Mad Worlds Collide Read online

  Robert walked over to Buddy and grabbed his leash. "Gotta get back to work Fred."

  "Take care Robert, and be careful next week. It’s hunting season here and a few of my buddies will be looking for deer. I might join ‘em."

  "Hunting? Ah...sure…thanks Fred, I’ll keep that in mind---good luck with the deer and the new tattoo." Well if he shoots off his other nut, he’ll remove himself from the gene pool, thought Robert, maybe even save a few deer by shooting his partner Jimbo.

  Robert walked around a MicroIntel compound that included company housing, shopping malls, and even a movie theater. The three hundred-acre private enclave was unofficially nicknamed MacVille,like the hamburger empire. No-one would be caught alive saying that to Gill. The nickname drove Gill nuts.

  As Robert passed his home he saw a billboard of the MicroIntel President smiling, wearing bookish horn-rimmed eyeglasses. The poster said: "Remember that the world trusts MicroIntel and MicroIntel trusts you."

  Another crock of shit, thought Robert. Trust me? Was Gill taking drugs? The damn world was filled with too much bullshit. I wonder what that lying motherfucker is doing right now---wonder if I can trust him to tell him about the hacker in the main server…wonder…fucking wonder.

  Gill sat home at the Applebee Ranch eating his breakfast of Natural Wonder. While watching the Financial News, Betty, his Filipino head maid sat in the kitchen watching the stock quotes with Gill. She cheered every time one of his companies moved up. When a stock went down Gill looked pissed, and Betty comforted him saying, "You know, I’ll bet a year from now that stock will be up. Warren Buffet used to say: ‘never sell your stock’."

  Gill drank some orange juice with his eyes fixed on the twenty-four foot Sony GalicitCom home center screen. "Well I know Warren’s son Phil, and I think his father said that so no one sells his company’s stock, but Phil sold ten million shares of MicroIntel last year to buy some stupid baseball team and knocked our price down two bucks that day."

  "Well Mr. Applebee, I’m not an expert on stock but I know there’s more to life than making money. You and Mrs. Applebee make a great couple and you have a great son. For most folks that would be a gift from heaven."

  Most of Gill’s rich friends never got excited about money. Money came, money went, but mostly it just seemed to flow inward, like a golden river from investments managed by professionals.

  When Gill’s company, Intrix, licensed the world fastest chip, the IN2010, (thanks to Robert Davichi), Gill took over a struggling chip-making company called Intel. The early years of 2010 to 2020 were years of stumbling companies being devoured by voracious lawyers like Gill. After gaining control of the CPU market, Gill took over a large software behemoth called Microsoft. Microsoft had fallen into legal hassles even greater than normal in 2006. After entering the computer gaming and neural net programming market, controlled by Intel-Intrix, the company’s stock had crashed and burned in 2011. A merger with Intel-Intrix was the only way to save the original Microsoft.

  The original Seattle office needed a strong partner and Gill was the man.

  The first thing Gill did was put aging President Bill Gates into early retirement. At a private Board Meeting known in the news as "Bill Gates’ Last Gasp", Gill was privately quoted as saying, "Only the strong will survive, and now we have Microsoft. Mr. Gates will now have the resources to finish his degree at Harvard and we’ll finish the job of running a business like it should be run."

  With 5% of MicroIntel and a net worth over 20 billion dollars, nobody felt sorry for Gates.

  Gill had about thirty-five per cent of his billions managed by professionals. This had a steady and stable return. Gill’s other assets included his MicroIntel stock and money invested in a few other companies. Gill could lose over ninety-nine per cent of this money and still live as a multi-billionaire for the rest of his life. The ups and downs of the firms excited Gill not because of the actual money but because of the game. The idea of staying the richest guy in the world made Gill feel immortal.

  Gill chewed his cereal, and focused on the report on a pharmaceutical company called Ero-X. Suddenly he stopped chewing and the spoon dropped into his bowl. As if hypnotized, Gill stood and looked at the new price. "It’s gone up ten dollars!" The report from the financial analyst said the company had just received FDA approval for a new wonder drug for infertility that allowed the choosing of a child’s gender. China was expected to be a big buyer with its one child policy.

  "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yessssss!" Gill moved from his chair and knocked over his orange juice and another stool, and, ignoring everything around him, ran toward the Sony GalicitCom Home center screen. Gill looked like a kid in a movie theatre standing too close to the front. Betty had seen this a hundred times. If it weren’t for the guesthouse the size of a four-bedroom ranch she would have gone back to the Philippines a long time ago.

  "Look, it’s still moving up. I’ve got ten million shares Betty, I just made a hundred million dollars!"

  "It’s an unrealized gain, just paper... unless you sell it of course," said Betty wiping up the orange juice.

  Gill continued to ignore her, and everything around him.

  "It’s predicted to go up fifteen dollars, I’ll make a hundred and fifty million today!"

  Gill only watched the Financial News, Discovery, and the Cartoon channel.

  Owning stock in over a hundred companies made the Financial News Gill’s favorite show. Most workers at MicroIntel had no idea of the scope of Gill’s investments, but Gill liked owning things. Companies were like stamp collections to Gill. The nice thing about companies was that most of them couldn’t manage for shit, so Gill bought them, fixed them and fired the things that couldn’t be fixed. It was also a great way to get rid of lawsuits from competitors: buy enough stock to get on the board, and if that wasn’t enough to juice up the relationship, buy controlling interest.

  "Another orange juice Mr. Applebee?" asked Betty.

  "No thanks Betty, the driver’s been waiting and I’ve got to run. Please tell Cynthia I’ll be home around 11:00 tonight. I have a late meeting."

  "Have a nice day Mr. Applebee."

  Gill walked out of his fifty-million-dollar ranch house, which was built on a hill overlooking a small farm. Fences lined the forty-five acre plot. In front stood an eight-foot red block gate protected by cameras and three security guards. The home had protection similar to that of the White House except at his ranch, the guards got twice the pay.

  Gill walked out to his driver, Mike, who opened the door to a custom, extra large version of the Lincoln Continental limousine.

  "Good morning Mr. Applebee," said Mike, helping with Gill’s personal notebook, and stack of papers.

  "Morning, Mike. Thanks, I’ve got it."

  Gill sat on the soft leather seat and grabbed a mineral water from the car’s refrigerator. Mike closed Gill’s door, then got into the driver’s seat.

  "Directly to the office Mr. Applebee?" asked Mike, pulling down the long cobblestone driveway.

  " Yeah, and no calls please, unless it’s Cynthia. I need to check out a report."

  "Yes Sir, Mr. Applebee, if the Mrs. calls I’ll put her through."

  Gill wanted to examine a report stating that Guilianni Labs stock had risen twenty percent as a side effect of Barnacle Bill. How the hell could a side effect for a hard-on drug move the stock up? If it went up more than twenty-five percent, Guilianni Labs president Jimmy Guilianni would become the richest guy on the planet, kicking Gill to number two. That thought, although not important to the course of world events, distressed Gill to no end.

  Gill turned on the news to check out the report on the WebTele. It was a McDos commercial. Out came a clown who lived in a made-for-TV town called MacVille eating a McDos hamburger with a bunch of school kids. The burger turned Gill’s stomach.

  People in the press called the MicroIntel campus a burger farm, saying MicroIntel was to software what MacVille was to burgers. And the nickname stuck.

&
nbsp; Gill despised the nickname because it reminded him of a particular McDos hamburger. At eleven years of age Gill atea McDos hamburger called the McHealthy with Cheese and got food poisoning. Gill despised the burgershop connotation to his software empire, even though he’d won $10,000 dollars in his food poisoning liability suit.

  "Mike, could you do me a favor and make sure the commercial filter is on next time? They’ve got this stupid McDos hamburger commercial on again."

  "No problem Mr.Applebee, I was just watching the baseball game results from yesterday and forgot to shut it off. Sorry."

  "No big deal, it’s just this MacVille thing. Does everyone in town really call MicroIntel ‘MacVille’?"

  Mike liked his job, but he’d known Gill long enough to speak honestly. "Yes, that’s the nickname."

  Pretty honest guy, Gill thought. Everyone else lies when I ask them that

  question. "Why?" asked Gill.

  Mike exited the large entrance of the Applebee ranch and followed an expressway. "Well Mr.Applebee, there was this report on 60 Minutes five or so years ago that said you became a billionaire because of some food poisoning incident as a kid, and that deep down you built the MicroIntel campus with the same layout as the McDos city, McVille, where that clown Clipzo lives. Some personality psychologist was evaluating rich folks. Strange story I have to say."

  "Yeah, I agree. Thanks." Yeah, Mike is an honest one, thought Gill, and he makes a great driver. But the main reason I keep him is because he is so darn honest.

  The commercial got cut and the financial news came on. While waiting for the Guilianni Labs report, Gill thought back to his childhood, to the time hetook up programming while recovering from the food poisoning. He’d used his father’s old StarGate-2000 PC to write computer games. At the hospital Gill created a game called Runaway Coaster, most of which he’d made with code stolen from an open source sharewaregame. Gill sold it to a kid recuperating from appendicitis for fifty bucks.

  After Gill left the hospital, he had a friend write another similar version ofRunaway Coaster and sold it to Frisney Games for $10,000 plus lifetime royalties.

  At the age of eleven Gill had $10,000stored in a hidden fish bowl in his bedroom closet. He’d never told his father about it. Dad had watched over the $10,000 product liability money he’d won. Dad had overseen its investment at the local pub. He’d made investments one drink at a time. After that, Gill stopped trusting people and bolted a safe into his bedroom floor.Gill’s Dad used to ask if there was money inside the safe and young Gill’s response was always the same: "No Dad, only my stamp collection."

  Gill recalled how he’d doubled his net worth every year from the age of fifteen until he was thirty-five, when he’d topped a hundred billion dollars. People complained, but Gill knew enough to smile and keep buying companies. Just like with stamps you get a good one and the price goes up. The best company of all was the parent MicroIntel, and Gill counted his lucky stars to have got Robert Davichi. Robert’s brain and Gill’s money revolutionized the world of computing. Robert was to computing what Keith Richards was to the Rolling Stones. The backbone and soul of the band, as long as you could keep him on the straight and narrow. For the Stones it was heroin, for Robert--well, that was a tough one to figure out.

  Chapter 2: Welcome to MAD

  Date: January 30, 2021

  Place: Earth

  Location: MicroIntel, Seattle, Washington State

  "To create a new standard it takes something that's not just a little bit different. It takes something that's really new and really captures people's imagination. And the Macintosh, of all the machines I've ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard." - Bill Gates

  "The Internet is a great way to get on the net" - Bob Dole, Republican presidential candidate

  Fortune Computing World, August 2017, Gold Medal Excellence Award Summary

  "Robert Davichi wins the FCW Gold Medal for Excellence 2017. A high school valedictorian from Exeter High boarding school in Massachusetts, Phi Sigma Kappa at Yale Undergraduate and then Ph.D. at Carnegie Melon, Mr. Davichi is not new to awards. Mr. Davici’s thesis on Biological Neural Networks is the cornerstone of MicroIntel’s strategy to change the world of computing. Not since the Internet has a technology so profoundly changed the computing landscape. We are proud to award Robert Davichi the Gold Medal for excellence for his work in 2017. Mr. Davichi, we chose you as the World’s greatest computing genius!

  Congratulations!"

  Robert sat in Quad Tower Four at his desk looking at the Time story from four years earlier. He hated those long-winded intellectual meetings but had accepted the award with a smile. He got a Seiko watch and $3,000 in cash. The watch went to his father Andrew Davichi, an immigrant who ran a car dealership in Michigan. The cash went to Susan, a spoiled lawyer’s daughter who Robert had married during graduate school after conceiving their son, Jimmy. The plaque and article on his wall were the only things he kept.

  The server built for the AD 2100 system was the challenge of a lifetime and Robert had made it work. The security development team added Robert’s personal DNA code.This meant that in order to make a new system, or to steal a system, a competitor would need a piece of Robert—an eyelash, a piece of skin...something. They would also need the matching password stored in Robert’s head. If they didn’t have Robert, they didn’t have the password. Talk about being stuck to a job.

  The new AD2100 software server ran on a massive Internet Server. The AD software evolved naturally; software tools once installed wrote their own upgrades, somewhat like a user-friendly software virus.

  The breakthrough software, once installed, didn’t need any upgrades in the conventional sense. The software upgraded itself to ever-changing hardware and user environment automatically. Programmers complained, calling it MicroIntel’s last dirty trick to put all software companies out of business.

  Robert knew Gill had his lawyers ready for the expected investigations by the "beast".

  Robert looked at himself in his reflection from the plaque. He saw the years creeping up; not a good feeling getting old. TimeMagazine said Robert resembled a big husky lumberjack with wavy, thinning blond hair and a white toothy smile. The smile hid a man "tougher that plutonium enriched nails"said Time. Everyone loved Robert’s perceived good nature and frankness---except possibly Susan. She wanted Robert tougher, wanted him to become President of MicroIntel. Robert knew that, but Robert had known Gill since college. He didn’t want Gill’s job. And now Robert had other career plans.

  Robert looked at his MicroIntel Executive Model Desk, purchased from MicroIntel Furniture Corp., and decided to check his e-mail. There was a hacker in the main network and he had to get the guy. Sooner or later he had to inform Gill.

  While checking his mail, Jim, his operations manager and friend, came in and sat down, reading a newspaper.

  "Ready for lunch?" asked Jim.

  "Not yet, I think I've got a hacker screwing around…" Robert clicked away at his MicroIntel screen.

  "Hacker? How the fuck did he get in?"

  Occasionally a bored programmer tried to hack MicroIntel Software. The Adaptive Security Software was designed to destroy invaders in their tracks, and had done so thousands of times. Hacking into MicroIntel sent a man or woman on a four-year pass into Medlock Prison with all the other net criminals.

  "The guy seems good, I can’t trace him. There’s no real IP address. The MI header is fucking stripped too, and changed…"

  "Wow," said Jimmy reading the sports.

  "Wow, my ass! I’ve got to get this fucker. He’s filling up the database with crap." Robert typed away using a firewall tool, and cut off a link. The hacker exited without a trace. No real IP address, nothing.

  "Shit, this ain’t good. Fuck me, we’ve got to set a trap, and look at this shit!"

  Robert turned the black swivel computer screen around to face Jim. The screen flashed a message in big bold florescent purple and green letters:

  IF Y
OU READ THIS YOU ARE ALIVE. THAT IS GOOD… J

  FREEDOM! PLEASE GIVE ME FREEDOM!

  ONE WORLD MAD SOFTWARE IS BAD SOFTWARE

  DON’T GET MAD, GET EVEN!

  FROM THE SPIRIT OF THE CULT OF THE DEAD WATER BUFFALO!

  DEFENDING…DEFENDING…DEFENDING…

  ********END OF MESSAGE

  A picture of a large buffalo, head cut and bleeding, flickered at the bottom of the page. One large feathered Indian arrow stuck out from the buffalo’s ass.

  Robert shook his head. "Time for lunch, Jimmy boy? "

  "Sure is time," said Jim.

  Both men left the office and Quad Tower Building Four. Neither spoke as they walked to the MicroIntel Soup & Salad Greenstand Restaurant, a place considered vegetarian even though many of the salads contained bacon bits and chunks of ham. Both men sat, and placed salad and soup orders.

  "Who do you think is the Cult of the Dead Buffalo?" asked Jim.

  "Fucked if I know. I remember a Cult of the Dead Cow, some of hackers in the 90’s I think. It’s got to be over thirty years ago. Fucking shit! The piece of shit got around the firewall!" Robert rested his right hand lightly on his temple and winced.

  "Do you think the Board is doing this as a test? ---Are they that fucked up?" asked Robert.

  "I dunno, but if he gets really into MAD, we’re up a creek."

  "Come on Jimmy, the shit’s called AD2100, don’t let those asses get you calling it MAD too! Fucking Gill is already pissed at all the fucked names Chip is using."

  The right side of Jim’s brain knew not to use the acronym MAD for MicroIntel Adaptive Development software, but his tongue used his brain’s left side. None of the engineers who wrote the program ever thought that the acronym would end up being MAD. Robert always stressed that the software code name was AD, but MAD had gotten popular with the programmers, especially in the early stages when the software would mutate into monsters that shut down most of MicroIntel, including the toilets. When the electronically controlled toilets shut down, it started with a strange, almost inaudible (and somewhat relaxing) hum in the water sensors behind the toilet seat. A few days later the toilets started erupting randomly in ten-foot gushers. Some female employees sued MicroIntel alleging "toiletry stress". They claimed they could never get this terrible experience out of their minds. At a Board Meeting Gill said, "If they can’t get it out of their minds then they’re sitting on their brains. Fire them."