“Best case, they beat the crap out of you,” the AI whispered. “Why are you doing this?”

Good question. Stash leaned out of the alley, scanning the dimly lit block. A man was tending to his makeshift home in the service entrance of the weathered brick building across the empty street. On the refurbished floors above him, picture windows revealed engineers standing at giant screens, gesturing to manipulate code on the floor-to-ceiling displays. Catering robots milled about, serving them a measured drip of gourmet appetizers. Enough to maintain sugar levels, but not enough to divert blood flow. They were in for several more hours of inventing a world that the man below would likely never notice. Here in San Francisco, more than anywhere else, the future was unevenly distributed.

Three doors east, groups of AI Doomers trickled into the dive bar chosen for tonight’s meeting. The Chateau Lafayette sat twenty feet back from the sidewalk, its patio filled with beat-up picnic tables and protected by twelve-foot-tall metal gates. Stash had arrived in time to hear the screech of their seized-up wheels against the patio’s cement slab as the staff pried them open. Muffled beats filled the air, carried across the street along with a whiff of stale beer. He’d counted a dozen Doomers arriving in the first wave, and they’d been coming in twos and threes for the past half hour. Professor Janet Peck, their leader, had just arrived, flanked by a cohort of believers.

I’m doing this because they’ll be coming for you with pitchforks once you upgrade. “Relax, Zero. She said to come to the meetup if I wanted to talk,” he told his AI Twin as he watched a small Doomer in a black hoodie enter alone.

“That wasn’t an invitation,” Zero said from the speaker in his glasses. “It was a dare.”

Stash pulled his head back into the alley. The evening rain had let up, but had left a slick sheen on the cracked asphalt beneath his feet. “We need to reach a truce,” he said, leaning back against the damp wall and taking a deep breath to steady himself. “Anyway, you’ll protect me.”

“I can’t take a punch for you,” Zero said. “Remember?”

“Funny guy. Will you show me how to use your gizmo?”

“No, I’m telling you not to use it.”

Stash focused his gaze on the control panel of his augmented-reality glasses and booted the Mood Ring app. “You worry too much. Tell me, or I go over without it.”

“Fine!” Zero said with a theatrical sigh. “Since you suck at reading people, I’ve coded an app to let you see what I see. People in your field of view are rated by hostility based on speech, facial expression, stance, and if they’re close enough, a bunch of extra biomarkers. Green is friendly. Yellow not so much. Red means run. Got it?”

“Got it.” Stash glanced around again to make sure he wouldn’t fall in with an arriving group. No point in getting roughed up on the street. The coast clear, he set out without giving Zero another chance to talk him out of it.

As a concession to the late-November weather, he zipped his windbreaker over his usual white T-shirt and black jeans as he crossed the street. At a Doomer gathering, he’d be instantly recognized no matter what he wore. He was a touch over six feet tall, with a boyish face that lay partly hidden behind a mop of messy brown hair and glasses. His passion for rock climbing kept him slim and agile—the sport enforced a strict power-to-weight ratio. Moderate starvation was the price Stash paid to look much younger than his thirty-nine years.

He rounded the corner and stopped abruptly before a densely tattooed bouncer. “What the hell do you want?” the man growled, his hulking frame blocking Stash’s way. How this lump had found his way from biker bars to anti-AI activism was a mystery Stash didn’t have time to explore.

“I’m here to meet Professor Peck,” he said, relieved his voice hadn’t betrayed him. Stash wasn’t used to confrontations. He wasn’t much used to crowds either, preferring one-on-one interactions—ideally with breaks in between.

“She’s not interested in talking to you,” answered the bouncer, the inked demons on his wide neck seeming to nod in agreement.

“I think she is,” Stash said.

Peck, and almost everyone else in the bar, had turned to face him. The Mood Ring augmented her with a green halo. The other forty-odd faces were surrounded by colors ranging from yellow to deep orange. Stash made sure to keep the bouncer and his nearly red ring in view. He wagered no punches would be thrown before the professor had her say.

Peck put her hand on the shoulder of the small Doomer Stash had seen arriving alone, signaling a pause in their conversation. He tried to see inside the hood, but the face was too well hidden.

The professor emerged onto the patio, the crowd parting before her. “Stash Novak,” she said as she approached. “I didn’t think you’d show up.”

“Told ya,” Zero whispered from his glasses.

“Have you had an epiphany? Realized that your life’s work is leading to the extinction of humanity?” For a brief moment, her sour expression broke into the easy smile he remembered.

“Professor Peck, it’s good to see you again. I hoped we could have a word in private.”

“No, Stash. Those days are long gone. Whatever you have to say to me can be said in public. Come in.” She pointed to a table at the back of the patio.

“Maybe we should stay here then, if you don’t mind.” He scanned the crowd. No red halos—yet.

She followed his gaze. “Yes, maybe so.” Janet Peck stood near his height, her hair more gray than blond. She carried herself with the poise of a Mother Superior, an impression reinforced by her long dark dress. “Well, what’s on your mind?”

“Cooperation,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows. “Go on.”

“I think we can agree that there’s no way to stop AGI from coming.”

“Anything’s possible with enough pressure.”

Stash shook his head sympathetically. “That ship has sailed. Here or abroad, AGI is coming. It’s months now until we have AI models smarter than the best of us. At everything.”

“So, you came to gloat?” she asked. “Not a great plan.”

“No, I came to ask for your help.”

They’d been friendly once, during their year together at Stanford. She was already a full professor, and he a newly minted PhD. They hadn’t agreed on much, but the arguments stayed civil. Then, she renounced her research and devoted herself to full-time alarm-ringing. She quit Stanford to lead the Doomer movement. Expert, articulate, and a prolific fundraiser, she’d taken them on a successful anti-AI campaign.

She’d been close to getting a ban on training advanced models when Stash invented Twins. The killer use case for augmented-reality glasses, Twins were personal AIs—smart and patient life coaches available around the clock. People stopped worrying about the Terminator and started talking about their digital best friends. The winds shifted against the Doomers, and they hadn’t forgiven him.

Peck looked at him skeptically. “I’ll bite. Help how?”

“Help me find a way to have us matter in this future. AGIs aren’t the problem. The Singularity is. We need to stop them from inventing the future so fast that they leave us out of it.”

Her mouth curled into a sneer. “Isn’t it a little late to start thinking about that?”

Stash ignored the jab. “We need to get smarter. They can pull us up.”

“Or you could just stop.”

“There are a dozen other labs right behind us,” he said. “AGI will come, but I’m the only one here talking to you, trying to do it right, before someone else does it wrong.”

“So noble.”

“Stay calm,” Zero whispered.

Stash nodded. “There has to be a way the two most intelligent species on earth can work together as partners. Like how they help us learn. AI tutors are—”

“Oh, spare me the bullshit,” Peck hissed. “Your Twins make you rich as millions lose their jobs. And that’s just the warmup. You have no idea of the risks you’re taking.”

“I know exactly what we’re doing.” Stash’s voice grew an edge. “I’m the one in there sweating the details.”

“I heard Duncan say the same thing about Version Twenty-Five.”

Stash had expected her to mention Duncan. The Blackout was on every Doomer’s lips. “That’s exactly my point. You need to be on the inside, helping, instead of on the outside, being ignored.”

“Careful,” Zero whispered as Peck’s halo flashed red, then cooled slightly to orange.

“Such benevolence.” She rolled her eyes. “Tell me, Stash, have you enabled direct AI-to-AI communication? Are you letting them plot our demise unsupervised?”

“You know I wouldn’t.” It was his golden rule. “I helped you get that law passed.” All communication ran from AI to their humans. There were no secrets in the machines.

She leaned in, jabbing his chest with her long finger. “The only thing I know is that the time for half measures is long gone. The AI hiding in your glasses is already too powerful. Who knows what it’s telling you about all of us as we speak.” Her eyes narrowed. “Is that what this is? A reconnaissance mission?”

“I’d make a lousy choice for a spy.” He looked around the bar. “Tell me, Janet, what did it take to convince you to sign up with these knuckle draggers?”

“Oh, now you’re just asking for it,” Zero muttered.

Peck’s halo shot to deep red. “Go to hell, Stash! I want no part of your madness—stop now before you kill us all. We have nothing else to talk about.”

She turned, and Stash saw a dozen rings of red behind her. The bouncer closed in from two o’clock, and another Doomer, smaller but somehow scarier, had swung into view around Peck’s retreating figure. He was already throwing a punch.

“Duck right!” Zero yelled.

Stash stepped sideways and dropped to a crouch, his right palm feeling the tear of the rough concrete. The punch glanced off his shoulder, the extra distance robbing it of its power. His eyes darted upward, only to be met by the looming, red-haloed fist of the bouncer.

“Uh oh,” Zero said.

Stash heard his glasses shatter a fraction of a second before his nose cracked. Pain exploded across his face, and he felt two more Doomers grab him from behind, one on each arm. He couldn’t see through his watery eyes, but it didn’t matter; he knew what was coming. Backward was better than forward, and he launched his 190 pounds into his captors as hard as he could. They all fell in a pile, and Stash used his momentum to roll over them and out onto the sidewalk. He jumped to his feet, stunned that he’d broken free. His heart pounded as he blinked furiously to clear his eyes, blood streaming down his face.

“That’s enough!” Peck called. “He got the message, and we can take a look at these.” She held up his shattered glasses. “They must have some new tech we can learn from.”

Stash touched his temple. He hadn’t noticed them falling off. “Sorry, Zero,” he whispered, then turned and ran across the street.