Born Predators - Chapter 3, Part 2

𝔸fter the attack, Puja cancelled meetings. Cancelled work. Cancelled everything. She’d spent the night repeating interviews with the Harbor Patrol, then the police. She’d told her story, told about the ladder on the boat crashing down on Jamie. About maybe someone on the boat. She’d repeated it at least a half dozen times. She felt herself becoming more clinical in her description each time, as if she were describing an experimental result rather than a personal tragedy. But the interviewers had acted surprised, saying that no one else had seen anything except a shark. Even resolute, confident Puja began to have doubts about what she’d seen.

Her PR department was flooded with calls, bombarded with interview requests and demands for quotes. She replied one time, “Our beloved friend Jamie Brinson is still missing, and all we can do is hope and wait.”

Social media wasn’t waiting. Clips about shark attacks ballooned. Scenes of people frantically screaming Shark! from the yacht now headlined every internet story. 

Those stories made her frantic. But they were easier to take emotionally than the haunting tributes about Jamie and his contributions. The AI-enhanced storm forecaster that named individual houses that had risk of flooding. And when his AI behavioral predictor got so good he could use it to find lost children. Those tributes were so true: no one else in their business approached Artificial Intelligence as a public benefit. No one fought so hard for all these quirky little programs that were suddenly spotlighted on every news station in America. They were great PR for the company, except…

Puja simply couldn’t read them. Not without the closure of knowing.

What happened to Jamie?

 ***

“Hampton Bay Municipal, Ernie DiStepano’s office,” said the strained voice of the receptionist. This wasn’t her first call today.  “This is Gail.”

“Hi Gail, my name’s Kinney Austin, I’m trying to reach Mayor DiStepano.”

“Oh.  Oh!  Doctor Austin!  Yes, Mayor DiStepano was very eager to speak with you.”

There was a click, and another tired\ voice:  “Ernie.”

“Kinney Austin, returning your calls.”

“Doctor Austin!”  His manner shifted abruptly to staccato sentences.  “Yes.  Just the, uhh, lady I needed.  I take it you heard the news outta here today.” 

“Just something from the internet. Can you tell me what really happened?”

“Well,” DiStepano adopted a more officious tone, “this Brinson kid, he was at a company party—a boat party, you know.  And I guess at some point he got in the water, and he went under.  Everyone is telling my officers there was a shark.”

“Well, did someone see the shark?”

“Brinson’s gone.  We’re looking for the body, but I dunno how much there’d be left, you know?  God, listen to me, it makes me sick.  This Brinson, he was gonna do some real special things for this community.”

“Sharks don’t eat people, Mayor DiStepano.”  Those four words—Sharks. Don’t. Eat. People.—formed the core of Kinney’s public messaging. They had the virtue of truth, but they were often confusing. Like usual, she had to explain. “Sharks might bite, even fatally, but we’re not meals to them. If a shark killed this man, it didn’t eat him.”

“Oh my god, it spit him out?”

“No, Mr. Mayor. The shark didn’t swallow him. So there was nothing to spit out. I’m telling you that there’s a body somewhere to be found.”

“See!  Yes!  That’s exactly why I wanted someone like you on board for this.  I barely know a fish’s head from its ass and I’ve got nobody who knows about sharks.”

“Sir, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be ‘on board’ for.”

“We need you out here, Doctor Austin.”

“No way,” was her instant response. “Stony Brook alone should have ten people more qualified.” 

There was a sigh, a long silence punctuated by slightly asthmatic breathing. When the Mayor’s voice returned it was ragged, low. “Look, I didn’t want to say it, because even over the phone I feel like someone’s gonna hear it that shouldn’t.  Things could get bad.  Folks could panic.”

“Look, sir, as someone who knows an awful lot about these animals, second attacks are rare. I don’t think you have any reason to panic.”

“See, there you go again! Knowing things we need about sharks!” he huffed. “But I know things about people. These Goddamn fish scare people, and believe me, I wouldn’t be calling like this outta the blue if it weren’t deadly serious.”

She rubbed at her temple, anticipating a pain that had yet to arrive. “Sharks are not that interested in us. We’re not prey to them. We’re not anything to them.  For ninety-nine percent of their time on Earth we didn’t even exist. They’re just doing what they’ve always done.”

“In my experience, what they’ve always done is ruin towns like ours! That kid was our lifeline to the future, and all we got now is tourists leaving in droves ‘cause our Bay is full of sharks. Half my constituents are homeowners worried about their investments. The other half are Greenpeace whackadoos warning they’ll roll my car off a pier if anything happens to their precious ocean! Look, I got nothing against the damn fish. I like nature. But sharks have always been bad for business and if people really wanna shoot ‘em there’s not a lot I can do to stop it.”

This hit Kinney hard. It wasn’t the worried tourists that Kinney suddenly thought about. It was the shark killers who would swarm to this. They’d done it before all over the world: vigilantes stacking sharks head to tail on the white sand beaches. Running lines through their mouths, blood still seeping from their gills. Hanging them arched and dripping and stinking by the wharves. It was a visceral scene that Kinney had personally witnessed.

DiStepano seemed to sense an opening. “We’re really in a bind here, Doctor Austin.  If we don’t get it sorted out, if folks’, uhh, baser instincts are allowed to rule, then a whole lotta sharks will get dead. “

“Well…”

He had her now, and both of them knew it. “People are really scared, Dr. Austin,” he was saying in her ear.  “And you never know what people will do when they’re scared.”

***

Captain Annie waited at Pearl Hour, the closest local bar to the Monterey Coast Guard station, sitting at a low table on the back deck, warmed against the summer Monterey fog by a gas fire pit. She’d picked a table in a corner, along a railing that looked down at a small stage, surrounded by green plants, pungent blooms, old wood planking and brass bannisters. A good place to wait.

Annie had cleaned up the Aquarium’s boat after Kinnie had been whisked away, and packed all the summer student’s equipment. She knew what was coming, and already had two seriously over-liquored drinks condensing onto the table. An energized vocal artist played unexpected electric violin down on the stage, filtering out into the evening.

Kinney walked down the little alley on the side of the bar, into the little courtyard, and collapsed onto the empty chair.

“You know I can’t go back there.”

Annie was about the only person who knew Kinney well, who knew something about her past – her journey from a treacherous beginning up through the shark infested ladders of the academic research world. Captain Annie’s own treacherous journeys were against typhoons and tidal waves – child’s play by comparison.

“It’s been, what, fifteen years? We’re talking high school, Kinney. Let it go.”

Kinney shut her eyes tight. “It’s yesterday. To all those people. They’re still there, all over that town.”

“I’m not that sure, Kinney.” Annie was being quiet and calm. “It’s yesterday to you because you think about it every day. What happened to you there…”

Kinney leaned her head back against the back of the chair, “Not every day…” she corrected weakly.

“Ok, not every day. But more often than the people back there…there’s no family of yours there, no real friends you’ve kept up with. Look, what happened was awful, and your reaction then makes perfect sense. But it doesn’t define your whole life in that town.”

“Yeah, maybe… But even now, I still don’t know how to face them. It’s like I had to slam a door, and I don’t want to open it again. I know how they’ll be, blowing things out of proportion.”

“OK, so those town people you respect so little, even though they aren’t there anymore, tell me how they’ll react to a shark ruining their town? They’ll be very considerate of the ocean wildlife? You think? Or blow it out of proportion and go berserk on a shark killing spree?”

“You are such a jerk sometimes, Annie.”

“Yes. You know the answer. So, do you want to count shark heart beats out here in this calm little circle of protected sharks? Or save the lives of 100s of sharks out there, stopping a frantic shark massacre in Hampton Bay?”

And as Kinney strained to find some quip, some remark, some excuse to ignore it all, Annie saw a figure approaching from the side door and whispered. “OK, here’s Handic. Now, please try not to piss off the trustees. Remember we need a new transmission…”

Kinney turned abruptly to see a mid-age well-manicured blond man smoothly stepping onto the patio.

“Kinney,” Annie said, “You remember our Aquarium Board President Jonathan Handic. He said he needed a moment.”

Kinney rose, and unable to think of anything else, reached out to shake Handic’s hand.

“Uh…”

“I know you’re just being filled in,” Handic interrupted. “I thought I’d come and explain why going out to Long Island is so important.”

“I think I’ll go talk to Razz between her songs.” Annie left.

“I’m not really being filled in. I mean I know this guy is some AI wizard…” Kinney offered. She and Handic sat. He nursed a glass of tequila.

“Jamie Brinson invented a dozen new ways to use AI to do really useful things, like model protein structure. The way it changes from minute to minute. I know that sounds pretty uninspiring, but it means his AI could design ways to kill viruses, bacteria, and even cancer cells. And he single-handedly changed storm prediction for offshore wind farms,” Handic smiled thinly, “He even was supposedly working on an AI service to find lost pets and kids.”

“And now he’s missing,” Kinney finished.

“Dead from a shark attack, by all accounts. And you are the best shark researcher in the world. We need to know what happened.”

“Why? Is this about the shark? What the shark needs?” Kinney was displaying her best stubborn streak. She just didn’t do well around the rich and powerful.

“Brinson’s company Sparkistry was due for its Initial Public Offering in a few weeks. It’s been bankrolled to the tune of billions, and investors are very interested in the company’s future.”

Even Kinney understood. Handic was a major venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. He had money on the line.

“So if this is a shark attack? The stock exchange collapses? Everybody throws themselves off the Golden Gate Bridge?”

Handic blinked, “No, Kinney. We just need to know what happened. Because there are…other reports.”

Kinney looked at him blankly. Waited him out.

“The CEO Puja Ganguly saw something different. She says no one saw a shark.  What she saw sounded like Brinson was hit – maybe attacked - as he tried to climb onto his own boat.”

“Haven’t heard this at all.”

“No, everything is Shark! Shark! Shark! That’s what people believe now and it’s hard to counter Facebook on news like this.”

“Even for you people who own Facebook?” Kinney couldn’t help but ask.

Handic just smiled. “I’ve advised Puja with her company. She knows I’m on the board here and asked for help. She’s in a bad place, she doesn’t know what happened to her friend. I said you could help.”

“So if I say the genius of her company was murdered instead of being bitten, the IPO will go ahead OK?”

“I’m sure it won’t be like that. Everybody says it’s a shark. And there is likely to be a shark hunt that’ll keep this in the news for a week. Your first reaction was that it probably wasn’t a shark. Maybe an accident.”

“But the shark could be pregnant. That would explain it being there.”

“Just so. Find out what happened. Stop the shark hunt. Help my friend Puja understand it all.”

Kinney’s brain started plotting, organizing, “I can’t leave today…it’s too late for me to get home and clean up and get to SFO for the red eye to New York.”

“I know. I had my plane come down to Monterey. It’ll take you to JFK airport tonight..”

Kinney stared. “It’s like that, is it?”

Handic smiled back. “Yes, it is.”

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