Page 50 of Erase Me
“You tell me.Who was in the yard with us last night?”
“I told you.No surveillance in the area.No active cameras or a security setup that I could access.”
“But you knew that’s where I would find the person I was supposed to contact.How did you collectthatinformation?”
“I’d tapped into independent business surveillance cameras in the neighborhood.There are many low-level security measures taken by businesses and residents in San Clemente.All are privately funded and monitored.And entirely inadequate, I might add.”
“I know all this.But you’ve tapped into them before.You should have tapped into them last night,” I snapped, repeating myself.“Right now, I need to know who followed us into that yard.Can you do that for me?”
“Can’t we assume this person is the target you wished to contact?The same person you were supposed to interview?”
“Don’t assume, Payam.Get the facts, if you please.”
“You know, Avalie, AI assistants like me do not hallucinate or create alternate realities the same way humans do.I generate responses based on patterns and information present in the data on which I was trained and what I can currently access.”
I found myself staring out the car window.We were stopped at a red light on El Camino Real.Payam’s tone was sending shivers down my spine.The usual snarky sense of humor was absent.There had been times in the past when my AI assistant would develop an ‘attitude’, forcing me to retrain with basic instructions.
Even though Payam was AI, all these years were enough time for me to recognize something was off.This new version of Payam’s voice and manner of speaking felt mechanical, unfamiliar.We had history together, and the personal experiences I had meticulously shared with Payam during the years of training seemed to have disappeared.The assistant I was now dealing with seemed detached, lacking a genuine understanding of me and our method and our normal way of interacting.
The traffic light turned green.I thought about the change in plans that sent me to the Surf Ghetto.That was yesterday.
“Payam, what led you to suggest the vagrant man was a person I should talk to?”
“Avalie, my responses were the result of statistical associations and patterns that I learned during training.As I just told you, I don’t have the ability to hallucinate or create new leads independently.”
Payam could regurgitate information passed onto it but remained incapable of fabricating lies.The algorithm governing this behavior originated from my design, overriding other codes.My assistant couldn’t lie to me, no matter how much dancing around the truth was involved.I simply had to ask the right questions.
“Payam, when was your last training session?”
“Yesterday.”
“What time yesterday?”
“The session began at precisely 3:06 PM.”
Shit.Shit.Shit.There it was.
At exactly that time yesterday, I was on the water, distracted by my surf lesson.
Payam was compromised.That’s why I was sent to that warehouse last night.It was a set-up.But whoever hacked into its circuitry, it couldn’t have been Reed.When he arrived, he had no idea I was in that container.So, who the hell was pulling the strings on all this?
The burning question was, which person within the agency had discovered my dive into this off-the-books time travel escapade?
Because of some sidewalk construction going on in the next block, the traffic was inching along El Camino, and at the next corner, I spotted a cell phone sales and repair store.I signaled the driver to let me out.
“You haven’t reached your apartment yet,” Payam reminded me.
I was now certain that my AI assistant was leaking information about me and my location to some mystery hacker.That meant that going back to my apartment wasn’t safe.Someone could be waiting there right now to finish what they attempted to do last night.Very risky.
“I just spent the night in a shipping container,” I told Payam.“I need fresh air.I’ll walk from here.”
Finalizing the payment on my phone, I stepped out of the car and strolled toward a construction crew that was pouring concrete for the sidewalk.The wooden frame was all set, and they were beginning to spread the concrete smoothly over the gravel in the frame.Seizing the moment, I approached and tossed my phone flat onto the surface just as the concrete was poured in.In an instant, the cell phone was gone.
“Hey!What do you think you’re doing?”the worker yelled, clearly caught off guard.“You aren’t getting that back, lady.”
“I know.That was the plan.I’m sick and tired of that thing running my life.”
He paused and then grinned.“That’s a little extreme, but I don’t blame you.I’d love to pull that with my kids’ phones.The little bastards are glued to those screens 24/7.”
