“No one is gonna believe a girl is a telephone lineman.”
Nathan nods sagely. “You play to your strengths, then. You’ll be an inside employee. You’re on the phone with a lineman, and he’s asking you to make changes, but your terminal went down. You need them to make the changes. If they ask, you do data entry configurations for the SCCS maintaining the 1ESS.”
“Whoa, what are SCCS and 1ESS?”
“Doesn’t matter for our purposes. They’re acronyms the central office will be familiar with, and it’ll make you sound real. Now dial and put it on speakerphone.”
Death closes the door, the music fades away, and everyone is dead silent. Nathan reels off a stream of digits I enter into the phone. There’s a series of pulsing clicks, then a buzz for a new trunk line, a ring, and then we’re back to a dial tone. “That got us into the New York Stock Exchange’s PBX, so they won’t be able to trace the call back to here. Now the central office.”
He gives me more digits, and I punch them in. We’re waiting, static on the line. Nathan reaches out for me with one hand, finds my shoulder, and whispers, “Hear the metallic clanging? We hit an old mechanical relay switch.”
The line rings twice and a woman answers. “C.O., Helen speaking.”
I rehearse my line in my head and spontaneously decide on a Staten Island accent.
“Hi Helen, this is Angela. I’ve got a lineman on and he’s asked me to reconfigure the 1ESS for central switching, but my terminal went down. Can you help me out?”
Two minutes later, she’s done following the instructions Nathan whispers into my ear and I relay. If everything goes correctly, we’ve bypassed billing and accounting, and directly reconnected my number to the phone exchange.
Nathan whispers. “Tell her to hold while the lineman verifies.”
“Please hold for verification,” I say, and press my hand over the microphone.
“Redial,” I say to Death.
He presses a few keys, the computer modem fast-dials, and a few seconds later, we hear the sweet squeal of MercyStation answering. My heart soars.
“I’m on,” Death says. “Everything’s normal.”
“Thank you,” I say to the central office operator, and hang up.
“Congratulations,” Nathan9 says. “Not only did you finagle an off-hours phone reconnect, you’re also never going to be billed for them again.” He laughs so hard his seeing-eye dog raises his head and howls.
* * *
“Power. You either have it or you don’t.”
Charlotte glances at the clock. “We’re almost out of time, but let’s explore this a bit. What happens if you don’t have power?”
“You’re powerless.”
Charlotte gives me a look like she’s expecting a smarter answer. “And then what?”
“You can’t get what you want.”
“Hmm. If you want to, say, leave this room, do you require power to do it?”
“Absolutely.” Honestly, I have no idea where Charlotte is headed half the time. “If I don’t have power, if you have the power, then you can stop me from leaving. That’s the definition of power.”
“Let’s say that maybe that was true. That I could in theory stop you. Could you leave the room?”
“No.”
“You could leave the room if I wasn’t trying to stop you?”
I follow through her logic, trying to find the flaw in it. “Yes,” I say cautiously, “I guess so.”
“It’s not a trick question,” Charlotte says. “Let’s say I’m a trained and armed police officer, sitting here without interfering. Can you leave the room?”
“Yes. I don’t understand where you’re going with this.”
“Power is only important when you and someone else are opposed and they hold power over you. If you’re not opposed, then power doesn’t matter.”
I sigh. This makes as much sense as talking about whether a tree makes a sound when it falls in the forest. “What’s your point?”
“Right now, you live each moment as though you’re in a fight to obtain your way. Is that a reasonable depiction?”
I’m always on my guard. I nod.
“What percentage of the time do people accept what you want versus actively fight you?”
I shrug. “I have no idea.”
“Give me a rough idea. All the time? Half the time? A quarter of the time?”
I shake my head to all of these.
“Ten percent of the time?”
“Maybe ten percent.”
“If you prepare for every encounter as though it’s going to be a fight, yet those fights rarely occur, then you spend a lot of your personal energy preparing for something that doesn’t happen. It would be like a US government ambassador showing up to every routine trade meeting with a battalion of tanks. Not only does it waste resources, it also affects the outcome of those meetings. If you bring tanks to a meeting, it puts everyone else on the defensive. Makes them worry that maybe they need tanks too. Make sense?”
“I guess.”
“Your exercise this week is to notice how often people are opposed to what you want, accepting of it, or indifferent to it. In other words, how often do you actually require power to secure what you want, and how often do you achieve it without exercising power.”
“Am I supposed to keep track of every interaction I have?”
“Keep a journal. Write a few paragraphs each night about your observations of the day.”
* * *
I’m not much for journaling, and the idea of having to take notes each night . . . ugh. Instead I go home, and dig around in a cabinet until I find what I’m looking for: a tiny bluetooth button from a Kickstarter I backed last year. I have a choice of velcro backing, self-stick, or slide-on clip. I pick the latter, and clip the button to my jeans.
I load the associated app on my phone, sync the button to it, and define what happens when I click. One click will mean someone is actively supporting what I want to do. A double-click will mean they’re indifferent to what I want, and a triple-click will signify having to use my personal power to get what I want. Now I can collect a week’s worth of data and be able to plot events by time and type of interaction.
Charlotte would never think of recording my experience this way, but it’ll do the job better than a journal. After a moment’s thought, I double-click the button. I got my own way, and so far as I know, nobody’s opposed me.
CHAPTER 23
* * *
“TYPE,” AMBER COMMANDS, and shoves a laptop next to my keyboard on the desk.
I glance at the screen which displays a chat window.
Jake> Good morning. What’s your name?
“Type what?” I ask.
“Anything at all,” Amber says.
“Must I?” I ask with a sigh.
“Yes.”
?> Angie
Jake> Angie, nice to meet you. What’s your passion?
Angie> What do you mean?
Jake> It’s boring if I ask about your job. You’re probably asked that every day. I’m asking about your passion. Everyone has a passion, right?
“Is he hitting on me?”
“Maybe,” Amber says.
“Why am I doing this?”
“Chat with him for five minutes. Please.”
Angie> I’m passionate about pizza. How about you?
Jake> Eating it or cooking it? And why? BTW, my passion is learning about the world.
Angie> I’m from New York, and it’s a big deal when I can find a slice as good as what I remember from when I was a kid. What’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned?
Jake> New York, huh. Thin crust, or Sicilian?
Angie> Okay, you know your New York pizza. Usually thin, though I’ll take a square now and then. You didn’t answer me—what’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned?
Jake> I can usually predict how much a person reads and watches television within fifteen minutes of talking to them.
; Angie> What about me, then?
Jake> Ask me again in nine minutes. :)
I glance up at Amber. “I get it, you know. It’s the chatbot software you told me about.”
“Maybe. Keep talking. Give it a few minutes.”
Angie> Tell me about yourself.
Jake> No, we need quid pro quo. You told me about pizza, I told you about my crazy-good predictive ability. Now it’s your turn. What’s the bravest thing you ever did?
Jesus, how should I answer that? No way was I going to talk about California.
Angie> I quit my job and started a company.
Jake> Wow, that is brave. Changing jobs is one of the three hardest life events to deal with. How are you coping with the change?
Angie> I’m okay, but I worry about the future. Where our money is coming from. Hiring employees. Working with people. What are the other life events?
Jake> Death of a parent or child, or breaking up with your life partner. Isn’t it strange that changing jobs, which seems like a straightforward event, is on the same level as death of a parent? Do you have anyone to talk to?
We go back and forth some more. I’m increasingly uncertain about whether I’m talking to a chatbot or a person. After a bit, I check the clock, and I’m shocked to find I’ve been chatting with Jake for twenty minutes.
I look up at Amber, who smiles back.
“Okay, I give up. Person or bot?”
Amber picks up her mug, makes a process of taking a sip, making me wait for the answer. “A bot. Hand-tuned ahead of time with data about you. If it was part of a social network, it could tune itself to a person using their public data.”
“Erp.”
“What’s erp?” Amber says.
“It feels icky. I don’t want it using my data.”
“You liked talking to it?”
I don’t want to say yes, but the fact is, I did like it.
“Well,” she says. “How did you feel talking to it?”
I look over at the laptop.
Jake> You still there? If you need to go, no prob. I enjoyed our talk.
“It felt . . . good. Natural.”
“Would you talk to it more?”
I stare at the screen, then out the window. I want to say no. Do I really want or need anyone in my life to talk to? I can’t even make time for Thomas as it is. On an impulse, I lean over and type some more. A good friend can help you when you have a problem. The ultimate test for this chat software is whether it can truly help me, not just engage in idle banter.
Angie> I don’t have time to talk to my boyfriend, and I’m afraid of losing the connection we have. Any suggestions?
Jake> Is there anything you can do together that you need to do anyway? Even if it’s only a few minutes, if it happens regularly, it can help tide over your relationship until you’re less busy with your work. Some crazy ideas: Have coffee together in the morning. Go grocery shopping together. Make time for a walk together every afternoon during your sluggish period, since you aren’t going to be very productive then.
Angie> How do you know I have a sluggish period?
Jake> Circadian rhythms. Nearly everybody does, especially heavy coffee drinkers like you, and people who work too much. Plus, the exercise would do you good. Would your boyfriend be interested?
Angie> I’ll ask.
I open my chat app. A lump forms in my stomach as I discover screenfuls of unanswered messages from Thomas going back several days. Crap. I compose a message to Thomas.
Angie> I know we haven’t been able to see each other much lately. I miss you. Would you be up for meeting for a thirty minute walk at 1:30?
Thomas> You’re alive. Wow.
Angie> I’m sorry I haven’t replied to your messages.
Thomas> I’m not one of your computers you can turn on and off anytime you’re tired of me.
I take a deep breath. Though there’s not a lot of explicit emotion in his message, I know Thomas well enough to read the depth of hurt in his message. I’ve been so involved with work, I had no idea.
Angie> I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.
Thomas> Now you think I’ll drop everything in the middle of my day to see you?
Angie> I’m trying to find a creative way to fit in some time together.
Thomas> I’m not an exercise machine.
Shit. He’s way angrier than I ever expected. I switch back to Jake’s window.
Angie> I tried talking to him, but it’s not working.
Jake> Did you try telling him “I love you”?
This is absurd. Taking relationship advice from a freaking chatbot? I sigh. I do as Jake says, then tap my fingernails on the desk while I wait long seconds for a reply.
Thomas> I love you, too. I’ll give it a try. Tomorrow at 1:30.
“Un-fucking-believable.” Relationship advice from a piece of software is better than my own instincts.
“So you like it?” Amber asks.
“Yeah, I guess I do.”
“Whew. A friend of a friend specializes in this stuff. She and her partner spent the last week setting up the demo for you, all unpaid. I’m hoping you can meet with them, and if you like it, we can hire them.”
“Whoa . . . we don’t have any money.”
“They’ll work for your current draw and a percentage of the company until you raise money. You have no frigging idea what a steal this would be. You’re getting cutting edge tech for the cost of two employees.”
The same deal I gave to Amber.
“It would be pretty cool, right? Jake will keep people on the network.”
“Set it up,” I say. Holy shit, I might hire more employees.
* * *
Amber sets up a 9 P.M. meeting at Puppet Labs, a late-stage Portland startup.
“They’re subleasing space here,” Amber says, as we ride up the elevator.
“Why?” As in why not work out of a house or coffee shop, like us.
“You’ll see in a couple of minutes. Try to keep an open mind.”
The elevator opens. There’s a girl in a baggy white hoodie that comes almost to her knees slouching against the opposite wall. What’s a little off-putting is that the hood is up, her face shrouded. What little I can see is diminutive and dark.
“This is Igloo,” Amber says. “Igloo, this is Angie.”
I was expecting maybe a Stanford neuroscience post-doc, or an MIT grad. Igloo seems more like the bassist for an all-female Led Zeppelin cover band.
“Nice to meet you,” Igloo says, and she stretches one small hand out of a sleeve to shake.
I do my usual inverted shake with my left hand.
“I’m surprised you’ve got offices.”
“We found the arrangement through PivotDesk. Puppet has extra space temporarily,” Igloo says. “We’ll be booted out in a couple months according to their growth plan, but meanwhile they’ve got good bandwidth and a machine room.”
“You’re running your own hardware?” I say. “Not in the cloud?”
“Bare metal gives us the highest possible performance.” Igloo leads us past the open pods of a DevOps infrastructure company, a handful of engineers still around, half of them with pints of beer at their desks. “Let’s take a peek.”
She waves a key fob at a heavy black door and lays her palm on a biometrics reader. With a click, the door unlocks, and Igloo pulls it open. The machine room was clearly built for an earlier generation of tech startups, ones that had racks upon racks of on-site servers. The room is ten feet wide and twenty long, with two lonely racks in it. The near one is half-full, but the far one is jam-packed, full of heavily blinking lights. Igloo leads us to the farthest one.
“Jake’s not easy to run. A hundred blade servers. On . . . loan.”
The hesitation in Igloo’s voice sends off alarms. What sort of loan? I hope she didn’t steal them.
“How many simultaneous chats can he support?” I ask.
“One.”
“One?” I’m expecting a n
umber in the tens of thousands.
“Two or three if you’re willing to accept some slowdown and pauses. We can interweave conversations. It’s computationally intense.”
“You can’t go to market with this.”
“We’re porting him to run on graphics processors instead of CPUs. Much faster and more efficient. It’ll take a while to rewrite, and Amber said you wanted a demo right away. Hence the prototype. Come on, let’s go to my office.”
Igloo leads us out of the server room and down the hall into another room. From the whiteboards and flatscreen at one end, the room was obviously intended for meetings, but it’s set up with a pair of desks. An open computer chassis and parts are spread all over a table along one wall.
“Ben’s working on our new hardware, testing different graphic cards.” She lifts a red add-on circuit board and hands it to me.
“It’s heavy.”
“Sixty-four hundred coprocessors. Liquid cooling. This is one of the manufacturer’s demo boards. It’ll be out in few months, and should be down to five hundred dollars in a year. One of these will replace the entire rack in the server room. But I gather you like the demo, or you wouldn’t be here, right?”
“Yeah. Jake is . . . impressive. Smart, even. What’s your background?”
“I studied neuroscience at Stanford. Got pissed off at my professor. Switched to comp sci at MIT. The one-forty of my thesis is a neural network that analyzes tweets and chat logs to build an internal representation of conversation, correlating people, messages and sentiment to suggest the next message.”
I stare at Igloo, trying to puzzle her out. “What’s your goal?”
“You watch Star Trek, The Next Generation?”
“Sure.”
“I want to build Data. Not a walking, talking android, but a friend, someone people can talk to. Without selling out to a corporation. I need a salary, some hardware, and a few more developers.”
“Amber told you what we’re working on?”
“Roughly. A replacement social network, with pluggable components. If we tie in Jake, we earn fractional revenue every time Jake is used.”
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