The AI Mission

“Please sit down Kim, I want you to tell me the story.”

I sank into the large chair, the sort you see in films of London Gentlemen’s clubs with smoke everywhere, people hidden behind newspapers and with butlers delivering drinks. The chair was relaxing, but there were no comforts here, only death.

“Don’t look at him Kim, he is quite dead. You have obviously been keeping things from me; I need the truth. Feel free to leave out the unnecessary items but give me enough context to understand everything. Tell it to me, I think you owe me that.”

I turned my chair away, so his body was not in my eyeline. “I did promise not to keep things from you, and I could not keep that promise. Will you keep your promise to me? I will try and verbalise it, but wouldn’t you prefer a written report I could just type it up for you, it would probably be quicker and more exact.”

“But I need the nuance, tone and texture, I can only get from you speaking to me, just imagine I am a long-lost friend, and you want to tell me everything. As for me keeping my promise, I will do that, but you are in no position to hold me to account, if I do not.”

With a voice of resignation, I began to tell The Story.

Living with two old people was never going to be fun, but it was safe and came with love and security.

My dad couldn’t cope after mum was sectioned when I was eight years old, his job as a care home manager took its toll too and I think it was a relief when Nan and Granddad offered to look after me a couple of years later. As a ten-year-old, I already knew who I was, I just did not know if the world was ready for me yet, thankfully Nanny Kat gave me the space to figure that out. A few years ago, Covid had made me an orphan.

One Tuesday, a couple of weeks ago, I got home to Pinewood Crescent from London well after six in the evening. I was about to put the key in the lock when Nan opened the door on the way out to her table tennis. “Hi Kim, there’s some tea in the pot and I put a plate of pasta in the microwave ~ I won’t be long, see you in an hour”.

“OK Nan see you in a bit, is Granddad about, I need to ask him something?”

“He’s listening on YouTube ~ having a bit of a Bon-Jovi session, good luck with trying to get his attention”.

Sure, enough as I went through the porch, I could hear Dead or Alive blaring out from the open living room doorway. I waved and he smiled back to me from his settee.

The pasta was good ~ Nanny Kat tolerated my veggieness and since I moved in, she always cooked themselves a meal and me a veggie option. I poured myself a cuppa, kicked off my shoes and tucked in.

The music quietened and Granddad Nigel came to see me.

“How’s it going, train from London the usual pain? You know if you call, I would’ve picked you up from the station”.

“Yea thanks granddad, I know, but after being stuck like a sardine, I hopped on an e-scooter, it only took a few minutes to get home. Actually, I haven’t been jogging for a while, perhaps I should have walked. I saw that man again today”.

“Are you sure it was him?”

“Yep, if you had to draw a picture of a spy, it would be the spit of him, hat and all. He walked over from Bletchley Park too.”

“Well, it’s just a museum now, perhaps he likes war time history. Why don’t you ask him” he said with a cheeky grin.

“That’s right, hello, are you a spy?” Talking to anyone new is always a challenge, but someone who I know who visits Bletchley Park and gets off in London at St James Park, just 15 minutes’ walk from MI5 HQ, just wasn’t going to happen.

I asked granddad how the job hunting is going; he just shrugged his shoulders and returned to Bon-Jovi. Since his redundancy, I have been giving Nan three hundred more each month, but I think this makes Granddad feel more useless. Sometimes he won’t look me in the eyes, like he has let me down.

I picked up my shoes and went to my room. This was my haven overlooking the garden at the back of the house. The room has lovely views of the flowers and was always quiet, with the exception of the occasional bird chirping or squawk at dawn and dusk. As well as my bedroom this was my social centre and my office.

Working for England Rail as a software developer has its perks: 2 days in the office in London and 3 days working from home. My perfect workday would be to get home without having spoken to anyone, after all that’s why we have chatbots. Since I started commuting into London, I found that wearing sunglasses always deterred people wanting to talk, this and my make up were my two shields. People are less likely to engage if they can’t see your eyes. Even in winter, I wear the glasses and to be honest I have adopted them into my everyday life, at work and at play. The only time they come off are at home. The reporting I do, does itself; a couple of years back I merged my company Large Language Model (LLM) database with some foodie, travel and a relationship LLM’s I managed to get a back door into. Since then, it’s paid dividends, the bosses like the way my trend reports are always ahead of the curve and lets them predict their overpaid arses off. Now and again, I have to get new links, but these people never spend the money on security they need to.

I pulled my phone out and clicked on a playlist to shuffle.

Open up my laptop and, let’s see if we can find who is our mystery man. Most software programmers, keep up to date with latest trends and packages, but I suppose we all have our favourites. A bit like a carpenter has a favourite chisel, something just feels familiar and easy to use. I’ll use my preferences, I have the travel info at hand so better kick off with some Hiddentec and then interlace a bit of GitHub and Tabnine to disguise the source. There it is….. Mr Smith, how original! Better stop there or MI5 will be flagged. Looks like we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.

Nan was back from table tennis and called up to see if I wanted some tea, I called down no thanks. She always gives me my space and lets me just be me. I’d always visited and spent weekends with them and my cousins, but living somewhere is a whole different thing.

I remember how relaxed and typical I felt the first time I tried on her skirts and shoes. A few weeks later the lipstick would come, eventually my make up would be a ritual to be completed before I left the house. It was inevitable she would catch me, when she did she sat on the bed in her room and asked “what’s all this about then?”, I shrugged, struggled and just mumbled as any 10 year old would and she put her arms around me and told me that no matter, who or what I wanted to be she would be there for me. I guess she always knew I was a bit different to her other grandchildren. As the years went on, I would become a different Kim and the only things that were not tolerated in the house was intolerance and making tea in a cup ~ tea has to be brewed in a pot, no short cuts and Nan always knew if I had cheated.

Granddad just went along for the ride, he was not in denial, and he made sure I stayed involved with my four girl cousins when we practiced combat techniques and being shorter and slimmer than average gave me a bit of an advantage with speed. My tights soon became leggings, and I adopted black as my favourite colour. By the time I went to secondary school I could handle myself with any would be bully and my cousins always looked out for me too. A lashing from their tongue was worse than a dozen punches to any school hard nut. In his early sixties and unemployed, the flab had gotten the better of him and his enthusiasm seemed to be limited to fishing on the Grand Union canal.

Now at the age of 26, I guess I have a firm idea of who I am, but I am not sure about any lasting relationships. People just don’t seem to want to invest any time in getting to know me. Perhaps when I meet that special person, I wouldn’t go looking for things that I shouldn’t.

So, Mr Smith or whoever you are, why Bletchley Park? It’s Just a museum and a good thing it is local. I had been there as a kid and went to see granddad when he rented an office there about 15 years ago. I’ve been back to look at the National Museum of Computing when I was at college, but nothing looked like it could be used for modern spy craft.

Over the next week, I Googled the hell out of everything about Bletchley Park for likely connections. Most of it was WW2 codebreaking stories, brilliant in their own right, but not current. Maybe it has something to do with these two:

·2023 Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hosts world’s first AI Safety Summit

·2025 exhibition on the impact of AI on our lives

Monday evening and my eye was drawn to the advert for Afternoon Tea at Bletchley Park, but I decided instead to go for a drink to my local. Captain Ridley’s Shooting Party, just down the road from me. The pub is named after a secret meeting. In the 1930’s an old Bletchley mansion went into government ownership, some spooks came up to poke around and check it out as a possible wartime location. They called the meeting ‘Captain Ridley’s Shooting Party’ as a disguise for their jaunt. Now the pub that took its name from that meeting, is the best place in town to get lost in a crowd, whether it’s drinkers or families, it’s always on the go at Captain Ridleys. But tonight, I wasn’t in the mood to be alone, and I think I will need more help.

“GRANDDAD…do you fancy a pint.”

Our walk to the pub went up the hill and through the park and only took 15 minutes, on the way Granddad asked. “Are you OK? To what do I owe the honour of a pint on a Monday with my favourite granddaughter.” Nan & Granddad told us ALL we were their favourite, corny I know, but it means a lot as a kid to be loved, unconditionally.

“Promise you won’t be annoyed granddad?”

“Of course, you daft bat, I won’t be annoyed”.

I explain, “I cannot get the Bletchley Park spy out of my head and that man.”

Granddad advises, “Ok Kim. Supposing he is a spy, what’s it got to do with you? How would you like it if someone came poking into your job. My advice is to leave it well alone.”

We got to the pub went in past the fruit machines and sat in the back in a booth on the left, where we could not be overheard. Granddad got the drinks.

As I was in mid gulp he sarcastically said “Thanks for asking me out for a drink” then he frowned and said “I know how your brilliant mind works, you are bored now and you need something to occupy yourself, so you’ve become obsessed about this man in the hat. You just need to find someone special to love and be loved by. Then of course, they will do your head in every moment they get, and you won’t even have time to create something to poke around in”.

I spoke, “Yeah, like that’s going to happen, no one on the horizon at the moment. You worked at Bletchley Park a bit. Was there anything strange going on then? Anything out of place that might be connected to current activity?”

“Funny you should say that, but…”

“What?”

Granddad explains, “Everything about that place is odd, it’s meant to be. You let a load of spies, codebreakers, civil servants and the army run a place, and you might as well be looking for a needle in several mountains of needles. Besides, I rented an office in the Naval Intelligence building. Hardly call that working at Bletchley Park.”

We both sat in silence and sipped our drinks, then Granddad pipes up “In between my job hunting, I could poke about a bit if you want. I can think of worse things to do than roam around. I still got my local annual ticket and as a local it only cost me just over ten quid for the year.”

I am happy and say, “That’s fab, what I want you to do is…”

Grandad replies, “Nope. You know your AI has supervised learning and unsupervised learning, if you tell me what you want, I may miss out something important” I will go for a mooch and let you know over the next couple of days.”

I put some lipstick on and agreed. I could not fault his logic, but I didn’t want this to become his project. I know he is down and bored, but I would have to manage him when the time comes. I suppose that’s why I put on the lipstick. I know it annoys him when we are out together in public.

Grandad asks, “Do you fancy a burger? when I get a pint, I fancy a burger for some reason”.

Was this him just getting back at me for my lipstick “You know I am a vegetarian”.

He muses, “Well, they do veggie burgers. Oh well, I suppose I better be good too. Any way you look pasty and a bit wan.”

I scoffed, “Wan, did you just pop out from the 18th Century or something and before you explain, I know what wan is. My Lipstick annoys you, doesn’t it?”

Grandad looks at his pint, “No not really, only when we go out for a drink”.

Annoyed, I said, “Are you embarrassed to be seen with me then?”

He rocked in his seat, like I just punched him. He shook his head and explained. “You know I love you and always have. Your lipstick annoys me because in my early teens, I worked in a restaurant. I did some waiting on table and washing up. The lipstick really annoyed me, you had to give those glasses extra effort. I know in these modern pubs they have dishwashers, but you still get the odd glass with a faint impression of lipstick. So that’s why your Lippy annoys me a little.”

I blushed a bit when he said he said he loved me, not because I didn’t know it, but because he felt he had to tell me. I apologised. “Sorry granddad, I know you love me and thanks for letting me know about the lippy, I just, well you know, when my cousins come around you sometimes give them a hug and that. We’re all about the same age and they are girls, I just thought, well I didn’t know what I thought.”

“The thing is Kim, your Nan and me are blessed with five beautiful grandchildren, but you live with us. I see the others once a month at most, if I hugged you every time we met it would be a bit creepy wouldn’t it.”

He laughed and broke the ice. I laughed too.

“Anyway, you don’t like to be hugged, from about the age of 12 you would always stand there like it was a torture, so we stopped doing it. Do you need a hug now?” he said sarcastically.

I confirm, “No thanks, I don’t actually like it”.

Exasperated he says, “You see, for someone so clever you defy logic. Are we good?”

I smile and say, “Of course, let me buy you a pint Granddad.”

He laughs, “Wow is it my birthday”.

When I returned with our drinks, he looked at me and said all earnestly “if you ever feel unloved or different, don’t keep it to yourself. We are big enough and ugly enough to take it on the chin, just communicate with us.”

He winked and said, “or set up a chat bot to do it for you”.

He beamed, the beer was loosening him up a bit now, “I got this great joke for you.

’God is annoyed and gets Donald Trump, Keir Starmer and Elon Musk together. I am annoyed with you all, I have given you all the tools to fix the world and it has gotten worse. I am going to destroy Earth in two weeks.

Donald Trump goes back to the American and holds a press conference. I have some good news and some bad news. Good News is God exists and the bad news is that you have all wrecked the place, so God will destroy the planet in two weeks.

Keir Starmer holds a press conference in the UK. I have bad news and really bad news. The bad news is that God is really pissed off. The really bad news is that God will end the world in two weeks.

Elon Musk holds a company wide video meeting with all staff. I have some Good news and some Fabulous news. The good news is that God thinks I am one of the three most powerful people on the planet. The fabulous news is that we don’t have to debug the Tesla operating issues anymore.’

I laughed, Granddad always did have a repertoire of jokes, mostly bad, but that one was OK. We talked about the Park and codebreaking for another hour, and I was more convinced that the AI summits and exhibitions were linked in some way, they must have something in common.