Phoenix staff continued to investigate motives for the attacks on their androids, but had theories, and no concrete proof. Meanwhile, Leila was moving on to the next phase of her plan.
Maestro android development team members, Nia and Hiroshi, unaware of Leila’s ideological motives, were facing challenges of their own.
Since Nia nor Hiroshi have been able to determine the source of the training set contamination, they decide to take Lucy into the field, a real school, and let her spout off whatever poisoned training has been added to her model.
While both Nia and Hiroshi were puzzling over the poisoning of their teacher androids training sets, Theo, the server room manager, had traced both his and their problems to Simon, who was violating established access protocols.
Not only was Simon loading down the servers, but he was poisoning data sets created by the teacher training team. Theo needed allies, if he was going to take on a powerful user like Simon.
Little by little, the layers of the onion were being pulled back. And what was being exposed, did not look good. It seemed like a good time for another rooftop meeting.
When Theo cut off Simon’s access to the teacher training sets, that left Nia with the only remaining access. And Leila’s brutes went to work immediately, to regain that access.
In the meantime, the Seeker and Victor were already ahead of events, having discovered why Leila’s goons were so anxious to get Simons poison back into Lucy’s training sets.
That Leila planned to put androids into every school in America, to fill students heads with Ayn Rand theology, was self evident. The question was, how to stop her.
Despite intimidating by Leila’s goons, word of issues with Maestro’s teacher drones was getting out. And, Buddy, Phoenix’s teacher android, always had his ear to the ground for such things.
Meanwhile, Leila, ever anxious to stay one step ahead in her expanding efforts to remake the educational system, was preparing her “Great Kings” Theatre, and “Hall of Counselors” ready for opening. All for the purpose of undermining Democracy.
With all the revelations surfacing about the Forbin family, one group strangely absent from the discussions. Out of the loop, and out of town as well.
Despite being a cofounder of Phoenix, Maxson had retired a few years ago, and had little involvement in the current operation of Phoenix. That was about to change, due to recent events.
The somewhat reclusive Maxon had nevertheless become aware of the attacks on Phoenix, and intended to respond differently than Antonio had to date.
And, that offense was not exclusive to Phoenix itself. Nia was about to get the security she needed, but not from her own management.
