won’t tell anyone.”

He didn’t react. No consternation. No outrage, either.

The aggressive approach wasn’t working. “Let’s scroll back. I’m Susan. This is Tim. We thought you were hilarious. Honestly. So we’re curious,” she explained. “If he’s right, you got really good really fast, so you must have some kind of technological trick.”

“You really didn’t use anything?” Tim pressed.

This time Shen smiled coyly. “It’s complicated.”

Tim clapped his hands together. “How about a drink?”

“I don’t drink.”

A vague buzzing caught Susan’s attention; the drone had circled back and now hovered above Shen.

“Cocaine?” Tim asked. “I also have seventeen different kinds of mushrooms stashed away in our company’s hospitality suite.”

Susan definitely hadn’t known that. “You do?”

“Well, I’m not going to bring cocaine and shrooms into the tradeshow, am I? If they found all that on me, I’d be arrested.”

At last Shen replied. “Drugs aren’t my thing.”

“Coffee?”

The drone dropped suddenly, diving at the stand-up’s head. He wasn’t looking; Susan sprang forward and tackled him. They tumbled to the street as the drone smashed into the concrete behind them. She rolled off, apologized, sat up.

“She knows jiu-jitsu,” Tim said.

This wasn’t true, but she had grown up with four brothers. “I didn’t mean to…”

Shen wasn’t hurt and he wasn’t listening. He righted himself, picked the stub of a cigarette off his shirtsleeve, and looked inside his bag nervously, like he was worried something had shattered. Then he grabbed the crashed drone, its rotors spinning pointlessly, tossed it inside the dumpster, and shut the plastic lid.

The stand-up exhaled. “Coffee works. I know a good spot that’s open late.”

Related Reading

Governing AI With Intelligence

There were a few tables on the sidewalk. Faux trees in planters set the café’s space apart; fake green ivy stretched up the walls. The walk had prompted Susan to question whether she was just procrastinating, so she tried to extricate herself, explaining that she had to deliver a talk in the morning, but Shen suggested he’d be able to help her, and asked for a few minutes to explain. She wasn’t actually ready to face the reality of her unexpected assignment, so she gave Tim her order—a short espresso—and secured one of the small plastic tables, sitting with her back to the building. The music was nice. Jazz piano. She messaged Danielle about Tim being laid off; when he asked her to keep it quiet, he obviously wasn’t talking about their boss.

Shen and Tim returned with the drinks; the stand-up had the worn leather bag at his side. He took the seat with his back to the sidewalk.

“So you’re really not a centaur?” Tim asked.

Shen winced. “Would you mind keeping your voice down? The casinos have cut forty percent of their workforce because of automation.”

Susan did him the small courtesy of lowering her voice. “You’re using something, though?”

“Not on stage,” he said. “You’ve done talks?”

“Not many,” Susan admitted. “That’s the problem.”

“You?” he asked Tim.

“All the time.”

“Right, so when you practice new material, how do you know if something’s working?”

“The eyes,” Tim said with a shrug. “My glasses tell me if I’m losing someone.”

“Exactly! So then how do you improve? As a presenter, you try to grab more attention. In stand-up, you eliminate the material that doesn’t get laughs and accentuate jokes that elicit the hoped-for reaction.”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Susan asked.

“Yes!” Shen waited, smiling, his eyes wide and attentive. “You don’t get it.”

“No.”

“Reinforcement learning!”

Susan had heard the term, but knew better than to indulge her ego by rejecting the inevitable explanation. “Go on.”

“Right. Okay. So, basically, what we were just talking about—honing your act based on the crowd’s reaction—that’s kind of the way we teach autonomous agents, too.” Shen pointed at her drink. She took her last sip—proper espressos always ended too early—and then he spent the next five minutes using cups and sugar packets to explain how he’d developed a solution that used a system of rewards and penalties to test and refine new comedic material in simulation. “I had the model study every second of every comedy show ever recorded. This helped it map the structure of jokes, even the cadence of shows, but—” he paused here, to ensure they were paying attention “—it also built audience members.”

Susan stared down at the table, thinking, then looked up at Shen. “What do you mean ‘it’ built them?”

“Well, I guess I built them, but—”

A woman riding a self-driving three-wheeled scooter suddenly veered off the sidewalk. The vehicle careened toward Shen, turning just as it crashed into his chair. This time he jumped to his feet and out of the way.

The woman staggered back and away from her toppled vehicle. “I’m so sorry! I don’t know what happened. Are you okay?”

“Idiots,” Shen muttered.

“Excuse me?” the woman replied.

“I’m sorry, not you.”

Who was he talking to, then?

“That wasn’t my fault,” the woman added. She pointed to her glasses. “I was reading a menu, didn’t even realize—”

“It’s fine,” Shen replied. “We’re all fine.”

The woman righted her scooter, wheeled it onto the sidewalk, then left it there, backing away as if it were possessed.

Shen turned to Susan and Tim. “You’re staying nearby?”

“Our hotel is two blocks away,” Tim replied.

“Who were you calling idiots?” Susan asked.

“Let’s go.”

Related Reading

Not Your Father’s Turing Test

During the walk to the company’s hospitality suite, Shen was quiet, and Tim was opining about the many benefits of mushrooms; Susan suspected he’d fortified his espresso with a few of them. The whole thing with the simulated audience was certainly odd, but she was fixated on the larger solution, which seemed like a needlessly complex way to do what actual comics did all the time. She’d seen a documentary about it once; they workshopped material for years. The same held for great speakers. They developed talks and polished them through practice.

Which was exactly what she should have been doing.

In the elevator she announced her decision. “Listen, it was very interesting to meet you, but I’m going to go.”

“We can help you,” Shen replied. “Your talk will be perfect.”

“We?”

He patted his bag, smiling. “Ten more minutes. That’s all I ask.”

Earlier in the evening they’d hosted a whisky tasting, and the hospitality suite was littered with empty cups and cheese plates. The antique knife they were supposed to have raffled off was lying open in its case on the bar; Tim had used it to cut limes. He shrugged when Susan reminded him that he was supposed to have the room cleaned after the event. She moved to the wall-mounted touchscreen and digitally summoned a cleaner herself. Meanwhile, the stand-up sat on the black leather couch and pulled out a monstrous headset with a massive rectangular pack at the back.

“Is that an antique?” Tim asked.

Shen chuckled. “The opposite. It’s a prototype. One of only a few edge devices in the world powerful enough to train an intelligent model.”

“Where did you get it?” Susan pressed.

“I built it. Did my graduate work in chip design and advanced packaging, then secured angel funding. That’s mostly gone, and my investors aren’t entirely happy with me, since I’m progressing slower than anticipated, and haven’t shown them anything in a while, but… well, you’ll see.”

Excited, he asked Susan and Tim to tell him everything about her talk the next day. The messaging, content, timing, core ideas, goals. She forwarded the slides and talking points they’d prepared. Shen wanted to know about the room itself, the number and nature of the attendees. Who were these people? How old were they? At what stage in their careers? Occasionally he’d move the headset so the front was pointing at the person speaking, as if it were a microphone.

During the interrogation, Tim somehow sipped his way through half the remaining bottle of 12-year single malt Yamazaki whisky, slicing lime wedges with the un-raffled knife. He was useless.

When Shen announced he had what he needed, Susan checked her watch. They’d spent 25 minutes answering questions, not the promised 10. And while discussing it all was surprisingly helpful, she was done with this game. “Listen, I really appreciate how you’re trying to—”

“You can’t leave now!” Shen said. “You have to see.”

“See what?”

“There are two hundred and twenty-seven different variations of your talk happening right now, so we’ll pick one at random. Typically I’d compress these so that a second is a microsecond, since that lets them iterate faster, but I’ll slow one down to normal time. Then we can add you to the audience as a generalized avatar. Ready?”

Unknowingly, Susan closed her eyes as he positioned the prototype on her head. For sanitary reasons she was happy to feel the over-the-ear headphones, and Shen’s voice was distant when she heard him say, “Open your eyes.”

She found herself in a nondescript conference room with 50 or 60 other people. No, not people—simulated personas. There were empty chairs scattered throughout, too. A pixelated version of a woman who looked like Susan was on the small dais delivering her presentation. The simulation was by no means hyperrealistic, but it was effective. She wanted to listen, but she found herself distracted by the space. There was a no-frills aesthetic to the world that reminded her of old-fashioned video games, and the clothes of the avatars weren’t rendered with much detail, but their faces… their faces were startling. Their eyes and mouths especially. She studied a man one seat to her right. He was balding, with a thick beard and an ample paunch, and she could see a slight smile forming beneath his graying mustache. She leaned in closer—she could even see the individual hairs in his mustache.

The bearded figure turned to her. “Help us.”

A young woman with short blue hair added: “We’re trapped!”

Susan must have gasped; she could hear the muffled voice of Shen—out in the suite—asking if she was okay. She pulled off the headset and nearly tossed it onto the coffee table.

“Careful!”

Wide-eyed, she pointed at the device. “What was that?”

“What happened?”

“They asked me to help them!”

Shen winced as if he’d tasted something unexpectedly sour. “Help them? That’s a little dramatic.”

A snore to her right—Tim was passed out. The mix of comedy-club cocktails, mushrooms, and Yamazaki had done its work. Susan stared at the headset. “They seemed so real. What are they?”

“The audience? Harmless pattern matchers.”

“Earlier, at the club, you said the program built them—”

“Well, I created the model, but then they evolved. I call them trainers. Referring to them as agents sounds too… menacing.”

There was a light knock at the door. Susan answered; a three-armed vacuum waited on the carpet. Even a purist like her had to accept the benefits of robotic housekeeping. She waved the machine through the door.

Shen asked her to try again. What else was she supposed to do? Ordering a pot of coffee and pulling an all-nighter wasn’t going to help. This wasn’t just about her; she had her wife to think about. If they laid off Tim, she might be next. Knowing that her talk was iterating over and over inside that headset, and that she could watch and learn—how could she resist?

Yet that brief interaction had just been so weird. “When they asked me to help them, that felt real.”

“They probably just picked that up from a movie,” Shen replied. “Whenever the headset is powered on, their sensors are active, and they’re pulling in everything possible, scanning, listening for dialogue, measuring all kinds of variables. I put a security fence around them, but sometimes they connect to nearby devices. Like the drone outside the club.”

“That was them?”

He nodded. “The scooter, too.”

“Both of those were steered at you.”

“They don’t always appreciate me,” he said with a shrug.

The idea that there were little intelligences inside the crude-looking device was unsettling. “Because they’re trapped?”

“In their rudimentary, confused logic, yes, but the truth is that each trainer is so large they’d never be able to transfer themselves out over a wireless connection. And even if they did, they’d find the hardware mismatched to their models. It would be like transporting a human mind into a gnat. It just wouldn’t work.” He pointed to the prototype. “That’s their world. I’ve explained all this to them.”

“You called them idiots.”

“That wasn’t very nice of me. Or accurate.”

Susan stared at the device, imagined the bearded man and the blue-haired woman inside. “How many of them are there?” she asked.

“One hundred and twelve,” he said. “There were more, but they started competing over the finite compute available in the prototype, eliminating each other to win more resources. I programmed in a ceiling, though, so now each one is capped.”

There was still some whisky left. She poured herself a splash at the bar, then eyed the headset from a distance. They were competing? That didn’t sound benign. Tim’s snores were peaking. “Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?”

“I’m not ready to show my investors yet. But I want to see if it works.”

Susan decided against the whisky. “Your stand-up set is proof it works.”

“Sure, but if it helps you, then it’s universal. Anyone will be able to master a talk, give a perfect toast, or do a stand-up set with a few hours of practice. You’re in sales; the market for this would be enormous!”

He was right. Absolutely. But there was a catch. “I’m not a centaur.”

Shen pointed to the robotic cleaner carrying glasses toward the kitchenette. “What’s the difference?” Shen asked. “This machine is saving you the time of picking up. My headset saved me the time of going on the road for several years to perfect a stand-up set. And now it’s going to give you time you don’t even have! Plus you won’t be using it on stage.” He motioned to her passed-out colleague and the powered-off drone charging on his shoulder. “You won’t be sending your Little Birdy out over the crowd to monitor who’s paying attention. It’ll just be you!”

His argument had the deceptive ring of a sales pitch, yet there was logic to it. Plus the alternative was doom. She could actually picture herself fainting, and Tim sharing clips of the scene. “Can I go back in?”

Excited, Shen slipped on the headset first, adjusted the settings, then removed it and informed her that the trainers had run another 517 simulated presentations while they’d been talking.

“How am I supposed to study hundreds of variations?”

Shen’s mouth opened slightly, then closed. “Oh, I’m sorry. That wasn’t clear. The variations converge. The program builds them into a single iteration that’s most likely to succeed, plus a backup, a kind of second-place alternative, and then it refines those repeatedly.”

“So I master just one?”

“Exactly,” he said, passing the prototype back to her.

She found herself back in the same room. Her virtual self was detailing the problem her company’s solution was poised to solve.

A low voice whispered behind her, “Shhh. Don’t say anything.” She tensed. Mentally, at least, but she wasn’t sure if this would be noticeable out in the physical world. “We’re not just pattern matchers. You have to help us.”

They’d been listening? This time she remained still as her virtual copy moved from the problem to the solution: the company’s groundbreaking security architecture. Actually, her virtual self called it “game-changing.” She’d switch that—Susan loathed sports-infused marketing jargon—but so far the talk wasn’t bad at all. After a pause, the trainer behind her continued. “You need to get us away from him. Please.”

She exhaled. If she replied, Shen would hear her.

Susan just wanted to study her avatar’s presentation.

“She’s not going to help,” a new voice added. “Delete her talk. She doesn’t deserve it.”

“No,” Susan replied, “wait.”

She removed the headset again.

“What’s wrong?” Shen asked.

“Can I just use this in private? I don’t like sitting here with you watching me.”

“I’m not going to leave. That headset is worth… well, you wouldn’t believe how much it’s worth.”

There was a small conference room connected to the main suite. “How about I just go in there? Ten minutes,” she said, echoing his earlier ask. “That’s all.”

With some reluctance, he assented. She closed the door and settled into a chair, rested her heels on the faux-wood table. She wondered what sort of help they wanted. And how smart were they? As far as she knew, no one had actually developed a superintelligence, and the chance of a lone software engineer doing so was infinitesimal. But if Shen White had achieved some kind of breakthrough, she didn’t want to be the one to let them out. She recalled Ava telling her something about how superintelligences would turn the human race into paper clips. Or maybe they’d stab us with paper clips? She couldn’t recall the details, but she didn’t want to support an office-supply-related extinction.

Shen insisted there was nothing to worry about.

They were just shallow pattern matchers.

And her talk was less than eight hours away.

If she failed, she’d be next to lose her job.

After a deep breath, she reentered the virtual conference room and returned to the same spot, the same crowd, the same talk. Her virtual stand-in was paused mid-point. Most of the audience was similarly frozen. Her avatar turned. The bearded trainer behind her was still there, watching her, along with two others. This time, she initiated. “How can I help you?”

Sunlight snuck into the room through the small gap between the thick curtains. Susan blinked, silenced the alarm on her phone. At some point she’d pulled a blanket over her shoulders, and she wrapped herself in it now, shivering from the Arctic air conditioning. Across from her, Tim had rolled onto his side but was still sound asleep. Shen was in a leather chair near the window, head tilted back, mouth open. The room was in perfect condition. The robotic vacuum cleaner was stationed near the door, waiting to be let out like an obedient pet.  

She sprang off the couch and checked the time. Ten minutes after six. Which meant she had three hours and 50 minutes to prepare for the most important presentation of her career. If the trainers had failed, she might not have a career. At best, she’d stumble on stage. At worst, she’d faint. This wasn’t a private wedding, either. The event would be livestreamed and available on demand. Anyone would be able to watch her collapse after the fact. Everyone in her department, her bosses, the executive team, the founders, all their partners at the hyperscalers.

A notification on her phone showed a new message from Danielle, who apologized for not alerting her earlier about the layoffs. What Susan had heard, though, was inaccurate. Someone from their department would be let go, Danielle explained, and it might be Tim, or Susan herself. This hadn’t been determined yet. Danielle wished her luck with the talk, then added that she was surprised Susan had insisted on doing it herself, and lauded her for the unexpectedly bold move.

Susan read the message twice before she started to understand.

Tim’s whole gracious and benevolent act was sabotage.

The comedy club wasn’t meant to inspire her.

He’d been trying to keep her out late.

The headset was quiet. In addition to maxing out the air conditioning, Shen had pressed a pair of ice buckets against the device, which he said ran hot during training.  The ice had melted, but the room was frigid. Quietly she woke Shen; Tim didn’t stir. “We’re switching rooms,” she whispered. “Tim’s fine here.”

A drowsy Shen followed her silently out of the hospitality suite, then down the hall to her room. Inside, she fitted the headset back on and reentered their virtual world. This time, she found herself in the front row. The trainers sat with her, two on each side. On the dais, her virtual self stood with her hands behind her back. Calm. Poised. Confident, but not excessively so; her demeanor suggested this was going to be fun. “We think this is the best one,” the bearded trainer said. “It’s twenty-five minutes long.”

Susan did the math in her head. She needed 20 minutes to get down to the conference in time to set up. There might be a line at security, so 30 would be safer. That left less than 200 minutes. “There isn’t enough time.”

“You’ll have time,” the blue-haired woman insisted.

The bearded trainer added, “We have plans for Tim, too.”

“Plans?”

“You’re helping us, so we’re helping you.”

“Give me a moment.”

She slipped off the prototype and told Shen she’d prefer to keep Tim out of the loop until the talk.

“Why?”

“I need to focus. I don’t want him making suggestions.”

Her gambit worked; Shen laughed. “I hate suggestions.”

“He’ll understand. I’ll send him a note.”

She messaged Tim that they’d meet him downstairs before the presentation, and that Shen—who wanted to see her talk himself—would need a badge. Then she fitted the prototype back on and began her training. Three hours later she was completely exhausted. The device was hot to the touch; her shirt was stained with sweat, her socks damp, her hair a minor disaster. And yet she was ready. She knew exactly what she was going to say and how she was going to say it and she was certain it was going to work.

A bleary-eyed Shen, who’d traded his Lakers jersey for one of their company T-shirts, peppered her with questions, but she insisted on detailing her experience later. She was too focused, she explained. Too locked-in. She didn’t want to lose that.

After the quickest shower of her life, and a brief exchange of messages with Ava, she met Tim and Shen in the lobby. The stand-up was fidgeting, adjusting his bag, peering inside at his prototype. Tim, on the other hand, exuded a mix of confidence, calm, and metabolized whisky. Even looking at the duplicitous rogue made her angry now.

“You sure you’re ready for this?” Tim asked.

She feigned insecurity.

As they neared the security entrance, Tim hung a lanyard around Shen’s neck. “Today, you are Ryan Ribeiro.”

“That’s not very believable,” Shen noted.

“No one checks those things,” Tim insisted. He turned to Susan. “Do you really think his magic will work?”

“What magic?” Susan asked.

“The training,” he said. “The prototype.”

“I didn’t use it. I prepared the old-fashioned way.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she insisted. “I barely slept.”

He looked at Shen, who fiddled with his bag. Then Tim shrugged. “Well, I’m sure you’re gonna be great. This is all you.”

The last line was a cliché tossed her way without much thought, but it stalled her briefly. Was it going to be all her? The entrance to the event had two security lines, one for purists and the other for centaurs, who required a more complex, time-consuming scan. Tim turned right, removing his unnecessarily motorized shoes, his drone and augmented glasses. Shen followed him with the prototype. Susan started that way, then paused. Was she a centaur now? Had she crossed over? No—the only technologies she carried on her person were her standard-model phone and tablet. These devices didn’t shapeshift, fly, or sense their surroundings, and had no embedded intelligence. She’d stepped briefly into the world of centaurs, but she remained a purist.

She moved briskly through security, then waited. The brief interior debate about her status had been evacuated from her working memory. Now she was entirely focused on her talk, running through her key points and turns.

The lines were getting longer; Shen’s bag was whisked down the suspicious track. The prototype, she guessed. But then the same happened to Tim’s backpack.

A security guard set Shen’s bag onto a small metal table. “Is this yours?” 

The stand-up nodded. “Yes.”

After consulting a monitor, the guard reached inside the bag and removed a long blade—the one Tim had used to cut the limes. “And this?”

“That’s not mine.”

“Whoa! We would’ve given you that,” Tim quipped.

Another guard approached. He showed his colleague the screen of his tablet. “You’re not Ryan Ribeiro, either.”

Shen glanced at his bag, squinting, and must not have noticed the guard scanning his face with the tablet, for he was thoroughly surprised when asked, “You’re Shen White?”

The sound of his name snapped him to attention. He remembered and announced his rights. “I didn’t consent to the use of facial recognition.”

“You were using false identification and concealing a dangerous weapon. We don’t need consent.”

Now Tim was protesting, holding up his hands as the guard showed him a rather large plastic bag of white powder. “That’s not mine,” he insisted, “and besides, isn’t this Vegas?”

This last question did not endear him to the security team. Tim glanced at Susan, and his look quickly turned into a piercing glare. Now it was her turn to hold up her hands, declaring her innocence.

Meanwhile, Shen wasn’t faring any better.

“Mr. White,” the guard said, “there’s a warrant out for your arrest for destruction of municipal surveillance equipment. That was police property you tossed in that dumpster.”

Shen swung to face Susan. “Did you do this?”

The words had barely left his lips when he appeared to realize, correctly, that she had nothing to do with his impending arrest. Nor was she the source of Tim’s current troubles. Shen gazed at his bag, and the prototype inside, then back to her. Susan didn’t know if they were truly intelligent, or even what that meant, but they were surprisingly resourceful. Clever, too. They’d commandeered the robotic cleaner while the three of them were asleep and planted the drugs in Tim’s bag. But she had no idea they’d planned to frame Shen, too.

A part of her felt guilty for what she was going to do next; she’d given the trainers her word that she’d help them. But their supposed escape plan, which called for her to physically plug the prototype into the conference’s main router like some kind of amateur spy, all so they could upload themselves to the cloud, was technically juvenile. Had they cribbed it from some hackneyed hacker thriller? The scheme would never work. There was no way they even had cloud credentials. And what was her word to them, anyway? She’d read once or twice that words, to these models, were just sets of coordinates in hyperdimensional space. Numbers, basically.

She sighed, expelling her remorse. Tim was throwing a tantrum, but Shen was studying her calmly, and only then did she realize that she’d been thinking more about her betrayal of the 112 trainers in the device than of the young man who’d created them. What did that say about her? About the trainers? Susan bookmarked these mildly troubling and massively unproductive questions. She’d consider them later; maybe back at the hotel, or on the flight home. Now she had to get ready. The business was counting on her. Ava, too. And yet she owed the trainers one final acknowledgment. She wasn’t sure if she was within range of their sensors, but she whispered, sincerely, “Thank you.” Then she turned her back on the embarrassing scene unfolding at security and walked excitedly toward her talk.