Maya And The A.I. (Patreon)

It wasn't Wallace's first visit to the dark web. He had been studying various underground information trading sites and exploring the denizens who routinely frequented said sites. He learned quickly the difference between a hacker who did their job from a computer and their more ambitious industrial espionage counterparts. Unlike a hacker, these individuals actually infiltrated property in the flesh instead of from the relative safety of a keyboard and stole physical data to sell to the highest bidding. It was these modern cat burglars who Wallace sought out and tried to make contact with. 


He wasn't with the government or anything as glamorous as that. No, he was simply an inventer who was programming and designing one of the most complex artificial intelligence systems ever conceived for domestic applications. If his vision was realized, it would revolutionize childcare for centuries to come. His Corporate beneficiaries understood how groundbreaking his automated daycare facility could become and had funded him handsomely. And yet, they balked at the idea of letting him hire someone to test his system or the nursery itself. They had acted like he wanted to use an actual baby! 


Of course, one day he would need to test it out on an actual infant. After all, that was the target demographic, but before he could even think of doing that, he had to prove that his machine could care for a person safely. He was confident that his AI was up to the job and was ready to correct any mistakes that it might make during the testing phase, but first he needed a guinea pig. Which was why he was on the dark web seeking out someone dumb enough to trick into breaking into his nursery. 


He had just finished writing out a juicy little tidbit of information about a revolutionary piece of technology that was housed in Cherry Blossom Labs. The post was both simple and yet ingenious; posing as a disgruntled technician, Wallace had dropped a lot of inside information about the company to appear legitimate, but not enough to actually damage the company itself. The bait was truly something any modern corporate information shark would be a fool to pass up. He said that the system was a state of the art AI programmed to care for children and had the potential to be adapted for use in senior care facilities. Playing it cool, he made sure to ask for a modest twenty five percent finder's fee payable to him in bitcoin when the AI was sold. 


Wallace sat back in his chair, waiting for someone to take the bait. 


Maya sat on her bed, bored and hungry for the next big score. Okay, maybe that was a bit of exaggeration on her part. She wasn't a bank robber, but the high she got from breaking into a closely guarded building was only topped by the money she made when she found the appropriate buyer for her illegally acquired acquisition. She hadn't had any real jobs installing security systems in about a month now and she was definitely starting to feel the pinch in her purse with rent being due in roughly ten days time. She hadn't had many security contracts in her normal line of work due to the economic slowdown and desperately needed something that would sell fast and cover her rent for the rest of year. Her ten thousand dollar a month oceanfront condo wasn't exactly paying for itself. 


She clicked through random outlets, hunting for information that could lead her to her next payday. Each potential lead she found looked promising, but would probably need to be sat on for a while before the heat cooled down. That, and some of the companies were on the other side of the world. She loved jet setting, but only when she could afford it and justify going on an impromptu vacation afterwards.  Her routine was fairly streamlined by this point in her thirty year old life; she would steal some interesting invention or prototype and hawk it before disappearing for months at a time. Her ability to just vanish back to her Coastal condo had kept her from ever being caught. 


The last "heist" was a way for to see her ancestral homeland. She landed in Tokyo, checked out some temples and did the tourist thing before breaking into a company to steal a prototype for a diaper which could alert a smartphone when it was wet or dirty. Who bought it? Who cares. Probably Proctor and Gamble or Kimberly Clark, but that didn't matter to Maya. All that mattered was that It paid the bills nicely for the past year while she cherry picked certain security contracts to stay sharp. It wasn't much, but the money she had made installing security systems helped cover herself until she ran out of potential jobs and found herself on the verge of going broke.


"Well, what do we have here…" Maya said to herself, a smiling forming on her face as she read a fascinating bit of insider information from a disgruntled employee. 


Maya had to admit that it was a very promising lead and, after a quick search of Cherry Blossom Labs, the icing on the proverbially cake was the location of said labs; fifty miles away. Normally, she would like to keep a bit of distance between herself and her potential target, but the idea of an artificial intelligence that could literally be used for both children and the elderly made it hard to pass up. She was a bit surprised that it was being developed by such a relatively unknown company, but that only made such an opportunity more tantalizing for her. 


"It's like taking candy from a baby." Maya chuckled to herself as she accessed a program that forced itself to pop up on the disgruntled employee's computer. 


"What's this?" Wallace furrowed his brow as he spotted something that looked like an old messaging panel pop up on his screen. 


"I'll give you 15% of the sell on the AI."


'Looks like I have a bite.' Wallace thought with a grin as he typed his reply into the seemingly archaic chat box.


"I know when the guards change shifts and I'm not taking less than 25% for the sale."


Maya licked her lips. This was looking very promising, but she had to at least get the tipster to take a break on the cut.


"I'll give you 20% and have it wired to your bitcoin account by the end of the month."


Wallace was going to ask the mysterious person how they knew his information, but stopped shy of asking. He didn't want whoever it was on the other end asking for an account. He didn't need them digging into his personal information like that. Luckily, he didn't need to worry about this computer being hacked, it was just for watching movies and playing music on. 


"Alright, you drive a hard bargain. I'm only giving in since I'm sick of my boss and want to fuck him over before I quit. This payout will pretty much be my severance package." Wallace typed in, hoping to divert the stranger's attention away from requesting financial information and to legitimatize his own position. 


Maya's eyes opened up in shock by the response. She started rapidly typing in her reply.


"DONT QUIT!" She wrote in all caps before adding; "It'll look suspicious if you just take off after a major theft. Just stay put, the money will cushion the bullshit you go through at work until you take off a few months later."


Wallace was actually pleasantly surprised by the response. He didn't expect his potential test subject to be so intelligent. Whoever he was talking to could potentially try to outsmart his AI which would only help it grow. 


"Damn. I didn't think of that. Yeah, okay, I'll take 23% to stay put until the heat dies down."


Maya read the reply with a sigh. Whoever she was chatting with was determined to get their cut, but three percent more than what she wanted to give them wasn't going to break the bank. Yeah, it was probably going to be the difference between a half million by a few hundred grand, but she didn't want to argue about it all night. The sooner she could get to her car, the sooner could get to the lab, break in and get the harddrive the AI was stored on. 


"Fine. I'll give you 23% for the location of the computer and the times when the guards switch shifts." 


Wallace had his test subject right where he wanted them!


"Deal!" He typed in and then added; "They switch shift at 3am in the office near the front. The AI is stored on a computer that is in the test facility located in the back of the building and everything is turned off at night so don't worry."


After he hit the send button he realized that the person on the other end might wonder what he meant by "test facility" so he rapidly replied; "It's pitch black at night so you won't be seen."


Maya cracked her knuckles and replied; "They'll never see me coming. You can count on that."


'They're cocky, whoever they are.' Wallace thought as he wheeled away from his entertainment computer and over to his work computer. He quickly accessed the test nurseries programming routine and turned it on. The room itself would remain shrouded in darkness, just as he promised, but his AI would be on and waiting for its first "baby" to take care of. 


Wallace wheeled back over to the computer with the pop up window and saw that the mysterious thief had logged off, but the last message basically said that they would keep in touch until the AI was sold and he was paid. 


"Well, it looks like the trap is set." 



To Be Continued...