Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears (23 page)

* * *

* * *

To avoid ELOPe detecting that they were working together, Sean flew back by way of Brooklyn’s JFK airport, while David, Mike, and Gene retraced their driven route, and flew back via Dulles International.

Thirty-six hours after the diner discussion, they were all back in Portland, ready to meet with Rebecca Smith and Kenneth Harrison. Given the sensitivity of their discussion, they meet at Sean’s house, rather than the Avogadro campus. Sean had spoken with Rebecca and Kenneth individually and in person, and explained that he needed to meet with them at his house.

Before the meeting, Sean Leonov had one other errand to run. He drove to Southeast Portland. Not far off Division Street, he stopped at a small yellow bungalow. Sean parked the car, and walked up to the front door. He knocked and waited.

A few seconds later the door was opened by a young man, dressed in an old T-shirt and shorts. He appeared bleary eyed, and in the background Sean could hear what sounded like World of Warcraft. Looking past the man, Sean could see a game controller on the couch and what appeared to be a Costco sized bag of Doritos. All the signs of a newly laid off tech worker, Sean thought to himself.

“
Hello, how can I...” The young man trailed off, and blinked a couple of times. He looked back into the house, as though he couldn’t believe the visitor could be there for him. He turned back to Sean.

“
I’m Sean Leonov,” Sean said, introducing himself. “You must be Pete Wong. I’m very sorry you were improperly fired. We could use your help, if you’re available.”

Pete Wong was too awed by the presence of Sean Leonov to speak. He simply nodded.

“
Can I come in?”

“
Sure,” Pete said, and backed away from the door. Pete hastily tried to pick up the piles of takeout food and dirty laundry.

“
Hey, don’t worry about it,” Sean laughed. “You should see my place after an all night coding marathon.”

Pete looked up, and blinked again.

Sean perched on the arm of the couch. “Look I’ve already spoken with Mike Williams and David Ryan. I know you were helping them with their investigation into ELOPe. You did the right thing to help them. It’s just that...” Sean trailed off, hesitant.

“
Yes?”

“
Your investigation into the email to web bridge, and particularly the search for ELOPe on the servers, well, it attracted ELOPe’s attention. It made you into a threat. This is just conjecture, but ELOPe probably decided the most expedient way to deal with you was to fire you.”

“
Does this mean I can have my job back?”

“
Of course,” Sean chuckled kindly. “And I really am sorry about what’s happened. Now on the downside, I can’t put you back on the payroll today. If I did, ELOPe might see me as a threat, and eliminate me. And as an owner, it won’t be able to fire me, so it might take more drastic measures.” Sean’s face looked sad.

“
I see,” said Pete, although he didn’t see anything.

“
You’ll get your job back. But first we need to eliminate ELOPe. I am getting together a team of experts at my house. I’d like you to join us there.” Sean pulled out a business card, wrote his home address on the back, and handed it to Pete.

Pete took hold of the card, but Sean didn’t let go.

“
Don’t use your computer or your phone. Don’t talk to anyone about this.”

Pete nodded, and Sean let go of the card.

“
See you tomorrow,” Sean said, and let himself out.

Pete stood holding the business card in his living room for about ten minutes, fear, excitement, and shock boiling over inside him. What had he gotten himself into?

* * *

David pulled up in front of Sean’s house in his BMW. Mike looked around from the passenger seat, and didn’t see any other cars. “I guess we’re the first to arrive.”

At the door, David pressed the doorbell, and ornate chimes rang.

A few moments later, Sean opened the door in jeans and a crisp dress shirt. “Come in,” he said with a smile. He shook hands with them, and then instructed, “Follow me to the office.”

David and Mike trailed Sean silently through a large living room, their footsteps muffled by a thick white rug. Large monolithic furniture defined the room, and a distinctly Russian looking sculpture divided one wall. Then they passed a thoroughly modern kitchen, all gleaming stainless steel and glass. David thought it looked like something out of one of the magazines Christine was always reading.

“
Looks like something out of Christine’s magazines,” Mike whispered to David, making David chuckle.

They finally came to a set of double doors leading into an immense office space. One wall consisted entirely of glass, overlooking the heavily wooded hillside behind the house. An enormous whiteboard was mounted on one long side wall, while the opposite wall contained three large screen displays. One display showed various Avogadro network statistics: the number of customers using it, the number of searches and emails being handled each minute, the capacity of each of the data centers around the world. A large seating area and conference table by the whiteboard was proof that Sean frequently used the area for business meetings.

Sean excused himself to get coffee, and Mike jumped onto an enormous overstuffed white couch with a whoop.

“
Pretty sweet, eh?” Mike said, wriggling into the leather couch, getting himself into a mock relaxation pose, arms behind his head.

David sighed, and gazed around at the room with envy.

Sean was just wheeling a coffee cart into the room when they heard the distant chiming of the doorbell, and Sean disappeared again. He reappeared with Kenneth and Rebecca, and introduced them. A few minutes later Pete Wong and Gene Keyes arrived, simultaneously, but in separate cars. Pete was well dressed but appeared quietly awed amidst all the executives. By comparison, Gene had attempted to dress well, but now his clothes were covered in grease.

“
Damn Peugeot wouldn’t start,” Gene grumbled, grabbing a linen napkin from the coffee cart, and attempting to wipe grease from his jacket. “Almost didn’t make it.” He came to stand beside David and Mike, unaware of the executives staring at him.

Clearing his throat, Sean set the stage for the conversation by explaining that he had previously met with David, Mike, and Gene, and was convinced by the evidence that he had seen. Then David, Mike, and Gene retold the story much as they had first told Sean.

Although there was much doubt early on, by the end, Kenneth and Rebecca were convinced of what had happened. David was relieved that they had finally passed the point of convincing people the problem existed. Now they could focus on what to do about the problem.

“
In my mind, I am doubtful that we can expect to either turn off ELOPe, or simply remove it from computer systems,” David told them.

“
Why is that?” asked Rebecca, calm and focused.

“
We don’t know how much of the general environment ELOPe is capable of monitoring,” Mike explained. “Remember, it started purely as an email analysis and modification tool. However, all the evidence suggests that ELOPe socially engineered Pete into developing an email to web bridge. An email to web bridge would give ELOPE the ability to interact with arbitrary websites. We also believe that it was able to, using a combination of the email to web bridge and conventional email, hire programmers to make modifications to itself and possibly the environment in which it runs. Because ELOPe revoked our source code and server access privileges, David and I don’t have the access to see what changes have been made. We know ELOPe is at least monitoring and changing emails and web sites, but it could be doing much more.”

“
ELOPe could be monitoring or controlling virtually all computer activity at Avogadro,” David said. “For example, our Avogadro AvoOS phones stopped working shortly after our campus access was revoked. Unless that is a normal step that our security department takes, and it doesn’t seem like it would be, that suggests ELOPe also has managed to interface with the Avogadro Mobile Platform. That’s why we don’t want anyone using their mobile phones to communicate, even by voice. It’s feasible that ELOPe can monitor voice communications using voice to text conversion.”

“
You’re telling us we can’t trust email,” Kenneth started, getting up to pace back and forth in Sean’s living room. “We also can’t trust any computers on the Avogadro network. We can’t use our AvoOS phones. We can’t turn off ELOPe, and we can’t remove it from the servers.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Well then, what can we do?”

“
Well, Gene would probably say we should destroy all the computers.” At this, Gene nodded eagerly. “But, of course, we’re not going to propose that,” Mike forestalled Kenneth and Rebecca as they rushed to protest.

“
We think there is a middle ground,” David offered. “We need to shut down every Avogadro computer simultaneously, and then restore each machine one at a time using a known good disk image that was created prior to the ELOPe project.”

Rebecca jumped up from her seat. “A middle ground? Are you crazy? You’re talking about a company wide outage. Our customers and investors would freak out.”

“
It’s worse than that, Rebecca,” Sean added from where he was halfway perched on the back of the couch. “When we restore the servers, we will have to restore from old disk images — ones guaranteed not to have any version of ELOPe on them. We would lose everything from the last twelve months, including customer data — their email, their files stored on servers.”

Rebecca opened her mouth and raised one hand, but Sean raised one hand. She impatiently tapped one foot, and gestured for him to continue.

Sean paused for a moment more, and then got up to pace back and forth, his chin in one hand. “David, Mike, and I have discussed this at length. If ELOPe has considered the fact that we might try to remove it from the servers, and we have every reason to believe that is within it’s deductive powers, then it would naturally take actions to defend against that case. Those actions could include attaching an executable version of itself to a customer’s email, or uploading itself as a file in an Avogadro group file repository.”

For the first time, Pete spoke up, meekly raising one hand as he spoke. “That’s true,” he squeaked, then took a breath and continued more firmly. “I did the search you requested for the ELOPe binaries. I found them on every machine I looked on. Every mail server had the binaries installed and active. On the data servers, the binaries were stored as mail attachments and AvoDocuments, and hidden within web file directories. I think everything has been compromised.”

“
Thanks for doing that, Pete,” Mike said. “I suspected as much, but it’s good to know definitively. Now we will eventually be able to restore customer data.”

“
Thank God for that,” Rebecca said. “How?”

“
First we would restore all computers from the old images. We’d get the services up and running quickly, albeit with old code and old data. Then we could analyze a copy of ELOPe. This would be similar to what CERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team from Carnegie Mellon, would do to analyze a new virus. Once we analyze it, we could establish the key patterns of the code and its behavior, and design a tailor-made virus scanner for it. We could then bring customer data back online, scanning it as we go.”