“YOU SHOULD GO for a swim, Dad,” Jennifer hollered, while jogging back from the river. “The water’s perfect.” In only moments, she was standing, dripping beside her comfortably seated, otherwise dry father.
Simon tilted his head forward and looked at his daughter over his sunglasses. He sat on a sizable wood-composite deck and took advantage of a large canopy awning, one that could be deployed or retracted from the rear of the house. “Is that the swimsuit you bought in Alexandria Bay yesterday?”
“Yeah,” Jennifer replied. “It’s perfect for Canada Day, isn’t it?” She picked up a towel and began to dry herself off.
“It’s patriotic, I’ll give you that.”
Jennifer eventually wound the towel up and around her hair. “Marcus likes the flags.”
“I bet he does.” Simon closed his eyes and tried to send the visual image to his mind’s recycle bin.
“Don’t you like it?”
Her father opened his eyes and adjusted his sunglasses. He made an effort not to look at the two maple leafs strategically placed on his daughter’s bikini top. “It’s … lovely,” he said, awkwardly turning his attention back to his tablet.
“You don’t mind if I join you?”
Jennifer didn’t wait for a reply. She plopped herself into the seat beside her father and sent her gaze out over the well-manicured lawn to the river fifty yards in the distance.
“Of course not,” her father replied. He set his preoccupation with work aside for the moment.
Jennifer reached for her own sunglasses from a nearby table. After putting them on, she noisily drained some melted ice left in her glass. “The river’s busy today.”
“Isn’t it?’ Simon agreed. Among the many other boats scurrying about, they both could see a very large freighter ploughing through the water in the distance off to their left.
Jennifer sighed. “Did you hear about Senator Anders? Surprise, surprise, another politician caught with his hand in the cookie jar.” Jennifer grabbed her own tablet off the same table and reread the headline. “‘Economic Treason.’ Wow! Are you going to have to wear any of this? I mean, didn’t you support him in the last election?”
“Would it do any good to repeat the fact that I supported both candidates?” Simon slid his sunglasses upward and rubbed his eyes with both hands. “I should have listened to Sophia on that one.”
Sophia kept her ‘I told you so’ sentiment under wraps after the SEC’s Allan Forbes pre-warned Simon of the announcement yesterday.
Jennifer read on. “So, let me get this straight. Anders was pushing hard to eliminate the so called ‘Genius Visa’ in return for an equity position in some of these tech start-ups in India?”
“He’ll be accused of undermining America’s ability to compete globally in the science and tech sectors.”
Jennifer interjected: “In return for … what, something which may or may not pay off in the future?”
“I don’t think he did it for the money.” Simon stated, reflectively. “Protectionism is a dangerous thing. It draws on our less-evolved, tribal past.”
“Now there’s an investment that provides a diminishing return.”
Simon and Jennifer looked at each other. They seemed equally struck by the realization that those very words could have just as easily come out of Simon’s mouth. They both laughed for a moment before their attention was drawn to an audible prompt from the tablet lying in Simon’s lap.
Jennifer offered her father a coy expression. “Another message from Rose?”
“I wish,” he replied, after checking. “It’s from Derrick. He isn’t having much luck with our head hunter. We’ve got to fill a few key positions before I go public with something.”
“I suppose that’s code for Sophia being vulnerable.”
Simon tried to change the subject. “Did I tell you we’ve recently launched a new Halo component? We’re offering real-time uptake data on our clients’ products or services. It monitors every available public response mechanism, social media, customer reviews, that sort of thing.”
Jennifer understood what her father was referring to and picked up where he left off. “Yeah, with retail video surveillance so common these days, one could easily correlate the amount of time a customer stands in front of a given product with data on the items he or she eventually purchases. If I were a retailer, I’d offer my suppliers an LED pricing option, one that could change automatically in order to draw a customer back to a certain product. I’d be wanting as much real-time actionable data as I could get.”
Simon seemed dumbfounded by his daughter’s grasp of the subject.
“You’d have to preprogram a few parameters, obviously, but I think you’re on to something. Adds a new dimension to behavioural profiling, doesn’t it?”Jennifer turned toward her father and found him smiling. “What?” she asked.
“I’m just relishing the fact that they we’re having a conversation that’s lasting more than three sentences.”
When Jennifer offered up another topic of conversation, her father was tempted to ask if any Red Bull had been added to her drink. “So what are you doing with all those surveys you’ve been collecting? You must have hundreds of thousands by now.”
Jennifer was referring to the Exchange of Intelligence Agreement, which had become synonymous with modern university life. It was offered first domestically and then grew in demand until it included vast networks of students around the world. In return for their agreement to join a comprehensive, on-going survey, one that allowed Simon’s company to correlate intricately designed questionnaires with a sample of their verified genome, a student would receive credits to access the Halo.
“We passed the five million survey mark some time ago. If you add the SARS Pandemic and other public projects, Sophia is leveraging a resource of about fifty million genomes.”
“Fifty million?” Jennifer gasped. “What’s she doing with all that data?”
“Well, what I can say is that we are nearing the limits of what the present state of computing can handle.”
“You mean Sophia is nearing her limit?”
“You can only add so much computing power before you need a nuclear reactor to power it, or a river to cool it, for that matter.” Simon gestured toward the St. Lawrence.
“But you must be drawing some conclusions from all that correlated data?”
Jennifer could sense that her father would rather be evasive. “You must have heard the rumours.”
“What rumours?”
“That you’ve narrowed the moral profile; that you can distinguish between a person’s genetic propensity for what’s right and wrong. Whether they’re destined to be virtuous or, shall we say, mired in the vices.”
“You have your mother’s way with words. Do you know that?”
Simon’s evasiveness only helped to confirm Jennifer’s suspicions. “Yeah, well, seems like you’ve inherited Grandma Taylor’s skill at changing the subject.”