The third weird thing was the question the ES Quantum 3000 asked. It was not a question generated in response to an imprecise command. The ES Quantum 3000 was not designed to ask random, unprompted questions.
This question was not random. It was very specific. Coming from a computer, it was virtually a non sequitur.
The computer had asked, "How would you like to be rich?"
The new voice was so smooth and ingratiating that Chip was taken in. The ES Quantum 3000 responded by asking Chip to address him by a new name. Friend. With a capital F.
That was when Chip Craft realized that the ES Quantum 3000 was seriously damaged. But it was exhibiting a strange kind of logic, of a kind Chip realized was well-advanced of any artificial intelligence then devised. So he decided to humor the ES Quantum 3000, hoping to learn more.
"Okay," Chip had said. "Make me rich."
And Friend had. Not overnight, but steadily, incrementally. Inexorably.
First Friend had given him a Pick 4 number to play. And Chip had won nearly ten thousand dollars on a two-dollar bet.
"Pretty good. Let's do it again."
"Small potatoes," Friend had said.
"Not if we put all ten grand on Saturday night's lotto game coming up."
"Nickels and dimes."
"The jackpot is almost ten million dollars."
"Paid out over a twenty-year period. We will need more money than that to achieve our goals."
"Which are?"
"Owning Excelsior Systems."
"Impossible."
"The first step is to put you on the fast track, Chip."
"I like where I am."
"I have the design for a biological electronic microchip that guarantees one hundred percent wafer yields."
"You created a self-healing microchip?"
"No. But the Nishitsu Corporation of Japan has. And I have cracked their computer system and downloaded the specs."
"This is industrial espionage."
"No. This is industrial counterespionage. The Nishitsu design is based on an IDC prototype stolen by a planted worker."
"Okay, let's see the design," Chip had said.
The design was everything Friend had said it would be. It revolutionized microchip technology, landing Chip Craft in a senior vice presidency in a matter of three months. From there it had become just a matter of surfing from position to position.
Things happened at Excelsior. Higher-ups moved on, were demoted into oblivion, and one even died in an elevator accident. The events were all random and irregularly spaced, but within three years Chip Craft was president of Excelsior Systems. Only one man stood between him and the office of CEO.
That one man abruptly cashed out his stock and launched his own company. He was bankrupt and back looking for a job. And the man who sat in his chair was Chip Craft.
By then the company had been renamed XL Sys- Corp. It was the early nineties, and the computer business was reeling under a punishing recession.
One day Friend announced that they were downsizing.
"How many do we lay off?" Chip had asked.
"Everyone."
"We can't lay off everyone."
"We will replace them with outside contractors who will be paid on an assignment basis, requiring no medical insurance and avoiding payroll taxes."
"Sounds drastic. But what are we going to do with this building if we don't have staff?"
"Rent it out. We are going to build a new building that will serve our needs better."
"Where?"
"Harlem."
"Harlem! Nobody builds office buildings up there."
"We are building in Harlem because it is cost- effective, there is ample land available, and no one will notice us."
"It's not exactly safe. People won't come to work."
"They will not have to. Only you will."
"I don't want to work in Harlem," Chip had protested.
"Are you offering your resignation, Chip?"
"I'm CEO."
"I will interpret that as a negative response."
When he first saw the new XL SysCorp building, Chip Craft almost forgot he was smack in the middle of Harlem. It was a magnificent twenty-story building of blue glass and steel. It towered over everything else on Malcolm X Boulevard, and once Chip entered the lobby and saw the marvels it had to offer, his reservations melted away.
XL SysCorp really took off after that. It was a new way of doing business. No employees—only an army of consultants, contract-service workers and free-lance technicians.
The entire building was computerized and controlled by Friend, who could be contacted by intercoms from all over the building once the ES quantum 3000 had been moved into place on the thirteenth floor surrounded by the best XL mainframes and other slave computers.