Soul Heist - The Missing Mentor

Chapter 38 - AI

Danian admired the ultra-modern, cubicle-shaped house as they strolled over the finely manicured grass patch in one of Tokyo's posher residential neighbourhoods. Naoto's mum, a highly prolific AI scientist, opened the black glass door in a white designer t-shirt and blue jeans, her dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She welcomed them in and said how excited she was to meet Naoto's friends finally.

Half an hour later, freshly showered, Danian walked into the dining room wearing some of Naoto's slacks and a t-shirt that read Keep calm and calculate. The room smelled of fresh coffee and croissants. Indira stepped around the open plan designer kitchen, a glass carafe filled with fresh orange juice in her hands. Her ginger hair fell in waves over the pale grey, loose sweater and reflected the sunshine that came through a large glass front. Danian's eyes followed her legs which appeared disproportionately long in an ultra-short tartan skirt she wore over black leggings, all gratefully borrowed from Naoto's older sister who studied abroad. Short of drooling, Danian quickly shut his mouth and plunged at the large see-through table. Next to him sat Naoto's father, a top-notch robotics engineer, who looked much more like a seasoned Japanese tennis player in his white polo shirt and sport shorts. Just a sweat headband and racket were missing to complete the look.

"One of you plays tennis?"

"Sometimes," Danian said, loading fruit salad onto his plate. "But I mostly whack the ball into the sky."

Naoto's dad suggested his coach look at Danian's swing, then he turned to his son. "What brought you back home less than halfway through your surf camp?" There wasn't an ounce of accusation in his voice.

Danian thought he would divert the conversation by giving an account of Naoto's surf progress, consciously leaving out the part where he nearly drowned near Tanah Lot. But Naoto was quicker.

"That's a bit of a story, dad," he mumbled with his mouth full of croissant. Then he told his parents a well-crafted, however not exactly true, tale about them helping Indira on a piece of investigative journalism. That they were digging into an unprecedented scandal of global corporate greenwashing, in which well-known, publicly traded companies were hiding their insufficient actions to clamp down on carbon emissions behind inflated environmental claims, dished out with increasing frequency by their PR departments.

Indira and Danian looked at Naoto with slight bewilderment at his creative cover-up, but his parents had nothing but pride in their eyes.

"Is there any way we can help?" Naoto's mum asked.

Her son shook his head. "Only if you happen to know someone who calls himself Unagi?"

Bit of a long shot, Danian thought. Naoto obviously didn't mention to his parents that Unagi had instructed Morfitt to head to Jakarta. After all that had happened, he was undoubtedly involved in Morfitt's malicious activities. Putting his focus back on the fantastic pastries, Danian helped himself to a pain au chocolat.

"Hang on," Naoto's dad said. "In the context of climate change, that name does ring a bell. Do you remember, honey?" He looked at his wife. Then he explained that back in the days when they were both undergrads at Tokyo university, they did some data science work on a project the students had dubbed Unagi.

"Which stood for uber nefarious artificial general intelligence. It had essentially started as a new kind of AI-driven climate model that had been developed to run on a small-scale quantum computer."

"And went a bit out of control," Naoto's mum added.

Danian wiped some chocolate from the corner of his mouth and reached for an expensive-looking cup. He smelled caramel tinged with blueberry. Good coffee. It perked him up after their tragic and unexpected all-nighter. What had Danian's parents just said? He found it hard to imagine that Morfitt took an interest in forecasting the weather.