Chapter 1
Where are they?
Sometimes I wish I had more locks. I realize that this is the most fair way of doing things, and let's face it, it was my idea in the first place. But once in a while I long for the days before Sentagon when I could have whatever I wanted. At least they can't take my thoughts.
Ok, so where did I put those keys?
Right there, in the bowl as expected. I've had my car disappear more than once and it couldn't have been more frustrating. You never know who exactly uses your stuff when you forget to lock it, but it always comes back a little bit worse for the wear.
I have about two thousand locks for all of my things, which might seem like a lot, but when you think about all of the stuff that you own, two thousand ends up being less than you need.
Even the most basic stuff needs a lock. Imagine trying to make fried eggs without a frying pan.
No time for eggs. I'm late for work.
I drive into my reserved spot near the main entrance. The building is nondescript. You wouldn't know that inside, engineers are laboring away on the world's most omniscient and powerful software. This is just one building on the huge campus which comprises Imperium.
As I walk up I can feel my hands beginning to sweat more than usual. I am an indispensable part of this company yet I always have a slight feeling of imposter syndrome.
There is no reason for me to even go into the office, it's just that I have no desire to work from home again. More importantly, today is the day that I quit.
I walk right past security, scanning my badge as usual, and casually greet the two security guards who are protecting the entrance.
"Morning," I say with a sense of insecurity.
"Good morning, Spacegoat," they say in tandem.
They were always friendly, almost uncomfortably so. It felt forced. Each time an employee walks into the building, the security guards are mandated to put on a smile and greet them, by name if possible. It was supposed to create a sense of community, but I had grown tired of it.
I turn my eyes away and walk through the heavy security doors through the mini-kitchen.
The mini-kitchens are stocked with every food that any of the employees has ever expressed interest in. It's overwhelming. Since Imperium controls the source of locks, we literally have unlimited resources. Everything that any employee wants or needs is at their disposal, while they are in the office.
I overhear a group of engineers who are lingering around the espresso machine.
"Yea I ran a 10K around the city on saturday and hiked through the valley sunday," says one.
"My girlfriend and I ran about twelve miles on Saturday, and hiked another fifteen more on Sunday," remarks another engineer.
"We took it easy this weekend. We took our dogs to the dog park and let them do most of the running." She laughs. "We did hike about ten miles Sunday though, and kayaked for a few more," says a third.
There is always a sense of one upmanship in everything the engineers talk about.
When they see me they become quiet and wait for me to pass. I smile fakely as I walk by. As soon as I'm down the hall, they start talking again.
Admittedly, I haven't endeared myself to many of the engineers. There are tens of thousands now, spread across multiple cities and countries, and I probably only know about fifteen.
My desk is in the middle of a large room, almost like a factory floor filled with desks.
As I sit down, I see Kaos already working, with her headphones on. She doesn't even acknowledge me, but that makes me happy. I dislike making small talk after a weekend. I don't care what my coworkers did and don't care to talk about what I had done. I don't do much usually, other than work, so there's not much to say anyway.
That weekend I had added a new module to Sentagon which improved the design patterns of some of the graph edge representations. The work was unremarkable from a product standpoint, but it kept me busy and I always enjoy fixing outdated or poor software architecture.
Kaos has been working on Sentagon almost since the beginning. In the early days, as the software was growing, she was actively adding the most important features. I relied heavily on her to implement the things for which I didn't have time or interest.
There are probably ten thousand Jims and ten thousand Xiaos and ten thousand Javiers. It's impossible to keep all those names straight, so it's easier to call people by a moniker, their unix name. More importantly, most of our communications are done remotely and when digging into the code, a person's uname is the only identifier of who had done what.
I can feel my heart beating.
Is this heart murmur a problem?
My hands are still sweating even as I continue to wipe them on my pant legs. I can't focus on anything, so I start to pull the latest repository updates and look over the outstanding pull requests. There isn't anything interesting in the list so I just stare at my screen as the new code is pulled to my development server.
"Somebody got a case of the mondays?" Krill asks. He's used that joke far too often.
"Uh huh," I mumble.
Despite having built this software, I still have a boss, Krill. Looking at him is like looking at a kid who has become old. His face and his demeanor make it seem like he hasn't really done any introspection to realize that he's an adult. He has slight insecurities which come out in the way he presents himself. Often when talking he puts one foot in front of the other. That always irks me.
How could someone of his seniority level, Chief Technology Officer, be so imperfect?
Most of my conversations with Krill were me telling him what I needed to build, him asking me to do something different, me saying "maybe I'll get to it", and then doing what I wanted to do in the first place, and never doing what he asked. I'm sure that doesn't sit well with him.
He realizes that he has no real authority over me, but he has to put on a show for the rest of the engineers and his boss, Ornathane, the CEO.
After he walks away, chit chatting with some of the other engineers as he does, I look around to see who's in the office. Despite the feeling that it's time to move on from Sentagon, I've made some truly amazing friends here.
As I saunter over to Flipz's workspace, I can tell that he's in a good mood. Flipz has also been working on Sentagon since the early days and he always has a smile on his face.
"Hey man," I say.
"Yo Spacegoat. What's up? How was your weekend?"
"Pretty tame. I submitted a fix for task 4510252. Took me longer than expected. That part of the code is really old man, had to change a bunch of stuff," I reply.
"Sounds fun man, did you get out at all?"
"Nah." I'm not going to belabor the point that I didn't do anything interesting outside of coding. "Let's hook up later today, there's something new I've been working on, I want to show you and Kaos," I say as I nudge Kaos to get her attention.
She barely flinches and continues typing furiously. Kaos is a beast when it comes to coding. As far as technical skill she probably has more than I do. Of course I would never tell her that.
Kaos and Flipz are my two most loyal and best friends at Sentagon, though we never really hang out outside of the office in person. We frequently chat at all hours of the day on our internal messaging system and video chat, but don't do much in the way of real outdoor activities.
I poke Kaos again. She takes off her headphones, looking annoyed. "What?"
"Stop acting so serious. I have some stuff I want to go over with you and Flipz today," I reply.
"Ok, cool," she acknowledges.
Flipz lets out a coarse "ha!" as Kaos puts her headphones back on and turns her attention back to her computer screen.
I'm hesitant to let on that things will be changing a lot, but I'm anxious to tell my friends what is going on. I need to get it off of my chest.
I decide to split the difference with an esoteric: "I have some stuff I want to talk with you about." I smile.
"Sounds ominous," Flipz says.
"I mean, yea, I'm excited about it. I just have to set some things up first," I say as I shrug.
"Right on, just let me know when you want to talk, I'm around."
I look down at my wrist to see what time it is, and realize I'm not wearing my watch.
Did I forget to put on my watch this morning? Or did I not put a lock on my favorite timepiece?
I don't even care right now, because I know I have to rush to get to my meeting with Krill.
I look at Flipz's screen to check the time and confirm that I only have about ten minutes to get all the way to the other side of the campus.
"Gotta go man," I mumble.
I grab my backpack from my desk, and begin my march to meet my boss for the last time. I'm about to tell him that after spending almost my entire life working on this software, I'm quitting Sentagon.
Chapter 2
We meet in a conference room called "Bisquickness", a reference to a since out of production pancake batter mix.
Each of the conference rooms in every office across the world has a "clever" title with a theme. This particular theme was "pre-made meals from days past." Some other rooms within that theme are "Hungry man games", "Lego my Prego", "Manwich Sloppy Joe's Crab Shack", and "Michelina's weiners".
When I arrive, Krill is already there, sitting at the far end of a ten person table, plugging away at his laptop.
He stands to greet me. He's a tall man, but not imposing.
"Hey Spacegoat, I'm glad you're here," he says. "Take a seat."
This is an unexpected greeting, seeing as we have regularly scheduled meetings every week to discuss all things Sentagon.
"Hi," I reply in a nervous but dismissive tone, and I sit down.
I have something to get off my chest, but before I can quit, Krill interjects.
"Do you want to work here?!" he asks.
I'm flabbergasted.
After all of the hard work that I've put into this company, into this software, for most of my life, what kind of question is that?
"NO! I quit!"
Of course I don't say that. While it is true that I want to quit, I don't want to go out like this, on the defensive, on someone else's terms. I have a plan and I don't want someone like Krill to ruin it.
"Yea, of course. Why would you ask me something like that?" I say, trying to keep calm.
He stands up and leans against the wall behind him. His back is against the wall, both literally and figuratively.
"Over these past weeks and months you seem to have lost your enthusiasm. I'm hearing that in the private chat rooms you're being negative about the recent changes."
It was true. We recently restructured the department which I ran, "Sentagon infrastructure", and I had been talking with my team in our private and encrypted chat channel about it.
How did he know this?
Only the closest members of my inner circle were in these rooms and the channels were completely secure. I know because I wrote and maintained the software.
He must have some spy in my crew.
"I just think we are changing the process too frequently. We need to stick to something and..." I start to say, but Krill interjects.
"I'm sick of hearing about the process! The process doesn't matter. I want to be able to count on you, but I need to know that you're going to buy into these changes. Ornathane and the board of directors have plans and they don't want some rogue programmer acting in a silo."
To call me "some rogue programmer" was a deep slight against the work that I've had done at Sentagon. It was almost laughable, but I maintain my poise.
"Ok, I understand." I compose myself. "Yes, I want to be here. I wouldn't have sold Sentagon to Imperium and moved to this city if I didn't."
"Good, I'll relay this to Ornathane and the board." He sounds relieved. "Just keep me in the loop when you make changes. No one reviews your code that goes into production, and in this type of business we need oversight. You have to be held to the same standards as every other programmer at this company."
"Yea, of course. Whatever it takes, Sentagon means everything to me," I say with false sincerity.
"Great, let's end this meeting early, I have a lot of stuff to get to," Krill says. It seems like he feels that he has won the argument, and wants to flee before the situation changes against his favor.
"Sounds good," I say and walk out as Krill goes back to his laptop.
It is true that at one point, Sentagon meant everything to me. But those days are past.
I walked into that meeting with the intention of quitting, to leave everything behind and try something new. Now I have a new purpose: finding out how Krill knows what I've been saying.
Could Imperium backdoor my encrypted chat channels? Who in my crew was Brutus'ing me? Just who did the CEO and board think they were, minimizing my value to Sentagon?
The whole system exists because of the work that I did with my team. I have some questions to answer and a new motivation to stick around for a while.
I know that Ornathane and Krill aren't enchanted with my presence at Imperium. Everything that allows them to control the system is potentially undermined by my complete access to the software. Without me in tow, they can't maintain complete control, but if they can control someone on my team, then they can get their way.
The fact that someone from my team, a trusted confidante, would sell out myself and the rest of the Sentagon infra team enrages me.
As I slowly shuffle back to my desk, I run through the list of possible enemies one by one in my head.
Maybe it was more than one person, maybe it was everyone. If I was out of the picture, everyone else on the team would get the opportunity to step up and assume the power that I never wanted.
When I get back to my desk, Ska is waiting for me.
"Hey Spacegoat", he says in a jovial tone.
Ska is one of the younger members of the team, usually happy, and always eager to learn.
"Hey man," I reply somberly, but trying not to show it.
"Have you gotten a chance to go over the updates I added over the weekend. I think if you look at the optimizations you'll be impressed. I spent half the day on Sunday verifying my assumptions on the run time of the graph traversal."
"How fast?"
"Well, I mean it depends on a lot of factors, but it's basically constant time."
"Huh?", he's gotten my full attention. "What do you mean?"
To run a graph traversal algorithm in constant time is, by all measures of computer science, impossible.
"I can't really explain it without showing you, it's pretty dope. I'm super stoked about it."
"Pretty stoked?" I laugh. "I should imagine so. I'm pretty sure that's impossible."
"No, Spacegoat. I did it, I know it was impossible. But I've done it. This will change everything."
"Ok, put some time on my calendar for later this week, I'm gonna head out right now." I head back to my desk and take a seat.
"I will!"
I suspect there is a major oversight in Ska's updates, but he is always finding new ways to improve the system. Ways which have never before been possible. So, who knows, maybe he was on to something.
But, with talented engineers like Ska, Kaos, and Flipz building parts of Sentagon that don't require my input, I have a new issue to deal with. If the software keeps improving without my input, it might outgrow me.
I can feel my nerve endings starting to burn.
Have I been so blind?
The whole time that we were working on Sentagon, I assumed that the team couldn't function without me.
I am anxious, nauseated, and worried. I always thought that Sentagon would just stagnate if I ever left. The combination of my protegees superseding my skills and attempting to oust me will ruin my plans.
The original intention of Sentagon was to do good in the world. I sold it so that I would not have to worry about a retirement account, buying a home, and so I wouldn't have to worry about working for a living any more.
But my intention was to have the system remain a cause for good. Already the team here at Imperium was using it to exploit people, despite my best efforts. Without me here to safeguard, society would be in real trouble.
I feel like I'm going to puke or faint, I have to get back home before either happens. I grab my backpack and hustle away to my car.
Chapter 3
As soon as I get home, I pull my computer out of my backpack.
I have to make sure that my backdoors in Sentagon's code are still in place. From the beginning of Sentagon, I had written "hidden code", backdoors, for myself to enter and modify the code base should a scenario like this ever arise.
The first few backdoors that I check are not working, it seems like they have been removed.
Could the board have added some outside coders to thwart my attempts to neuter Sentagon?
My head starts spinning and I feel nauseated again. I go to the cupboard to grab some ginger cubes, but I can't find them. I haven't eaten any for a long while, and they are gone. I could swear that perishables didn't require locks. I know that logic was in a revision of Sentagon because I wrote it myself.
Did someone remove that code?
When I go to lie down in my hammock, it's gone too.
Have I been so consumed in my day to day life that I have been missing these obvious things disappearing? Who else would want a giant living room hammock?
I really loved that hammock, just not enough to put a lock on it.
This is the thing with Sentagon and the locks: they make you choose what you really value. The value that we ascribe to inanimate things is frequently changing.
If you don't use something for an extended period of time, and need a lock, you might be inclined to unlock it, to free up a lock.
"Well, I haven't used this thing for six months, I can go without it indefinitely," you tell yourself. But when you really need something, and it isn't there, you regret your decision to leave it unlocked.
The telescope in my living room is not necessary. I'd bought it to look at the blood moon one year, and I did that. It served its purpose, and now it sits there, collecting dust. A symbol of an achievement, as meager as it was.
At first when we are forced to choose the objects that are really important to us, we feel liberated. We can let go of the things that serve no purpose or that we take for granted. Things take up room in our living spaces and in our minds.
With a limited number of locks, people are forced to minimize and keep only the things that are essential. We have to answer the question: if we can only keep a few things, what will we keep?
However you can't blanketly state that only a certain number of things will be valuable or important enough to keep. Things change, tastes evolve, circumstances define necessity.
Enough philosophizing. I have to formulate a plan.
Imperium is bastardizing Sentagon, using it to maintain control over the people.
Since I built it, it is my responsibility to put an end to it.
The system has redundancies across the planet - servers and data centers that will be used to restore any code if I change the software.
How can I take down the system?
The distributed nature of the software makes it all but impossible to hack it. There is no central repository so any idea of bringing down a single node won't work. I need to solve a problem for which the decentralized system was intended to prevent.
In theory, if I can take down all of the locations which hosted the repository, I can update the code without any possibility of backups restoring it.
But if I can't change the software or take down the system, my only option is to reset the ledger which keeps track of the locks. If everyone's locks are reset, everyone will have the same opportunities again to get access to resources.
People who have hoarded valuables and gamed the system will lose everything that they have collected. The system which has been corrupted will be reset and everyone will again have equal opportunity.
That's what I have to do, reset the ledger.
The ledger though, is distributed as well. With the current graph traversal search, by the time I execute a command to reset everything, our watchdog will sniff it out and halt it. I need something that can happen immediately.
Ska's algorithm! I haven't looked at it yet, but he is confident that it can operate in constant time.
If he's right, I can execute the reset command and it will finish before anyone can stop it.