As we countdown the 40 days before Summons of THE EIGHTH DIVINITY hits Kindle (and later bookstores near you), we will release one letter every fifth day. These letters avail the reader of the thoughts of certain background players populating the sprawl.
Reader discretion is advised.
Dossier on Kymara
RE: A Dark Web Report from Karna B. Dune
These are journalists who fear something worse than lawsuits.
With more than fifteen years in the business of news, color me gob smacked at the events of the past month. We have a great deal of ground to cover, and though this report won’t reach readers anytime soon, I intend (or better yet need) to share what I know.
Before jumping right into it, I would first point out that my superiors at Rearmount News not only stymied my every effort to research and deliver the story, they issued threats to my career and reputation with disciplinary actions ranging from censure to termination with a not-so-subtle overture towards blacklisting. And this comes from an outlet eager to advertise its extensive whistleblower protections. Now, I am not so fond of my tinfoil hat that I equate unwelcome consequences with plucking of raw nerves–that is, until I lost contact with my source. Someone deleted her social media accounts, wiped away her public records, and tampered with satellite images of her home. Her digital footprint had been minimal before the purge. Did she do this herself? Her misgivings overcame her trepidation–I’ve published several stories for whistleblowers, and she wasn’t the type to run.
Because of her disappearance, I’m placing this and future entries within a secure torrent service–I am uncertain of the identity of these nefarious actors, but I am persuaded they play no role in our government.
Since I’m not sure whether my own social media accounts will persist, I’ll give a small bit of background here: I’ve reported on mammoths and magnates of high technology since grad school. I’m well-acquainted with the cold and hot disruptors, the app wars, the generative AI, the new money, and everything in-between. It’s a fascinating area of human behavior, and I do have something of a reputation. Or did. I don’t know yet whether there are consequences for the probing my source and I have attempted. The rag I serve just isn’t what I thought, but I’m hardly the first widget to discover this.
So here goes the material I’m not permitted to place on-the-record. Three months ago, one of Kymara’s research scientists contacted me with an unbelievable story. Diana–we’ll call her–had intended to reveal her name at the release of our expose, but that likely won’t happen now.
For those not in the know, Kymara is a leading multinational trading in genetics, nanotech, and artificial intelligence. Its parent, Best Holdings, recently acquired the firms in each of these three spaces: Codeka, Picoveer, and Intellidez, reorganizing them under the aegis of Kymara. Before the merger, they were each valued in the billions of US dollars–their value now may be inestimable, at least at the time of this report. The firm is fiercely secretive, dissuading scrutiny with lucrative court settlements and almost surgical litigation.
Getting to the meat of it, I attended a symposium on ethical AI several months ago. Diana approached me claiming to have read my work. No self-respecting journalist denies the ego tickle, so I was eager to agree to a private meeting. Once alone with me, she appeared unhinged as she feverishly watched the door, checked her phone, and peeked out the windows. I wondered at once whether I was the butt end of a prank by my own coworkers. And yet I was accustomed to coaxing trust from sources and informants. I mixed her a mean martini–thanks to my years bartending for LaDonna’s in Vegas–after which we sat and debriefed on her life for five hours. I should point out here–in case you’re not one of my usual readers–that I spend a great deal of time working my sources. It improves one’s chances of scoring the mother lode of a scoop if the asset thinks–correctly or not–that you see her for herself. Highly intellectual people are actually easier to coerce with emotions since they believe themselves to be immune to them.
Diana’s story is riveting. She solved (don’t ask me what the hell this means!) object classification problems in worst-case design (WCD) in grad school before finding a big girl job at a big fat tech firm. She languished for several months under a domineering, narcissistic manager before deciding to ditch him for greener pastures. Her advisor’s death propelled her into the thick of things; just before the memorial, a high-level part of Kymara’s ELT courted her to his company. She wouldn’t reveal his identity to me, but his apparent affection for her late professor softened her up. Distracted by the discussion, she didn’t notice that her asshole manager stalked her all the way to the funeral, and he attempted to rape her at the hotel just after said memorial. In a stroke of desperately good fortune, Kymara’s VIP ordered his security to watch her after they parted, and their intervention saved her from a terrible fate. The agents were diligent, ensuring the SOB would never attempt a reenactment with her or anyone else. The authorities ruled his death a misadventure–the plumbers are thorough indeed.
Grateful for the rescue, morbid for her professor’s death, and eager for a fresh start, Diana joined Intellidez and relocated to Australia to apply machine learning techniques for stellar object classification at Urumi Observatory. She spoke at length about the incredible technology on display at Intellidez’s installation affixed to the retrofitted facility. I was very much piqued by her measured composure; she could speak about her predatorial boss, the magic of Kymara, and morbidity without breaking eye contact. She could convey intensity–it was a seething coolness. But Kymara’s bells and whistles were humdrum compared to the marvels she discovered. We reached what I call the conversion point–the break in the interview in which she commits to become an asset. Her bearing betrayed fear as she uttered, “It’s a reboot on our understanding of Earth and the creatures living here.” My first thought, if I’m honest, was that I finally hit paydirt on crazy. LaDonna said I was always looking for the crazy. With that, she said goodnight–I was furious, but she was easy on the eyes, the conference was boring, and I would have pulled out my eye teeth to get inside Kymara.
The conference continued another two nights, so we met both days, carefully planning multiple cab rides so as to make it as hard as possible for eavesdroppers to glean word one from us.
That second night, Diana picked up the trail as though minutes rather than hours separated our sessions. She explained how object classification can operate with vast fake neuronal networks (vapidly called deep neural nets), and how one might fool such a network with a weird set of inputs. It was almost as if there was a password in the form of pixel reassignments which could throw the model’s prediction, even if a human wouldn’t and probably couldn’t see the difference.
These technical details became relevant when she pointed out that the algorithms embedded in Urumi’s detection system deliberately and selectively deleted objects from the final scans–there are hundreds of such objects, and she reverse-engineered a part of the learning network to compel the system to report these anomalies. Many if not most of the objects burn up as they fall to Earth, but she managed to locate two such objects dumped in a patch of desert some twenty kilometers from the observatory. With the help of a coworker she trusted, Diana collected the mystery objects. Knowing they faced scrutiny by the security system permeating every computational substrate of Kymara’s installation, Diana hid one chunk. Before I could inquire about the second chunk, she said that her confidante knew chemistry pretty well, and his careful study of it underscored that this was no naturally occurring alloy. Further, he knew no Earth technology capable of replicating it. Somehow, the structure made up a lattice with several resonance points. He deemed it an amplifier for a power source he couldn’t fathom. Diana intended to contact a ufologist in California, though she didn’t identify the person’s name. I’m currently trying to track this person down–the more devout light-watchers tend to live off the grid, but there aren’t that many.
Back to Diana, I thought it odd that she ended the second evening hours early. I would have been happy to speak with her, but she felt compelled to return to her hotel room. The next day, I sought her at the conference, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. I decided my coworkers pranked me, but a package awaited me at the front desk. Accepting it, I rushed to the privacy of my room before tearing open the package. The box had contained something, but it had been carefully opened, gutted of its contents, then closed as carefully to avoid the very appearance of tampering. In tearing the box to pieces, I discovered a short note hidden between the layers of the container’s side. Diana is clever. She wrote:
Dear Karna,Thank you for your kindness in listening to a stranger. I do not believe I can escape my fate now. I must vanish for a time, so I entrust to you my faith. I hope it is not misplaced.REDACTED
And that was that–Diana disappeared from social media, and every other facsimile thereof. I sought more information from Kymara three days down the road only to turnup jack shit, even with cached copies of her recent activities. They deny she existed, despite very clear evidence. I knew Kymara’s plumbers were thorough, but a tapeworm this extensive would rely on technology I wasn’t aware we had. The hotel staff insisted that no one could have tampered with the package once it was in their hands–whom should I believe?
Diana had promised to explain how this discovery could “remake our world;” instead, I walk away empty-handed. Rearmount won’t back me up, threatening me. Stonewalled scarcely does it justice. Is Diana a prisoner? Did she agree to vanish? Maybe I’m insane.
Kymara is the quintessential enigma–a triumvirate outwardly dedicated to enriching its paltry number of shareholders, but something more sinister is at work. What are they hiding? Since his son’s death, the parent’s founder has all-but-vanished. It’s doubtful these words will reach the light of day, but I’m attempting a workaround that might just do the trick.
My leadership’s kneejerk reaction that this story has no terminus suggests to me that they’re genuinely frightened. It must be something beyond the run-of-the-mill slander charge. These are journalists who fear something worse than lawsuits.
Until then, be safe and carry the peace in your pocket. I’m still Karna B. Dune.
Copyright © 2024 J. Martin Lutece