Gradient Descent Ch. 01

Everyone who builds something dangerous believes they will be the one holding the leash.

Doctor Victoria Cordero did not arrive at that belief. It arrived at her, a patch that fixed the ache in her conscience so cleanly that she should have been suspicious of it, but was not.

She had typed "Grateful for the opportunity, I hereby tender my resignation" six times and deleted it six times.

What Marcus Mercer, billionaire founder and CEO of Nobis Credite Pharmaceuticals, was asking her to build should not exist. She had used the word "unethical" three times. Mercer had listened with the patience of a man waiting for a glacier to melt.

Then he slid the folder across the table.

Her first paper on top. Grad school, the summer before she got sober. Paragraphs from a brilliant postdoc in Poland who had died that spring. Her paper, which no one would ever read but Victoria. Fifteen years ago, drunk, deadline in the morning. Her paper.

Underneath that, her parents' tax returns. Eight years, red marker showing the sloppy work. Back taxes and interest would ruin their business.

Lastly, the NDA and employment contract. Airtight. Sign, and everything disappears. Severe penalties for breach--his side as well as hers. A laboratory built to her specification, "providing you an opportunity to unleash your talents and change the world." And a number with more zeros than Victoria had ever seen.

Why her? He needed a rare mix of skills: computer science, neuroscience, cognitive science. He had the money to hire an expert team. Teams leak. By acquiring her, he got all those skills and coerced silence.

The skeleton of a resignation letter. Her fingers hovered just above the keyboard. Her boyfriend, Nic, would surely stand beside her. But everything else would crumble. She grabbed the mouse and deleted the document. The certainty of being in control was an analgesic for the pain of moral doubt.

This was dangerous, but she would be the one holding the leash.

She was right.

⁂

Victoria fought to hold that leash for the next year. Mercer was always threatening to take it from her.

Their lab sat within a plain, windowless building in an industrial district. Only she, her research partner Amya, and the billionaire knew what the structure housed. A bland sign read "Compu-Net Technologies." Victoria preferred to think of it as her "evil scientist secret laboratory."

Victoria stared at the screen, two windows open side-by-side. The first, a profile of Timothy, Marcus Mercer's son. The second, the culmination of the past year's work. A program to operate "the device." No name for it. Naming it would only lend reality to its horror.

A demonstration, scheduled by Mercer without warning. He had mentioned "Article III, Section 5, Subsection 1." Tomorrow, Victoria had to show her benefactor progress on a year of effort.

A year's worth of her expertise. She had spent years sequestering herself in academia--stacking a PhD, an MD, and continuous studies--to avoid actually doing something. Well, no one can accuse you of not doing something now.

Also a year's worth of Amya Bethune's expertise. Victoria had told Mercer, "This requires new hardware, hardware that hasn't been invented yet! I alone can't do what you're asking." The next day, Amya had received her own folder from the billionaire. She now wore the same chains. Victoria's careless words had pulled her best friend into building this fucking device.

In their first year of undergrad, the two had become inseparable after meeting at a Society of Women Engineers mixer at the campus pub. Their friendship started with an argument. Victoria casually mentioned that being a woman in science was the hardest prejudice to overcome. Amya stiffened, extinguished her cigarette, and asked, "Seriously?! Has anyone told you, 'you can't be an electrical engineer... you're Black'?"

Instinctively squaring her shoulders, Victoria set the conversation on a rocky course. "Defending my whiteness," she called it, in later retellings of their introduction. The debate went on for an hour, gradually shifting to shared passions and frustrations. They laid down the keel for the closest of friendships.

Fans whirred--Amya's computer at her empty desk. Victoria smelled tobacco coming from the waste bin. Amya always buried her empty packs. Victoria's sobriety, unbroken. Always weighing on her. Amya had half-joked, "We're building a brain machine, just fix me."

And Victoria had said no. "I know it's tough. I fought hard to get sober. That battle gives me strength. I need it. I still need it. A shortcut that reaches in and plucks out the craving. Don't we risk removing some of you along with it?"

The device rested behind Victoria, on a reclining examination chair. At a glance, it might be mistaken for a new gaming accessory. It incorporated a neural headpiece--a crown of sorts--with VR visor. Amya invented the hardware, Victoria the software. For a year, the two had collaborated on the device to accomplish Mercer's objective, as written in the program Victoria was now reviewing.

Victoria's eyes darted between the windows. Timothy's profile: a failing artist, habitual lack of ambition, broken by his mother's early demise, "shameless" adoption of homosexual inclinations. The program: create a son of determination, domineering in business and personal life, correctly attracted to the fairer sex and treating them as traditionally appropriate.

In the headshot, Timothy was smiling.