"What is it?" Divya hated to have to interrupt the interview to once again deal with the intruder. "Umm, ma'am," hesitated her assistant. They stood again in the investigation room with Lee handcuffed a little distance away. He continued in almost a whisper, "We gave him the outdated AGI's code as you suggested, but the blackmailers' smart contract seems to have caught it."

"How's that possible?" asked Divya, "that code has never been seen by the outside world - how can they identify it as being old?"

"The Ether smart contract has a set of checks on what outputs the AGI must have for certain inputs."

"Like a checksum?"

"Yes, several checksums - and our old model fails them."

How in God's name did they obtain a checksum? The only people in control of such sensitive information would be the creators of the model themselves - is there a mole in her team?

"Well perhaps it's a dud," the assistant attempted to console, "Someone's just messing with our guy here - blackmailing him to get himself in trouble at a high security zone."

Divya was nevertheless skeptical. "Can we run a quick check with a few of our real AGI's responses to try to crack it open?"

"Sure, I'll get on to it," responded the assistant, and Divya moved towards Lee, "I'll break the sad news to him in the meantime."

She took a seat across from Lee, who had been looking expectantly in her direction ever since she walked into the room again. "I'm sorry we could not help you," the words fell like thunder over him.

"But ... you said you would!"

"And you know we tried. We tried to feed in the model we thought your blackmailers are looking for - my guess is they have it rigged against you - there exists no key to unlock your contract."

"No! That can't be ..." Lee uttered in defiance. Divya pitied his cruel circumstances, but Lee was more than incredulous - he was staring dead in her eyes, as if calling her bluff. "Have you tried everything?"

"Indeed we have," she reiterated with a straight face, quite contrary to the assistant, now approaching her again. "Madam," he uttered and handed over the iPad he was holding.

Divya's eyes quickly traversed the screen to figure out what it was. She was looking at partial results that their real AGI obtained on the blackmailers' contract test. All 160 million data points evaluated were scored perfectly so far - this is exactly what the blackmailers expected Lee to get.

"Shut it down," she whispered, scared they may reveal more information than intended. Her fears had been realized. Their best model had been compromised, but thankfully only the checksum was out - whoever was behind this still wanted the source code and parameters.

"The cops are here for him," pointed out Divya's assistant, loud enough to evoke a shriek from Lee. Divya jumped up too - she could not have these details leak out in any way - neither to the press nor to the cops. "Now listen to me," she finally turned to Lee, "I will make these charges go away. That's all I can do for you, after all."

Lee was almost panting, still desperate but also a little perplexed at what just transpired. As the campus security uncuffed him, he absent-mindedly stood up, rubbing his wrists. He collected his confiscated belongings - except the digital devices that the security team refused to return. As he eventually walked to the door, Lee turned to Divya to mumble "Thank you for trying."

He continued outwards and was escorted by guards right up to the bus stand outside the campus gate. Once dropped off, he stood by the trash can for a while. A couple of buses halted and then moved on. Lee finally looked around and promptly fetched a phone stuck inside the trash can. He began walking off as he dialed a number and waited for the connection.

"So?" asked the person at the other end of the call.