Zendyne | Page 4

It made Lee feel as if he were unclean.
Which he was, of course. No one who planned to get ahead in Zendyne could afford to be
associated with a loser. People were more than happy to talk about one, though, as Lee
discovered when he went to the head of the stairwell to grab a coffee, and the whispered
discussion around the machine trailed into embarrassed silence at his approach.
He did his best to ignore it.
He was determined not to surrender Lilith, which would have meant looking on
helplessly as the entity was wiped out or whisked away into Zendyne’s corporate data
vaults. He wanted to be the one to probe the AI, to find out what made it tick and where it
came from.
And it wasn’t just intellectual curiosity that was behind his silence, or even the chance of
establishing a world-class professional reputation. Anyone who controlled an entity like

Lilith, and who wasn’t a complete idiot, could surely find a way of milking the situation
for wealth or power or whatever else might float his boat.
Wealth and power sounded like a pretty good start to Lee, easily good enough to balance
out a few snubs from his co-workers. And that wasn’t counting any of the other things he
could get from this, if he played his cards right. He wasn’t about to let any of it slip
through his fingers.
Still, the old worry continued to nag at the back of his mind: who had created the
intelligence that now resided in his ‘deck? Were they aware that their property had gotten
loose? Things could get awkward if the owners took a narrow-minded view of what he’d
done. If they considered his actions to be more about theft than safekeeping, for example.
But the roller coaster was moving now, and Lee had to hang on and hope the ride would
be worth the risk. The entity must have gotten into the doll somehow, and who could
prove it hadn’t left the same way? There was no hard evidence to point to him. If they
caught up with him, he’d simply hand over the goods and ask for a finder’s fee.
And if they didn’t, well, there were all sorts of things that the owner of a general purpose
AI could achieve, once he figured out what it was good at. Market analysis, maybe. Lee
toyed with the idea of quitting Zendyne and making a fortune on stocks and commodities
and futures. Or perhaps he’d find someone to buy the product outright, someone with a
suitcase full of cash and an underdeveloped sense of curiosity. His mind drifted, picturing
furtive meetings in seedy bars. He’d probably need to bring a partner in with him to
watch his back.
Not that there was anyone in his life that he could trust with something like that.
Lee’s handeck remained in his belt pouch, powered down and off limits until he’d rigged
a firewalled machine to probe it at arm’s length. The entity might be dormant, or it might
be awake and waiting for him. Having watched Lilith flit so effortlessly from doll to
‘deck, he wasn’t about to let her anywhere near a connection to Zendyne’s local network.
But that was a problem for later. For now, he had other things to think about, such as
inventing a reasonable explanation for what had gone wrong with the android. A cooling
system failure, perhaps, leading to overheating of the doll’s neural substrate. That would
be perfect: a random problem that had nothing to do with psychotic mindware or bad
design, and that could be plausibly and reassuringly fixed by tightening standards in the
fabrication plant.
All he needed was a few days to carry out an investigation and fake some results. Then,
everything could get back to normal and he’d have plenty of time to figure out how to
deal with the entity that called itself Lilith.
***
"Ah, Lee. Please, sit down. Will you take some tea?" Xia Lin poured for both of them.
Lee’s project manager seemed more distant than usual. Cooler. Hardly surprising, Lee

thought. This was where they put the boot in.
Usually, Xia Lin’s manner was anything but cool. Over several years of working together,
she’d left him in no doubt that she was available for what Zendyne corporate-speak
would have termed an ‘alliance’, with her as mentor and him as protégé.
It was a standing offer that would have done wonders for Lee’s career, if only he’d been
able to take it up.
He’d often wished he could. Physically, his manager was exceptional, with abundant dark
hair that tickled when she leaned close to point something out on his workstation, and
skin that was a summer-scented incitement to the nature versus nurture debate: