A helicopter disappeared off the California coast last week. The flight, a maintenance visit to an offshore Avogadro data center, took off shortly after 1pm, ten days ago. The last communication with the helicopter occurred at 2:15pm. No problems were reported at that time. After forty-eight hours, search crews were recalled, as the likelihood of survivors in the cold Pacific water became almost impossible. Curiously, the story has received no major media coverage until now. Neither Avogadro nor the Coast Guard mentioned the incident through official channels. A chance conversation between a Coast Guard officer and a prominent San Francisco blogger resulted in an online story about the incident, which prompted further followup. Avogadro could not be reached for comment.
Avogadro Gov, a wholly owned subsidiary of Avogadro Corporation, switched over the the main email and IT systems of the British government today in a ceremony at the Palace of Westminster. The ceremony was attended by the Chair of the Council for Science and Technology, Professor Jane Gavotte. Professor Gavotte and Avogadro Executive Ms. Linda Fletcher pressed the ceremonial red button marking the commencement of IT service by Avogadro Gov.
Avogadro Gov was recently spun off from parent company Avogadro. Ms. Fletcher commented that, “to provide the highest level of integrity for governmental use, Avogadro Gov operates independently from Avogadro.” Part of that strategy includes the use of floating, hardened data centers that can resist natural disaster, well as as terrorist and pirate attacks.
As part of the agreement, four floating data centers will be located along the English coast. Two are stationary floating barges, and two are disused oil tankers that have been converted for Avogadro Gov’s use as mobile floating data centers. Locations of the data centers have not been disclosed.
Ms. Fletcher also noted at the ceremony that the governments of Mexico, Japan, and South Africa would be adopting the Avogadro Gov platform in the coming week.
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.”
“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.”
“Our most important weapon is our intelligence and knowledge. I have complete confidence in this group,” and Sean gazed around the room, “to solve this problem, which is inherently a technical one. Our most important defense is our complete and utter discretion. Under no circumstances can word of this go outside this group or be communicated by email or phone, or ELOPe will be warned and take action against us, as it did with Mike and David when David originally planned to remove ELOPe’s modifications.”
“The executive team will give you any support you need, pay any money necessary, and do whatever it takes in the end to remove this virus from our computers. Now go get started!”
Then the planning started in earnest. Alternately divided into small groups, led by Sean, David, Mike, or Gene, or gathered into a whole group, they tackled problems small and large — from bringing down computers and defeating backup power supplies to cleaning and restoring the computer software and data afterwards. During the next few days, Gene made several more trips to the local office supply store, almost buying out the store’s entire stock of notebooks, flip charts, sticky notes, and markers. Engineers worked constantly, taking breaks only when exhaustion made it impossible to think. Over the course of three incredible days, the plan emerged.
On the first day they decided that for each remote site that needed to be powered down, they would send one employee to that site who was in the direct management chain of command, and more over, would command a high level of trust from employees at the remote site. Working hand in hand with the travel department and using printed records of travel plans, they found a combination of previously planned commercial flights, private aviation flights, bus trips, and automotive rentals to get the designated employees to their final destinations.
Throughout the first two days the site engineers, crisis engineers, and real estate planners identified a site-specific process for each of the many dozens of unique sites and data centers that would effectively kill power to the site and bring all computers down simultaneously. Although the sites shared many common design characteristics, each one had enough small differences that the engineers still needed to create a custom plan tailored to each site. The plan had to overcome stringent safety systems and backup systems that had been designed expressly to keep the sites operating regardless of any natural disasters that might affect power. And all without the primary tools they had been trained to rely on: their computers.
Once power had been shutdown everywhere, the element of danger from ELOPe would be largely gone. Then the clock would be ticking: it would be a race against time to restore every computer from risk-free backups before customer confidence was lost, jeopardizing the Avogadro brand and business.
Over the course of the first day, several times people had asked what to call their mixed group of real estate planners, programmers, operations engineers, and others. Gradually people picked up the name Emergency Team. It was simple, solemn and accurate.
Their planning had been stymied in one regard. No one local had sufficient knowledge about the offshore data centers. In the morning of the second day, recognizing this shortcoming, David sent a private pilot to the California Bay Area to fetch Bill Larry and Jake Riley. The pilot came back that afternoon with only Jake Riley.
Jake remained standing in the doorway when he entered the room full of engineers. His clothes and hair were askew, his shirt hanging out of one side of his pants. Thick stubble on his face and dark circles under his eyes gave him the appearance of a haunted man.
A hush grew over the room as engineers noticed him standing there.
He stood in the silence for a moment. “I’m Jake Riley.” He paused. “I didn’t have a clue about what was going on before I got on that plane three hours ago, but Frank here briefed me on the flight. I have bad news. Bill Larry is missing and presumed dead.”
There were gasps all around the room, and David rushed to the doorway to get closer.
“He was in a flight to visit an offshore data center, and his helicopter disappeared without any notice. We initially believed there was a helicopter accident,” Jake went on. “On the flight up here, I heard about what’s been going on, and now I think it’s likely Bill Larry was killed by a robot manning an offshore data center.”
The packed, hot room erupted into a roar of simultaneous discussion. Sean forced his way through the crowd to stand next to Jake and David, and yelled for quiet.
“Why didn’t we know about this?” Sean asked.
“You should have known,” Jake pleaded. “I’ve been sending you daily updates on the situation. We had a Coast Guard search party and I hired a private firm to supplement the search for the missing helicopter. We found nothing. We assume now that he’s dead.”
After this shocking news, it was hours before the assembled team was able to get back to productive work.
On the third day the whole Emergency Team gathered under Jake Riley to debate options for dealing with the offshore data centers. Once more they convened in Sean’s living room, the only space large enough for them. By this time, three solid days of people working around the clock was starting to overwhelm the space. Takeout food littered every surface, and the luxurious, once white carpeting in the living room was slowly turning gray with ground in dirt and food. Sean’s expensive artwork was covered haphazardly with flip chart paper and maps. In the dark of night, an exhausted engineer had mistakenly drawn diagrams of power supply connections directly on the wall, his sleep deprived mind thinking he was writing on a whiteboard.
“So far we’ve deployed twelve stationary barge-type floating data centers, and six refitted oil tanker type floating data centers,” Jake explained, passing around printed photos of each. “Our original plan used only stationary barges, but the ready availability of tankers, the environmental benefits associated with reusing existing materials, and our rush to get the program back on track made the tankers attractive to use.”
“Was it your idea or ELOPe’s idea?” Gene called out from the side of the room, behind several rows of engineers.
“I don’t honestly know,” Jake said, shoulders slumped in defeat. “Regardless of how it happened, the situation we have now is that both platform types have been fitted with automated defenses.” Jake passed another set of photos around the assembled room. These were promotional shots of the robots. “The oil tanker data centers do not have a human crew, despite their mobility. They are piloted by remote control. I called down, and had one of my engineers do a discrete test of the system this morning, and it would appear we still had the ability to direct the tankers, but whether that control is an illusion, I can’t be sure, and we shouldn’t count on it.”
One of the engineers, a long haired hippie looking fellow, asked “So how the hell do we kill power under these conditions?”
“I don’t know,” Jake answered. “We’re going to have to be creative. Because all the data centers are armed with robotic defenses, and we believe those defenses are operating either autonomously or under the control of ELOPe, we can’t simply fly people out there to cut power supply cables. Just like the land based data centers, every system has redundant backups. Probably more, because we had to take into account the maritime environment with its accompanying degradation effects, accidents, storms, and equipment malfunction miles from shore. So we need some creative ideas.”
“What can we do to take control of the robots?” asked Mike. “Or, lacking that, can we incapacitate them in some way?”
“Can we intercept communications to the robots?” one engineer volunteered.
“That will send them into autonomous mode, according to these specifications, which doesn’t help us at all,” another answered, as the discussion quickened pace.
“Let’s just shoot them!” someone called.
“Won’t work, they are hardened. It would be like shooting a miniature tank. One that shoots back.”
“As soon as we would try, ELOPe would know.”
“What about some kind of electric shock to fry their circuits?”
“With something like a Taser, we could send a hundred thousand volts into them.”
“They’re probably hardened against that too. We need technical specifications to know what we’re up against.”
“We need an expert from iRobot, they’ve got to know what their own vulnerabilities are.”
“We can’t do that,” Sean cut in from where he stood near Jake. “We can’t risk communicating with iRobot, or we might alert ELOPe who could be monitoring communications there. Let’s switch gears for a minute. Does anyone have any ideas that doesn’t involve disabling the robots?”
“Let’s cut off communications. If we can kill communications, regardless of whether the computers are on or not, ELOPe won’t be able to do anything. It’ll be isolated on the ship.”
“What are the communication channels on the floating data centers?” Samantha asked. “I assume fiber optic hard lines, right?”
“Right,” Jake answered. “Primary communications is provided by 4 ten gigabit ports, giving us peak bandwidth of 40 gigabits per second. That’s handled by two separate communication racks, so that if one fails, we still have half our bandwidth. But that’s just the primary. We have ship-to-shore dual microwave transmission, that gives us 750 megabits per second, for another 1.5 gigabits per second backup capacity.”
“So we cut the fiber optic cables and kill the microwave towers on land that are receiving the backup channel,” one engineer shouted out.
“It’s not so simple,” Gene added, having joined the group when he overheard the conversation turning to communications capabilities. “Jake, you might not know this, but the purchase orders we found showed that contractors installed additional communication systems over the holiday shutdown.”
“The purchase orders included…” Gene trailed off as he pulled out a notebook, and flipped through looking for his notes. “Satellite transmitters. Twenty-five megabit per second capacity. I have the channel frequency data here, maybe you can track down which satellites they are communicating with. Oh, and long distance radio modems, two per platform. The bandwidth is just 150 kilobits per second, but they are good up to 100 kilometers.”
The engineers collectively groaned.
“Multiple bandwidths, multiple destinations, including satellites,” Samantha summarized. “Jamming all those frequencies simultaneously will be difficult. There’s no way we’re going to get permission to shut down satellites. We have no idea what the other endpoint is for those long range data modems. We can’t track down every radio within a hundred kilometers.”
“We’d never be able to shut down everything simultaneously,” another engineer grumbled.
The conversation continued for hours, as the temperature in the crowded house went up, and tempers flared. When food arrived courtesy of Sean, everyone tumbled over each other to get outside for fresh air. The cold January drizzle sent them in after a while, but everyone felt refreshed.
After they finished lunch, everyone passed through Sean’s kitchen and refilled from the six coffee pots now lined up in parallel on the counter. Then about half the people split off into subgroups, finding other rooms to work in, while the other half regrouped in the living room.
“Look, we’re just going to have to blow the data centers with explosives,” one grey-haired engineer said when they were assembled one more. “You’re trying to come up with a fancy solution, but we don’t need fancy. We need guaranteed results. If you blow them up, then boom, all the computers and all the hardware are toast. Total, immediate shutdown.”
“It’s not that simple though,” Jake explained again. “We still have to get the explosives on board, and to do that, you have to get past the robots.”
Sean shook his head. “It’s going to be damn costly too, if we completely destroy them. We’ll do it if we have to, but that’s a lot of hardware to lose.”
“So we hire some mercenaries, people who have experience with this thing,” the gray-haired engineer insisted, “and have them storm the defenses. I mean, sure the robots are tough, but they aren’t invincible. They’re light-duty bots, not even military grade. You could take them out with a high powered rifle and armor piercing bullets. Then once the mercenaries are onboard, they can kill the power to the computers.”
“If we do that,” Jake said, “we have to face the fact that we’re putting people in harms way. We’re asking them to go up against lethal armed robots, and some of them will die.” He looked at Sean. “Are we OK with that?”
Sean looked around awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable with the question. “I guess I’d rather explain losing the hardware to Rebecca than having to explain losing lives.”
Gene cleared his throat. “Just one more thing. If you have mercenaries approach the barge, attack the robots, and then kill the power, you’re looking at a couple of minutes elapsed time.”
“So?” The grey-haired engineer was growing defensive as everyone shot down his ideas.
“We’re talking about a massively parallel, high speed artificial intelligence,” Gene said. “ELOPe could do a lot in those few minutes.”
Mike and David nodded in agreement.
“How about an EMP?” Mike asked.
“Electromagnetic pulse weapon?” Sean asked. “Do those even exist?”
“I think so,” Mike said. “Wouldn’t it fry the electronic circuits? It would even leave the data intact, so we could recover it.
“Nice idea, Mike, but the metal cargo containers are perfect Faraday cages.” Jake shook his head. “We can’t even get a wireless signal through them. I think the cargo containers would protest the servers against even an EMP blast.”
“What the hell can we do?” David yelled in frustration.
“We’re going to have to blow them up,” the grey-haired yelled back, equally frustrated.
“How?” Sean asked calmly.
“We have a plane drop bombs,” Mike said.
Everyone looked up at him, where he sat on the back of a couch, against the wall.
“We hire mercenaries, but they drop bombs from high altitude, so the robots can’t fire back at them. They use a big bomb, something that can destroy the whole barge.”
“Can you hire mercenaries that can do that kind of stuff?” David asked.
“You said unlimited budget, didn’t you?” Mike looked at Sean.
Sean sighed. “Yes.”
“Well, didn’t the U.S. hire private military contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq?”
“Blackstone,” Sean said. “They have helicopters and planes. Even a remotely piloted drone.”
“There you go,” Mike said.
“Alright.” Sean paused. “So the basic plan is to hire a private military contractor to drop explosives on the ships. All in favor?”
“Sorry, but…” Jake looked sheepishly at the group. “There’s one problem with that. If you blow up the barge, but any of the containers remain intact, they’ll float away.”
“They float?” David said, mouth agape.
“Sure,” Gene answered, “they can float for weeks or months.”
David shot him a look. Where did people learn all this stuff?
“Ours will float indefinitely,” Jake said. “The extra weatherproofing we do make them watertight. Unless the structural integrity is compromised, it could float around the world. They don’t float very high, so they aren’t easy to track. What happens if we lose one of those containers? It’s bad enough that we might lose customer data at this point, but the real issue is that now ELOPe is on those servers. If the container washes ashore in China, and someone grabs a computer out of the container and plugs it in, then ELOPe is back.” Jake looked apologetically at Sean.
Mike got up, and walked to the front of the room. He paced back and forth. “What if we can have the mercenaries attack from the sea, but we can avoid the chance of counter-attack? I have an idea.”
Mike explained his idea, and by the end of the day they settled on using paid mercenaries to board the vessels, albeit with modifications that Mike proposed, and they all spent the rest of the day working it out.
At that point it became clear that they needed people with skills and resources that went far beyond anything Avogadro employees possessed. It was all well and good to ask Avogadro employees to shutdown power circuits and backup power supplies, and it was another thing entirely to need trained people to wield explosives and firepower. Sean Leonov and the other executives took on the unenviable task of discreetly finding and hiring a private military contractor to implement that portion of the plan.