The Idea Factory

by Pepper White

  The chuckles disappeared and were replaced by stone cold silence.

  "I've given you examples of how to solve Lagrange's equations. When I was about your age, I took the Physics department's equivalents of this class, and I took the Electrical Engineering department's equivalents of this class, in both cases at the undergraduate and graduate level. I even took two classes in the Mathematics department that formed the underpinnings of the material. During the summer between junior and senior year when I did research for one of my professors during the day, at night and on weekends, I did every problem I put my hands on. I made up my own problems and did them. I wanted to thoroughly master every aspect, every facet, every subtlety, every special case of how to apply these equations in the real world."

  He paused. "I kept up the project to just before Christmas time, just after the end of classes, and when I was done, I wanted to share it with someone. I showed the book to my adviser, and he said, 'What you've just done is trivialize the equations to a set of mechanical solution procedures. There's nothing special to that at all. In twenty years a dumb computer will be able to do what you've done.' I ask you, do you think he would have responded that way if I were a homeboy like most of you?"

  No, I thought. His adviser must have heard Shockley's (Ph.D. '36) allegation that blacks are genetically inferior. Racist scientists take their wizardly positions of power, and by virtue of the fact that they're smarter than the rest of us, they tell us lies that we are nearly powerless to debate, much less disprove.

  Lincoln continued, "So I took that notebook binder, that one that I'd prepared during more than two years of nights and weekends, and I went to the bonfire in the Senior House courtyard, and I threw it in there and watched it burn while I cried. So you will have to make your own notebooks and pioneer those solutions yourselves."

  Then he looked at me, straight in the eye, for an uncomfortable second.

  "Now, I'd like to give you a more recent example. A few weeks ago, I lectured to you about flux linkage in an electromechanical system. One of you asked a question in that 'stump the professor' tone of voice, the kind that shows you're looking for a chance to get even, and since I'm black you thought I might be an easy hit. One of you asked me to derive the electrical side of the equation, the side that we mechanical engineers wouldn't normally have committed to memory. But even though I burned my notebook, I had internalized the knowledge, and as you may recall, I presented a complete, correct derivation."

  I looked down at the floor, put my elbow on the desk and my hand across my forehead so as to avoid any further eye contact. He was talking about me.

  "I'm not asking you all to change the world. I'm just asking you to consider the possibility of laying aside your prejudices," he added. "Now, it's a beautiful day. Why don't you all go out and take a walk for the rest of the class time. We can make up the lecture material on the next rainy day."

  April 20

  "Hey, Pepper, I want to talk to you about something," Eldon Tyrell said, drumming his fingers in a typing motion on the wall next to the door to my apartment. Eldon was one of the Atkinson freshmen, who lived down the hall from me. We both had a crush on Cindy, and he did fine vocal sound effects of, for example, a machine gun with a silencer on it and the buzzing virtual swords that Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader dueled with in Star Wars. I'd first met him when two juniors were trying to bully him out of his room during orientation week.

  Eldon was an aero-astro major, which involved fluid mechanics, my forte, and we'd become friends-good enough friends that I'd confided my literary ambitions to him. He became an ally on that front, an informant.

  "Sure, kid, come on in," I said in my best Bogart voice.

  He sat in the chair next to the end of my desk, like the chair the client sits in in the private eye's office, a black wooden instituteissue desk chair, and I sat back in the green Naugahyde arm-swivelchair on casters and put my feet up on the desk.

  "Sho, whadaya got to shay, kid?" I asked him.

  "Wait a minute, the lighting's not right," he answered. "We need the art deco desk lamp you swiped from your office in the heat transfer lab sort of pointing away from the corner of the desk between us so we're half in bright light, half in shadow. There. And let me turn off the overhead light. That fits the mood much better."

  "Sho, whadaya got to shay, kid?" I asked him in take two.

  "Here, let me show you this. I was just accepted. I'm finally in THA. It's so amazing; I'm really psyched. They just let me know yesterday. Here, look at this."

  He put a sheet of paper on the desk in the bright part. At the top of the sheet was printed "Under the Eagle," and the left wing and head of a bald eagle completed the letterhead. The left margin said vertically, "Restricted," and the bottom margin said in fine print, "For security reasons, do not show this to anyone else in your dormitory. The Technology Hackers Association."

  The high-quality printed text had several announcements. "Coming Hack on the buses that drive down Amherst Alley next to athletic field. Attack the dirty beasts with surgical tubing water balloons; no soap, please-we don't want to anger the bus company.... Possibility of pink water balloon throw at demonstrators. ... Impossible Hack at graduation; the Dekes scooped us with the balloon at the H-Y game. Impossible Hack must be good."

  I asked Eldon what the impossible Hack plan was.

  "I can't divulge details; I mean, I'm already telling you so much I should shoot you. Let's just say we're going to defeat the West German Secret Service security sweep. See, Helmut Schmidt, the former West German chancellor, is scheduled to speak at graduation in about a month. We're planning a hack that's going to cost a few of those guys their jobs. It's not going to be easy, though. We're dealing with the sons and grandsons of the Gestapo, and these guys are good. But I think we're up to it. I mean, our parents and grandparents won the war, didn't they?"

  "Yeah." I stopped being Bogart, started being myself again. I took my feet off the desk and leaned forward in the chair. "What about the pink water balloons?"

  "Well, that one I'm not too proud of. Some of these guys are really fascists. I mean, I don't agree with everything they do. You know how MIT has acquired all that land owned by Simplex, and how they're going to tear down all those rental units and make a whole lot of poor Cambridgeport residents homeless, and then they're going to build R&D office space that by the time they're through will probably be just an addition of square footage to a growing office space glut that will probably occur in the Boston market by then?" he asked rhetorically.

  "Yes," I answered.

  "Well, the THA brass wants to throw pink water balloons at them from the roofs of the buildings near where they're demonstrating," he said. "I'm not so sure it's a good idea. The demonstrators will probably figure MIT put us up to it and then they'll hate the institute even more. I mean that's how those warped, paranoid leftists look at things."

  "Maybe as you advance in the organization you can change it from within," I said. "But aside from that, tell me more about your involvement. What was the application procedure?"

  He offered to answer after I gave him a glass of ice water.

  "These guys are incredibly organized," he said. "They gave me this form; I mean a printed form, just like you'd fill out for a job application, like for the government or something. It asked all kinds of personal questions, like what kinds of hacks I'd done in high school, what my political convictions were, and a lot of other personal questions, things I wouldn't want anyone outside the organization to see. It's sort of like Skull and Bones at Yale. The difference is that you have to be smart to get into THA, and you have to be a landed gentry blueblood to get into Skull and Bones. Anyway, I signed the application, so they've got me. If they find out I violated the confidentiality oath, for example, all they'll have to do is send my application form to my employer, and I'll be sunk."

  "Don't worry, I'll change your name," I said. "The operation sounds like what I've read about intelligence organizations."
<
br />   "You better believe it," Eldon answered. "They've got section heads and everything. There's even a minister of intelligence. They have files on when the janitors clean the classrooms and what the rounds of the CPs are. That way they know how to create a diversion. If they're going to do a hack, one team will create a diversion in an area away from the CPs' beat. X number of CPs will investigate the diversion, and the door that has to be picked or broken into will be free of heat. The minister of intelligence also goes around collecting other random information; he listens in on conversations, things like that. It's kind of sick but it's really fun. I could enjoy putting bugs into someone's house or tapping someone's phone."

  "And take away some of the freedom you're working to protect?" I asked.

  "Look. It doesn't matter. So what if all you find out is that the husband is being unfaithful and the wife doesn't know it. You won't do anything with that information. It's the old tree falling in the forest not making a sound idea. I could really have fun with this. I'd never kill anyone though. But gosh, I'm probably on a CIA career track and in five years I might be killing people and I don't believe in that."

  I responded, "Don't worry about it. You won't kill anyone. Not directly anyway," I said.

  "Directly or indirectly, I don't like it. It's against my religion. I think you're right, though. They probably subcontract all the hits. I'm pretty sure there is a pipeline from THA to the CIA, just like there is with Skull and Bones. For example, we have the OSS guide to lockpicking. The Office of Strategic Services ... they were the precursor of the CIA."

  "Yeah, but that's a public document by now. You can probably order it from the National Technical Information Service," I countered.

  "Whatever. You should see it, though. It has all kinds of tricks in it. See, the brute force way to pick a lock is to put this thing they call a rake into it. But the problem with the rake is that you can shine a light into the keyhole and tell whether the lock has been picked. So there's this other little tool with a hook in it."

  He took his keychain out of his pocket and showed me a short piece of metal that looked sort of like a can opener from a Swiss army knife.

  Eldon continued the explanation. "You just pick one pin at a time, and no one knows anything about it. Some veteran CIA guys can pick seven pins in fifteen seconds. It's pick, pull, turn handle, pick, pull, turn handle, until bingo you're in."

  "Don't the CPs find you guys annoying?" I asked.

  "Not really. It's in our constitution that we can't do any damage. One time some group broke into the top of the Green Building and stole the air raid warning sirens. The CPs thought it was THA, but it was actually some sniveling frat boys. THA embarked on a little mission and returned the sirens the next day, with a note saying, 'Courtesy THA.' Plus, with doors and locks, we never attack them with pliers or vice grips. If the hack requires removing an entire door handle and then reassembling it later, that's what we'll do. That's just the way we operate."

  "Have you hacked yet?"

  "Yeah. I just went on a mission the other day. We hacked the dome in the library. It was just so amazing. We met in a conference room and reviewed all our tasks and what signals we'd send and receive to know that the coast was clear. We synchronized our watches and then when we were walking down the corridor the group leader saw just an anonymous hand around a corner as a signal at a couple of places, I mean with perfect timing. We went ahead and climbed to the top of the dome and had sort of a picnic up there. It was awesome, I mean what a view at three in the morning of the Charles and all of Cambridge and MIT. It was a starter hack. I don't know which dome hack was tougher, the one when they put a phone booth up there and the phone rang when the CPs went up to check it out, or when we put a live cow up there."

  "It's cruel to put a cow up there," I said.

  "Not really; see, cows don't walk downhill, so there wasn't any danger of the cow's hurting itself. Anyway, after we were done with the hack we met back at the conference room at the prearranged time to discuss the results. It was great. I mean it was so much fun it's scary. And just think; a lot of the CIA guys are just overgrown hackers and they think it's a game. Like they say, 'OK boys, time to do a little job for the prez,' and of course the prez would know nothing about it. I'm almost sure the Company recruits here."

  I sharpened my pencil. "That's interesting," I said. "The CIA is the Company, MIT is run by the Corporation. I think I detect a trend."

  "Yeah, but you better not write that."

  "Why not?"

  "Because you could lose your alumni athletic privileges. Or no employer will touch you. Or it might adversely affect your credit rating."

  "Aw, come on, Eldon, people only worry about that kind of thing in the Soviet Union. We have freedom of speech here."

  "Yeah, sure, we can print whatever naked bodies we want, but if you make people think you might be labeled a subversive. All I'm saying is be careful. And by the way, don't flame about any radical fundamentalist 'religious' groups. You don't want to spend the rest of your life moving from safe house to safe house."

  "It's too late; I just did. Tell me more about THA."

  "Sorry, I don't know any more. It's organized in a cellular network, so I only know four other people in the Association. It'll stay that way until I advance."

  "And how do you advance?"

  "By being good," Eldon answered. "It's not by seniority at all, not like in companies and trade unions. Like the minister of intelligence, he's only a sophomore now. Last year he spent all his time hacking. It was hack all night, sleep all day, and he almost flunked out. Come to think of it, he was pretty smart. He did his advancing as a freshman when all the courses are pass-fail. I wonder whether he planned it that way."

  "How's he doing now?"

  "He's doing really well. Actually, I'm not supposed to know who he is, but he opened a door for me and I recognized his sneakers. He's actually a friend of mine. I mean, I had no idea."

  "Maybe you can follow in his footsteps," I said. "By the way, did I tell you the CIA sent me a recruiting letter?"

  "Oh, wow. It really is true. They do recruit here. Do you know how they found your address?" Eldon asked.

  "I put my resume in the resume book at the placement office. That's the only thing I can think of."

  "Do you still have the letter? May I look at it?"

  "Sure. It's here in my briefcase," I said. I put the case on the desk. My parents had given it to me for Christmas for upcoming job interviews.

  "Cool," Eldon said. "I didn't know you had a briefcase. Can I play with it for a second?"

  "Sure," I said and handed it to him.

  Eldon became Q, the smart-sounding British guy in the lab jacket in the basement of the headquarters of Her Majesty's Secret Service. "Now you see, Bond, this briefcase is specially equipped for all types of emergencies. If you'd like to release the poison gas, release the latches one at a time. If you don't want gas to come out, release them together. Remember that. Poison, one at a time. No poison, together. Your camera is this brass fitting on the bottom; you'll have to remove it with the special tool on your keychain. If you lose your keys, the pop top from a soft drink can will do. The other brass fitting is the dagger. And, Bond, please don't lose it this time. It took us two months to prepare it for you, and you know how we hate to redo work."

  I said, "You do that well. You ought to be an actor."

  Eldon answered, "It's nothing; just straight out of the movie. Anyway, if I work for the Company, I'll have plenty of opportunities to be an actor. Let's take a look at the letter."

  I started to open the briefcase.

  Eldon said, "Don't forget. No poison, together."

  I opened both latches at the same time.

  The top of the letter had a smaller version of the eagle that was on the top of Eldon's letter from THA.

  "Do you have the envelope, too?"

  I gave him the envelope.

  "That's interesting," Eldon said. "There's no return addr
ess on it. And it says 'Not to be forwarded out of the United States.' That must be so when you're on your summer vacation picking apples in Bulgaria the letter won't be forwarded to you. Otherwise, the Bulgarian branch of the KGB would figure it was in code, you were an operative, and they'd throw you in jail. We'd have to give up one of their guys to get you out, and that would be a waste."

  Eldon read the letter, moving his lips really fast as he read, his eyes scanning line by line about five lines per second.

  "Oh, cool," he said. "You'll be doing all the things that Q does. Look at this. 'High-technology collection devices,' read bugs. 'Photo-optical-mechanical devices,' read microfilm cameras."

  "I don't know whether I'll follow through on it, though. There must be better uses of technology to protect our liberties and standard of living."

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know, counting light bulbs or something."

  "Hey, I heard a couple of good light bulb jokes recently," Eldon said. "How many Tufts students does it take to change a light bulb?"

  "I don't know. How many?"

  "Only one, but they get twelve credits for it. How many graduate students does it take to change a light bulb?"

  "I don't know. How many?"

  "Only one, but it takes ten years. I gotta go now. Big eight oh two problem set due tomorrow. Hey, by the way. Don't tell anyone my name. In all THA mailings they use only first names and last initials; anonymity is key. And everything I've told you is classified. If you publish it before I graduate it could really mess up my future," Eldon said.

  "I have a heady feeling of power, sort of like Bob Woodward," I said.

  "Yeah, why don't you call me Deep Throat? Nah, that's too tacky. Oh, I know. How about Chromedome? Or Gandhi? Yeah, Gandhi, that's it. That'll be great. Just call me Gand for short. Anyway, like I say, I gotta go. Remember. Not a word to anyone about who I really am.

  "Okay, Gand."

  C H A P T E R