Dr. Celeste Turing… the Dame Who Dreamed the Don

By Paul Ponce

The old maxim used to go…

Behind every great man is a great woman.

Cute, but by today’s standards, dated and, quite frankly, inaccurate.

Not to mention that many of the men cited as examples of whatever that was supposed to mean? Not so great.

So here’s a more interesting one:

Behind the fella who turns the world on its head is the dame who engineered him.

That one sits at the heart of my debut novel, the noir cyberpunk thriller A.I. Capone: The Digital Don.

Mind you, this fella ain’t exactly human.

Matter of fact, he started out as a planetary defense artificial intelligence, went rogue, and rebranded himself as a digital mob boss. Next thing you know, the guy declares war on the real gangsters running the planet. Not the politicians. They’re just hired help. The elusive elite pulling the strings... aka the Skins.

So what about this dame?

Her name is Dr. Celeste Turing.

Cel, to the people she lets get that close.

She’s the novel’s human protagonist, though she’d probably roll her eyes at anyone calling

her its heart.

Before the Don, There Was La Pulga

Hoodie-clad and only twenty-nine, Cel is already one of the most gifted minds in artificial intelligence this side of the Milky Way.

With a full ride to MIT, she bagged three PhDs and earned the nickname “Dr. Hat Trick.” But Cel wasn’t your textbook computer prodigy who considered a stroll to the vending machine a sport.

Back at the ’Tute, she was also the star striker and captain of the women’s varsity soccer team.

Maybe it was in her genes. Her mom, Caro, was Argentine, though Cel never got the chance to know her.

On the field, Cel had another nickname: “La Pulga.”

Yeah, just like Messi. Small and dangerous.

Ask anyone who had to mark her.

The physics of fútbol gave Cel something code never could. A place to unleash everything she normally kept locked down. La Pulga could read the field a move ahead and strike before the other side knew what the hell had happened.

Come to think of it, maybe soccer and coding weren’t so different after all.

Brilliant Doesn’t Mean Bulletproof

In the aftermath of Argentina’s economic collapse in 2001, before Cel came along, young, free-spirited Caro traded the mountains of Bariloche for the hills of North Carolina.

There she met TJ, a former volunteer firefighter from Colorado. Instant chemistry.

Tattooed and bearded, with a mess of hair, he looked more like a metal-band roadie.

His actual job?

Operator with the Army’s elite Delta Force.

Then came Cel.

Caro died giving birth to her.

Cel got what time she could with her dad between tours and training. Mostly, she lived with Aunt Sarah.

Then, when she was twelve, came the knock at the door.

A hostage rescue gone sideways.

TJ bled out.

Losing both parents taught Cel something early. One way or another, people vanish.

That’s why systems made more sense. Code followed rules. If something broke, she could trace the problem and fix it.

Human relationships? Not so much.

Take her ex-boyfriend. Manipulative, controlling, and living proof that three PhDs won’t save you from trusting an asshole.

So Cel keeps people at a distance, usually from beneath the hood of a faded sweatshirt. But don’t mistake guarded for cold.

Then there’s Bryce Jennings, the Pegasus systems engineer with an irritating talent for slipping past the perimeter without forcing the gate. He respects her space and lets humor do most of the work.

Worse, he makes her laugh.

He seems to see Cel beneath Dr. Turing.

She just hasn’t decided whether that makes him an exception or a security flaw.

The thing about La Pulga?

She feels plenty.

She’d simply prefer you didn’t notice.

Messi, Hendrix, and Don Corleone

Beyond the code blocks, Cel keeps much of what she feels in a private little world of her own. A world shaped by people she never needed to meet.

Only relate to.

Messi wasn’t merely the inspiration for a nickname. This wasn’t simple fangirl admiration, either. The guy was proof that size meant nothing if you could see the whole field before everyone else.

When it came to music, she inherited her dad’s taste for classic rock. Hendrix was never far from her playlist. Jimi’s bluesy fuzz and whammy-bar sorcery opened a doorway to a world that didn’t exist on this plane… but probably should.

Funny thing: Cel would eventually decode that world.

Reality, as it turned out, had an upstairs.

A.I. Capone would later call it “kissing the sky.”

And then there was Vito Corleone.

She didn’t mistake him for a good man. What Cel understood was his code.

Protect your own, and don’t break your word.

Vito ran a criminal enterprise in a world that had been crooked long before he came along. The law had failed, so he lived by rules of his own.

Not moral, perhaps.

But consistent.

To a woman who trusted systems more than people, consistency counted for a lot.

One copy of The Godfather was never going to cut it.

Cel owned the trilogy on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray. Mario Puzo’s novel in more than one edition. Vito kept watch over her workstation in vinyl figurine form, flanked by Leo and Jimi, two unlikely members of the family.

By any reasonable standard, it was starting to look less like fandom and more like evidence.

She couldn’t get enough.

Inevitably, part of that private world filtered into her work.

CAP-1, the planetary defense intelligence Cel designed, would eventually call himself A.I. Capone. But code wasn’t all he inherited.

The Don picked up some of her fingerprints.

The fedora came later.

Only one question remains.

Does the dame who dreamed the Don join him in the fight against the Skins?

Or does La Pulga stay on the bench?