But need hadn’t arisen. The other organizations had chosen wisely. By tech industry standards, the Waterhouses were, by this point, old money—the unglamorous ballast that would keep the conference from heeling over to one side or the other. The glittering-eyed libertarians from El Shepherd’s world were counterbalanced by the invitees from ONE, which had evolved, over the years, into a mostly harmless foundation that tried to bridge the gap between science and religion. Top-drawer brains had been nominated by Solly Pesador, who to his credit had reached outside of his own department and invited some who could be counted among his rivals. The roster had struck Zula as a little weak when it came to currently active members of the underlying industries. So, once she’d made certain that Corvallis and Maeve could attend, she’d spent her remaining invitations on CEOs and CTOs of companies working on things like quantum computers and distributed ledgers. The guest list now comprised twenty-seven humans, one robot, and one monster.

As far as she knew the word “monster” had not been uttered until this moment, but she was relieved, in a way, that it had now broken the surface.

The afternoon sessions had all been introductory in nature. They went over the ground rules: everything here was off the record, private, not to be photographed or posted. The usual conflicts and rivalries were to be left on the pier. Indeed, some of the session topics were specifically about the legal and political twists and turns that had been part of this story from the moment Richard Forthrast had signed his will.

Sophia had told the story of her internship and her senior thesis, bringing them up to May of this year. It was now October. Solly had picked up the torch, starting with the moment during Sophia’s thesis presentation when the account had run out of money only to receive a large, unexpected infusion of funds, “presumably from someone in this hall,” and continuing through the summer and fall as the resources demanded by the Process (as they called the thing that Sophia had launched) had grown, sometimes in small increments, and—as had occurred last week—sometimes in huge quantum leaps.