by Sloan, David
“That ‘if’ is important, remember.”
“I’ll deliver.”
“Any sign that your partner knows what you’ve been doing?”
“Jason? No. He’s a technical wizard and very creative, but I don’t think there’s an ounce of paranoia in him.”
“Fine,” Graham said. “Keep it that way. I’ll catch up with you next week.”
Neeson put the phone away and went back inside with a sigh to make sure the techs weren’t whining about their weekends being taken over. It was up to him to keep control.
[South Division: Second Round]
[Saturday, March 21]
Neeson considered his reputation as a workaholic to be his greatest executive asset. He could demand hard work because everyone assumed he would work harder. His employees felt safe because the founder of their company was always vigilant. However, if they knew how little he thought about WindSkin when he came in at 5 AM, their opinion of him would be different. But being at the office that early, especially on a Saturday, ensured that no one ever found him out. As sunlight crept over the buildings and palm trees of Chlorophyll Valley, he sat alone: just himself, a cup of coffee, and OPUS.
By his reasoning, it was important to the company that he push OPUS to the limit of its capacity. What he was doing wasn’t research per se; he had decided to call it an ‘executive innovation initiative’. He had realized some time ago that OPUS could do more—much more—than control a panel grid. With a few custom algorithms, some innocent thievery of other programs, and some flashes of ingenuity in which he took genuine pride, OPUS had become a dream machine. Though his employees didn’t know it, his initiative with OPUS had already saved the company once. With patience and discretion, he planned to propel the company far beyond the scope of green energy, into every facet of life. For Neeson, it had been a long time since his plans for the WindSkin Corporation had been limited to WindSkin.
At that moment in the morning, OPUS was all his. He opened his stock trader program on one monitor, his e-mail on the other, and leaned back in his chair. He deleted junk mail while the stock program made its complicated calculations. By doing e-mail, he could truthfully say that he had been working that morning. Not that anyone would call him on it. It was his company, after all. The very rules governing use of the OPUS servers had been dictated by him. To his thinking, access to OPUS was his right, though it was a right that should, for a time longer, be kept secret from the man who had created it.
The program was complete in ten minutes. Neeson’s investment portfolio was automatically updated based on the projections of OPUS, which confidently foresaw an increase in total value of 0.7% by the end of the day. Neeson smiled. For further gratification, he logged in to the ESPN site on his other screen and looked at his bracket, pristine after a complete first round of games.
These two programs represented his most elegant and successful experiments. When he’d realized that OPUS could be exploited outside of energy management, he tried and failed at a few forays that ranged from banal to dramatic. There were last year’s mid-term elections, but everyone knew the outcome of those months in advance. He tried predicting box office numbers, but that didn’t prove interesting. He tried to predict the movements of the seemingly random Wall Street arsonist, but there wasn’t enough data to do anything practical. OPUS did best when given mountains of data.
It finally occurred to him that sports offered the greatest opportunity to show what OPUS could do, though it took some time for him to discover the ideal application. He found decades of highly detailed statistics for every sport he knew, all gathered by fanatics and professionals, all freely available online. Aggregated in the right way, the data was perfectly digestible for OPUS. But it wasn’t enough for Neeson to just predict outcomes of individual games. Anyone could do that. He had to do something that had never been accomplished before. The idea of attempting to predict a March Madness bracket came to him at the end of November while he was watching a game at home. It was so obvious that it was thrilling to finally discover it. He had spent all that night, then all that next week and the weeks after, drafting the program and mining the data. He tested four years’ worth of tournaments trying to get it right, feeding it all the stats that preceded Selection Sunday. Then he had sat back in nervous anticipation as OPUS worked for several solid hours before announcing victory. The accuracy of the output had been shocking. It had even called the 2011 Butler-Pittsburg game even though the outcome of the actual game had been thoroughly unpredictable. With some additional data sets and tweaks, the computer finally spit out the perfect brackets 90% of the time for any year of the past two decades. And, as he saw that morning, it had correctly predicted the entire first round of 2015.
Neeson sipped his coffee and spun away lazily from his monitors to look at the rising sun now in view through his window. WindSkin may have been his baby, but OPUS was his mistress. As for the stock market program, well, that was just a nice personal retirement plan. Nothing wrong with that. It wasn’t something that Graham needed to know about.
By 6:45 AM, the sun was fully up and OPUS was off. Neeson had shut down his session on the server and moved on to the ordinary, tedious, anxiety-inducing tasks of running a start-up. At 7:00 AM, he received a phone call.
“Dr. Faulkner, this is Haj Hitok. I apologize for the early call. I believe Mr. Reynolds told you that I would be checking in.”
“Yes, Haj, I was looking forward to hearing from you.” Neeson’s VIP voice was ready at hand no matter what time of the week it was. “We’d like to set up an appointment for you to come down and see…”
“Neeson, the reason I’m calling is that my schedule has had some changes, and it happens that I will be in the Miami area today only. Forgive me for the late notice, but I was wondering if I could visit your facility today?”
“Oh, well…” he scrambled to look over his calendar. “Well, I’m free any time before 1 PM. This afternoon we’ll be down in the wind tunnel running tests, so…”
“Actually, that sounds ideal. I would like to see WindSkin in action. So it wouldn’t be a problem if I came this afternoon?”
Neeson bit his lip and cursed himself for mentioning the wind test. “Absolutely. We’ll look forward to seeing you then.”
“Excellent. I will be at your office at 1:00. Thank you.”
When the call ended, Neeson took a moment to breathe, check the clock, and strategize. Then he called Jason.
“It ain’t even 8:00 in the morning yet,” Jason answered groggily.
“Are you on your way?”
“I’m in the car, though I’d rather not be up at all. What’s up?” Neeson explained Haj’s call and heard Jason sigh over the phone. “Well,” he said, “I kinda wish you hadn’t of done that.”
“Well I kind of wish I hadn’t of either, but it’s done,” Neeson growled. “What’s the status on the diagnostic?”
“Best I can tell,” Jason diagnosed like a car mechanic, “OPUS either locked out the failsafe or just failed to initiate it. All the redundancies never activated either. Must be some kind of glitch in the load-sharing program. It was like they didn’t actually want to deactivate. Like the panels got too greedy.”
“You didn’t program OPUS to be greedy,” Neeson replied evenly.
“I programmed OPUS to be power hungry. That’s pretty much the same as greedy.”
“Jason,” Neeson was losing his cool now. “It’s a program. It does what we say. The fact that it isn’t operating the basic safety protocols isn’t a problem with the core of OPUS. That’s a problem with the way the safety protocols were programmed. It can’t be that hard. You need to get everybody rechecking the failsafe subroutines for the glitch right now.”
“We’ve been on it,” Jason replied after a silence in which Neeson could almost hear him rolling his eyes. “But the problem seems pretty well hidden in there. I can’t guarantee that we can find it in time to be sure it will test well. And even if we fixed the problem, I can’t guarantee
that something else won’t happen.”
Neeson knew he was right. “OK,” he declared, “we’ll do this. We’ll take the test only up to 110 and tell him that was the objective. If, for some reason, he wants to see us push the limits, we’ll bring it up to 130. But I want you to install a manual failsafe, independent of OPUS, that will kick in at 115. WindSkin shuts down, all panels close automatically, everything powers down.”
“Isn’t that cheating?” Jason asked. Neeson cringed at his young engineer’s completely naïve view of the world.
“Why? It’s close to what WindSkin should be doing anyway. Going up to 110 will be a completely satisfactory test. And Haj is only here to inspect. A successful test will buy us time. It might even buy us a substantial sale with money up front, which will allow us to get it right. This is the way it has to be. Can you do it?” Neeson stood with his hands on his hips. He imagined that talking to Jason was like talking to a teenaged son.
“Yup.” Jason hung up. Neeson ripped his headset off and began to pace the room.
* * * *
At 1:02 PM, a car arrived at the front entrance of WindSkin. A sharply dressed man emerged from the back seat with a thin briefcase.
“Welcome,” Neeson smiled widely, showing no sign that he had been waiting outside for ten minutes. He escorted Haj to the golf cart that would take them to the wind tunnel facility. On the way down, he pointed out the more interesting sites of Chlorophyll Valley while trying not to think about worst case scenarios. Haj made the task easy—as they drove up, he took special interest in the architecture of different testing facilities and quizzed Neeson on the bizarre specializations required by the surrounding energy research buildings. Neeson felt himself relaxing. Haj was already impressed with the corporate splendor. Everything would be fine.
Jason met them just inside the door and shook hands with the architect. As Haj entered the control room, Neeson glanced back at Jason with questioning eyes. Thumbs-up. We’re good.
The techs were busy setting up and checking off protocols. None of them had a friendly look for the evil boss who was making them do panic work on Saturday. Neeson did nothing to placate them.
Haj entered the wind tunnel itself and circled around the tower with his hands clasped contemplatively behind him.
“Have you ever been in a wind tunnel before?” Neeson asked.
“Yes, I have used them to test models for some skyscrapers I designed in Indonesia. But those weren’t as impressive as this.” Haj looked around at the curved walls and the giant fan assemblies on either end. “You wouldn’t allow me to be in the tunnel for the test, would you?” he asked, only half-joking.
“Sorry,” Neeson smiled, “but this isn’t our facility. We’ve been asked to keep people out of the tunnel for safety reasons. The room is designed to produce very high wind speeds that are consistent everywhere throughout the tunnel, so no matter where you stood, it would feel like a hurricane. It simply isn’t safe. But you should come back here in August when we get the real thing outside.”
Haj nodded his amused compliance. When all was ready, everyone left the floor, and the tunnel was sealed off. The tower of panels stood alone in perfect repose. Neeson took a deep breath as the fans began their turns. Full strength simulation #17. He looked over at Jason again for some redundant encouragement, but Jason just shrugged and crossed his fingers.
Panels began to open as the wind speed topped the 50 mph mark. Everything was progressing normally. Neeson noticed one or two panels that didn’t seem to be opening quite right, but he didn’t think that it was obvious enough to be noticed by someone seeing them from the first time. In fact, Haj seemed intrigued. As speeds topped 80, then 90, Haj stood closer to the window, peering intently in. Neeson began to get a good feeling. We’ve got him, he realized.
Suddenly, everything went dark. With the exception of blinking red indicators, every light inside the tunnel and control room turned off and left them in total darkness. A minute later, they were re-illuminated in the dull orange of emergency back-up lights.
“What happened?” Neeson yelled angrily, forgetting his VIP voice. No one had any idea. The computers were rebooting. No data was available.
“I’ll go down to the basement,” Jason said. “Call the facilities guy,” he commanded over his shoulder to a technician. Neeson turned to Haj, who hadn’t moved.
“I’m afraid we may have to wait a moment, Haj. I don’t know what…”
“It’s fine,” Haj said, “I understand technical difficulties. You go find out what is wrong.”
Neeson left the control room, making sure to close the door calmly behind him, then jogged furiously down to the basement as he flashed through possible people to blame. How much were they paying to lease this place? And the owners couldn’t even ensure that the power supply could handle the specifications of their trials. Or the techs—had they taken short-cuts during the set-up because it was a Saturday morning and they were feeling sorry for themselves? Whatever the cause, what happened was unacceptable. Anything that didn’t go according to plan was unacceptable.
The facilities manager, an old man with older tastes in professional fashion, was already talking with Jason by the time Neeson found them. Bouncing his flashlight beam over pipes and cable bundles, the manager guided them to the main power control center. The flashlight slowly made its way over the system until it settled on a breaker box. It was immediately obvious to Neeson why he’d stopped there. The bottom of the metal box was charred and partially broken, and as the manager carefully opened it up, they saw that the entire lower portion, including the wires protruding from it, was completely destroyed. The three men glanced at each other.
“What do you think? Some kind of overload?” asked the manager with a grim expression.
“Maybe,” said Jason. “We were pretty lucky there wasn’t a fire.”
Neeson, who knew enough about electrical engineering to understand the seriousness of the damage, asked, “Is there any way to fix this today?”
The manager answered with a slow, pessimistic exhale. Jason didn’t offer any hope either. Neeson looked up at the ceiling in frustration and considered his options.
“Look,” he finally said, “you work on this for the next hour. I’m going to take Haj out to the town center for some lunch. Try and get things back running, but if not, we have to cancel the demonstration. It should go without saying that I would rather not do that.” Once his meaning was clear, he went back upstairs, wondering if it were possible that Haj hadn’t eaten lunch before 1:00.
* * * *
In the center of Chlorophyll Valley, several enterprising real estate developers had constructed a cobblestone plaza surrounded by shops, restaurants, and entertainment facilities catering to the newly affluent, up-and-coming innovators and their clients and lackeys. Neeson escorted Haj to the patio seating of Club Kabob and placed his phone where he could see any updates as soon as they arrived.
“I’m sorry again for the disappointment,” Neeson said, his VIP voice fully restored now. “The building isn’t ours, and even though we gave them our load requirements upfront, it looks like their wiring just couldn’t handle it. We were just getting to the exciting part, too.”
“It is OK, Neeson. You do not have to keep apologizing. I have dealt with many testing glitches in my time, it’s simply part of the process. At least I can report to Mr. Reynolds about the first part of the test.” Neeson didn’t want to pursue the subject of Lance Reynolds just then, so the approaching waiter was a welcome distraction.
“The sampler plate, extra hummus on the side,” Neeson ordered. Haj pointed at a building across the way.
“You have a KM Center here?”
Neeson nodded. “You know Kaah Mukul?”
“I helped them with some designs when Myung-Ki Noh was first starting it up several years ago. I’ve never been to one of the centers, however. If I’d been a smarter business man,” Haj gave a courteous nod toward Neeson, “I would have invested
in the company early on. I thought his ideas were clever, but I did not see how profitable they would be and now I feel very foolish. Do you visit Kaah Mukul?”
“It’s popular with a lot of the younger programmers around here. They’ll go to play Ullamaball or something to blow off some steam during lunch or after work. Jason, who you met, takes his staff down there every so often as a group geek team-building exercise. That’s how he justifies charging it to the corporate account, at least. Of course, it helps that there’s a bar next door.”
“But you don’t play?”
“Oh, no,” Neeson sipped his water. “I have an interest in it, but it’s business related. Have you heard about their executive centers? They’re only in the really big KM centers near corporate hubs like this. Anyone who has an interest in placing some marketing or design strategy in the Kaah Mukul world goes to these offices and can interface with Kaah Mukul business contacts directly using their private network. I was just there a few weeks ago to submit a proposal for installing a virtual WindSkin system on one of their skyscrapers.”
“Really? What did they say?”
“Haven’t heard back yet. If you know Mr. Noh, maybe you can put in a good word for us. It would sure help with our PR.”
Haj shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I do not have a close connection with him. He is a very unusual and very distant man, and I only worked with him a short time. I cannot help you there.”
Neeson shrugged it off. “Worth a shot.” The waiter brought out their kabobs and pita on a platter, and Haj attacked his food with gusto. Neeson cast him a calculating look and put his own fork down.
“We are great admirers of your work over at WindSkin,” Neeson said. “Corazon Resort is truly superb from an architectural standpoint—from all standpoints. It sets the new gold standard. I think I can say without exaggeration that Corazon Resort and WindSkin are the perfect match in terms of cutting-edge technology and leadership in their respective fields.”
Neeson’s phone vibrated with an update from Jason: Need more time. Not pretty over here. He put the phone aside as Haj continued to eat.
