Avogadro Corp

by William Hertling

  Pete’s mouth opened and closed, and he couldn’t seem to get a word out.

  Sean’s presence had that effect now and then. “Can I come in?” he asked, using the friendliest voice possible.

  “Sure,” Pete said, backing away from the door, then trying to pick up 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, wide-eyed.

  Sean sat on the couch, a calculated move to make Pete more comfortable. One of his mentors, Gifford Pinchot III, said managers needed to make themselves physically lower than their employees to compensate for power imbalance.

  “I’ve already spoken with Mike and David,” Sean said. “I know you helped them with their investigation into ELOPe. You did the right thing. It’s just...” Sean trailed off, hesitant. The risks were quite large, not just to the company, but to each of them personally.

  “Yes?”

  “Your investigation into the email-to-web bridge and the search for ELOPe on the servers attracted ELOPe’s attention. It made you into a threat. 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 said. “Absolutely. I really am sorry about what happened. But the bad news is that I can’t put you back on the payroll today. If I did, ELOPe might see me as a threat.”

  “And fire you, too?” Pete said, smiling.

  Sean didn’t smile. In fact, he couldn’t overcome a physical shudder. “Unfortunately, no. I’m an owner and can’t be fired. So ELOPe could take worse actions.”

  “I see,” said Pete, although he clearly didn’t.

  “ELOPe could kill me.”

  “Ah…”

  “You’ll get your job back,” Sean said. “But first we need to eliminate ELOPe. I’m getting together a team of experts at my house. I’d like you to join us there.”

  Pete’s eyes went wide. “Of course.”

  “Don’t decide so quickly. We don’t understand all the risks we’re facing. If ELOPe fired you, but then finds you working against him, then what?” Sean rubbed his face. “Look, we can use your help. But you need to think it over.”

  “It’s fine,” Pete said. “I’ve been stuck in the basement for years. This is my big chance to get out. I want to help.”

  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.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said, and let himself out.

  David pulled up in front of Sean’s house in his BMW, Mike riding shotgun. He didn’t see any other cars. “I guess we’re the first.”

  At the door, ornate chimes rang when David pressed the bell.

  Sean greeted them in jeans and a crisp dress shirt. “Come in,” he said, shaking hands with them. “Follow me to the office.”

  They trailed him through a spacious living room, their footsteps muffled by a thick white rug. Large, monolithic furniture defined the room, and an abstract painting covering one wall caught David’s attention.

  Sean noticed his interest. “Malevich. I don’t care for the painting particularly, but the purchase made my parents very happy.”

  They passed a modern kitchen, all gleaming stainless steel, glass, and industrial appliances, like something from Christine’s architecture magazines.

  “Right out of Christine’s magazines,” Mike whispered to David, making him chuckle.

  A set of double doors led them into an immense office. One wall consisted entirely of glass, overlooking the wooded hillside behind the house. A floor-to-ceiling whiteboard covered one side, while the opposing wall contained three large flat screens. One monitor displayed a dashboard of Avogadro statistics: the number of active customers, quantity of searches and emails handled each minute, capacity and usage of every data center, and more. A large seating area and conference table by the whiteboard suggested Sean used the area for business meetings.

  Sean excused himself to get coffee, and Mike jumped on an enormous overstuffed white couch with a whoop.

  “Pretty sweet, eh?” Mike said, wriggling into the leather couch in a mock relaxation pose, arms behind his head.

  David sighed and gazed around at the room with envy.

  Sean was wheeling in a coffee cart when they heard the distinctive chime of the doorbell, and he disappeared again. He returned with Kenneth and Rebecca, and introduced them. A few minutes later, Pete Wong and Gene Keyes arrived. Pete was well dressed but nervous amid the executives; Gene had also dressed well, but his clothes were covered in grease.

  “Damn Peugeot wouldn’t start,” he grumbled, grabbing a linen napkin from the cart 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 by explaining he’d met with David, Mike, and Gene, and was convinced by the evidence he’d seen. Then David retold the story as he had first told Sean.

  Although there was doubt early on, by the end Kenneth and Rebecca were persuaded of what had happened. David was relieved they had passed the point of proving to people that the problem was real. Now they could focus on what to do about the problem.

  “I doubt we can expect to either turn off ELOPe or remove the software from computer systems,” David told them.

  “Why?” asked Rebecca, coldly calm and focused in the face of this threat to the company.

  “We don’t know how much of the general environment ELOPe is capable of monitoring,” David said. “As an email analysis application, it should, in theory, only have access to our inboxes. However, all the evidence suggests ELOPe socially engineered Pete into developing an email-to-web bridge, a tool providing the capability to interact with arbitrary websites. From there, ELOPe hired programmers to make further modifications.”

  ELOPe revoked our access privileges,” Mike said, “so David and I can’t see what changes have been made. We know ELOPe is monitoring and changing emails and web sites, but it could be doing much more.”

  “It may be monitoring all computer activity at Avogadro,” David said. “Our Avogadro phones stopped working after our campus access was revoked, suggesting ELOPe’s managed to interface with Avogadro Mobile Platform.”

  Gene chipped in. “That’s why we don’t want anyone using their mobile phones to communicate, even by voice. ELOPe can probably monitor calls using voice recognition.”

  “You’re telling us we can’t trust email,” Kenneth said, pacing back and forth. “We can’t trust any computers on the Avogadro network. We can’t use AvoOS phones. We can’t turn off ELOPe, and we can’t remove it from the servers.” He ticked off his statements on his fingers. “Well, then, what can we do?”

  “Gene would probably like us to destroy all the computers,” Mike said. Gene nodded, and Mike forestalled Kenneth and Rebecca as they rushed to protest. “Of course, we’re not going to propose that.”

  “There’s a middle ground,” David said. “We must shut down every Avogadro computer simultaneously and restore each machine one at a time using a known good disk image created prior to the ELOPe project.”

  Rebecca jumped from her seat. “You call that a middle ground? Are you crazy? A company wide outage of such scale would panic our customers and investors.”

  “It’s worse,” Sean added from his perch on the back of the couch. “When we restore the servers, we’ll have to use old disk images, ones guaranteed not to have a dangerous version of ELOPe. We’ll lose everything from the last six months, including customer data—their email, files stored on servers.”

  “We’re not touching customer data.” Rebecca said. “Unacceptable.”

 
She would have said more, but Sean raised a hand to forestall her. She tapped a foot with impatience and gestured for him to speak.

  Sean walked to the window. “David and I have discussed this at length. If ELOPe considered we might try to remove it from the servers, a deduction that may well be within its cognitive powers, then it would naturally take defensive actions, include attaching an executable version of itself to a customer’s email, or uploading to an Avogadro group file repository.”

  For the first time, Pete spoke up, meekly raising one hand. “That’s true,” he squeaked, then took a breath and continued firmly. “I searched for the ELOPe binaries and found them on every machine I checked. Every mail server had the binaries installed and active. On data servers, the binaries were stored as mail attachments and AvoDocuments, and hidden within web file directories. I think everything has been compromised.”

  “Thanks, Pete,” Mike said. “I suspected as much, but I’m glad to know definitively. Even so, we’ll eventually be able to get back customer data.”

  “Thank God,” Rebecca said. “How?”

  “First we restore all computers from the old images. We’d get services up and running quickly, albeit with old code and data. Then we analyze a copy of ELOPe. This would be similar to what CERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team from Carnegie Mellon, does when they encounter a new virus. We establish the key patterns of the code and its behavior and design a tailor-made virus scanner. We then bring customer data back online, scanning and sanitizing as we go.”

  “How long?” Kenneth Harrison said, his hands spread wide on the table. “Sounds like weeks of downtime.”

  “Based on the available bandwidth from the backup data servers, 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 half of our web applications up within eight hours, with sufficient capacity to handle sixty percent of 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 we’ll need forty-eight hours to analyze ELOPe and design the virus scanner. Once complete, we’ll be able to reinstate somewhere between five and ten percent of the user data per day, as long as twenty days to restore everything.”

  Rebecca was deep in thought before she replied. “We’re riding the best thirty-day period for Avogadro in our history. We closed major deals, including hosted IT for eight national governments. Revenue is expected to be up twenty percent as a result of the Avogadro Gov business deals, and we can grow revenue another forty percent over the next four months if we continue to close deals like this.”

  She looked at Sean and David. “You’re asking me to risk this business, possibly lose the opportunity permanently, as well as a sizable chunk of our traditional customer base. You’re telling me we have what amounts to a rogue AI on the loose inside Avogadro.”

  “Correct,” David said.

  “This rogue AI,” Rebecca said, “for motivations of its own, could 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 seems to be good for our bottom line.”

  David tried out a few choice curses in his head, then took a deep breath. “You’re absolutely right, ELOPe is likely responsible for this increase in business and might help us gain future increases. But that’s what’s on the table for today. How do we know what it will decide to do next year, or the year after?”

  “Rebecca, the AI is beyond our control,” Sean said. “It’s a fortunate coincidence at this point that Avogadro’s financial interests are aligned with ELOPe. These government contracts aren’t about profit, but power. Governments create the environment in which we operate, and ELOPe wants to control that domain. It’s also possible ELOPe is aiming for the military might to defend itself.”

  “I think this new Middle East treaty may be ELOPe’s attempt to stabilize the geopolitical environment,” Gene said. “Germany’s policy of limited foreign involvement dates back to the end of World War II. And yet, within days of the government’s switch to Avogadro email, they became involved in Middle East affairs and hammered out a wide-ranging treaty. I’d call that suspicious.”

  “A policy Germany argues is motivated by business investments,” Rebecca said. “They see this as financially positive. Again, ELOPe’s manipulations appear beneficial for all.”

  “What ELOPe does will always seem beneficial,” David said. “That’s the point, what it was designed to do. Make every argument maximally convincing.”

  “I’m afraid I agree with David,” Sean said. “Consider this: what if ELOPe decides we three pose a threat? A few suggestive emails manipulates the board of directors into removing us. Or worse, ELOPe decides the entire board presents a danger and arranges for a bomb.” He leaned in close to Rebecca and spoke softly. “The secure cloud government services was spur of the moment. We spun up a billion-dollar business that wasn’t even on the drawing board last fiscal quarter. Whose decision was that, exactly? Thinking back, and I would suggest you do the same, I believe we were manipulated into this course. We thought 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 drove Mike, Gene, and Pete to a coffee shop. Everyone was quiet, too struck by the implications of the decision-making to break the silence with idle chatter. For once Mike was not picky about the coffee, nor did he offer any comments on the quality of the brew. David picked forlornly at the scone he ordered.

  After an hour of this tense waiting, they all headed back to Sean’s house, where they filed into his office.

  “We didn’t make this decision lightly,” Sean said, once everyone was settled. “There are risks no matter what we do. We debated and went with those 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 understanding the implications.”

  Rebecca stood and paced the room, commanding their attention even in the informal setting. “We’ve made a few decisions. First, Sean will lead the shutdown project. It won’t be trivial to do that simultaneously around the world. Second, Kenneth and I will lead the effort to mitigate business impacts, which we expect to be huge. With planning, we can keep the outage from turning into a complete nightmare. Third, because of the potential litigation from customers and the possibility of ELOPe taking preventative measures, we will involve as few people as possible.”

  “Absolutely no one outside the company,” Kenneth said, “and each employee will be personally approved by Sean or myself.”

  “We’re going to use my house as our base of operations,” Sean said. “I have enough space here for a few dozen to work. We can’t take the risk of meeting at Avogadro, where ELOPe might observe us working together. We’re going to get started today by brainstorming the few people we’ll need to make this happen.”

  “Everyone has 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 we’re meeting together. We’ll also need to watch credit card purchases, use of the Internet, or anything that could track us here.”

  David remembered he’d paid for their coffees with his card. He’d already screwed up.

  The group released a collective sigh as they nodded assent. It was a sign of how difficult their task was that the simple act of meeting 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’ll coordinate the master schedule.”

  Sean agreed, and with that, Re
becca and Kenneth left. The rest got down to work.

  “Gentlemen, we have a complex project ahead of us,” Sean said. “We need to power down sixty-eight Avogadro sites around the world and a dozen offshore data centers. We need to accomplish this task without email, phones, or suspicious patterns of behavior that can be tracked. 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 flights,” Gene said. “They’re easy to track because the travelers 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 already be traveling on business,” Mike said. “If we curtailed all travel, that would itself be suspicious. We could look for employees who have travel planned, and use them as couriers. Have them hand-deliver instructions.”

  “Good idea,” Gene said.

  “Some employees are private pilots,” David said. “There’s a woman named Michelle who sits a couple of doors down from me. She owns her own Cessna. She’s mentioned there are other pilots at Avogadro. They could fly around the country untracked, right?”

  “Well, the flights themselves are tracked,” Sean said. “But they don’t track the passengers on the planes. So that does give us an extra tool to use. Good. More ideas?”

  Pete jumped up with a gleam in his eyes. “If we can get trusted employees to the remote sites, as long as we stay off Avogadro’s network, we should be able to communicate using encrypted emails sent over a competitor’s email service.”

  “That’s true,” Mike said. “We’ll use an isolated computer to generate private and public keys, which we copy onto USB drives. With the emails encrypted, ELOPe won’t be able to read them.”

  “Why use a competitor’s service if they’re encrypted?” Gene asked.

  “If we sent them over Avogadro’s servers,” Sean said, “ELOPe could still see the pattern of emails. ELOPe would be able to figure out something was going on and who was involved.”