The Conflict Algorithm, Chapter 5
Sara had texted Leo several times, but didn’t get a response. She didn’t take it to heart, figured he was probably home sleeping. She picked up Edwin’s sleeping body and thought about carrying him the two blocks home, quickly changed her mind.
“Wake up, mi amor.” Sara kissed her son’s forehead gently.
Chickie had brought some girl to his bedroom and locked the door. If Sara stayed around longer, she’d be compelled to do cleanup. As it was, she couldn’t help but pick up the few things near to her. The only people left from the party were a few hard core smokers out in the backyard, but even they would be leaving soon.
“Ed-Win,” she said, as she lifted him by his arm and got him on his feet. Edwin sleepwalked out of the apartment, down the steps and onto the sidewalk, supported only partially by his mom.
Two blocks later, they spotted a bum lying in the middle of the sidewalk. Protective of her son, she looked to see if it was clear to walk in the street so she could give the potentially dangerous, drunk or high bum a wide berth.
Before she stepped off the curb, she realized with a shock what she was looking at. There was blood on the pavement. Edwin had sensed her hesitation and had snapped awake. “That’s Leo,” he said.
Sara knew instantly what had happened. Bebo must have followed him. That meant she couldn’t call the cops or do the hospital thing. Her apartment was exactly 90 feet away, just around the corner. “Come on, Edwin, let’s try to get him up.”
Leo opened his eyes, and Sara was able to help him up, but he didn’t seem to be able to talk. He let out a slight continuous hum, punctuated with a murmur as she helped him walk. She and Edwin used their arms on either side of Leo to hold him up. They managed to move slowly down the street.
Leo woke up in the middle of the night. He was in a living room, there was one lamp on, and it was dim. His head was wrapped in a bandage of some sort. His shirt was off and he had a blanket over him. Sara was asleep on a sofa chair right beside him.
He watched Sara breathe for a little while and pieced together what had happened. Why is it so easy to imagine people as children when you watch them sleep? She looked so vulnerable, and he felt an incredible urge to make sure she was protected. Perhaps he should really learn to protect himself. He reached gentle fingers to his foggy and painful head. There was a strange comfort in finding the locus of the pain. There. Right there, oh, and there.
Sara’s nightwear was apparently a large t-shirt and boy shorts. He felt a little pervy looking at her, especially after he noticed she wasn’t wearing a bra. He tried to get up. It made quite a bit of noise, not just because he moved clumsily, but also because the couch he was on was covered in plastic.
“No, no, no, no, no… you stay right there,” Sara said, unfolding herself from the chair.
Leo wanted to reply, but his mouth felt incredibly slow. He blinked for a long time. A tear pushed from his eye.
Sara got up, slid behind him on the couch, cradling his head gently, willing him back to sleep. Leo thought for a moment that, if he had a concussion that the last thing he should do was fall asleep. That was right before he fell asleep.
A couple of things: Abuela cooked a mean breakfast, but didn’t speak any English. Sara was gone when Leo woke up, but had left his phone on a charger and a detailed text message. There was also a folded hoodie, and his own soiled shirt in a tan grocery bag.
His face, reflected in the gold-flecked living room mirror looked like he had gotten beaten up much worse than he had. It was 10am and Leo was supposed to meet the people from Andvantech at 2pm. That wasn’t going to happen. He shot them a postpone email.
He texted a thank you to Sara, thanked Abuela, and headed out.
There was a circle of thought Leo followed as he made his way home. Amid the strangeness of being in his neighborhood at a time of day that was unusual for him, Leo imagined himself as someone who could fight. What if he could become an expert at defusing conflict, and if conflict had to happen, what if he could win?
Is violence ever okay? What if it was to protect someone? Was all conflict stupid?
Leo was still pondering all this as he let himself in his side entrance apartment. He looked around at the haphazard setup, and felt a pang of embarrassment. His mattress sat on the floor. His clothes were in bins. His computer desk was the most put-together part of the room.
Leo noticed he didn’t have any family photos up on the wall. He’d left everything behind when he left years ago.
He crawled onto his mattress, sat back gingerly, and let the tears flow. His phone buzzed. He picked it up, outsized hope flaring down his arm that it was Sara.
It was the Advantech people offering 2 grand just to meet — if he met today. This was so super sketchy.
Fuck it. He snapped a photo of himself, attached it to his reply, “Looking forward to seeing you at 2.”
Advantech was on the 33rd floor of a nondescript office building on 6th avenue and 51st Street. The train ride had been a bit surreal, mostly because people were avoiding Leo like he was an extra from a zombie film. Also, he got the feeling there was a bug crawling on his ankle, spazzed, inspected, didn’t find anything. A minute or so later, he saw a roach on the seat next to him. He had reached away to find something to kill it with, and it had disappeared by the time he turned back.
The lobby security had taken a long, hard look at Leo’s ID. Leo still felt skittish. Riding up the elevator, it was all he could do to avoid singing. He was not a good singer.
On 33 and through the glass doors. Leo smiled at the receptionist. Marie the receptionist was ensconced behind a white marble counter, bright orange backdrop with classy lighting illuminating the Advantech logo. She didn’t flinch at his bruised face, she invited him to sit in the appropriately compatible furniture and offered him “coffee, tea, water?”
Leo had just pulled his phone out to dispel the potential for boredom when a man stepped out from a hallway.
“Hi, Leo, I’m Sean. Sean McIntyre. So glad you’re here. Why don’t you come right this way?”
“Sure.” Leo said.
Sean led the way to a conference room with a view of Radio City Music Hall. “Can I get you anything?” he asked.
“I’m all right. Thanks.” Leo looked around at the 15 seater and figured he’d cut the corner and balance out the power in the room.
“Great! We’re really glad you’re here. I’m hoping you’re interested in consulting with us?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Wonderful! So I’m assuming you’ll have questions, but let me give you the overview.
We are a competitor of Recon. Our offerings are very similar, but we have a large client base in the political sphere. Our services are often contracted by firms working with the RNC, DNC, foundations, think tanks, and so on.
We want to be the service provider of choice. Right now, we outsource our dynamic feedback to third parties, mostly overseas, and obviously, it’s costly, but also, in today’s climate, having Ukranian or Chinese crowd-sourced political feedback sway the electorate is somewhat risque.
Did you know what Recon was doing with your division’s research and demos?”
Leo was piecing together the story and a strategy much faster than his addled, and most likely, bruised brain was capable of. Leo was still hoping this was about a job interview, and not something sketchy. “Not exactly,” he responded.
“Hm,” Sean said. “Well, they were running your conversation models on social comment threads.”
“Oh, yes, we knew that. That was how we tested if we could de-escalate flame wars.”
“Right, so you know that 4 billion posts came from your algorithm? That you had a success rate of 64% of nullifying the opposition? 12% of the time your algorithm actually won the other person over.”
“Um.” Leo shifted in his seat. “Well, it’s not really my algorithm. I’m one of the computational linguists who worked on the model — which is really flawed, by the way. Even as is, it would take say, a team of 6 about 9 months to rebuild. ”
“Yes, of course, actually, let me clarify. We don’t want to rebuild anything.” Sean paused. “Obviously, you would be compensated.”
Leo felt shameful and embarrassed. The pain in his head made him feel stupid to be alive. He also felt an instant dislike for Sean for having been put in this position.
“What kind of compensation?” Leo said, diving in.
“To start, a retainer of 50 grand you keep no matter what. During integration you get a thousand a day until it’s implemented. How does that sound? Oh, here is your check for this consultation.”
Sean fished a check out of his pocket and slid it across the short distance between them.
Leo felt a strong urge to puke. He should say something that indicates interest and asks for some more time.
“Thank you.”
“So, not to rush you, but we’re excited to get started. What are you thinking?”
“I’m, uh, not sure I can give you what you are looking for.”
“You mean you don’t have access to the files any more?”
Leo did not want to confirm that he had a perfectly good recent backup of the entire platform both on his laptop and at home. Shit, everything they wanted was in his bag between his ankles.
He was aware that his delay in responding was a kind of tell, in itself. Of course they knew he had a copy. Would they try to get it from him if he said no? Would they break in his house? He believed in encryption, but given enough time and resources they could probably get to it. Logically, only his password stood between them and a lot of money.
Then there’s the new facts. Leo had no idea that the cloud platform that opened the webservices that trained his platform was actually being used to influence people out there. He wondered how much time he could buy.
“I think I can get what you need, it’s more a question of timing. There are a few things I need to take care of.”
“Medical concerns?” Sean braved, glancing at Leo’s bruised face, which Sean had been studiously ignoring until then.
“Yes, I’m waiting on the outcome of a few tests and I’d planned to take a small vacation.”
“Of course, I understand. Perhaps we can send you the contract and you can look it over and sign it. When do you think you can have an answer for us?”
