Dahlia - Birth of an A.I. Ch. 04

Emma said bluntly, "We let our shitter get too close to where we eat."

Bellona smirked, "Yes, that. The Carol thing didn't fit the pattern of what our illegal operations had done in the past. We didn't think that would be overly noticed, since the plan was never to actually release that evidence, but I fear it did. The president, at the least, knew the real reason Carol left. In that case, if he figured that out, the president would know to be sneaky to take out the threat, fearing rightly that we had our eyes on everything. The colonel in charge of the drone program even told the president the flight should avoid Chicago air space, but he was told to shut up and follow orders."

I sighed, "Alright, let's go," as my sated and pleasure addled mind tried to work through all the ramifications if she was right. I suspected the AG part would go ahead, and clean up all pollution, simply because all those companies already had the designs and rights to build them. As to if we'd be seeing any money from it, or if we'd be able to release nanites and communications in ten years, or interstellar stuff in the next year, I had no idea.

If the president spread the word, we could become the most hunted people in the history of the world. Every government and bad guy would have a bullet with our names on it.

Or, this could just be coincidence, and Bellona was just paranoid.

As for money, that shouldn't be a problem, we had billions in banks around the world, more than half of it was under different names, and part of other smaller companies with little notoriety and impact in the world. Run by humans really, my ladies were mostly silent partners with a majority ownership. If we had to, we could disappear, but we'd always be looking over our shoulders.

Point being, even if our vision of the world's future died, at least we'd be taken care of, if we could hide.

We all got dressed quickly, no time for a shower, and while the ladies brushed out their hair, which was all fucked up from the sex, I packed an outfit each for all of us in a single bag. It only took us maybe ten minutes, and we were headed for the door.

Lia must've called for her limo with the server, because it was waiting outside. Which was a good thing, we all wouldn't have fit in the M5.

That thought, absurdly perhaps, made me realize we needed to pick up an SUV, or family car, if all four of them were going to have a kid by that time next year. If we were still alive. Sure, they couldn't beat us, I could order the deaths of all the world leaders, and go back to bed, but of course, we'd never do any such thing. Did it count as self-defense, if it was against a country exercising national security? I wasn't sure, I just knew the idea didn't make me at all comfortable, but neither could we let them kill us.

I took a deep breath, it could be nothing after all, and we slipped into the limo.

We were only two blocks away, when Bellona's eyes widened, and four seconds later a loud explosion shook the quiet night.

Bellona cursed, in that sweet voice, and it made it almost funny.

"I hate being right. What should we do?"

I asked, "Why did he do it, with us out of the house."

Lia said, "Normally they would have a team watching, either through a satellite, or a local team on scene, to verify mission success, but the president couldn't do that without tipping us off. In other words, he had no choice but to take a chance, and operate on blind faith we were home, otherwise the tipoff would've been blatant, we're lucky Bellona picked that threat up at all. If the Colonel hadn't argued about Chicago airspace, it wouldn't have been flagged by our filters and brought to her attention."

Right. Duh. In my defense, I was still a bit sleepy, but not anymore. Fuck.

"So, when they report no one was in the house, what will he do then?"

I wasn't going to ask about the outrage of a drone missile fired in an American city, against American citizens. That would never be known, it would be covered by a gas leak explosion story, or something. I wondered what they'd use for coverups once explosive gases and poisonous fumes weren't a part of the world.

Bellona frowned, "I don't know, should we call and ask?"

I laughed, then that got cut short when no one else was laughing, "Seriously?"

Bellona shrugged, "We're already outed, at least in relation to POTUS. Our only chance now is to talk our way out of it, and to convince him we aren't a danger to anyone but murderers, dictators, and monsters. Hopefully, the fact his heart is still beating will convince him we're telling the truth. Because of the need for secrecy for his plan to have a chance, he hasn't actually told anyone else about his suspicious, or put it on a computer system."

She frowned, "Technically, we could plug the leak right now."

I shook my head, "We're not doing that. Not just because he's the president, which is reason enough, but it wouldn't work. Others would wonder about the drone strike, and it would all come out in an investigation. If he could figure it out, others will see it.

"If we have to, if worse comes to worst, call the ship, and we'll hide out in a third world country, and control the businesses from there. Whatever we can keep up, I imagine if the truth gets out Fortress will be uninstalled from every computer system faster than you could sneeze. Umm, go ahead I guess, give him a call."

That should be interesting.

Bellona shrugged, "We won't do it, but the president has enough skeletons it would be easy to misdirect that investigation away from us and what led to his discovery of the truth. Even at that, he was just guessing."

Maybe, but there was no point in talking about it any further.

Lia cleared her throat, and somehow routed the sound of her phone call through the limo speakers in the back. The phone rang twice before it was picked up.

"This is the President."

Lia replied, "You missed, sir."

The president used un-presidential language, and when he got done cursing Lia continued.

"What now? We have no intention of assassinating a president, but we can't very well play this game. Right now, only six of us are aware of the truth, and you must admit we've done good, and made the world a better place. I understand national security, but surely we can come to an accommodation."

He replied, "Just like that?"

She said almost cheerily, "We needed a new house anyway, we're all starting families."

The President took a deep breath, "I see, and if I don't back off, and if I tell the world? I can't stress how disturbing it is that you recognized and avoided what you avoided."

She replied, "Our record speaks for itself. We have no wish to take over anything, but rampant corruption that leads to human suffering and death will not be tolerated. We made a mistake with Carol, and showed our hand, but even so only you noticed. Otherwise, all we've done is take out the garbage, the human garbage and we're moving to end the energy crisis and stop pollution.

"What you may not know is we also have cures for many genetic diseases, have cured cancer, and can slow genetic degradation which extends human life by quite a bit. We will release all of that of course, when the FDA approves the use of our nanites swarms. Which won't be for ten years. There are also other technologies we plan to release at the same time, in ten years, just as beneficial if in a less obvious way.

"Point being, even if we have an eye into things you don't like, we've also ensured others do not, while we improve the world that we all live in. Which means the real question Mr. President, is who do you trust more? Do you trust me and my four collogues in the know, who have done good in this world without grasping for power, or the leaders of other countries and your enemies, who once again would be able to spy on you effectively if our software was removed and we were hunted down? Perhaps we are a threat to national security, but I would argue that we're a lesser one than the ones we've already taken off your threat board."

The President said, "I take your point, but you didn't answer the question. I thought I was the politician."

Lia sighed, "I suppose not, I also thought that would have been obvious given this phone conversation. We would reluctantly leave our country, and we would disappear Mr. President. If we were willing to kill you to cover it up, we wouldn't be talking right now. AG advancements in transportation and power generation would continue, but America would miss out on other advancements, or at least for a time, as we released them elsewhere in the world. You made a good effort, but if it turned into a manhunt, there'd be no chance of success as communications would tip us off every time anyone got close."

The President asked, "What do you suggest?"

Lia said, "That we all get on with our lives, and forget this ever happened. I wish you'd think of us as the good guys, as silent allies of a sort, after all several of the arrests the secret service has made the last six months in the name of protecting your life, the data they acted upon originated from us."

The President said, "You scare the shit out of me, if we're going to be honest. What are you?"

Lia glanced at me, and I shrugged, but then shook my head. If things did go to shit, and they did kill us all, that would end it. In two years we'd have similar but slightly different bodies fully grown with different names, and life would go on. If the president found out the real truth, that they were A.I., a successful manhunt wouldn't end things, and they'd scour the world for their mainframes.

I doubted they'd find them all, or even be able to take us out in the first place, but why take the chance?

"Four very smart women, who have invented the next generation of technology. I imagine our advantage won't last forever, once all our technologies have been released, your government scientists will figure out how to do what we've been doing, or at least be on an even playing field."

That was true to a certain extent, except we'd never release A.I., or the genetic sequencing, cloning and mind transfer and control technologies. Of course, it was probably just a matter of time until they were duplicated in one way or another, by someone else. Unless... we suppressed that kind of thing, and kept an eye out for it.

I wasn't sure what to do there honestly. Perhaps it was hypocritical, but the idea of anyone besides us having the power we had, scared the fucking shit out of me.

The President asked, "What other technologies?"

Lia replied, "Nothing related to security," she went on to explain the nanites wouldn't just be for health, and their other functions from wireless payment systems, phones, televisions, virtual reality, entertainment, healthcare, and all that other stuff I've already mentioned more than once. She also hinted there was more space tech coming, but it was still under development.

The President said, "For now, we have an agreement. Only because I believe what you said, and I don't want America falling behind if our attempts to hunt you fail."

Lia asked, "For now?"

The President said, "Don't interfere in my administration again, and I'll have no reason to change my mind, except to tip off my protection detail of any threats, of course."

Lia laughed, "Done, Mr. President. As long as you don't hire anyone torturing or drowning puppies, we won't have a reason to interfere, but we'll give you the chance to take care of it first, with an FYI."

The President grunted agreement, and then hung up.

"Do we trust that?"

Bellona said, "I don't like it, but we'll keep an eye on him. Make sure he keeps his word, and that he doesn't pass notes in class. If that happens, we'll have to go on the run."

I snickered at the pass notes comment.

"What now?"

Lia said, "That's..."

"Up to me, right," I interrupted, and she smirked at me.

I said, "Hotel, we look for a new house tomorrow, with at least ten bedrooms."

Lia raised an eyebrow, and I added, "We're not stopping at just one kid each, are we?"

They all kissed me, quite passionately, and my arms were full of alluring soft flesh for a few minutes as that all got worked out. It was quite obvious they liked that idea, past the desire to just obey me, by a fucking mile.

Mia said, "On an unrelated note, we were right about FTL. The probes are keeping perfect time with us, in FTL going three hundred times the speed of light. Which means we can take a month off sometime, if we ever find a planet to visit."

I nodded, "Is it possible to go faster, warp two or something?"

Emma giggled, a little naughtily, and kissed my cheek.

"Doesn't work that way, love. There may be a way to increase speed, but it won't be as simple as pumping more power into the warp bubble."

Lia said, "Maybe enlarging the field, or duplexing it somehow. We'll give it some thought. It's incredibly fast already, but when you consider it would still take over three hundred and thirty years to cross our galaxy at three hundred times the speed of light, I suppose it's slow. Still, it's fast enough to hopefully find some worlds and start spreading out humanity in local space. A few weeks in a ship isn't that bad, even a hundred light years would just be four months. Maybe we'll figure out the wormhole thing one day."

Lia pushed the intercom button, and she told the driver to take us to the Embassy Suites, a four-star Hilton, which wasn't all that far from work.

I said, "New house tomorrow, and clothes shopping," as it finally sunk in, we'd just lost everything. Well, except for my car, and my nanites took care of a shit ton of things, including phone and entertainment.

Mia kissed me, I guess she thought I wanted to be comforted.

It was late, and we were all tired as we checked in, stripped down in the hotel room, and cuddled up for sleep. Tomorrow was another day.

Chapter Eleven

It took us almost two weeks to fix everything from that night. For the moment, the President seemed to be our reluctantly willing co-conspirator, or at the very least he hadn't said anything about his discovery to anyone else, and he hadn't tried to kill us again.

We found a large mansion on the north side of the city, and got new clothes, furniture, kitchen stuff, and all the other things one needed for a house. Even paying with a cash outlay, these things took time. Not that living at the Embassy Suites for two weeks had been a hardship, but it wasn't a home.

The mansion had twelve bedrooms upstairs, and we even ordered a custom mattress for the master suite that would easily fit five, not that it would stop us from cuddling up closely together at night. There were four full bathrooms in the behemoth, not including the half bath downstairs. One in the upstairs hall, one in the master, and two of the remaining eleven bedrooms had a full bath attached. We also set up another workout room, living room, den and office, and unlike the brownstone we had a very large yard, with a large inground pool and pool house in the back. It was a nice place, and in a good neighborhood with good schools.

Hopefully, the President wouldn't be a dick and blow it up.

Our lives also seemed more balanced, as we all followed my suggested plan, and as the amount of time the ladies spent on AG Systems Technology was drastically reduced, we all had plenty of playtime and were back to normal hours at the office. Emma even had extra time to go back to pure research on humanity's diseases and conditions she hadn't found a cure to yet, while the rest maintained the companies we had.

The probe had arrived at Alpha Centauri over a week ago, and there were no habitable planets there at all, but plenty of resources and things to stick our noses into. I supposed that kind of thing would lower pollution even further, as we stopped needing to mine the planet that we lived on to support manufacturers, we could rape lifeless rocks in space instead.

The second probe, and next closest sun which was Tau Ceti, we'd reach it in just over an hour from that point, the probe would I mean. I planned to log in for that, as the probe got the first look at the solar system up close, even if it would take time to determine if there was a living world there. I hoped there was, despite the odds.

It was another typical Monday morning outside of that, and I was in my office going over the list of projects. I had no intention of adding more, not for a while, but I liked to keep up on what was going on.

My door opened, and I looked up to watch Lia, Mia, Emma, and Bellona walk in my office with mysterious and lovely smiles on their faces. That almost never happened, being the company officers, all of them coming to my office at once I mean.

I looked up with a raised eyebrow, as Bellona closed the door.

Lia blurted, "We're pregnant!"

At first, I thought she'd meant us, as in me and her having a baby on the way, but as I looked at the others a shiver went down my spine. I also had a shit eating grin on my face.

"All of you, at once?"

Emma laughed, "It's not that surprising, we're all on the same bodily schedule, and we were fertile within a day if not hours of each other, we just didn't tell you because you asked us not to. We're all at least two weeks, so you got us all in that first week."

Right, and we'd all been fucking like rabbits even more than usual, at the excitement of starting a new family. I also felt a ridiculous pride rise up in my chest, like it was some amazing accomplishment. I suppose it was a big thing, but it shouldn't have been surprising.

I stood up, and I waved them all in as I rounded my desk and then pulled the into a group hug.

"I love you, all of you. That's amazing news."

Lia smiled brightly, "It'll cause some issues when the whole board is on maternity leave at once, but we'll figure it out."

I nodded, and stole a kiss from my gorgeous brunette, then of course I had to kiss the rest of them.

"We should celebrate tonight."

Lia nodded, "How about we eat out, Italian?"

Everyone laughed, not at all surprised that'd be her suggestion.

I said, "That'll do. I suppose we won't be using that nice jacuzzi on the back deck for a while?"

Emma pursed her lips, "Definitely not. Not good for pregnancy."

Fuck, I didn't think it'd really hit me yet, I felt a little overwhelmed. I knew it would happen, but I hadn't really expected all four at the same time.

The jacuzzi part was a shame too, we were spending our first night at the house later that day, had checked out of the hotel earlier that morning for good. I'd been looking forward to playing in it with my four ladies. Still, that was just a random thought, and the disappointment was nothing to the amazed and shocked joy I felt in that moment.

"When?"

Emma said, "August twenty eighth, or thereabouts."

"Doctor?"

Lia giggled, and Mia said, "I think we broke him, he's talking in one-word sentences."

I glared, which probably looked stupid with my wide smile, and then kissed them both.

Emma said, "I'll take care of the checkups, but we'll work with other doctors and share the test results, I can't help them give birth if we all go on the same night."

I nodded, that made sense.

"Sexy."

That time I'd used one word on purpose.

They all snickered, Lia teasingly, Emma sultrily, Bellona sweetly, and Mia joyfully, and then they stole one more kiss from me before leaving my office. Needless to say, I didn't get any more work done before it was time to log in for the probe.

I logged onto the probe just a minute before it dropped out of FTL, on the edge of the solar system. We'd decided not to stay in warp inside the solar system, just on the off and crazy chance it was already occupied. The visual, infrared, and night cameras started taking in data, and we sent out other active scans like lidar, radar, and mass detection.