Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears (24 page)

“
How long will all this take?” Kenneth Harrison said, his hands spread wide on the table. “It sounds like weeks of work and downtime.”

“
Based on what we know about the available bandwidth from the backup data servers, and this is just a rough estimate, it’ll take thirty-six hours to pull down every computer and restore from a known good disk image,” Mike answered. “We think we can have roughly half of our web applications up within eight hours, with sufficient capacity to handle roughly sixty percent of our normal volume. In sixteen hours, we’ll have ninety percent of our applications up, at eighty percent of capacity. As for the customer data...” He turned to Sean.

Sean looked at Kenneth and Rebecca. “You’re not going to like this. We think it’ll take forty-eight hours to analyze ELOPe and design the virus scanner. At that point, we’ll be able to restore somewhere between five and ten percent of the user data per day. It’ll take from ten to twenty days to restore everything.”

Rebecca was deep in thought for a minute before she replied. “We’ve just concluded the best single month for Avogadro. We closed major deals, including taking on hosted IT for eight national governments. Revenue is expected to be up twenty percent as a result of the Avogadro Gov business deals we’ve already concluded, and we expect we can grow revenue another forty percent over the next four months if we continue to close Gov deals like this.”

She looked at Sean and David. “You’re asking me not just to risk this business, but to almost certainly lose it — probably permanently, as well as a sizable chunk of our traditional customer base. I understand that you’re telling me we have what amounts to a rogue AI on the loose inside Avogadro. I also know that this rogue AI, for motivations of its own, could easily double the size of our company within six months. The board of directors will ask exactly what the downside of this AI is, when on the face of things, it sure seems to be good for our bottom line.”

“
You’re right,” David admitted, “the likelihood is that ELOPe is responsible for this increase in business, and would be responsible for future increases. And yet, even though this represents the loss of a huge potential profit, we’re asking you to kill it.”

“
Rebecca, the problem is that the rogue AI is well beyond our control,” Sean explained. “It’s purely coincidence at this point that Avogadro’s financial interests are aligned with the activities of ELOPe. It’s securing these government contracts not because of the profit, but because governments create the environment in which we operate, and ELOPe wants to control that environment. It’s entirely possible that the AI can foresee that the ability to influence legislation would help fulfill its goal of surviving. And it’s also likely that ELOPe wants to be able to control military power to defend itself.”

Gene jumped in. “I think the new Middle East treaty that Germany has worked on is in fact an attempt by ELOPe to stabilize the geopolitical environment. Germany has had a long term policy of very limited foreign involvement, dating back to the end of World War II. And yet, within days of the transition of the German government’s email to our email service, the German government became significantly involved in Middle East affairs, to the point of hammering out a wide ranging treaty. That seems suspicious.”

“
ELOPe could decide that we three pose a threat,” Sean said, “and manipulate the board of directors into removing us. For that matter, ELOPe could decide the board of directors presents a threat, and arrange for a bomb.” He paused for a moment. “Think about it — this secure cloud based government services business has been spur of the moment. We spun up a billion dollar business that wasn’t even on the drawing board last fiscal quarter. Who’s decision was that exactly? Thinking back on it — and I would suggest you do the same — I believe we were all manipulated into it. We saw a good opportunity, and we grabbed it.”

“
OK, enough already.” Rebecca held up one hand in protest. She turned to David. “Gentlemen, please give Sean, Kenneth and me some time and privacy to talk. Come back in an hour.”

* * *

David, Mike, Gene and Pete went for coffee, David driving them there without any discussion. He just took it for granted that’s what the others wanted to do. For once Mike was neither picky about the coffee shop he chose, nor did he offer any comments on the quality of the coffee. David picked forlornly at the scone he ordered. After an hour of tensely waiting with little discussion, they headed back.

When they arrived at Sean’s house, Sean answered the door, and invited them back in. They filed back into Sean’s office solemnly.

“
It was not a decision to lightly make,” Sean told them. “There are risks no matter what we do. We debated our options, and finally, we had to pick the set of risks we were the most comfortable with. We’ve decided to perform the hard shutdown.”

David stopped holding his breath. “Thank you. For believing us, and for taking this seriously.”

Rebecca stood up, and paced the room, while holding their attention. “We’ve made a few other decisions. First of all, Sean is going to lead the effort to perform the shutdown. It won’t be trivial to shutdown simultaneously around the world. Second, Kenneth and I will lead the effort to mitigate the business impacts, which will be significant no matter what we do. But hopefully with a little planning, we can keep it from becoming a complete nightmare. Third, because of both the potential litigation from customers, as well as the possibility of ELOPe taking preventative measures, we will involve as few people as possible.”

“
That means absolutely no one outside the company,” Kenneth added sternly. “And each person inside the company will be personally approved by Sean or myself.”

“
We’re going to use my house as our base of operations, to plan and implement the shutdown,” Sean said. “I have enough space here for a few dozen people to work. We can’t take the risk of meeting at Avogadro, where we could be observed to be working together. We’re going to get started immediately by brainstorming the key people we’ll need to make this happen.”

“
People have to be absolutely sure to turn off their mobiles before they come here,” Gene said, “or leave them at home. We can’t chance ELOPe using location tracking to determine that we’re meeting together here. That also means watching credit card purchases, use of the wireless network, or anything that could track us here.”

David thought about paying for their coffees with his credit card. He had already screwed up.

The group sighed somberly, but nodded assent. It was a sign of how difficult their task was that merely meeting as a group would require extensive precautions.

“
If you’ll excuse us, Kenneth and I will get to work on the business aspects,” Rebecca said. “Sean, I expect you and I will coordinate the master schedule.”

Sean nodded agreement, and with that, Rebecca and Kenneth left. Sean, David, and the others got down to work.

“
Gentlemen, we have an exceedingly difficult task ahead of us,” Sean began. “We need to power down sixty-eight Avogadro sites around the world, and a dozen offshore data centers. We need to do this without email, phones, or any suspicious patterns of behavior that can be tracked by computers. We need people who know the facility designs to tell us how to power them down, and we need to communicate and synchronize our efforts. Any ideas?”

“
We’ll have to avoid commercial airline flights as much as possible,” Gene said. “Those are easy to track because they are in a centralized database. Not to mention that purchasing tickets will leave a trail through credit card transactions and Avogadro’s travel reimbursement system.”

“
Well, some employees would be traveling on business to visit other sites,” Mike said. “If we curtailed all travel activity, that would itself be suspicious. We could look for employees who currently have travel planned, and use them as couriers, and have them hand deliver instructions.”

“
Good idea,” Gene said.

“
Some Avogadro employees are private pilots,” David added. “There’s a woman named Michelle who sits a couple of doors down from me. She’s a private pilot, and she owns her own Cessna. And she’s mentioned there are other pilots at Avogadro. They could fly around the country, and their flights are untracked, right?”

“
Well, the flights themselves are tracked, I think,” Sean said. “But I don’t think they track the passengers on the planes. So that definitely does give us an extra tool to use. Good idea. Any others?”

Pete jumped up with a glean in his eyes. “If we can get trusted employees to the remote sites, as long as we stay off Avogadro’s computer network, we should be able to communicate using encrypted emails sent over a competitor’s email service.”

“
That’s true,” Mike said. “We can use an isolated computer to generate private and public keys, which we can then copy onto USB drives. With the emails encrypted, ELOPe won’t be able to read them.”

“
But why do we need to use a competitor’s email service?” Gene asked.

“
If we sent them over Avogadro email,” Sean answered, “ELOPe could still see the patterns of email communication. ELOPe would be able to derive not only that something was going on, but exactly who was involved. If the data packets go over our network at all, they can be detected, so we need to be sure not to use wireless on an Avogadro site at all.”

They brainstormed a list of employees who could help them further develop their plan. The list included people from the facilities team, the travel administration team, the engineers who developed the site plans and the engineers who were responsible for backup and failsafe systems. Sean agreed to spend the next day personally meeting each employee, since he was the one member of their team who was widely known and instantly recognizable.

* * *

The next morning David, Mike, Gene, and Pete reconvened at Sean’s house. Sean was at the Avogadro campus finding the employees they had identified the day before. Gene arrived with a huge cardboard box that he struggled to carry in.

“
What the heck do you have in there?” Mike asked.

“
Some old fashioned stuff you fancy computer nerds might not be so familiar with. Let’s see what I have.”

Gene proceeded to pull out stacks of paper pads, post it notes, pencils and markers, maps of the United States and the World. David and Mike pitched in to help organize it.

“
Do you really think we’re going to need this much?” David asked quizzically.

“
We plan to have about thirty people working here, without computers. Yes, we’re going to need it,” Gene answered. “I’ve got more in the car, come help me unload it. Accordion folders. Sketch books. Flip charts.”

David and Mike shared a conspiratorial smile.

“
I saw that,” Gene said. “You might think I’m weird, but believe me, people actually did perform office work before they invented computers. And maybe I just happen to know a thing or two about it.”

“
Sorry,” they both said sheepishly.

“
Don’t take it the wrong way,” Mike said. “It’s just that I’ve never even owned a printer, or had a newspaper subscription. I grew up online. It’s almost like if you pulled out one of those old phones, you know, the one with the round thing on it.”

“
A rotary phone? Are you just pulling my chain?” Gene grumbled in a low breath. “Damn fool kids.”

David and Mike shared another secret smile. Might as well have fun if they had to work.

* * *

A little before lunch the first of the employees that Sean had contacted started arriving. By the end of the day most of the people had shown up. Unfortunately, they accomplished very little productive work, because no sooner would David start his explanation of what had happened so far than another person would show up and David would have to start over.

Finally, at eight that evening everyone, including Sean, was there. Standing in Sean’s living room, David gazed at the dozens of people around him. Some engineers sat on Sean’s living room furniture, while others were perched on the folding chairs Gene had wisely purchased. Still more cascaded onto the arms of couches, sat on the floor, or stood in the corners of the room. The temperature of the packed room was high, but the group was absolutely silent, waiting for the story to emerge.

The smell of pizza permeated the house, a recurring odor that they’d smell many more times in the days to come.

David went through the story for the last time, his throat hoarse from the many partial retellings of the story that day. The crowd erupted into astonished gasps and side conversations from time to time, but then fell silent again. Finally, when David had recapped the technical explanation for the last time, Sean got up to speak.

“
The world I woke up in a few days ago was very different from the world I lived in all my life previously,” Sean began, and the crowd grew even quieter. “For the first time, man shares this world with another intelligence capable of sophisticated planning and actions. Unfortunately, this intelligence is like a cancer — one that will do anything, manipulate anyone, pursue any foe to ensure its own survival. It has control of our computers and our communications.”