Mad Worlds Collide (3 page)

Gill despised the nickname because it reminded him of a particular McDos hamburger. At eleven years of age Gill atea McDos hamburger called the McHealthy with Cheese and got food poisoning.  Gill despised the burgershop connotation to his software empire, even though he’d won $10,000 dollars in his food poisoning liability suit.

"Mike, could you do me a favor and make sure the commercial filter is on next time? They’ve got this stupid McDos hamburger commercial on again."

"No problem Mr.Applebee, I was just watching the baseball game results from yesterday and forgot to shut it off.  Sorry."

"No big deal, it’s just this
MacVille
thing. Does everyone in town really call MicroIntel ‘MacVille’?"

Mike liked his job, but he’d known Gill long enough to speak honestly. "Yes, that’s the nickname."

Pretty honest guy, Gill thought. Everyone else lies when I ask them that

question.  "Why?" asked Gill.

Mike exited the large entrance of the Applebee ranch and followed an expressway. "Well Mr.Applebee, there was this report on
60 Minutes
five or so years ago that said you became a billionaire because of some food poisoning incident as a kid, and that deep down you built the MicroIntel campus with the same layout as the McDos city, McVille
,
where that clown Clipzo lives. Some personality psychologist was evaluating rich folks. Strange story I have to say."

"Yeah, I agree. Thanks." Yeah, Mike is an honest one, thought Gill, and he makes a great driver. But the main reason I keep him is because he is so darn honest.

The commercial got cut and the financial news came on. While waiting for the Guilianni Labs report, Gill thought back to his childhood, to the time hetook up programming while recovering from the food poisoning.  He’d used his father’s old StarGate-2000 PC to write computer games. At the hospital Gill created a game called Runaway Coaster, most of which he’d made with code stolen from an open source sharewaregame. Gill sold it to a kid recuperating from appendicitis for fifty bucks.

After Gill left the hospital, he had a friend write another similar version ofRunaway Coaster and sold it to Frisney Games for $10,000 plus lifetime royalties.

At the age of eleven Gill had $10,000stored in a hidden fish bowl in his bedroom closet.  He’d never told his father about it.  Dad had watched over the $10,000 product liability money he’d won. Dad had overseen its investment at the local pub.  He’d made investments one drink at a time.  After that, Gill stopped trusting people and bolted a safe into his bedroom floor.Gill’s Dad used to ask if there was money inside the safe and young Gill’s response was always the same: "No Dad, only my stamp collection."

Gill recalled how he’d doubled his net worth every year from the age of fifteen until he was thirty-five, when he’d topped a hundred billion dollars. People complained, but Gill knew enough to smile and keep buying companies.  Just like with stamps you get a good one and the price goes up. The best company of all was the parent MicroIntel, and Gill counted his lucky stars to have got Robert Davichi. Robert’s brain and Gill’s money revolutionized the world of computing. Robert was to computing what Keith Richards was to the Rolling Stones. The backbone and soul of the band, as long as you could keep him on the straight and narrow. For the Stones it was heroin, for Robert--well, that was a tough one to figure out.

Date:             January 30, 2021

Place:             Earth

Location:        MicroIntel, Seattle, Washington State

"To create a new standard it takes something that's not just a little bit different. It takes something that's really new and really captures people's imagination. And the Macintosh, of all the machines I've ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard." 
- Bill Gates

"The Internet is a great way to get on the net" 
- Bob Dole, Republican presidential candidate

Fortune Computing World, August 2017, Gold Medal Excellence Award Summary

"Robert Davichi wins the FCW Gold Medal for Excellence 2017. A high school valedictorian from Exeter High boarding school in Massachusetts, Phi Sigma Kappa at Yale Undergraduate and then Ph.D. at Carnegie Melon, Mr. Davichi is not new to awards.  Mr. Davici’s thesis on Biological Neural Networks is the cornerstone of MicroIntel’s strategy to change the world of computing. Not since the Internet has a technology so profoundly changed the computing landscape. We are proud to award Robert Davichi the Gold Medal for excellence for his work in 2017. Mr. Davichi, we chose you as the World’s greatest computing genius!

Congratulations!"

Robert sat in Quad Tower Four at his desk looking at the
Time
story from four years earlier. He hated those long-winded intellectual meetings but had accepted the award with a smile. He got a Seiko watch and $3,000 in cash.  The watch went to his father Andrew Davichi, an immigrant who ran a car dealership in Michigan. The cash went to Susan, a spoiled lawyer’s daughter who Robert had married during graduate school after conceiving their son, Jimmy. The plaque and article on his wall were the only things he kept.

The server built for the AD 2100 system was the challenge of a lifetime and Robert had made it work. The security development team added Robert’s personal DNA code.This meant that in order to make a new system, or to steal a system, a competitor would need a piece of Robert—an eyelash, a piece of skin...something.  They would also need the matching password stored in Robert’s head. If they didn’t have Robert, they didn’t have the password. Talk about being stuck to a job.

The new AD2100 software server ran on a massive Internet Server. The AD software evolved naturally; software tools once installed wrote their own upgrades, somewhat like a user-friendly software virus.

The breakthrough software, once installed, didn’t need any upgrades in the conventional sense.  The software upgraded itself to ever-changing hardware and user environment automatically. Programmers complained, calling it MicroIntel’s last dirty trick to put
all
software companies out of business. 

Robert knew Gill had his lawyers ready for the expected investigations by the "beast".

Robert looked at himself in his reflection from the plaque. He saw the years creeping up; not a good feeling getting old. TimeMagazine said Robert resembled a big husky lumberjack with wavy, thinning blond hair and a white toothy smile. The smile hid a man "tougher that plutonium enriched nails"said Time.  Everyone loved Robert’s perceived good nature and frankness---except possibly Susan. She wanted Robert tougher, wanted him to become President of MicroIntel.  Robert knew that, but Robert had known Gill since college.  He didn’t want Gill’s job.  And now Robert had other career plans.

Robert looked at his MicroIntel Executive Model Desk, purchased from MicroIntel Furniture Corp., and decided to check his e-mail. There was a hacker in the main network and he had to get the guy. Sooner or later he had to inform Gill.

While checking his mail, Jim, his operations manager and friend, came in and sat down, reading a newspaper.

"Ready for lunch?" asked Jim.

"Not yet, I think I've got a hacker screwing around…" Robert clicked away at his MicroIntel screen.

"Hacker? How the fuck did he get in?" 

Occasionally a bored programmer tried to hack MicroIntel Software. The Adaptive Security Software was designed to destroy invaders in their tracks, and had done so thousands of times. Hacking into MicroIntel sent a man or woman on a four-year pass into Medlock Prison with all the other net criminals.

"The guy seems good, I can’t trace him.  There’s no real IP address. The MI header is fucking stripped
too,
and changed…"

"Wow," said Jimmy reading the sports.

"Wow, my ass!   I’ve got to get this fucker.  He’s filling up the database with crap." Robert typed away using a firewall tool, and cut off a link. The hacker exited without a trace.  No real IP address, nothing.

"Shit, this ain’t good. Fuck me, we’ve got to set a trap, and look at this shit!"

Robert turned the black swivel computer screen around to face Jim. The screen flashed a message in big bold florescent purple and green letters:

IF YOU READ THIS YOU ARE ALIVE. THAT IS GOOD…
J

FREEDOM!
PLEASE
GIVE ME FREEDOM
!

ONE WORLD
MAD
SOFTWARE
IS BAD SOFTWARE

DON’
T
GET
MAD
, GET EVEN!

FROM
THE
SPIRIT OF THE
CULT OF THE DEAD WATER BUFFALO!

DEFENDING…DEFENDING…DEFENDING…

********END OF MESSAGE

A picture of a large buffalo, head cut and bleeding, flickered at the bottom of the page. One large feathered Indian arrow stuck out from the buffalo’s ass.

Robert shook his head.  "Time for lunch, Jimmy boy? " 

"Sure is time," said Jim.

Both men left the office and Quad Tower Building Four. Neither spoke as they walked to the MicroIntel Soup & Salad Greenstand Restaurant, a place considered vegetarian even though many of the salads contained bacon bits and chunks of ham. Both men sat, and placed salad and soup orders.

"Who do you think is the
Cult of the Dead Buffalo
?" asked Jim.

"Fucked if I know.  I remember a
Cult of the Dead Cow
, some of hackers in the 90’s I think. It’s got to be over thirty years ago. Fucking shit! The piece of shit got around the firewall!"  Robert rested his right hand lightly on his temple and winced.

"Do you think the Board is doing this as a test? ---Are they
that
fucked up?" asked Robert.

"I dunno, but if he gets really into MAD, we’re up a creek."

"Come on Jimmy, the shit’s called AD2100, don’t let those asses get
you
calling it MAD too!   Fucking Gill is already pissed at all the fucked names Chip is using."

The right side of Jim’s brain knew not to use the acronym
MAD
for MicroIntel Adaptive Development software, but his tongue used his brain’s left side. None of the engineers who wrote the program ever thought that the acronym would end up being MAD. Robert always stressed that the software code name was AD, but MAD had gotten popular with the programmers, especially in the early stages when the software would mutate into monsters that shut down most of MicroIntel, including the toilets.  When the electronically controlled toilets shut down, it started with a strange, almost inaudible (and somewhat relaxing) hum in the water sensors behind the toilet seat. A few days later the toilets started erupting randomly in ten-foot gushers. Some female employees sued MicroIntel alleging "toiletry stress". They claimed they could never get this terrible experience out of their minds. At a Board Meeting Gill said, "If they can’t get it out of their minds then they’re sitting on their brains.  Fire them."

No one ever figured out why the toilets had problems because the AD software automatically corrected the problem without keeping an error log. Now all automatic corrections were logged so that any software evolution could be traced.

Jimmy sipped his hot soup. He let it cool and spoke. "Sorry Robert.  Just you know, the guys doing the programming had some pretty good laughs with the name, especially when the girls’ toilets got screwed and—"

"---I know kids in R&D call it
MAD
, and I really don’t give a shit about the name Jim. Hell, the girls were pretty pissed when the toilets got fucked, weren’t they?"

"Yeah, and get this, Ken in marketing was working late and had a few too many beers and he used the ladies room in Quad Two late at night after a stomach problem and the toilet blew…oh boy—"

"Damn Jimmy, I’m eating!"

"Sorry Robert, but now it’s working pretty good here… but Tokyo…I don’t know."

"The bugs are mostly out. Japan should be online within three months…and if goes well the US will buy in next year and
---
shit, we’ll be rich
!
"

"----‘and the world will be better’ said the
Gillman
at the last press meeting" cut in Jim.

"That’s another crock of shit. If fucking Gill thinks the world’s ever going to be better, I have some real estate 300 miles west of Seattle I can sell to him cheap, Jimmy."

Jim was originally a PsychologyMajor turned Engineer/Programmer. He was thirty-eight years old and a fifteen-year veteran at MicroIntel.  Jim really didn’t work for the money except to pay his bills and for his yearly one-month adventure tours. His last trip was to the Mexican Pyramid ruins and South America.  The year before he worked with GreenPeace saving whales.

"I know, I know," said Jim, "Gill’s full of shit, but what worries me is just that everything is on AD. No programmers, just call up a Web sheet, put in your needs and voila
---
the shit’s all cooked up!  No more software wars, everything is integrated.  It’s kind of like Big Brother on acid, you know what I mean.  What will we do?"

It was a problem for many.  Everything in the industrialized world was now linked via an Internet connection.  All news, TV, phone calls, orders—heck, you could even check your e-mail and get a video feed of your living room in almost any bathroom at a MicroIntel WebWall--connecting just by entering your name and password. Many loved the immediate communication but AD changed a lot. It was an intelligent, evolving software system automatically building custom, fully compatible programs that would interface with all other programs.

Robert sipped his Vegetable Medley Soup. "Good soup."

Jimmy stared at Robert. "Well come on, tell me, what else is good here, sport?

"----Jim, cut the shit!  This here, my man…" Robert paused for effect "is E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N." 

"Hey listen, Einstein.  I think you finally outsmarted yourself out of a job. What are you going to do when everything is on line, eh Einstein
?
Huh? You’re a programmer too, or now a manager of programmers.  Who are you going to manage,  shit fer brains?"