PORTLAND, Oregon — January 12th, 2010 UTC — Avogadro Inc. today announced it is acquiring up to 100 retired oil tankers for floating data centers.
“We are experiencing an unprecedented increase in demand for server resources, thanks to new strategic partnerships, including our Secure Government Applications Platform,” said Jake Riley, head of the OffShore Data Center project. “While we continue to maintain our traditional data centers, our primary infrastructure going forward is floating data centers. However, our barge-based approach lacks sufficient scale and flexibility. As the oil industry gears down, we can acquire retired oil tankers at favorable prices, and put them to good use.”
For more information, please contact Avogadro at AvogadroCorp.com
“Thanks for driving us,” Mike said from the back seat.
“No problem,” Christine said, behind the wheel of her Passat. “What’s your plan when you get there?”
“Gene’s sure he can find Sean in a city of ten million people using no computers or telephones,” David said, still sounding unconvinced.
“It’s not ten million people,” Gene explained again, exasperated. “Sean’s parents are older Russian immigrants. That makes it highly likely that they live in or know people who live in Brighton Beach. There’s seventy-thousand people that live in Brighton Beach, and only about half that many households.”
“So you’re going to talk to thirty-five thousand people?”
“No. Look, kid, this is basic math. Sean Leonov is the wealthiest Russian in the world, and hence will be a well known name in Russian families. If someone has met or knows anything about Sean’s parents, they’ll remember. If you use Dunbar’s number, and estimate that each person knows about one hundred and fifty people, in a population of seventy-thousand people that means that the odds are in my favor that the first person I talk to will either know Sean Leonov’s parents or know someone who does.”
“Oh.” David became quiet, pondering the math.
Christine laughed. David was brilliant, but it was fun to see someone outsmart him.
David said a hurried goodbye to Christine, while Mike and Gene waited. She looked worried, and David pushed a lock of hair out of her face.
“Be careful,” she said, hugging herself.
“Don’t worry, hon, we’ll be fine.”
“I wish I could call you.”
“You know we can’t. We just can’t take any chances of being tracked.”
“I know. Just go.”
They kissed quickly, then David grabbed his suitcase and walked toward the terminal. He looked backwards once, and saw Christine watching him with a sad face. David took a deep breath and rejoined Mike and Gene.
Even though they couldn’t imagine how ELOPe could track passenger flight information or credit card transactions, they talked it over the day before, and decided to err on the side of caution. They flew into Washington, D.C.’s Dulles airport, figuring that a flight into Dulles could not easily be connected to their real destination of Brooklyn, NY. Gene had wanted to take the even more drastic measure of driving across the country, but David and Mike convinced him that they didn’t have the time to waste.
Hours later, glad to be out of the plane, David waited in line with Gene for a rental car at the Dulles airport feeling out of sorts. David normally carefully planned everything in his life. Now he was on the opposite side of the country after a spontaneous flight, getting ready to drive to New York. He had never felt so adrift in his life. He thought back to last night, Christine holding him in her arms.
Mike rejoined them, carrying coffees on a tray and the New York Times, interrupting David’s introspection. “Guys, you are never going to believe this!”
“They still print paper newspapers?” David said sarcastically. “You’re right, I don’t believe it.”
“Be nice, kid,“ Gene said. “If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have any news at all right now.”
Mike just ignored David’s comments and went on. “You have to read these stories. On page one, the lead story is about how Germany has suddenly changed their international policy. When was the last time Germany involved itself in international affairs?”
David shook his head. “I don’t know, when?”
“Never. That’s when. Not since World War II. Now, out of the blue, they’re negotiating a disarmament and peace treaty in the Arab world. And they apparently traded away the sum total of their intellectual property to get it. Then on page two, there’s a story about how Germany just adopted Avogadro’s AvoMail. How can no one connect the dots with these two stories side by side?”
David and Gene stared at Mike and the paper, their faces a mixture of fatigue, astonishment, and disbelief. “I just don’t know whether to react with alarm or resignation at this point,” David finally replied.
“Not only that, but it looks like we moved on past floating barges for our offshore data centers,” Mike said, moving onto another page two story. “There’s a sidebar article on Avogadro, saying that in order to support the new secure government cloud services, Avogadro is purchasing a fleet of twenty recently retired oil tankers to use as the floating bases for our new offshore data centers.”
“Great, the bastard will be mobile now,” Gene got out in his usual growl. “Smarter than us, distributed, in control of the communication system, invisible, and mobile. Wars have been lost with fewer disadvantages than this.”
After they paid for and finally obtained the rental car, Gene drove the four hours north to New York City. They were mostly silent. Nobody was in the mood for small talk. Once in the New York area, Gene headed to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. There, he dropped David and Mike off at their hotel.
“Let me do this by myself, guys. I’ve never done detective work with partners, and the three of us will make folks nervous. I’ll meet you tonight at the hotel.”
David and Mike watched Gene drive off. They were travel-weary but nervous, and decided to get a drink at a bar across the street. The bar looked like the neighborhood watering hole, friendly but plain. David ordered two whiskeys.
“What do you think is going to happen?” David asked, hunched over his drink, staring into the wood bar. “Is it going to be like the Terminator movies? Or The Matrix?”
“I don’t know, David.” Mike shook his head. “I know most of science fiction does deal with artificial run amok, but then there’s also been plenty that’s been written about how artificial intelligence and humankind would have cooperative relationships.”
“Really, like what?” David asked, turning to look at him.
“Well, nothing is coming to mind right now.” Mike paused. “I was just thinking about how they turned the earth into pure computronium in one book. The humans had to move out to Jupiter or be assimilated into computing matter.”
“Jesus, I thought you were supposed to be the optimist.”
Mike shrugged.
“I always thought that an A.I. would be more, well, human,” David started. “That it would be something we could relate to. This thing, whatever it is, it’s more like an insect in its intelligence. It does things to promote its own survival, very sophisticated things, but we can’t talk to it or understand how it reasons. We can’t have a conversation about what constitutes good behavior, or a conversation about how we can collaborate together.”
They both mused on that for a moment.
“Remember Isaac Asimov’s Three Rules of Robotics?” Mike asked. “Asimov thought we would give robots immutable rules to safeguard human life. He assumed that creating those robots would be a deliberate, conscious act. We never thought we were creating an A.I., so we never thought through the implications.”