The Hacker and the Ants (24 page)

By that Friday, it began looking like the Adze could work. We let the gene tweaker run for the whole weekend, and on Monday, May 18, Russ, Sun and I floated in cyberspace looking fondly down at 256 Squidboys doing good things in all the different Our American Homes. We were the gods of this ticky-tacky little world, this sinister Happy Acres.

“It's time for me to do
my
thing,” said Sun Tam. “Let's hit the Rubber Room, guys.”

I was scared; I was always especially scared when we started up one of these powerful robots with code that
I'd
worked on. I knew all too well how fallible I was. Another worry was that the GoMotion ants might infest Squidboy and take over—even though we'd been sure to copy the incomprehensible encrypted machine language bits of a GoMotion ant lion into his code.

Ben went into the Rubber Room with us and picked up the remote On/Off switch as before. If Squidboy killed one of us, it would be West West's responsibility, and it would be Ben's job to take the fall.

As before, the Rubber Room held a practice staircase, soft mannequins of the Christensen family, a fridge, a Plexiglas door, and some furniture. Dome-head Squidboy was there, squatting down on his wheels. We waited behind the big waist-high table by the door while Russ stuck our new program disk into Squidboy. Russ ran back to us and Ben pressed the On button.

The robot hummed into life, scanned around the room, and said “Hello Squidboy.”

“Squidboy,” said Ben. “Go to the fridge and get Perky Pat a bottle of Calistoga water.” Squidboy smoothly turned toward the refrigerator and started rolling. When he got to the movable Plexiglas door, he slowed and used his tentacle to open it.

“Good going,” murmured Sun Tam.

Squidboy got the bottle out of the fridge, went back through the door, pulled up next to the seated Perky Pat doll, unscrewed the bottle cap, and set the bottle down on the table next to her.

“All right!” I said.

“Squidboy, go up and down the stairs,” said Ben. Squidboy made it up the stairs okay, but—he fell over on his way down.

In every program there's one killer problem that tortures you the most. In the case of Squidboy it was stairs. I was damned if I could get them right. As the coming days wore on, I began to realize that my having gotten the parameters right for the Veep so quickly had been blind luck. No matter how long I genetically evolved the Squidboy stair-climbing procedure, the damn machine always ended up falling over on the way down. Fortunately the Rubber Room had a soft floor.

I spent the next four days driving around inside Squidboy, single-stepping with all the variables in watch mode, perturbing and reevolving the parameters, and trying new hand-coded ideas for the staircase procedures. I was hacking all the time and thinking about nothing but the software . . . dreaming of bytes, xors and shifts, of memory allocations and data structures. On Friday, I came up with a desperate brute-force measure that made Squidboy climb stairs quite a bit more slowly than Studly had, but
Squidboy stopped falling over
.

Meanwhile Ben had already sent the Adze program to the West West software build group, who were sending us bug reports to the tune of two dozen a day. I was busy with the stairs, but doughty Russ and Sun dug in and fixed the bugs as fast as they came.

Friday afternoon West West started final code integration. We worked straight through Saturday and Sunday, testing the builds and adding final tweaks. The official Adze 1.0 build tested out copacetic on Monday. On Tuesday, the official product launch was held in a big ballroom in the San Jose Fairmont Hotel. We'd beaten out the GoMotion Veep launch by one day. Hurray!

R
USS, SUN TAM, JANELLE, AND A BUNCH OF other people went down to the San Jose Fairmont for the rollout, but Ben asked me to stay back at West West with him. “This way we'll be ready to turn him off or go telerobotic if there's any problems,” said Ben.

Ben and I sat in the Sphex room; Jack and Jill were on the other machine as usual. We had our headsets coupled right to Squidboy's two cameras, and our headset earphones were taking their feed from Squidboy's mikes. We saw and heard through Squidboy's head. Ben had a line linked to an emergency On/Off radio control that was at the site with the robot, and I was ready to slip my virtual hands into the images of Squidboy's manipulators and take him over in case of a less drastic malfunction. If things started going to pieces, I could fake the demo.

Squidboy was up on a dais at one end of the Fairmont ballroom, shifting his field of view this way and that. If he noticed someone staring right at him he'd wave his humanoid hand at them and I'd see the hand in the right part of his viewfield. “
hand_flag 2
,” I thought happily.

It was a fancy room, with big crystal chandeliers. The walls were covered with gold-and-cream striped wallpaper. The rug had a diagonal grid pattern with florets at the intersections. Facing the dais were seventeen rows of tables with white linen tablecloths. The tables held pens, notepads, dishes of wrapped hard candy, glasses, and pitchers of ice water for the assembled industry bigwigs and press. I recognized Jeff Pear in the third row with Dick and Chuck from GoMotion. Squidboy waved at them. They looked tense and depressed, which was just what I'd been hoping for. We'd beaten them out the starting gate and there was nothing they could do about it except sue.

The room was filled with the mutter of conversation. Now Otto Gyorgyi stepped to the podium, dressed in his usual gray suit and bilious tie. His slicked-down black hair gleamed in the spotlights. Squidboy gazed at him.

“Hello,” he said, “I'm Otto Gyorgyi, the General Manager of the West West Home Products Division. It's my pleasure today to announce our new line of Adze home robot kits. As of today, West West is shipping this kitware throughout the world. Before I fill in any more information, let's have a little fun.” Otto forced his sour face into a smile. There was an expectant hush. “Hello, Squidboy,” said Otto. “My name is Otto.”

“Hello, Otto,” said Squidboy. “What can I do for you?”

“I'm thirsty, Squidboy. Get me a glass of water.”

Squidboy looked around the dais.

“I'm sorry, Otto, but where is the water?” said the robot.

“On the table down there,” said Otto. Squidboy stared at Otto's pointing hand, then turned his gaze toward the front row of tables.

“Thank you, Otto.”

Squidboy wheeled to the edge of the stage, turned
sideways, and began carefully stepping down the dais steps. I held my breath till he'd safely reached the bottom.
Whew
! Squidboy wheeled forward and the glass and pitcher loomed before us. Behind the glass and pitcher were the faces of two reporters. Squidboy grasped the glass with his tentacle and picked up the pitcher with his humanoid hand. He poured water into the glass and set down the pitcher.

The viewpoint swung toward the stage and Squidboy galumphed back up the steps, rocking from side to side on his bicycle wheels and his flexing legs. The tentacle-manipulator held the glass steadfastly upright, and not a drop was spilled.

“Thank you,” said Otto as the robot handed him the glass. The audience burst into applause.

“Go to sleep for fifteen minutes, Squidboy,” said Otto. “And call my name when you wake.” Our vision screens went blank.

“I wish I was there,” I said, pulling off my headset.

“West West wants to minimize any linkage between you and the Adze,” said Ben.

“Because they pirated ROBOT.LIB and my SuperC code from GoMotion?”

“It's not that,” said Ben uncomfortably. “We're used to lawsuits. It's because of your trial. It starts day after tomorrow doesn't it?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess it does. I've been hacking too much to think about it, but yes, today is Tuesday and the state trial starts Thursday. Criminal trespass, computer intrusion, and extreme cruelty to animals.”

“What's the story with the cruelty to animals?” laughed Ben, momentarily falling out of his manager persona. “Is that some kind of right-to-artificial-life thing on behalf of the ants?”

“No, man, it's because of the dog that Studly killed.”

“I'd forgotten about the dog.” Ben got serious again. “The word from my higher-ups is that your presence at West West is bad for our corporate image.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“It gets worse,” sighed Ben. “Come on back to my office.” I followed him, wondering what was up, and then Ben fumbled around on his desk and produced a folder with my name on it. “I argued myself hoarse with Otto Gyorgyi about this, but his mind is made up.” He handed me a letter which read:

 

 

(3)
. . .

 

“I'm fired?” I yelped. “This is what I get for writing the code for a new product? A new product that's starting to ship? This is the payoff?”

“Well, you should at least note that paragraph (3) says that you'll get an extra four weeks of severance pay with your check this Friday. I got you that. Otto feels that from now on Russ and Sun Tam will be able to handle the Adze code support on their own. It's a rotten break for you, Jerzy. I'm sorry about it.”

“What the fuck does Otto know about anything?”

“He watches every dollar that goes out or comes in.” Ben glanced around to make sure nobody was within earshot. “I'll just come out and level with you, Jerzy. This is
really
about that three million dollars West West
put up for your bail. West West wants the money back.”

“You're going to revoke my bail?”

“At the end of the redeployment period, yes, your bail will be revoked. As I think I told you before, bail falls under the category of a West West employee benefit.”

“No wonder there was such a big rush to get me to finish the Adze code,” I said bitterly. “So you guys could go ahead and copyright it for West West and then cut me loose.” I racked my brain for a way out. “But . . . but what if there's a problem with the Adze code? I could consult on a part-time basis, couldn't I? You wouldn't need to pay me benefits or give me an office! Just lend me a cyberdeck so I can work from home—or work from jail if that's what it comes to.”

“No way,” said Ben after the briefest pause for thought. “Equipping a computer criminal with unsupervised cyberspace access would open West West to highly negative legal exposure.”

“Computer criminal. I don't believe this.”

“I'm sorry, Jerzy. You're a great programmer, but West West is laying you off. It sucks, but that's life in the Valley. You might check back with us if you win your trials.” He glanced at his watch. “I better tune in on Squidboy again. Good-bye.”

I went into Los Perros to seek out the consolation of my soft-chinned, bell-haired Gretchen.

“Look who's here,” said Susan Poker as I entered Welsh & Tayke.

“Oh hi, Jerzy,” said Gretchen, looking up from some papers on her desk. “What's new?”

“Are you busy?”

“Kind of. We're putting the paperwork through on two properties today. It'll take most of the afternoon. I get off at four-thirty.”

“You really should buy that house you were living
in,” said Susan Poker. “It's just standing empty, and Mr. Nutt's ready to accept a very low offer. Have you asked West West about it?”

“Don't you ever give up?” I asked her.

“Not me!”

“Hey, Gretchen, come outside for just a minute so I can tell you something in
private
.”

“Secrets from
moi
?” exclaimed Susan Poker.

“I'll come,” said Gretchen. “But just for a minute.”

So out there on the sidewalk I told her. “We finished that robot I've been working on, and now I've been fired.”

“Oh. Poor Jerzy. And your trial starts day after tomorrow. This is a bad week for you.” She patted my cheek and kissed me. “We should do something fun tonight, to take your mind off your woes.”

“I'll try to think of something. Meanwhile I think I'll get a drink.”

“It's barely two o'clock, Jerzy.”

“Hey, I'm unemployed!”

“Be back here at four-thirty, don't forget.”

“Okay.”

I walked very slowly down the street. As an unemployed person, I had all the time in the world. It was a funny feeling not to be in a rush.

I'd been racing from one job to another for more than twenty years now. For awhile I'd been a math professor, then I'd had a job selling textbooks, and then we'd moved to California and I'd become a hacker. Rush, rush, rush, and for what? To age and to die. Despite my big dreams, I'd never been anything more than a struggling shrimp in the world's big water, nothing but a gnat in the blank California sky.

My job and family were gone, but at least Queue and Keith were being nice to me these days—of course I was
paying them rent. I wished I'd brought a joint with me today. This was not a day when I felt like being the real me.

I walked a little farther and found myself in front of the Los Perros bakery. I'd been avoiding the place ever since my big night at the Vos, but today it seemed natural to drift in for a sandwich. There was Nga behind the counter as usual, dressed in black and with her hair poufed up on one side. Her quick eyes twinkled when she saw me, and her kissy red lips curved in a smile.