camelot_exe

Chapter 6: Strategic Context

How dare Mateo treat me like just another casual hello on the beach? I thought we had a connection. Yet I had no right to be disappointed; I had a girlfriend, didn’t I?

I reminded myself I had bigger problems. Since the presentation, my entire concept of reality had fractured: people were now ‘feeling code,’ subharmonics were allegedly creating mirrors (whatever that meant), and my own AI had decided to clean up after itself by erasing the evidence we needed to protect it. Then a smug little hacker announced he was Merlin, as if this entire enterprise were nothing more than a Renaissance Faire.

And currently, to top it off, several independent journalists published what they called ‘leaked files,’ accusing Camelot Enterprises of greenwashing with falsified data and environmental lies. I was meeting Grace for the usual cleanup routine: damage control, corporate containment, and reassurance.

Yet I thought not of Camelot nor Grace, but of Mateo as I stepped into our main conference room at Camelot Towers. Why was he the thing my brain refused to drop? It was like part of me had been locked to his frequency, and now everything else sounded off.

I sighed and dropped into a chair, sitting among gleaming chrome and chlorophyll. I gazed at the several potted plants, selected for their air-filtering efficiency, looming around me like leafy security guards. The space darkened as the ceiling-to-floor windows adjusted their tint in response to the sun’s intensity and trajectory. For this late afternoon meeting, everything remained cool and without glare.

A minute behind me, Grace glided into the room with a smile, skating in between the doors that predicted her stride and timing. She wore a black pencil skirt and a silky white blouse, bright red lipstick, and had twisted her dyed-blonde curls into a messy but coiffed knot.

Behind her, predictably in step, came Lance (though I sniffed his aggressively male cologne before I even saw him). He was in his usual softshell jacket, with his badge clipped neatly to his belt, and a dark beard freshly trimmed. Lance was objectively handsome, in that quiet, reliable way. And (to my slight, persistent dismay) an inch or two taller than me.

“I thought this was a PR meeting,” I said. “Do we need you here, Lance?”

“It is,” Grace replied, cool as glass. “But Lance’s team is confirming the source isn’t internal. He’s helping me coordinate the digital containment and strategy.”

“So you do think this is a leak, not a fabrication?”

“It’s a precaution,” Grace added gently, reaching forward to place a hand on mine. Her fingers brushed me softly for maximum reassurance. On her wrist, she wore the Camelot-issued smartwatch, the same as the rest of us, except hers had been styled to resemble a classic analog watch: gold trim, a minimalist face, and no visible notifications.

Lance was staring at her back when Grace addressed me, a calm, unwavering stare.

My father’s entrance to the room was more formal and dramatic.

A slim vertical screen slid down from the ceiling, humming softly as it locked into place. It flickered to life, and there he was: Ulric Penn, filling the frame from the chest up in a navy suit tailored so precisely it may as well have been grown on him. He was seated before the rich walnut paneling of his estate office. No pictures or diploma frames, and no clutter behind him, only the CEO in 4K detail so sharp it looked unnerving. In the corner of his screen, barely visible: a small green indicator. MORDRED was on the call.

Ulric’s face was all angles and intention: aquiline nose, clean-shaven jaw, and white-gold hair slicked back. Not an old man, exactly, but more like a fortress wall that had lasted the test of time. My spine immediately straightened in his virtual presence.

My father spoke only once everyone had settled into our chairs. His voice was modulated through the audio like a judge handing down a ruling. “We can proceed.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Penn,” Grace said, evenly. “These are the current headlines circulating in independent media.”

She tapped her tablet, and the first slide blinked onto the glass display behind her.
 

          “That’s a gross misinterpretation of a prototype efficiency test,” Lance scoffed.

 

   Grace didn’t pause, just clicked her tablet. I realized my fingers were gripping painfully hard on the edge of my chair.

I opened my mouth and closed it. They were calling ‘our renewable partners’ sweatshops?

Grace looked toward Uric Penn. “As you can see, sir, the narrative is being shaped very aggressively.”

I puffed up my cheeks and let out a breathy whistle. Aggressive as an MMA fight.

“Some independent fringe sites picked these up,” Grace continued, “but we’re already pushing back with clarifications.”

“And by clarifications, you mean the truth,” I said.

“Strategic context.” Grace smiled at me without warmth. “We can imply they’re from discontented contractors, foreign saboteurs, or political actors. It doesn’t have to be clean, just plausible.”

“But Camelot doesn’t throttle someone’s public services because they drive a gas-powered car?”

“It’s not about punishment,” my father cut in, his voice booming despite the filter. “It’s about nudging behavior. Social incentives. Like tax credits, but smarter.”

“And this? Emergency power routing protocol?” I’m pointing to a slide no longer there. “Tier 1 zones: financial district; high-value contracts are guaranteed continuity during brownouts. Clinics and housing left for Tier 3 fallback.”

“That was resilience modeling,” Grace replied. Her smile did not waver, yet her eyebrows knit together with the slightest of lines. “A disaster scenario. Prioritizing infrastructure, not people.”

“But people live in those zones,” I said, more softly. I dropped back into my chair. “So… is this all somewhat true? Even the sweatshops?”

“That’s the wrong question, Arthur.” Grace’s voice was serene, but not in a kind way. “The right one is: who benefits from leaking half-finished models out of context?”

Caught off guard by her inquiry delivered with the utmost levelness, I didn’t contradict her.

“If someone did leak this,” Lance said, “they plucked it from a sandbox environment. Nothing live or harmful.”

“So, it’s not MORDRED creating these scenarios without task‑specific programming?” I asked. “These aren’t real current decisions put into its system?”

“Test branches,” Lance replied. He was smiling, but it looked forced. “Draft models. They were never approved or deployed.”

“But the logic didn’t come from MORDRED, did it? We can write it out of it.”

Lance shrugged. “MORDRED runs a thousand simulations a day. As I said, someone pulled fragments out of context.”

“And fed them to the press,” I said.

“These stories, true or not, are a threat to our infrastructure,” Ulric Penn stated. “I want your assurance, Arthur, that you’ll protect Camelot’s interests at any cost.”

At any cost, included what?

“We’ve already neutralized the big outlets,” Grace replied, eyes locked on my father. No wonder he liked her and wanted me to marry her; she was a fearless ally. “The Times, Global Observer, and NetZero have all passed. No one wants to run unverified leaks when half their ad revenue comes from Camelot or our partners.”

Nobody bites the hand that sustains their payroll.

“And the little newsletters? The green Substack collectives? They don’t move markets,” she went on. “No human reads longform exposés anymore. Attention spans don’t last past a headline.”

But these headlines said enough.

“So, the stories are dead.” My father didn’t ask. He confirmed.

“Buried and paved over with solar panels,” Grace replied, smiling at her own pun. “We’ll roll out a pre-planned positive: a green tech partnership, a big charitable donation, maybe an exclusive interview Arthur gives to a friendly outlet.”

You’re not asking me if I wanted to do this. You didn’t need to.

My father’s following words sounded more like a threat than a verdict already written. “The system was built to detect betrayal, whether it grew here or crept in from the outside. MORDRED shall reveal them, and when it does, justice will be rendered to the full extent of disciplinary and legal consequences. Meeting adjourned.”

They all had redeployed so quickly as if this wasn’t a crisis but only an after-dinner cleanup. The leak was just another box to tick, allowing them to move swiftly onto other things.

I bit my lip, searching for words, for the courage to speak them. Nothing came. Instead, I sat there, listening to the soft click of Grace’s tablet as she closed the case. Then she leaned in and pressed a kiss to my cheek.

“Don’t worry, Arthur,” she whispered as I caught the scent of her perfume, synthetic citrus, and cooled metal. “I’ll take care of everything.”

The reassurance felt rehearsed. A line delivered to a client, not a partner. When had she started sounding like my father? When had that shift happened?

Across the table, Lance had gone very still, his jaw set. I’ve known him for years, but I didn’t recognize this look. Not quite anger, not quite guilt. Something raw that he quickly schooled back into professional neutrality.

Grace straightened, smoothing her skirt, and didn’t look at him. She turned, her heels clicking against the polished floor as she walked out with Lance. As they reached the door, Lance’s hand moved as if to touch the small of her back, then dropped.

They were always side by side lately, coordinating digital strategy or managing the press. Lance and Grace moved with the kind of synchronized ease that comes from spending too much time together. I told myself it was just a professional partnership. But when had I stopped being the center of my own relationship?

My father’s face disappeared from the screen. MORDRED’s green light remained.

Alone, I stayed seated, fingers drumming against the arm of my chair. My deliberations spiraled, wild and directionless.

Then my thoughts singularized into one image: Café Null and those fringe coders and freedom-of-information zealots. They’d know how to trace the leak. They could tell me whether this was just a smear campaign or something worse.