There was a knock on his office door.

“Come in,” Dr. Margolin said.

A young woman entered the office. She was maybe 25 years old, impeccably dressed in a tailored suit, and had a serious expression on her face.

“Alicia Washington, Legal. Would you please ID me?”

“That’s not necessary, Ms. Washington. If you got this far, you’re who you say you are.”

“It’s protocol.”

“If you insist,” Margolin said. “Cece, identify the other person in this room.”

There was just a momentarily delay, then Cece’s voice said, “Identity confirmed by biomark, facial, auditory, kinetic, and olfactory recognition. Alicia Gayle Washington. Senior Counsel, Corporate Legal: Compliance Communication Group KJC202. Visual sending to your Nimbus Display.”

An employment photo and video appeared on his Nimbus, showing the young woman who stood across from him.

“You’re who you say you are. Please sit down, Ms. Washington. I have a feeling I know what this is about.”

Alicia sat down in the guest chair and flipped opened her leather portfolio and tapped her tablet awake.

“I’m here to follow-up on your report about the onboarding error.”

“Everything in order?”

“Yes, it was quite complete.”

“Then how can I help?”

“I’m with the CC Group, and apparently this is a big enough deal that we have to create a comms brief for it.”

“Well, I’m not sure I agree about the big deal part, but I’ll do what I can to help.”

“Thank you. Just so you know, there hasn’t been any decision made to release any kind of brief, but Mr. Sabel wants to be prepared just in case.”

“Fine.”

“So this is just a conversation between you and me. Background info. Nothing will be recorded or written down for PD purposes. Also we’ll keep this non-technical.”

“Excuse me?”

“All the comms briefs need to be non-technical in terms of language and concepts. They are directed at multiple audiences and we can’t assume any minimum level of technical knowledge. You’ve done this before, haven’t you, Dr. Margolin?”

He shifted his weight in his seat. “Actually no. My last gig was at a private company. We didn’t have any government contracts.”

Alicia smiled. “The good old days, right? I bet you miss that. Anyway, let’s get started. I’ll describe what we adapted from your report. You stop me if we’ve misstated anything or left anything out. Anything at all.”

“Go for it.”

“Your databox isn’t recording, is it?”

“No,” Margolin said. “Just for peace of mind: Cece, enter private mode.”

Cece’s voice said, “Private mode activated.”

“Thanks,” Alicia said. She flipped her own portfolio closed and sat back in her chair.

“Okay, this morning—the morning of April 1st of this year, your monitoring team received a notification that some portion of Beta Group 4 had been onboarded to OmniWorld in error.”

“Correct. We estimate anywhere between 120 and 130 players had been substituted in from 4b.”

“But you don’t have a precise count?”

“No, not yet. Soon we will.”

“And why wouldn’t you know exactly how many alternates were sent into the game?”

“Our systems are constantly adjusting the beta group, with candidates in and out right up until the last minute. Some number of substitutions are typical.”

“But not 120?” Alicia asked.

“Not at all. Usually one or two,” Margolin said.

“But even though these players were sent into OmniWorld in error, there’s no reason they’re not qualified to participate in the beta, right?”

“Correct. The b’s are all qualified and vetted.”

“Then what’s the difference between a’s and b’s—those who are selected and those who are alternates?”

Margolin sighed. “Not really any difference. It’s more about game balance and testing demographics. That’s why, in many respects, this is a non-issue.”

“Well, the result of the error might not be meaningful, but the cause of the error is. That’s what everyone’s worried about and that’s why I’m here.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that. But as I stated in the report, we won’t know for sure until we’ve reverse engineered the onboarding code—and that’s going to take 10 days at least.”

“I was under the impression that you would have answers by the seventh,” Alicia said.

“That’s wishful thinking on the part of General Groves.”

“Okay, let’s assume the worst case scenario. Describe the error to me.”

Margolin felt his jaw clench, but he tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “That’s more a question for Groves. He’s the doomsayer around here.”

“Indulge me, please. For the sake of the comms brief disclosures.”

“I don’t know. I suppose they are concerned that the game controller is making decisions for its own nefarious purposes. Becoming self-aware. The singularity. Skynet. Robot overlords. Blah, blah, blah.”

“Dr. Margolin, please. Let’s keep this professional. How about we frame the worst case scenario as simply ‘a deviance from human oversight?’”

Margolin barked out a laugh. “Deviance? That might just be the understatement of the decade. If we’re going to play the doom and gloom game, we might as well not sugarcoat it.”

“Well, then, how would you frame it?”

“Automated machine learning and self-coding getting so far ahead of us, that we have no idea in hell what the game controller is doing. Right now, it’s ten, maybe fourteen days ahead of us. That means it takes a team of 300 of our top guys two weeks to unspool the code that the controller has written. And remember, that code is dumbed down and heavily documented specifically so that we idiot humans can understand it.”

“Okay, but besides unintelligible code, what’s the danger here?” Alicia asked.

“Unknown. That’s why Groves and his people are scared. But as I said, I think there’s a lot of handwringing going on for no reason. OmniWorld is completely isolated from any other network in the world. That’s why the facility is in the middle of the Oregon badlands. Physical separation. OmniWorld can’t crash the stock market, launch ICBMs, or knock satellites out of the sky. The very worst it could do would be to somehow injure the thousand people hooked up to stim-pods there on campus.”

“Are you certain of that, Dr. Margolin?”

“100% certain.”