William Hertling
AVOGADRO CORP.
The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears
For Rowan, Luc, and Gifford
Avogadro
1. Avogadro’s Number: The Avogadro constant (symbols: L, NA) is the number of “elementary entities” (usually atoms or molecules) in one mole, that is (from the definition of the mole), the number of atoms in exactly 12 grams of carbon-12: 6.022 × 1023
2. Avogadro Corporation: Avogadro Corporation is an American corporation specializing in Internet search. It generates revenue from paid advertising on search, email (AvoMail), online mapping, office productivity, etc. In addition, the company develops a mobile phone operating system called AvoOS. The company name is based on Avogadro’s Number, or 6 followed by 23 zeros: 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
elope
1. v. To run away; abscond. From Middle Dutch ontlopen, to run away
2. n: ELOPe: Email Language Optimization Project. An Avogadro Corporation R&D project to improve email communication effectiveness.
Prologue
David Ryan turned sideways and pushed through a gap between a sequined dress on one side and a suit on the other. He stood on tip toes, and craned his head to see over the crowd. He smiled at the sight of his wife’s blonde hair, only ten feet away. An arm jostled him, and champagne sloshed towards the rim of the three glasses he was balancing in his hands. Shuffling forward through the dense crowd, he finally rejoined his wife Christine, who was chatting with Mike Williams, his lead developer and good friend. He handed them their glasses with relief.
Glancing around, David saw that the annual Avogadro Corporation Christmas party was completely over the top, just as everyone expected. Another banner year at the world’s largest Internet company meant another no holds barred party. Avogadro rented the Portland Convention Center, the only venue large enough to hold Avogadro Corp’s ten thousand Portland employees. The theme this year was the Roaring Twenties. While a Jazz band played, usually reserved Avogadro geeks danced and swiftly became inebriated on free alcohol. Glasses chimed in toasts, lights flashed, and laughter sounded from all around. David glanced at Christine, who looked stunning and exotic in a black sequined flapper dress. David smiled again, happy to be celebrating, and with good cause. His project was successful. He was married to a beautiful, brilliant woman. He had a great friend and technical lead in Mike. He had every reason to be happy.
As David took a self-congratulatory sip of champagne, Mike nudged his arm, sending champagne over the rim again. “Here comes Sean,” Mike said, eyebrows raised in awe.
David hesitated, feeling a bit of awe himself. Sean Leonov, cofounder of Avogadro, was something of a demigod at the company. While David had been hired by Sean himself, it didn’t lessen the hero worship that David felt in his presence. Sean was a brilliant scientist who not only designed the original Avogadro search algorithms and cofounded the company with Kenneth Harrison, but he continued to write research papers while he helped lead Avogadro.
“Well, David, Mike, Christine, Merry Christmas,” Sean greeted them, demonstrating the amazing memory that was just one of his many talents. He clasped David’s shoulder, then shook hands with Christine and Mike. He turned to David and smiled. “It’s been a while since we talked, but I heard through the grapevine that you’ve been making great progress with the project. When do I get a demo?”
“Any time you want, we’re ready,” David replied. “I think the results are significantly more promising than anyone expected.”
“I’m excited to hear that. Send me an email, and I’ll have my admin set up some time. On the other hand, I’ve heard some rumors that Ops is complaining about the server resources you need.”
David groaned inside. Ops was short for Operations, and it was the part of Avogadro that was responsible for maintaining and allocating the all important servers. It required a million servers spread across nearly a hundred data centers around the world to run all the Avogadro applications. Ops was also David’s Achilles’ heel right now.
David clenched his jaw, and struggled to keep his voice calm. “Yes, it’s true that we’re consuming more resources that we projected. But we are functionally complete. User testing has shown that ELOPe is more effective that we originally projected. Resource utilization is our last major hurdle. When you see the results, hopefully you’ll agree the resources are worth it.”
Sean frowned at David’s explanation. “I look forward to the demo, but remember we have to bring this project to scale. I’ve already pulled strings to get your research project onto the production servers, so you’d have more horsepower. But before you release, you’ve got to solve these scalability and performance issues. Hundreds of millions of eager customers will hit your product the day you release.”
Sean smiled politely and tilted his head, an expression David had seen Sean make many times before when he expected someone to know better or do better.
“So how’s the gaming business?” Sean asked, turning to Christine.
David tuned out of the conversation, and fumed inwardly at Sean, Operations, and the world at large.
Sean chatted with Christine for a minute about her work, and then suddenly said quick goodbyes as he saw someone he wanted to talk to. As Sean left, David turned to Mike, letting loose the anger he felt. “Damn that fool Gary, he’s going to sabotage the project before we even get a chance to prove how successful it will be,” he spit out, then clenched his jaw again. “Why can’t he just leave us in peace?”
Christine put her hand on his arm. “You will succeed with ELOPe,” she reassured him. “Gary is not going to be able to stop your project. Besides,” she smiled at both of them, “with a presentation to Sean, you’ll have that much more executive support.”
David returned the smile without much conviction. She might be right on some theoretical level, but it didn’t change the fact that he was still furious at Gary. Gary Mitchell was the Vice President of Communication Products, which included AvoMail, their email product, and a whole bunch of collaboration tools like an instant messenger and a wiki.
He knew Gary was carrying a chip on his shoulder about their whole project. Six months earlier, when it became obvious that David’s team needed far more computing resources than typically allocated to R&D projects, he’d gone to Sean Leonov. Sean quickly made the decision to give David’s team access to the production servers in the Communication Products group. They had massive amounts of spare capacity, and it seemed like an easy decision.
But Gary Mitchell resented Sean’s decision. He didn’t believe a research and development project should have access to production servers, and he had been a vocal opponent. Since he couldn’t take it out on Sean, he took it out on David and his team. He had been looking for the last several months for any excuse to get them booted from what he regarded as his own back yard.
Mike chuckled, trying to diffuse the tension. “Hey, you can hardly blame him. We’re using five hundred times more resources than we predicted, which has got to be a record for any R&D project in the company. Heck, you know how few projects even make it onto the customer operations radar at our stage? Usually R&D projects make do with the dedicated R&D servers.”
Amidst the glitter and music of the party, and despite the efforts of Mike and Christine to cheer him up, David felt a burning resentment rise up in his stomach. He had so much invested in this project. Without even thinking about it, he swallowed his champagne in a single gulp. “I’ve given ELOPe everything I have for the last two years, and we’re so damn close. I will get this project released, no matter what it takes.”