Part 24

“What?! How is that possible?… He has a bodysuit too?”

“Maybe he has, but it likely is not that. You see… I have seen Puglisi many times. There are at least three different ones. Not counting the one we met. All are razor sharp but have different appearances, different mannerisms, speak differently, think differently…”

“Huh?!… Do you mean that several people share his identity? All claim to be him? And in this way can do several things at once, be present at different places at the same time, show up in front of someone who knows one of them and pretend to be someone else…?”

“Which pretty much sums what he could do if he had an unrestricted bodysuit,” Carla smiled.

“How he could be at two places at once with the bodysuit?”

“Easily. If you have enough nanoelements in your bodysiit, you could direct a part of them to separate, take some form and go somewhere and do something while you go elsewhere and do something else… Yes, it undoubtedly can do this too.”

“Gosh… But you say that Puglisi likely doesn’t use a bodysuit. What then…?!”

“What made him, well, Puglisi? Remember what The Boss told us about him?”

“Hmm… He is influential because he is really knowledgeable and smart… You think that there might be an AI behind him?”

“I am absolutely sure about that. No way a human being can learn and process so much information so quickly. Or ten human beings, or even a hundred…”

What we had entangled ourselves in?!

“And this AI is puppeteering people who serve him? Or the opposite, some people use it to predict and arrange what they want?”

“To us, the two are the same.”

“So… You think that our meeting with Puglisi was arranged? That it was not a statistically improbable coincidence?”

“I am sure it was. Puglisi didn’t kill me, but surely kept an eye on me, in case someone who wants to know more about him contacts me. And when the eye reported to him that somehow I go in my room and a man comes out instead, and vice versa at the end of the work week, he surely connected that to the info about the bodysuits. Those who were covering that info went to shops with local enforcement people – there is no way Puglisi would not know about it, he has the needed connections. And likely has some interest in the technology, I don’t know what exactly because I don’t know what he knows already and what not yet… He likely hired actors to play his daughter, the bodyguard and the attacker, paid an ambulance and a police team and so on…”

“Despite that you will know this is not the real him?”

“He knows I know that there is more than one him. No matter who is the real one, and is there at all one that is more real than the others.”

“And was ready to donate to us ten millions like this? To give them to charity just to maintain the impression?”

“Millions are nothing to him. Info about bodysuits might make him uncountable billions, he is smart enough for that. Or maybe even things that cannot be measured in money at all.”

“Gosh… Do you think that those two criminals we met later might be working for him too?”

“Could be… Though there is something I am missing. The guy on performance drugs had blinded me already when I tried to hit him, but I am pretty sure that I caught something that felt like a stone, likely the wall next to me, not the big goon. And I am even more sure that I didn’t managed after that to hit the first guy. What exactly you did to earn me the fame of Mr. Killer Punch? Even the option that triples the strength wouldn’t be enough to deliver blows like those the inspector described.”

I told her what I had done. She looked at me, then started laughing like mad:

“Wonder how the police would react if they knew that these punches came not from the muscular Carlo, but from the sweet and delicate Lexie!”

“That you have a great bodyguard, of course.” I smiled.

“Hey, don’t you think that this would be a bit humiliating for me?” Carla made a face like a frowning princess. God, she was cute and charming even with that expression.

“I don’t care. It’s a problem for you men, you solve it.”

“You women can be really nasty to us!”

We both laughed. Then I hugged her. She smiled happily:

“Let’s leave this banter for after we put the bodysuits on. It will look more realistic then.”

“You think looks will change much? For the others yes, but for us?”

“Maybe. Without the bodysuit, I feel all girl, absolutely. With it, that’s… Like I am still a girl inside it, but some of my values happen to be the same as of most men. There is a bit of that without the bodysuit too, I admit I’m somewhat tomboyish, just with it that bit comes to the front. I haven’t really changed, just can afford to be a part of myself that I always had, but never let it out. Don’t know how it is with you…” She blushed charmingly.

“Me, the bodysuit taught me a lot of things. They are useful to men and women alike. But when in the bodysuit, they somehow come out more easily. Damiano is still catching up with Lexie on them… Luckily he has caught up about how to please a girl.” I tried to make a joke.

“I think I need some more convincing on that.” She blushed even more.

I smiled and lifted her up, holding her in my arms. She shrieked happily and grabbed my neck. I couldn’t help but remembered how we had done exactly the same in the Tech Cafe, just in the opposite roles.

“Being a man is a heaven when he has a girl like you.”

“I would say the same, both as a girl with a man like you and as a man with a girl like you.” She smiled so happily that my heart melted. “And don’t think you have learned everything on how to please a girl. We will have lessons on that the next few days. Which I will also use, to learn how a man can – and should – be pleased…”

* * *

Less than an hour after the lunch, there was a knock on the door of the Boudoir. It was the Boss.

“Dear ladies, the company needs urgent help. Remember that batch of data about the radiowave pollution in Lombardy cities, that we processed a week ago? Turns out, there is a very serious problem with our results.”

Huh? There was nothing special about this processing. We shouldn’t have made a mistake…

“Our results show illogical inconsistencies. For example, the data about the farmlands south of Po show higher pollution than the outskirts of Milan. But there are no emitters beyond some occasional cell towers. Could you please track the things urgently? Our clients, the Lombardy administration, have noticed it and a team of theirs will be there in about an hour.” He nodded and closed the door.

For a couple of seconds, we exchanged puzzled glances. Then Mommy composed herself:

“Lu, check the input data. Vinnie, help her. Grace, look for a pattern in the results inconsistencies, I will join you. Lexie, check the scripts we used… The administration of Lombardy aren’t nice guys, they tried to create problems for us a year ago.”

“And got their noses pushed into the dirt,” Grace noted with obvious pleasure. “The Boss showed real class then.”

“They might be seeking a revenge now, they are that kind of people. Let’s go, girls!”

I examined carefully the script. There was nothing strange in it. Quickly ran it over a small subset of the radio pollution data for Tuscany. Perfectly convincing result, unlike that for Lombardy…

Did Lombardy have input data inconsistencies? I browsed through the columns of numbers. Everything appeared okay…

“Lexie, could you please process a selection of the data? Ten lines from every commune?” That was Grace. “I am halfway through making the selection, will be ready in five minutes.” She was typing so fast that her fingers almost blurred. I remembered the piano in her home – she likely was playing it. And likely was good, maybe a talent.

“Of course!”

In ten minutes, we had the results. The inconsistencies were even bigger. I quickly processed them manually through StatWhiz – not only they were bigger again, but were also different!

“What’s going on?!” Mommy wondered. “Numbers look okay… Let me make a check by hand…” She took an ancient-looking calculator out from a drawer and opened on her desk the selection. “The farms – 314.1216 + 711.4463… Total 3465.8453… Now, Milan – 942.1224 + 1312.69374… 12474.58392!”

“W-w-wait a moment! How is that p-possible? P-processed data show higher pollution for the farms, but manually adding t-them shows four times lower? Like it s-should be?!”

“This appears to me impossible,” I said. “There must be something wrong… Wait a moment!”

I bolted out of the room. Almost entered The Cave without knocking on the door. Calm down! Well-behaved girls don’t do that…

“Hi, Lexie! Did you find something?” cheerfully asked Nicola Petruccio.

“Maybe. May I ask Carlo for help?”

“Sure.” Carlo stood up from his desk, a custom-built by him monster that combined a processing desk with half a dozen other things. “How I can be of use?”

I described the situation to him, while going to our room.

“… So either the software is bad or something happens. Maybe we have a virus?”

“Pretty unlikely, I would have noticed it…” Carlo sat on my chair. “May I look at that selection, please? This file here?…” He opened a console window and started typing there something intelligible. Suddenly the screen was filled with straight columns of digits and letters, which he started examining carefully.

“Hmmm… Huh?! This here is no dot, it’s an Unicode graphic symbol that resembles one, but is not!… And this here is no valid end-of-line either!…” He quickly entered some more commands, then ran my script over the selection. This time the script filled the screen with cryptic messages.

“Now, let’s see the debug output… Yes! The data visually looks like good one, but in reality is not. This fake “dot” is treated as a column separator, and the fractional part becomes a next column. And since the number is a floating point, the fractional part is big for these communes and small for Milan, you get bigger results for the communes than for Milan! And the fake end-of-line prevents catching the problem automatically! Mystery solved!”

“Can it be just a mistake, or someone crafted it deliberately?” Mommy asked darkly.

“It is not really possible to prove it, but I believe it was crafted deliberately.” Carlo almost scowled. “And if they did that deliberately, they will insist that we did the mess.”

“Can we do something to counteract that?” Lu asked.

Carlo thought for a couple of minutes. Then got up from the chair:

“Give me some time.”

“Why they should do that?” I asked when Carlo closed the door behind him.

“There are such people,” Mommy sighed. “Some will have some agenda, for example to give the contract to someone connected to them. That is what The Boss caught them with before. Some will do it just out of nastiness. If the people who will come are the same people as a year ago, I would suspect an attempt for a revenge.”

“Revenge? For catching them with a corruption attempt? But this is… medieval!” How could important officials be so petty?!

“Welcome to Italy, Lexie.” Grace smiled bitterly. “The most civilized people in the world, the Renaissance, the art of the world, the operas, Ancient Rome, science, space technologies, beautiful songs… But also, the Borgia, Machiavelli, Mussolini… We can be just as nasty as every other people.”

Our talk was interrupted by Fabricia:

“Ladies, the people from Lombardy Directorate are here. Did you find something?”

“Yes, but didn’t find yet how to manage the situation,” Mommy replied. “Now all the hope is on Carlo.”

“He will think of something,” Fabricia nodded. “I am sure. A man like him will find a way out of anything.”

All women smiled and brightened. Me too. To be honest, I felt a tiny pang of jealousy. But Fabricia was right – Carla would find a way out of anything, despite not really being a man. She was more of a man than the men. More trustworthy, nice, kind, smart, decent and everything else…

Maybe we just perceived this as “the truest man” because she appeared to be a man with the bodysuit? Like they perceived me to be an incredibly nice girl for me just trying to be a decent man, only due to the appearance of the bodysuit?

“Well, can we do something to stall them?”

The faces around me visibly sunk. There was nothing we could do about it.

But the excuses are for women. Real men go and do, whatever it takes.

“May I come to the meeting, Fabricia?”

“Actually, this is what The Boss asked for.”

“He hopes that her looks will distract them?” Lu smiled.

“Of course. What else is are looks for?” Fabricia smiled too.

Seconds later, I was walking towards the office of The Boss. Tasked with distracting a bunch of nasty people by being a beautiful girl…

By looking like a beautiful girl, I corrected myself and entered the room of The Boss.

* * *

The visitors were three – two women, one about fifty, the other and the man about thirty. I gave them what I hoped to be an attractive smile. One that makes men drool and women go green with envy. At least try and throw them off balance a bit, give Carlo some time to think of something.

“Did you find something, Miss Manzoni?” The Boss asked.

“Yes. The input data appear to be bad.”

“I see,” smiled coldly the older woman. “You have bungled the work and are trying to blame it on us?”

Black-and-white skirt suit, stylish costly heels and necklace, reserved make-up, uptight look – she had done everything to show that she is the boss. But that didn’t help her to present as a woman. Could I beat her at it?

I smiled to her even more sweetly. Judging by the look she shot me back, she was going green on the inside. Good!

“With all due respect, Madame, we process the data for all provinces in the same way.” I explained. “And only that for Lombardy produces unexpected results, because only it is bad.”

“We also supply our data to different users in the same way, and only you have any problems with it.”

The woman composed herself. “I am afraid that it is our word against yours, and we are the customer.”

“With all due respect, the customer is the Lombardy Directorate,” The Boss intervened politely. “To the best of my knowledge, you are its information department. Not the same level of responsibility.”

“Whom do you think the Director would believe?” she cut him off. “Stop trying to wriggle out, Mr. Montafun. Admit your mistake and we might still consider using your services.”

“Again, with all due respect, I think that the Director would believe the truth,” I replied. “Wouldn’t it be diligent to try and determine where exactly the error occurred—”

“We have already determined this,” the man interrupted me. “Who do you think you are, to try to blame us? Looks are not everything, dear girl.”

“With all due respect, Mr. Santana, Ms. Manzoni is not just good looks—”

“Oh, come on, Mr. Montafun! None of us is an idiot. We are perfectly well aware why a man your age employs trophy girls. And if they are good at statistics… or at something else.” the man smiled sarcastically.

I felt my blood boiling.

“Are you making some assumptions about me, Mr. Santana?”

He grinned in an even more sinister way.

“I am right, am I not?”

It took me an effort to not jump and knock his teeth out. The grimaces on the faces of his colleagues helped a bit.

“I am afraid you aren’t, Mr. Santana,” The Boss replied with a slightly colder voice. “Ms. Manzoni is a brilliant statistician. And I would never dare to call her a trophy girl. You see, she is recommended by people better at evaluating one’s abilities than me.”

Santana laughed:

“For example?”

“Well, I recently was advised to treat her really, really well by an investment banker called Gianfranco Puglisi. Turns out, she saved his daughter from being mugged and raped, and he feels indebted to her…”

The faces of all the three visitors instantly lost some color and they started exchanging glances. Santana, who had opened his mouth to say something, just closed it. I smiled sweetly at him too:

“So, tell me, please, what software you exported this data from? And how did you vet the export?”

“This is a part of the procedures in our department. Due to security considerations, we cannot discuss them,” the third woman replied.

“Security considerations? What, please?” The Boss asked nonchalantly. “Knowing that would help us observe the needed security too, given that we by necessity have full access to this data.”

Before she could answer anything, there was a knock on the door and Carlo entered the room.

“Please meet our IT expert Carlo Gatti,” said The Boss. “Did you find something, Mr. Gatti?”

“Yes, Mr. Montafun. The Directorate storage that we downloaded the data from still keeps it. I compared it with the one we processed – they are the same. The problem with the data must have happened before they made it available to us. I also called DigiNotary and had them expressly notarize the fact, just for the case.”

The face of the woman that talked about security went white as a chalk. The other two visibly lost even more of their comfort.

“Madame Cattaneo, I am glad that we were able to pinpoint the source of the problem,” The Boss said. “Without your kind help, this would not be possible. So, I suggest to fix the input data, so that we might deliver our results in time.”

“Strange,” the older woman replied. “This software never created such problems before. I will see when we will be able to fix the data—”

“Actually I can work around it,” Carlo interjected. “The problems with the data are repetitive, and confined to the data formatting. While waiting for the notarization confirmation, I wrote a translator that fixes them and ran it. So, we already have good input data and can start processing it right now. I think we will be able to deliver the results before the end of the day.”

“Hm. Well, I believe then that this meeting is over,” the woman said.

“Just a moment, please,” I added. “Mr. Santana, do you still assume such things about me?”

He glared at me but didn’t dare to reply.

“Madame Cattaneo, I believe you are his boss? What do you think of your employee insulting women like that? I was left with the impression that you tolerate it.”

“Oh, I don’t! I was considering reprimanding him—”

“Nice to hear this. If you do, I will consider not suing him…”

Only after the trio was out of the room, I calmed down enough to realize that I had threatened with legal action a man in the office of my boss.

“Mr. Montafun, I want to sincerely apologize about my outburst. Should any problems arise out of it, I will accept the full responsibility.”

“Oh, I am sure that if they just peep about it, the media will love to learn what happened,” The Boss smiled. “Imagine the caption – ‘A girl beats some sense into a bureaucrat who nastily insults her because of her beauty’… I also got the impression that his colleagues were not happy with his behavior too. And if this story reaches Puglisi, which is rather possible, that idiot will likely regret being born… Now, let’s go back to work.”