Big Data: A Startup Thriller Novel

Chapter 12

Alex dropped me back off at the Four Seasons. By the time I got to my room, I was exhausted. I looked at the clock. I wouldn't need any sleeping pills tonight.

Before he left, Alex asked if he could come pick me up first thing in the morning so we could go see Taye in prison. I'd been intending to try to visit Taye as it was, so I said yes.

I lay on the bed, enjoying the plush sheets and the smell of clean linen. Then I debated grabbing my laptop and playing around with Gaia some more. Chances were good that Phillip wouldn't be able to let me keep my root privileges much longer, so if I wanted to learn more about Gaia, now was probably the only chance I was going to get.

It took some effort, but I rolled off the sheets and picked up my laptop. Then there was a knock at the door. I hadn't ordered room service, so I ignored it and logged into my laptop. Then I heard the door open.

"Hello? I don't need turndown service. Thank you anyway," I yelled.

An old Latina woman appeared at my bedroom door.

"Housekeeping?" she said.

"No gracias querida, no esta noche."

She smiled and said, "Buenas noches" as she left.

I knew that Gaia was Ancien's own supercomputer system applying every bit of processor power to improving the writing of code itself, but I still didn't know what Gaia's intentions were.

After all, every computer program—even ones as complicated as Gaia—was built with some sort of purpose in mind.

For the first time, I booted Gaia up on my terminal. Earlier at the Apple store, I was just looking at the code. I never actually tried running it. It didn't exactly come with a manual.

Gaia's possibilities were endless. A neural network that understood the underlying structure of code was itself an amazing discovery. The most advanced neural networks that processed images could identify the gender and ages of everybody in a photograph. And when you hooked them up with Ancien's enormous big data stores of structured data, they could even more accurately describe what was happening in an image.

For example, it could take a picture and tell you, "Three Pomeranians running around a park with a llama," or "A fifty-one-year-old woman crying of happiness while holding a baby."

These modern breakthroughs in image processing were breathtaking, but if a computer could understand code in the same way it can recognize images, it would enable a new generation of technology. If code could finally understand itself, technological breakthroughs would be able to start happening faster and faster. If a computer could intuitively know what any piece of code was trying to do and how to make it better, the possibilities would be endless. Faster Internet connections, better medical technology, smoother robots, smarter phones, software with fewer bugs, banks with less fraud—the list could go on and on.

I wasn't feeling sleepy anymore. But then, I was filled with dread. It occurred to me that the converse was true as well. Gaia could just as easily be tuned to find bugs in software in order to exploit security problems and break into online banks. My heart sank. I needed to know not only what Gaia was supposed to do, but what had already been done with it.

I heard the front door open again.

"Hola? Olvidaste algo?" I yelled.

Nobody responded.

"Hello?"

The lights went out.

A few moments later, I felt a cold damp cloth covering my mouth, and I smelled something foul, like a strange disinfectant. I tried to scream and heard someone shushing me. The man told me to calm down, that everything would be just fine. That I should take a deep breath and relax. As if I needed to be told to take a deep breath. My body reflexively gasped. I tried to kick, but the man's grip was firm.

I woke up in my hotel room. My head was throbbing. I looked around. I was still clothed. Nothing seemed particularly out of place, other than the bed linens, which were scattered on the ground.

Then I saw my attacker on the floor. I screamed. He was tied up with plastic zip ties like a hog for the slaughter. But he wasn't struggling, or even moving. He was passed out.

"Hey, calm down, calm down," came a voice from behind me. I was still screaming. It felt like I couldn't stop. I turned around and saw Alex standing there with his hand to his mouth, urging me to be quiet. If only I could.

Then he slapped me in the face, and I stopped.

"You okay?" he asked.

"What happened?"

"I saw we had a tail when we left the police station."

"And you didn't think to tell me?"

"I needed to know what he wanted."

I shook my head and said, "I guess he wanted me."

"Yeah, any idea why?"

I thought about Gaia. I wondered if this was the right time to tell him. I also wondered if this attack could be related to Gaia. I'd assumed Taye was the only one who knew about the app, but what if he wasn't? What if Taye had created Gaia, but now someone else was using it?

"No."

"You sure?" I knew he could tell I was holding back. Sure, he had just saved my life and all, but I still didn't know him. We'd only just met a few hours ago. And he seemed weird. Confident, but contumacious.

"Look, I told you I don't know. Maybe Taye does. We need to go talk to him."

"The prison opens in a couple of hours. Get cleaned up. We'll grab breakfast on the way."

"What about him?"

"He'll be okay. I'll move him to the room with the ice machines. Someone will find him, and he sure as hell won't be in a hurry to explain how he got like this."

"Don't you want to know who sent him?"

"He already told me."

I must have been out for a while.