Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [9]
Alice picked up the red phone. "Prospero."
The voice on the other side was the same androgynous voice that had called on the main phone. "Verify position."
At that, Alice let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. It was just a simple check-in call, making sure that she and Spence were safely ensconced. "We're in the house. All's well."
"Verified. Out."
The line went dead.
"And you have a nice evening, too." She sighed, hung up the phone, and closed the end table cabinet door.
Spence smiled. He had, she decided, a charming smile. And he really did have a nice ass.
"So, ten o'clock and all's well?"
"Something like that," she said. "So, want to show me how to make an ashtray?"
He laughed. She liked his laugh, too.
Maybe this assignment wouldn't be quite so boring after all…
Four
OVER THE LAST TWO MONTHS, LISA BROWARD had learned to well and truly despise the Hive's computer system.
Since it first came into existence, Umbrella had always had state-of-the-art computer technology, always first with the newest innovations in both hardware and software.
What they put on the market was usually about five years behind what they had for themselves. The head programmer for the most recent upgrade to the Hive was a British man named Dr. Simon Barr.
Lisa had first encountered Barr at MIT when she was an undergraduate, and he was teaching a class in applied artificial intelligence. He opened the semester with a variation on Lewis Carroll that had fooled most of the students, including Lisa, into thinking he would be one of those charming, daffy old Brits.
"The time has come, the walrus said, to speak of many things," he had said. "Of bits and bytes and decision trees, of compilers and of MRIs, and if the software's well designed, and whether they're truly living machines."
After lulling the students into a false sense of security, he dropped the bombshell: nobody in the class would receive any higher than a B, and most would receive a C or D grade. His theories, he explained, were far too sophisticated for any undergraduate to possibly begin to comprehend. He only taught the class because the powers-that-be had convinced him that he might find one or two great programmers there, and it behooved him—and those potential great students—to benefit from Barr's own vast stores of knowledge.
However, he had said, ninety-nine-point-nine percent of his students would not be great programmers, and probably that last point-one percent wouldn't be either, and this was truly an appalling waste of his time, but he supposed they had better get on with it and get it over with.
That speech alone prompted half the class to drop it.
Barr announced the second day of class that—now that he had weeded out the stragglers and the ones who wouldn't amount to anything except some job as a corporate drone writing drab code for unappreciative middle-management types—"you are going to work your brains to the very nub."
He also reiterated his position: nobody would get higher than a B. "But you will learn more from me than from any other professor you will ever have in your life."
Half the remainder dropped the class after that.
Lisa decided two things at that point: that she would stick with the class no matter what, and that she would get an A.
She spent the next three months being subjected to an amazing amount of abuse, vitriol, condescension—and also the most brilliant theories on AI she had ever heard before or since. Barr came by his arrogance honestly: he truly was an absolute master of the field.
He also made no effort to talk down to the students, leaving most of them scrambling to try to decipher what he was talking about.
Except Lisa, who lost a great deal of sleep, dropped ten pounds off an already rather skinny frame, got sick regularly, and came dangerously close to a nervous breakdown more than once. But dammit, she followed every single word Barr spoke in that arrogant tone that was peculiar to Brits.
On her final exam, he wrote the following on the back:
"Miss Addison,