It was Friday evening and Scott sent Matthew a text. “Hey finished up with my tests, I’m ready to get out of here!”
“Sounds good! We haven’t seen you outside of class for a while.”
They agreed to meet at Matt’s room. He was closer to another friend of theirs, Alvaro Ignacio. Alvaro was a nice guy, but a little bit too obsessed with video games. He was really into some multiplayer Mecha simulator and would often blow off classes or hanging out if he had a big online battle his guild was participating in. Not surprisingly Alvaro was on his computer and yelled out that he was staying in tonight.
Another friend Barry Yong was already over at Matt’s room. He was more reliable and wouldn’t miss going out on Friday and Saturday nights no matter what. Unlike Scott, Matt and Barry would sometimes go out other nights (Wednesday - Sunday). Their grades were decent - probably because they were really smart compared to Scott, but they were more interested in trying to escape the restrictive engineering social circles. They had a few other friends who were not engineers, but they were more acquaintances to Scott who usually left the social planning up to his two friends.
Today’s plan was not the most exciting. Matt and Barry had not been able to find any parties going on with their older acquaintances, so they were going to the default hangout - a place called Wedge Pizza which had a cheap but low quality pizza buffet and which catered to poor college kids near campus. For under $20 dollars they could eat all the pizza they wanted which usually wasn’t much, and drink all the caffeine they could handle from the fountain drink (usually a lot). This was one of the more popular hangouts for underage kids who couldn’t get a decent fake ID - in other words the low end of the social spectrum.
After paying and grabbing a slice of greasy, unappetizing pizza and large fountain drinks - they all preferred a highly caffeinated bright green beverage, but the dispensers were often out of syrup so today they settled for variations of cola.
“So Scott, I’ve barely seen you around. I find it hard to believe you were actually studying all that time. Did you find a new game or book? And if so, how come you haven’t shared the info with your best friend?” Matt asked.
Scott had briefly considered keeping Glitch_HR a secret. It was kind of amazing, and very likely illegal and dangerous. However, he was actually kind of excited about sharing it with his friends. So he went ahead and risked it.
“So, I’m going to warn you. I kind of stumbled onto something that might be kind of illegal and possibly dangerous. If you don’t want to know about it I will keep my mouth shut.” As if! Leading with that, there was no way they were going to let him drop it!
“Yeah, I don’t want to get involved in anything like that.” Barry said. WHAT??
“Hah! Kidding! You really think we wouldn’t want to hear all about it with a big lead up like that!” Barry laughed.
“Hah! You got me.” Scott chuckled, “So I was trying to finish that project for Dr. Chu’s class...”
“Ugh, that guy is sadistic. Who assigns a major project and has it due on Monday?!” Matt complained.
“Right! Anyway I tried to be a good student and get it done early, but was struggling because of the sheer boredom of it all. Anyway, I had this crazy idea the weekend before it was due and tried to code some AI program to write my code for me.”
“Oh, so you accidentally created some AI and now it has started building robots to kill us all?”, Barry added.
“Well it hasn’t started trying to kill us just yet. Anyway, I think my program got infected with about 100 viruses, so I gave up on trying to invent an AI and just stayed up all night and finished it normally.” Scott continued. “Anyway I got this weird message indicating my software project was complete. I got an invoice for several million dollars. If that wasn’t scary enough, it had already been paid by some Russian company. Weird right?”
“OK I see why you warned us. I think once the Russians realize your buggy software somehow convinced them to spend millions writing your homework project they are definitely going to ‘disappear’ you.” Barry added helpfully.
“So, is that why you’ve been avoiding us? Were you trying to make sure we weren’t targets too?” Matt asked.
“Um… that probably should have been a reason, but I was more worried about getting in trouble with our government than the Russians. Now I will definitely not be able to get to sleep for about a month.”
“Why would you be worried about our government?” Barry asked, curious.
“That’s just it. Along with this giant invoice, there was a copy of some software called Glitch_HR. It’s sort of like our homework assignment except a million times better. It has some features which I’m pretty sure could not be implemented without breaking a ton of privacy and espionage laws.” Scott explained.
“OK. I’m kind of confused now. Our assignment was for Human Resource software. How can something like that be breaking a bunch of laws?”
“Well among other things, it knows way too much about various companies, people and government agencies. I accidently pulled up a list of deep cover FBI agents!”
“Well, it was obviously fake! Otherwise you would have seen that I’m actually a super secret agent!” said Barry, obviously not taking this seriously.
“Also that’s how I knew Dr. Chu’s middle name was Puddles.” Scott said.
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“Oh yeah! That was hilarious when you asked him that! He looked like his head was about to explode and he sent everyone home.”
“No way! Your teacher’s middle name is Puddles and you asked him about it in class?!! Respect!” Barry was suddenly looking very impressed.
“That’s not even the best part. There is this skill training module that has some really cool stuff. I’ve actually been working on some of it and I feel like I’ve learned more in a couple weeks than I did my entire Freshman year.”
“OK, I don’t totally believe you, but this is a pretty good prank if you are making this up. When are you going to show us this magic program? Maybe aliens wrote it and are making you prepare for their invasion? Every Computer Science major makes a lame attempt at building a true AI. But maybe you actually pulled it off and it is sitting out in the cloud somewhere building up its strength so it can take over!” Barry seemed pretty excited about the possibility of aliens or computers taking over the world.
“Well I don’t think you are making this up, but you need to show us this!” Matt demanded.
After agreeing, the boys went back to Scotts room and opened Glitch_HR. Scott showed them the org chart sceen - staying away from government agencies, but picking some well known companies. The detail was pretty impressive and some of the positions were easily confirmed with web searches.
“Can we get a copy of this?” Matt asked. “I mean, I don’t really want the Russians coming after me, but this is really amazing”.
“Sure, if you want to risk it. Don’t share it with anyone else unless we all agree, OK?”
When Matt tried to open the software later, he received a message indicating he was not authorized to access the program. After talking with Scott on the phone they determined that he did not have any default access privileges and could only gain access if he joined a licensed company. A further search through some of the screens and they only found one company “licensed” to use the software. Genysis - the company Scott created when he first started playing around with the software.
“So can you add me as an ‘employee’ of your fake company?” Matt asked.
Scott went through the process and pulled up a list of positions Matt was qualified for. Like Scott, the top two were also “Unpaid Intern” or “Cafeteria Worker”. Junior programmer was also on the list, but there were some other options which had not been available for Scott.
“Junior Robotics Engineer. Yeah, I want that one!” Matt said, excited. He had always loved programming robots - he was a bit disappointed their college did not offer a Robot Fighting League elective.
“OK” Scott selected this option. “Barry is going to have a field day with this. Clearly you were offered this to start building that robot army for the evil AI.”
“Sure, sounds awesome! I’ll make sure to add some code to make sure the robots don’t attack any of us.” Matt laughed.
Matt confirmed he could now access the program and could see the skill training section. He wasn’t able to see all the corporation and org chart screens. Scott must have some kind of higher level of default access as the first user of the software, but they couldn’t figure out how to change permissions.
They decided to add Barry too, even though he was still not taking this very seriously. Again the program did not think highly of his skills, but had some other low level options available.
“Barry, would you rather be a ‘Junior Lab Assistant - Material Sciences’ or ‘Junior Manufacturing Technician’ ?”
“Dude, I obviously want the Mad Scientist track. Go with “Lab Assistant”. This is kind of stupid though - your fake company doesn’t have a lab or a factory so I’m going to be surfing the web all day. Hah! I guess that’s only fair since you aren’t paying me anything!”
After adding Barry, Matt asked. “So, some of these training classes are pretty interesting. Barry, did you look at your list?”
“Yeah, I skimmed it. This stuff seems kind of far fetched. There is a fair amount about experiments you can do in a home kitchen. Ooh.. there is one on bomb-making, and it looks like it is on the dark web!”
“OK, if you blow us all up I am going to fire you!” Scott said.
“Hah! You don’t have the power. You aren’t even CEO. I’m curious if you can fire me though, why don’t you try it?”
Scott tried to remove Barry from the company. He received a message that he didn’t have the authority to remove employees.
“We need to get some employees with management authority. I can’t even fire Barry.” Scott complained.
All three sat in silence for about an hour going through the skill training.
“Here we are, three guys on a Friday night studying nerd stuff! We’re as bad as the other guys in the dorm!” Matt said.
“Yeah, but there is some pretty interesting stuff here. I kind of wish I had a kitchen or a lab to try some of these experiments.” Barry said. “I didn’t actually look at the bomb stuff, but some other guy is explaining how to make carbon nano-tubes with some pretty basic equipment. It would probably cost less than $100 bucks to get the equipment and supplies. There are also several other authors with articles that seem to be related, but I don’t think they know about each other. This one guy is claiming he could induce a fusion reaction if he could assemble a network of carbon nanotubes with the right structure. Another guy claims he can dope nanotubes with various ions and then organize them in 3D using a computer and some magnets. But he says it is not practical yet because the supplies cost thousands of dollars for each test. Hah! If these guys knew about the work the others were doing they could probably build a tiny fusion reactor.”
Both Matt and Scott stared at him. “You are not allowed to build a fusion bomb!”
“Hey, no it would be a much more controlled reaction. I mean, it would just melt itself, maybe explode a little but it definitely wouldn’t blow up the city. OK, probably not. I guess I should read some more before trying something like this.”
Matt was puzzled. “So the stuff I’m reading is not as exciting as building a fusion bomb, but I’m wondering why they don’t teach some of this in school. It seems way more useful than what I’m learning in my robotics class.”
“Yes, and this is why you guys haven’t seen me much for the past two weeks. Not everything it recommends is interesting or useful, but it still manages to find some really amazing stuff. There are all these geniuses who write about their work and no one really appreciates it because they aren’t well known or going through the University system to publish their work. Also, a lot of it doesn’t do much until you combine it with other ideas.”
The boys agreed they all wanted to browse through their training some more over the weekend, but they promised to meet up over lunch on Sunday. Later that evening, when Scott was getting ready for bed. He thought, So I hope the Russians or the US government don’t shut us down or throw us in jail. I kind of think we might be able to build a pretty cool company. I mean, we don’t actually have any products or services and none of us know how to manage or run a business. Still, maybe he should go talk to that potential CEO. The program had come up with some pretty amazing recommendations on training, but you would think that if a Human Resources program could do anything it would be finding good employees. Right? Tomorrow, Scott was going to be brave and go meet his future boss.