Tiger and the Robot

2 Dream wheels

2 Dream wheelsNine months earlier:

It started with a dream…

I dreamt in the language of the moment. In engineering school, my dreams were filled with strange and wonderful machines. Learning to cook, exotic foods prevailed. Starting to sail, I dreamed in air and water flow over foils and appendages. Three-dimensional and fully colored, in a way that no drawing could equal.

Teaching myself computer programming, I dreamt in Fortran, later Basic and Java. Nightmares were in C++.

Mostly I forgot the dreams, though they were incredibly vivid. Occasionally, with a dream fresh in memory, I’d jot down the highlights. A pad and pen lived by the bed just for that.

One morning in 2015, I woke up to this note:

Siri. Cortana. Sherlock.

That’s all. I knew that Siri was Apple’s personal digital assistant. Cortana was Microsoft’s lesser-known equivalent. And Sherlock must have referred to Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective. Perhaps my subconscious was telling me to develop an app that would perform the functions of a detective? I liked the idea, primarily to stave off boredom and prevent me from ruminating on past failures.

My name is Chandler Gray, but my friends call me Chan. I had just come off a three-year stint as president of an app development start-up. From rags to riches and back to rags, …but, that was another story.

Anyway, I had time on my hands, and enough money left to live for a year or two, in my somewhat frugal way. Did I mention that I lived on a boat?

A Hinckley Bermuda 40, a millionaire’s yacht, with gleaming chrome and polished teak everywhere. At least that’s how she would have looked when she was new, about fifty years ago. I picked her up at A-1 auctions.

She was a classic yacht with plenty of storage. The previous owner found room for a large bale of m*******a in the lazarette and five kilos of coke in the bilge. Canada Customs lacked an appreciation of such things. The owner skipped.

She was called Blue Rose. I liked the name, and anyway, it was carved right into the transom. Changing it would cost money. In those days, she could have used some cosmetics, and the sails were tired, but the Perkins diesel ran well, and the hull was sound. I planned to restore her when I could afford it.

In the chilly dawn, I climbed out of the vee-berth and pulled on a sweatsuit. The Force Ten propane stove hissed gently as I put on the kettle. I would make coffee with a Bodum French press, no electricity needed.

While I waited for the kettle, I thought about the feasibility of a detective app.

I envisaged a perfect detective’s assistant. She’d have long, wavy blonde hair, a short skirt, and curves in all the right places. She’d have a genius IQ, know how to hack and code, and be available at all hours. Now, make her into a robot. Sadly, I mentally removed her body, leaving a phone app.

Robots existed, even fairly lifelike robots. None of them could move like a human, independent of a power source for more than a few minutes. I had been in the hardware business before. It sucked. This time everything would be software and using hardware that was already widespread. A smartphone would work for a user interface, but serious processing power would be needed. The Cloud was the place for that.

It couldn’t be an iPhone app. Apple kept too tight a control on app capabilities. I already knew how to program for Android and Windows. I picked Android because I had a couple of Android phones and all the development tools left over from my last venture. Also, Android was open source, and it was possible to modify the operating system if it somehow stood in the way.

Friends said I was obsessive. Once I grabbed onto an idea, I would plunge headlong into it, full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. So it was with the Sherlock application.

I began by texting my buddy N. Eli Feinman. He was a hacker extraordinaire with friends in both high and low places. Outwardly, he gave the appearance of being a somewhat aimless dilettante. Not true. He had a very quick mind and deep wells of arcane knowledge about circuitry and anything with wires. He collected antique cameras—the kind that used film—and old oscilloscopes.

I texted: Siri. Cortana. Sherlock.

In seconds a reply came back. Wilder Snail. 30 minutes.

I had to Google the place. It was a couple of blocks south of the Maker Lab where Feinman maintained his workspace.

After changing into chinos, a yellow collared shirt, and Topsiders, I walked up the floating dock to where my car was parked in an old loading bay. A great car, another classic. A 1965 Mustang convertible. They could go for fifty grand at auction in Las Vegas. Okay, maybe mine wasn’t quite that good. Fine, a long way from that good, but I planned to restore it to top shape soon. In the meantime, the duct tape kept out the rain, and Frank had welded the muffler back on. Again.

I pulled the orange tarp off the car and rolled it up. It started after only a bit of hesitation. The drive was only a few blocks, and I found a street parking spot. Meters were cheaper on the east side of town. A toonie—the Canadian two-dollar coin—got me an hour.

The Wilder Snail was a small corner grocery store with a coffee bar. Hip young people sold organic groceries and served good bevies. The tables had three legs and didn’t wobble. I appreciated the kind of owner who would think of that. The place had attitude.

Feinman and I had been best friends since High School. I could talk to him without fear of anything except gossip. Anyway, it was a give and take situation.

He was a bit late, as usual. I already had a coffee and a muffin in front of me when he dropped his bike helmet and man-purse (which he claimed was an iPad case) on the table and went for a bagel sandwich.

He brought me up to date on his various neurotic friends, some of whom I knew. I guess I was one of them, and he probably updated the others on my antics too. He was always careful not to reveal anything private, like their bank account numbers and email passwords, even though I was pretty sure he knew them.

“I have an idea for an app.” I jumped in as he took a sip of his coffee. We batted ideas back and forth all the time. Most of the time, we were trying to figure out how to take advantage of stupid people with money. There was a major oversupply of them in Vancouver. A lesser theme was how middle-aged guys could attract younger women.

“Another app? There are already millions of them. Let me guess. It’s a robot detective running on a smartphone.” He had deciphered my cryptic text correctly.

“Yes, almost. It should really be called Watson since it is an assistant to a live investigator. Unfortunately, IBM already uses that name. I’ll need your help to make it work.”

“Is this a commercial venture or a labor of love?”

“I’m interested in developing the technology. It’s too sensitive to sell. I already got burned by pirate copies of my last app. This one will be privately distributed.”

“What do you need my help for? You’re the programmer.” He had a pretty good idea what I would want, but I’d need to beg a bit.

“It will be an AI app.” AI was the acronym for Artificial Intelligence. I often derided AI by calling it Artificial Stupidity, but even I had to admit that it had reached the point where it could be useful. I lowered my voice. “A phone isn’t powerful enough, I’ll need a back-end server with lots of storage and multiple fast CPUs. And, I’ll need your help for access to certain databases.”

He looked over his shoulder to see who was listening. Nobody. “I never do anything that’s illegal—in Antarctica. But I have a buddy who over-invested in server hardware. Can you afford a hundred a month?”

“Sure. All I have to do is stop buying your coffee.” I did sometimes pay, but so did Feinman.

“Okay. Give me a business card, and I’ll have him call you.” He smirked, knowing I didn’t have a card right then.

“You know the info. Just email it. The project will need untraceable access to a few things. Not saying what they are now, but I’ll send you an encrypted list.” I didn’t want to verbalize that bit, just in case. Feinman nodded, and we stepped outside. He pulled on his helmet, climbed on his bike, and headed for the lab, I went around the corner to my car.

On my way back to the boat, I began to design the app in my head. First would be the back end, which would be a query engine, accessing a variety of databases, public and private. f*******:, Twitter, Google Plus and other social networks were on the list. And of course, it could use search sites including Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

It would need access to credit card statements, phone records, criminal records, license plate numbers, surveillance cameras, and a few other things that civilians and even most police are not supposed to access, at least without a warrant. I was certain that Feinman knew ways to get that information. We would set up a double firewall so my server app could get the information without revealing the source, or the fact that we had accessed it.

The “front end” app would run on the phone. There would be a minimal user interface, just speech, and text. It would send encrypted queries to the “back end,” and display or speak the answers. The real heavy-duty processing would be in the cloud, and that was where 90% of my coding time would be spent.

I would need a place to work, apart from my boat. Partly because of security. Boats were very easy to break into. Another reason was that I wanted to be able to get away from work sometimes, and that was hard when you lived in the office.

A couple of blocks up from the dock was a local coffee shop, the Clever Café. It was a small place on the ground floor of an old stucco-faced building. It was one star short of a Starbucks, but I liked the coffee, and they let me run a tab. I actually named the place. They were looking for a clever name, and I suggested the obvious. It stuck.

Outside, the neighborhood was a little rough, with litter around, sometimes needles. There were often a few seedy drunks sitting around on the bench by the bus stop, with bottles in paper bags. It wasn’t a major street, but only one block off East Hastings, which was. Safe enough, at least in the daytime, as the bums were too hungover to be dangerous, and the drug dealers and pimps didn’t come out until after dark. A beat cop walked by at least once an hour.

I parked the car at the dock, got the orange tarp out, and dragged it over the leaky convertible top. I strolled up to the Clever.

Xena, the owner, had seen me coming across the street and already had my long espresso ready. She even added the tiny bit of milk I like. Xena is attractive in a tall, full-figured athletic way, with flaming red hair and a pale complexion accented by a light sprinkle of freckles. She pitches for an alternative team, so flirting is wasted. I took my coffee and sat down at a window table. I was the only client at the time, so I motioned her over to join me. She grabbed a bottle of water and sat opposite me.

“How come bottled water is evil, but Pepsi is cool?” Xena had an inventory of one-liners that she recycled regularly.

“Do you still have that room upstairs for rent?”

“Yeah, but it’s, like, a suite. Got a shower and everything. I’ve been asking $300, but so far, no takers.”

“$300 a month? Sounds fair.” A bargain. I was expecting double that.

“You dork! Don’t you have any idea of Vancouver rents? $300 a week. That’s W-E-E-K.” She got up and took a key off a hook behind the bar. Tossing it to me, she said, “Have a look.”

The key missed my hand, and I had to fish around on the floor with a foot, then bend over to pick it up. My back creaked painfully. Nothing to do with my age, but I probably needed to work out more. Or at all.

The steep, well-worn, wooden stairs groaned as I climbed them. The handrail was loose. The door at the top was painted white but yellowed and peeling with age. Above the door was an old-fashioned transom vent, with a pane of cracked glass. So far, so good.

I had to push the door hard, and the rusty hinges squealed in protest. A little oil would soon put that right. There were a combined living room and kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The galley was just a counter with a chipped enamel sink, a one burner hot plate, and a bar sized fridge. None of it was new. A massive oak desk almost filled the living room, which had a single small window. An old wooden swivel chair with a blue foam pad was semi-comfortable. There were two rusty steel folding chairs which had once been painted gray. A dented beige 3 drawer file cabinet with a broken lock stood beside the desk. It was perfect!

The bedroom was small, maybe eight feet square. There was an old-fashioned brass bedstead with a single mattress. The mattress had to go. It looked and smelled as if something—or someone—had died on it. The 3-drawer chest was made of cheap pine, and the front was hanging off the bottom drawer. The bathroom had a toilet, a sink, and a shower. It was about the same size as the head on my boat, but not as well finished. There were two electrical outlets in the front room and one in the back. Not nearly enough for my purposes, but I knew an electrician who worked cheap.

There was a shortage of rental space in Vancouver, so I knew the place must be lacking, and Xena didn’t have other dorks lined up to rent it. Back downstairs, I tossed the key to Xena. “I’ll give you $800 a month for it. And I promise to fix it up some.”

She snorted. “You’ve got a f*****g nerve. I wouldn’t rent it to a jerk like you for twice that.”

After we traded a few more insults, we settled on $900, and I gave her a check for the first and last month. “When can I move in?”

“I’ll give you the keys as soon as the check clears.” Xena smiled—but it wasn’t a very trusting smile. I might have bounced a check on her once or twice…

A couple of days later, I got possession, and I texted my sailing buddy Olivier.

Can you meet me at the Clever?

He replied: 2 PM.

Ollie owned a sign shop, but he could build just about anything. He also had a designer’s eye for attractive and functional decor. It was a rare combination, and he had helped me with several projects.

He showed up in a Ferrari Red Ferrari. An older F355. Without looking, I knew it had a manual transmission. Ollie was a purist, who didn’t believe in automatic anything. He was a few inches shorter than my six one and a little younger, with a jolly face and thinning light brown hair. He was originally a French kid from Montreal, but his family moved to Vancouver when he was ten. Still had a slight French accent, but his English was otherwise excellent. He could be charming, or sarcastic, depending on the occasion.

I stepped outside to look at the car and help him out of the ultra-low driver’s seat. “Found another way to deplete your ill-gotten gains?”

“I wrote off my Lotus on the Sea-to-Sky highway near Whistler. I was drifting through a corner on the perfect line when suddenly the rear end swung right into the center barricade. Then it bounced off and spun. It wasn’t my fault. Mechanical failure. Tie-rod broke in the rear suspension. This is just a loaner until I get paid by the insurance.”

“Wow. They usually give me a Toyota Yaris—if I’m lucky.”

“Tough. I know you prefer rusty antiques.”

“That’s why I hang around with you.”

“Hey, that hurts,” Ollie said with a grin. “Let’s have a look at this dump.”

We spent a few minutes upstairs looking over the place, and he snapped some photos with his phone. Then we went down to the Clever to discuss it over coffee.

“I want to keep the grubby-chic look,” I said.

“Is that what you call it? I’d call it 60’s Cockroach. Or maybe Miami Lice.”

“Whatever. Here are my needs. I want to conceal a powerful PC in the desk. Make the top lift with a big LCD monitor on the underside, and hide the computer on the right behind the drawers. Ideally, the AC power would come up through one of the legs. When it’s closed, I want it to look like an old wooden desk, nothing more. Bolted to the floor.” His eyes rolled upward at the request.

“Why the secrecy? Nobody steals PCs anymore, just laptops and tablets.” Ollie could do what I needed, he just wanted to know why.

“I’m starting a new project, and it is kind of sensitive.” I trusted Ollie with my life, but not my wallet. Anyway, I gave him an abbreviated description of the project, and he got it right away.

I said, “I know you can keep a secret. Otherwise, your wife would have found out already.”

“Found out what?”

“Exactly. Anyway, what do you think?”

“Okay, the gray Lino on the floor has to go. We’ll pull it up and put new wiring under there. High-speed internet and encrypted Wi-Fi. I’ll find some old fir flooring that will look original. We’ll steam clean everything, then repaint it. After that, we’ll distress it. I’ll modify the desk at my shop. You’ll owe me big time for this.”

“Thanks. How soon…”