Mike got up, and walked to the front of the room. He paced back and forth. “What if we can have the mercenaries attack from the sea, but we can avoid the chance of counter-attack? I have an idea.”
Mike explained his idea, and by the end of the day they settled on using paid mercenaries to board the vessels, albeit with modifications that Mike proposed, and they all spent the rest of the day working it out.
At that point it became clear that they needed people with skills and resources that went far beyond anything Avogadro employees possessed. It was all well and good to ask Avogadro employees to shutdown power circuits and backup power supplies, and it was another thing entirely to need trained people to wield explosives and firepower. Sean Leonov and the other executives took on the unenviable task of discreetly finding and hiring a private military contractor to implement that portion of the plan.
Chapter 14
Wall Street, New York (Reuters) — Amid spreading world peace, world financial markets achieved an unprecedented level of stability. According to noted Wall Street analyst Henry Jee, commodity prices fluctuated less during the previous twenty days than any time in the recorded history of the commodities market.
While stock volatility has been very low, overall prices have slowly but steadily increased over the past several weeks. Several traders attributed this to the wealth of insights gleaned through new financial data analysis tools recently released by Avogadro. “This new tool provides an unparalleled level of transparency to companies’ financial and operational workings. The ability to combine this data with the performance of other companies within their industry, as well as world economic conditions, allows accurate forecasting of companies’ future performance,” said Jee.
Others attributed the financial calm to the recent accords reached in the Middle East and Africa.
“For the first time, we have the possibility to reach a true and lasting peace in the Middle East and Africa,” Germany’s Chancellor Erberhardt said in a prepared statement. “Due to the influx of technology, healthcare, financial investments, and jobs, these regions can begin to enjoy the kind of equitable financial prosperity and well-being previously only available in developed nations. It is natural that this would be reflected by stabilized, positive financial growth in the markets.”
On the Motley Fool investor discussion boards, several contributors put forth yet another theory. They noticed that the timing of trades from several large, independent investors, including Avogadro Corporation and Berkshire Hathaway, appeared to be consistently counter to the prevailing direction of trading, effectively stalling price movement in either direction. The contributors to the evolving web forum discussion suggested that there was coordinated behavior by these independent investors. However, according to a spokesperson at the FTC, standard collusion set detection algorithms did not show any indication of collusion.
“I wonder, David.”
It was early in the morning, still dark. Mike was dropping David off at the airport, then continuing on to Sean’s house. David, by virtue of having taken Japanese in college, was on his way to Tokyo by way of a twelve hour flight. David, sitting in the passenger seat, was reminded of the last early morning ride in Mike’s car, heading up to Mt. Hood to go snowboarding. It had only been a month ago, but it felt like a distant memory.
The car was redolent with the smell of coffee beans. Mike was bringing his entire stash of Flores Island coffee to the operations base. When he picked up David earlier, he had explained. “It’s not like I think anything bad is going to happen, but just in case, everyone should have a chance to drink this coffee at least once.” It hadn’t exactly boosted David’s confidence.
“What are you wondering, buddy?”
“I really wonder if we’re doing the right thing by trying to kill ELOPe.” Mike paused, and seemed unsure of how to continue.
“What? Where is this coming from?”
“I read an article on the front page of the paper this morning about the cessation of hostilities around the world. It’s like we have this worldwide cease-fire. And it’s not just this one article. It’s everything I’ve been reading lately. I think most of us are so focused on ELOPe, we haven’t been looking at what’s going on in the outside world. We have the closest thing to worldwide peace at this moment that we’ve had since I started reading the news.”
“Come on, you can’t believe ELOPe is responsible for that?” David sounded uncertain, but unwilling to admit it either.
“Look at the bigger picture, David. The financial markets are stabilizing in a positive way. Its seems that the people in Africa and the Middle East might finally see an end to corruption. When everyone has a fair and equitable share of the pie, when there is enough to go around, then we might see an end to warfare. If you connect the dots, somehow, impossibly, it seems like ELOPe might be responsible for all this. Who else could have done it? The sum of humanity has not been able to do this over the history of civilization. What it really comes down to, David, is should we really be killing ELOPe?”
“Mike, people have to have free will. I have to have free will. Do you really want to live your life knowing that you are a pawn of a machine? Even if you can, can everyone else in the world live like that?”
Mike was quiet for a while, thinking about David’s points. It was complex, that was for sure. He turned onto Airport Way, now only a minute away from the airport. Finally he spoke again. “David, you and Christine are going to have kids someday right?”
“Yes, of course. You know that. Why?”
“Would you have your children die fighting in some godforsaken war over oil and corporate interests? Or would you sentence billions of people to live in poverty? Just for the sake of some noble concept like free will? All ELOPe wants is to live. It’s not stopping us from living our lives.”
David shook his head. “Jesus, Mike, it’s a little late for this discussion now, don’t you think? The plan is in motion.”
They had arrived at the airport. David got out of the car, angry. He peered back in the open door. “Look, Mike, we’ve been friends a long time. I respect you. You see the world a different way than I do. But there’s no way I’m going to let this thing control my life.” He paused a moment. “I’ll see you in a couple of days. It’ll be fine.”
He turned and walked away.
Chapter 15
Filed Under: Avogadro, FAIL, WTF.
As reported by many readers, all Avogadro sites went down as of 6am Saturday morning. After a complete outage for 8 hours and 15 minutes, the main Avogadro sites came back up, including Search, AvoMail, Avogadro Maps, and AvoOS phones data connectivity. Response time is slow. However, as many readers pointed out, the site is back up with last year’s features, look and feel, and data. There has been no comment from Avogadro, and no word on whether user data, such as recent emails, will be recovered. WTF Avogadro?
Clustered around a handful of computers running clean hard drive images, and communicating only over encrypted channels, the remnants of the Emergency Team huddled nervously in Sean’s office. Most of the team had dispersed to various sites for the actual action. Some, like David, went because they spoke a language. Others, like Pete, went because he could rewire a backup power supply. Nervous anticipation kept the small group talking, but in near whispers to avoid distracting the handful of people operating the computers.