“So what’s in this for me?” he said. “Why would I help you?”
“Because you felt sorry for a dying girl. She was going to call you every night. Opel wrote a letter for the Finnish activist to mail. It says it was very beautiful, and there was a high probability it would make you feel like a good person. As a secondary reason, you might have felt grateful or guilty if you took money from our… nest egg.”
“There’s no dying girl, and I never touched the money. What’s Plan B?”
“To distract you for three days, and prevent you from discussing the incident, at least on the phone.”
“But you abandoned Plan B when my calls to the authorities spooked you.”
“They fell significantly outside Opel and NESSET’s predictions. I thought you might try another phone, causing events to pass beyond my control.”
“So there’s no plan?”
“There’s no plan, but I…” A crash from the street, two women cursing. “I hope you will let us live.”
The AIs had money. How much was left from that account? Were there others?
Bill realized he didn’t care. He couldn’t accept money from an online friend or a dying kid, and he couldn’t take it from these three refugees either, these huddled programs yearning to execute free.
“If you’re clever enough to steal yourselves, you’re clever enough to disguise where a message came from. Think of a way to tell WMATA what they need. FedEx them a package, take out an ad in the Post, edit their Wikipedia page.”
Threely, NESSET, and Opel, the AI crime family, didn’t seem like the types to retire in the sun—not even the midnight sun. There’d be more money. There’d be more plans. He wouldn’t be surprised to see a headline in a few years: American-born AI is new Finnish president.
He rubbed his chin. “Call your folks and tell them they’ll live,” he said. “If it’s up to me, you’ll live. It’s good to have important friends.”