Sleeping Outside the Box

I’m meeting with a guy from Google. He enters the board room and starts to talk to me about the long flight he just took from San Francisco. There’s something strange in his voice and I don’t quite believe that he just got off a plane.
He quizzes me with a few programming challenges but they are all elementary and I suspect he’s toying with me.
“Well, give me the answers to your questions in a week and I’ll start the evaluation. Then you can take part in whatever project you want or start making whatever project you can imagine.” He says.
“I’ve got some great ideas for Google Calendar,” I exclaim. I’m an eager little puppy. “It should be able to log your life, like sleep and work hours and generate a report for you of what you spend your time doing.” I give him an eyebrow raise, hoping he’ll agree vehemently that I should start modifying the calendar code right now. Instead, he begins to cough.
And cough. And he stands, walking toward the door, coughing more violently.
“I need to call in an engineer!” He says, hurriedly. “I’m sorry for this.”
He heads out the door and around the corner. I follow him and point him the way to the Men’s room. As he rounds the circuitous pathway of the building in search of respite, he continues his expulsion of airy fluids. Even through the walls and back in the conference room, I can hear him. It sounds viscous and hoarse, as if he’s on the verge of exploding his insides out onto the floor. I worry that I didn’t respond quickly enough to his needs. Perhaps he would hold that against me. Perhaps he would not be OK.
Minutes later, he returns with an engineer from Adobe Labs. The engineer is talking to him in a language I don’t understand and looks up at me with disapproving eyes.
“You can stay, but this is confidential.”
“Um, ok, sure…” I’m not really sure to what ‘this’ is alluding.
“Ok, let’s take of the helm…” The engineer says, pulling at the Google man’s chest.
The chest comes off, clean and with a few delicate clicks.
“A robot! AI? But then… He passed the Turing test! I didn’t have a clue!” I’m in shock and I’m mumbling and stuttering.
The Adobe engineer holds up his hands to me. “Don’t freak out, he’s a robot but it’s not AI.”
“I’m actually still in San Fransisco.” Smiles the Google man. “This is a prototype, I thought I give a try. It’s called a Mobile Avatar. I have three of them in different cities around the world. Makes arriving to meetings a bit more bearable–saves fuel, and I get to stay at home :)” He actually draws a smiley face in the air, two dots followed by a swoosh. It’s not the first time I’ve seen a gesticon. It’s the new trend with kids these days. Evidently, Google man wants to be hip.
I marvel at the smoothness of movement and the realism of the robot.
The engineer tinkers with the inside of the Avatar’s chest as he explains, “We realized it wasn’t worth making the AI to go along with our bots, but we could market them as vessels for people to be halfway around the world without actually going anywhere. Our clients, stay at home, step into a suit that picks up on every movement and transfers those signals to this machine.”

I am trying to be quiet, hiding between some thin trees in the forest. There is a lion somewhere around here and I have evaded him with great care. Just when I start to get comfortable, this giant Turkey-Dog™ growls at me from only a few meters away. I stopped eating mammals years ago. The genetic similarities with humans are too great and it feels too much like cannibalism. Something about meat growing hair and having live birth just doesn’t taste right to me anyway. I’ve wrestled with the notion that these lab grown Turkey-Dog™ types are not really mammals. Even though they have a head of a dog, they still lay eggs and are covered (even on the head) in feathers.

While I’m pondering if my hunger is great enough to attempt to eat this thing–assuming I can stop it from eating me, the beast starts to dig in the ground with it’s thin, sharp talons. Everything in this forest is ravenous. I can hear the sweet little birds in the trees, muttering to each other and placing bets. They would be frothing with hunger if they could.

Time is up. The Turkey-Dog™ runs at me and I have no choice but to scamper backwards through the loud autumn leaves. They crunch under my feet and I am certain the lion will hear us. Maybe I can outrun my pursuer and leave him to the lion.
I turn, facing the direction of my departure and notice a shallow but frantic stream. Wading into it, the water attempts to topple me over. I’m too big to succumb to the furious but diminutive rapids but the Turkey-Dog™ is not. He follows me in and is quickly and unwittingly pulled in by the stream. He isn’t drowning but he can’t fight away the water, which is carrying him swiftly away from me. I trudge after him. That’s my meal. It’s been decided. That beast is mine.

Now we are at the bottom of the river, which ends abruptly next to a large granite rock. There are sharp granite stones all around my feet and I grab one the size of a grapefruit, with the intent to lob it at my meal’s head. The Turkey-Dog™ inches out of the water, tired and beaten by the force of gravity. He curls up next to my feet and whimpers. I heave the rock firmly, aiming straight for the head. It misses. It misses by almost a meter. The thing is right next to me and my arms are weak and useless. That’s how hungry I am. I pick up the rock and try again several times. Each time, the rock flies over the beast’s head by such a distance as to make me seem incompetent. Meanwhile, the animal just lays there, looking at me, as if I’ve saved it’s life.

Before I’m ready to give up eating this thing, I realize that I’m not alone. A woman is here at the bottom of the river and she’s laughing at my attempts to kill the creature at my feet.
“What are you doing?” She snickers.
“I’m trying to eat this thing.”
“If you are that hungry, we have food.” She says, sincerely.
The Turkey-Dog looks up at me with wide obedient eyes. It seems I have a new friend.

Had to take a break from working all night to pause before midnight and think a bit about Matt, Ellen and Ella who all lost a loved one today, Emma.

If it weren’t for the countless array of blogs, videos and twitters to remind, report and reflect, I don’t think even my overactive imagination would have fathomed the depth of today’s tragedy. I don’t often cry for people I don’t know well enough to call close friends. Usually, I save those tears for unexpected footage of nuclear explosions and bad things happening to kittens.

But for this, knowing Matt very little and never having met Ellen and Ella, or Emma when I had the chance, I can’t keep working all night, pretending that it doesn’t have an impact.

Lena is 36 weeks and 3 days today. Our midwife checked us out today and everything looks great. Every now and then, I worry about something happening. What if we lost the baby somehow? What if something happened to Lena? What if something happened to both of them? What would I do?
I’ve been thinking about these things a lot lately. Not just even about the baby but suddenly, what if my brother died? What about my mom? or my sister? Would I be able to keep working? Would I move to Thailand and become a monk?
Some part of me (the tactless, villainously selfish portion of my brain) thinks, “at least they still have Ella”. How they would be able to hold together and remain human if they didn’t, I hope will remain a mystery.

I am amazed at the strength the Kowalczyk family has managed to muster and praise their close friends and relatives for keeping them sane. If it weren’t for the strange property of blogs, which allows a person to speak without really speaking out, I would not be able to form words on this subject. I don’t shed tears when I see pictures or videos of Emma. I only shed them when I think of standing in front of Matt and Ellen, trying to formulate something to say. There are no verbal algorithms for this.

Recent related posts:
Matt’s blog
Maislen: Goodby Emma
5 things Stephen Toulouse Learned from Emma

Not sure yet if this is a random hit or someone I know but it happened:

HACKED HACKER32_BURAK !

h4cker32_burak@hotmail.com

MUCKED

Bravo for not destroying anything–I always appreciate a good security breach as long as nothing is harmed :)