Heidy Oakland, CEO of Radius, walked into the conference room and sat at the head of the table.

Also sitting at the table were Cindy Larkin, her VP of datacenter operations; Rodney O'Neil, her COO; Kenneth Dash, her VP of Engineering; Stephan Eubanks, her VP of VR Services; and Antonio Finley, her VP of AI Services.

"Alright everyone, now that we're all here, does anyone have anything noteworthy to share before we get down to regular business?"

"I have something," said Antonio. "We just finished our latest service usage analysis, and it looks like close to 30 percent of all our service traffic is probably coming from one of our competitors. Mostly through proxies."

"Only mostly?" asked Heidy.

"Yes, there are three AI companies that are openly training their models using our service," replied Antonio.

"Well, good for them," said Heidy. "We said we didn't care, so it's nice to see at least a few companies being open about it. Can I assume that AI-n-stein isn't one of them?"

"Yes," said Antonio, "we've identified at least fifteen companies with corporate accounts that we believe are shells for AI-n-stein."

"Thirty percent. Is that causing any capacity issues?" asked Heidy.

"Not yet," said Antonio, smiling. "But we finally got pushback from BallSoft with our last limit increase request. Like you suggested, we've been asking for twice what we actually need, and this last time they only gave us half of the 400 percent increase we requested."

"Did they give a reason why only half?" asked Rodney, the COO.

"No," said Antonio, "they just made vague noises about needing time to defragment service clusters. It was all bullshit. They knew it, and they knew that we knew it was bullshit. I think we finally ran into their reserved capacity commitments to AI-n-stein."

"That's what I suspected would happen," said Heidy. "Assuming they refuse to increase our limits, how long do we have before we have to choose between no new accounts or service degradation?"

"Every time I think we have the growth curve worked out, it changes," said Antonio. "A week ago I would have said we have about a month before we hit capacity limits. Now, I think we're closer to one, maybe two weeks."

Turning to Cindy, Heidy asked, "Will we have any data centers up and running in that time frame?"

"No," said Cindy, "our first data center won't be ready for three weeks, maybe two if we get lucky."

Just then, Antonio's phone dinged. He picked it up, then smiled. "Ah, looks like BallSoft coughed up the other half of that capacity. That means we have three to four weeks before we hit capacity limits."

"That's good to hear," said Heidy. "That gives us more time to get datacenters online."

Then she looked at Kenneth, her VP of Engineering. "How close are we to releasing the new educational services and the open-source software updates for using the watermark model?"

"The updates to our open-source software for using the watermark detection model are ready to go. We just need to push the button and those changes go live," said Kenneth.

"As for the educational services," he continued, "everything's ready except the guided paper writing service. Our testers found some quirky behavior, and your secret model magician is working their magic to fix the issue. Current ETA is two weeks."

"Great, keep up the good work," said Heidy. "Stephen? How goes the VR services development?"

"It's going great, Heidy. The 3D video sharing service and teleconference service are done, and we are almost done with the virtual assistant service. We've made progress on the Worlds of Wonder service, but sadly we won't be ready in time for CES."

"That's still good news overall, and we knew going in that it was unlikely for us to have Worlds of Wonder ready for CES. Do you think we'll be ready in time for fall and the new school year?"

"Maybe. We've been surprised by how much educational material is prohibitively licensed and have resorted to hiring educators directly to help produce content. So far, every teacher we talked to about the project has been enthusiastic, especially after we show them the demo."

"That's great, Stephen," said Heidy. "You did a great job on the demo. It actually made me want to go back to school."

——————————

Jack spent plenty of time with his girls in his soul space, but he still tried to spend time with each of them in the physical world as well. It didn't feel any different physically, but somehow it felt more significant.

There was a restaurant/cafe attached to the chef school Lorie was attending, and it happened to be near the school Miranda was attending, so he was meeting the two of them for lunch at the cafe.

Lorie had the evening shift at the restaurant that day, so she was free to meet with him and Miranda for lunch.

He was already seated and just waiting for Miranda and Lorie to join him when he heard two women at the table next to him complaining.

"I still think this AI stuff is nonsense," said the woman wearing designer jeans, a low-cut top, and high heels.

"Why? What did it say this time?" asked her companion, a tall, stocky woman in a red dress and flats.

"You know how I like it when Vince..." the woman paused then made a quiet, "gluck, gluck" sound.

"Yes, I still don't understand why you like that so much. So what happened?" said her companion.

"Well, I was trying to figure out how long it was safe for him to continue beyond when I passed out, and the damned AI either tells me to break up with him or tells me to call the police! So annoying. It's bad enough getting judged by my ultra-religious parents, but now I'm getting judged by a damned computer!"

Jack couldn't help but chuckle at her comment.

He thought he'd been quiet, but apparently she'd heard because her attention snapped to him and she growled, "What? Do I amuse you?"

"No, sorry. I understand the absurdity of a computer having any kind of moral opinion. Besides, I have two girlfriends that enjoy the same activity you just alluded to. And the answer to your question is no more than 15 seconds. Any longer, and you risk brain damage."

"That's not much time," muttered the woman's companion.

He spotted Miranda as she entered the cafe and waved at her. Then Lorie came out of a side door near the kitchen and headed towards his table.

He got up and hugged both of them, then sat. As he did, the two women next to him watched with surprise and a small amount of jealousy.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.