Tommy Hou’s new boss was Sankar Mittal. He hailed from IIT Mumbai with a PhD in software engineering. After career building stints at Oracle and then Facebook, Sankar was essentially the only thing resembling a professional manager within Thimk’s AI think tank. Therefore, despite a braintrust of young prodigies that left him trailing and baffled from a technical perspective, he was the only real communicator and had the discipline to herd the random and sometimes bizarre personalities under his charge. He was also the buffer - the window into the eccentric team, and also the advocate and the promoter. He was great at it. And the dozen or so geniuses, loosely grouped according to particular efforts, almost invariably loved him. Which is to say that he didn’t interfere with them, or put them on the spot or pressure them over deadlines. Sankar was nurturing and he was fun.
“Hi Sankar, I’m finally here,” announced Tommy as he arrived at Sankar’s expansive low-walled cubicle.
“Hey! Welcome. It is so good to have you here. It’s a little strange around here, compared to normal. We were just getting back into the swing of being here and working together. Then, Boom! Another flare-up. Management wants us to figure out how we roll and still make progress, in a permanently remote working situation.”
“Yah. It’s crazy. It just seems like it will never go away. So, I think it’s right to consider that scenario. Maybe this could be the new normal.”
“Sad, but true.” Both of them were face to face but may as well have been on the phone, given that the company-issued masks covered much of their facial expressions. “Tommy, The whole group will be in around at lunch today and we will grab food and spread out in the big conference room. Everyone wants to meet you. I will warn you in advance, some of them are already asking whether they can join your group. I leave that up to you to decide but just to maintain sanity, let me know first, so I can make sure we don’t drop the ball on something important.”
“Yes. Absolutely. Of course.”
“So, for now, I need to go out for a short while. We have you in the cube over there in the corner. It’s set up with a good workstation. It’s the most private, which isn’t saying much. But, maybe we won’t actually be working here very often,” Sankar paused, contemplating. “Maybe we won’t be working here at all.”
Tommy just nodded, acknowledging his meaning. “Great. Thanks.”
Following a couple of hours with IT people on the phone, trying to get his online accounts in order, Tommy noted some activity in the offices around him. People were starting to filter in. Passers bye were glancing into his cubicle, obviously hoping to stop and make an introduction, but noting the receiver pinned between his ear and shoulder, they kept walking. A half hour later, having concluded his business with IT, Tommy walked over and saw several codies already hunched over their platters of assorted nosh. Sankar walked up behind him. “Tommy!” Tommy whirled. “Go out that door, across the patio. The canteen is in the next building.” Sankar carried his overloaded tray into the expansive conference room and immediately started making small talk.
Tommy wandered into the canteen. He had been there before, during his interviews. He was immediately reminded of the incredible bounty. But this time it was different. Sparse, lacking the variety,
and the vibrant activity. No more manned stations and white chef’s coats and the occasional toque blanche. The virus was not only a physical hazard. It also attacked the spirit and deprived the soul. He strode over to the Asian corner and found a reasonable assortment of edible-looking items and headed back toward the meeting.
Tommy could see Sankar through the full length glass wall panels of the conference room, waving his arms, his mouth moving in rapid fire. Sankar then saw Tommy coming and his expression was suddenly a look of shock. Sankar pointed and kept talking. Knowing that he was the subject of discussion, Tommy was suddenly uncomfortable. But he proceeded, lunch tray in hand toward the open conference room door.
“Tommy!” Blurted Sankar, arms raised as if preparing to embrace. “Meet everyone.” Some of the codies jumped to there feet, instincts directing them to come over and shake hands, but then realizing their mistake, slowly reseated themselves, slightly embarrassed. Others just smiled and nodded. One in particular didn’t even look up from his phone, as he held a large french fry in the air, ketchup clinging to its droopy end, as it awaited consumption. Only one thing could be attended to at a time, although it was always attended to perfectly. This young man made a very strange picture. His hair was wild and his face unshaven. That alone was not unusual in deep software circles. But he wore a pink tank top and it revealed musculature and expansive, intricate tattoos. That was definitely unusual within the coding sect. The lack of acknowledgment from this one individual drew Tommy’s interest far more than all of those clamoring for his attention.
Tommy smiled and offered pleasantries, but then glanced over again at the tattooed arms, one of them moving slowly to insert the unsuspecting french fry into the bizarre coder’s barely opened mouth. Once the fry had been chewed and swallowed, only then did the coder’s attention refocus on his phone screen.
“Bassie!” Sankar called over to the distracted coder, snapping him out of his stupor. He jumped and looked around quickly as if shocked to find that there were other people in the room. “Meet Tommy Hou. Remember I told you about him?”
“Fuck, Shank. I know.” Bassie shifted his gaze precisely and he snapped Tommy a nod of acknowledgement. Tommy analyzed Bassie carefully in every respect, noting an almost slurred annunciation. Bassie meanwhile retrained his thoughts toward the basket of fries.
Questions issued sporadically from the group, which as a collective could barely contain its excitement, Bassie notwithstanding. “We tried your technique on the facilities department. They didn’t know about it, but …” One of the more vocal codies was suddenly cutoff by Sankar.
“Okay! Let’s not go there. Long story short, Tommy, we don’t see the same effects. There must be more to it than we could get from the papers.”
Tommy nodded rapidly, winding up his response. “You can’t see it based on what we put out there. It’s considered too dangerous. Even at MIT, I kept the real secret to myself because I was worried. We discussed this before. I will keep the secret even here, at least for a while. I’m concerned about the technique being used improperly.”
Having bottomed-out on fries, Bassie was now more attentive, trained on Tommy, mouth hanging open with a blank stare. “It’s bullshit,” Bassie muttered. “Try it on me.” Sankar was about to launch into damage control but held back. The group just sat, glancing between two newly minted rivals, waiting to see what might happen next. Disappointingly, Tommy just smiled and turned to look at the others, essentially ignoring Bassie altogether. For his part, Bassie also checked out immediately, now back to his screen, as if nothing had changed.
The next day, they were back in the same room, this time going through their projects as a courtesy to Tommy, showing off their own formidable talents. Sitting next to Tommy was Benjamin Locke, referred to exclusively as “Lucky”. Nearly everyone seemed to have nicknames. “What is Bassie’s real name?” Inquired Tommy.
“Sebastian Veces.”
“I don’t get it. America is so into nicknames. Bassey is from Sebastian?”
“That’s a good guess. But too obvious. You see the way he always has his mouth hanging open? And then he will like work his jaw up and down, like a fish.” As Lucky explained, Tommy looked over at Bassie, who was seated at the opposite end of the long table, again buried in his screen. As if on cue, he had his mouth hanging open and then suddenly opened and closed it rapidly, a near perfect imitation of a fish gulping water. “It could have been much worse,” continued Lucky. “At first, we were calling him feces. But Shankar put a stop to it. Bassie’s really strange. He didn’t seem to care either way.”
“What is his specialty?”
“Bassie? You name it. I mean the guy is unbelievable. I consider my self an excellent coder. But that guy is next level. I mean, in one all-nighter he can do what it would take me a week. And it’s always damn near bullet proof.” Tommy absorbed it, glancing at Bassie with a newly formed ounce of respect.
“Okay people, shall we begin?” Shankar kicked off the meeting. “Before we get into the reviews, which I hope you can all keep short and sweet, Tommy has agreed to start off with some of the ideas he has and what he plans to work on in the first half a year or so.” Everyone now paid full attention, leaning in as not to miss a sound or a gesture. Even Bassie.
“Hey. Thanks very much Shankar. I can’t wait to hear what you are all working on. For me, I will build a small team of maybe four or five people initially. It’s really just to continue my work on the working memory and long term memory model. This is the part that really needs to be improved as the foundation for deep learning algorithms to be effective. I have a good starting point but there needs to be a lot of rapid iteration and extended exercises to see if the method is stable and reliable.”
“What about the mind control thing?” Blurted Bassie.
“Okay! Let’s get one thing straight,” broke in Shankar. “We are not using terms like mind control, brain washing, that kind of thing. It would be terrible publicity. This is a top secret effort. You have all signed special NDA’s on this topic. Please! Watch what you say, even jokingly.”
“Cortical resonance biasing,” continued Tommy, as he stared down Bassie.
“I want to work on it,” declared Bassie without hesitation.
“You said it was bullshit,” shot Lucky, feeling competitive based on his own ambitions to join Tommy.
“I was just kidding, Moron.” Shankar thought about refereeing but he held back.
“I don’t want to get into team selection yet,” interjected Tommy. “But it’s nice to know that I have some support. Maybe it’s better, I go through some recent test data that no one has seen yet. It is very promising. Would that be okay?”
The team chimed a cacophony of affirmatives except Bassie, who now had reverted to his screen. People noticed his sudden withdrawal. Shankar saw it as rude and now interjected. “Sebastian?”
“You had me at bacon,” was all he said without looking up. Tommy was a little confused by it but the room sighed in relief and the talk continued. As Tommy led them through his new, mysterious revelations and conclusions, questions began to issue, sometimes on top of one another. Hardly a member of this team understood anything about decorum, and they were compelled to vent their questions immediately as they formed. Another dynamic was also at work, which was to get noticed. Bassie alone remained stoic, eyes and mouth seemingly subjected to gravity well beyond Earth’s pull.
At the end of Tommy’s remarks, Tamara, aka Dolly, cemented the pandering with a lone clap that immediately drew in the rest, not to be outdone. Predictably, Bassie did not join in the applause but he was uncharacteristically animated and bright eyed. Shankar sensed that Bassie might even say something and as the claps subsided, he asked, “Sebastian, any thoughts?”
Bassie, with mouth in full fish position, rotated his head side to side rapidly, eyes also darting to cover the expanse of the group, as he stated, “What’s in your wallet?” In an imitated voice of excitement. There were some chuckles. Tommy had a confused expression.
“He always says shit like that. It somehow means he agrees,” confided Lucky. Now it was Tommy’s turn to sigh with relief.
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