The vibe at SciNet was very different from xTV. Where xTV had an almost Hollywood feel, SciNet felt like a university or a lab. Everyone was pretty uptight. Well, everyone except for a few of the developers, Desmond included. They couldn’t help but make a few pranks to lighten the mood. Most were related to the movie The Terminator, in which an artificial intelligence called SkyNet becomes self-aware and tries to wipe out humanity with a robotic Arnold Schwarzenegger. Whenever the database or website was acting weird, someone would say, “Oh God, I think SciNet’s becoming self-aware.”
The site’s error page featured a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger wearing dark sunglasses and holding a shotgun, with a caption that read, This page has been TERMINATED.
The CEO finally sent an email banning all jokes related to The Terminator.
Desmond replied:
Just to confirm, these jokes are terminated?
Despite their faux fears that SciNet would become self-aware, the platform did launch in the spring of 1998 and quickly became a hit. Across the country, labs and research facilities signed up, took inventory of the old equipment collecting dust, and posted it for sale. Some used the money to buy more equipment they actually needed—much of it from SciNet.
Desmond was the lead developer. He could have taken the role of Chief Technology Officer, but he’d rated that job as more risky. He would have had a higher salary with fewer technical responsibilities. If the company ran low on cash or needed to refocus, he figured managers with higher pay would be laid off more quickly than the programmers who would be needed to right the ship.
For the time being, however, the ship was sailing quite well. Their first clients were in the Bay Area: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, NASA’s Ames Research Center, Stanford, and SRI International. Word spread among scientists and procurement departments. Signups and transactions soared.
Desmond periodically ran database reports for management, identifying their largest clients—organizations they should call on and keep happy. Some were companies he’d never heard of: Rapture Therapeutics, Rook Quantum Sciences, and Prometheus Technologies.
“These three companies are each buying more than Livermore. Stanford even,” he said. “And it’s all kinds of stuff. They’re either just stocking up, or they’re running the largest-scale experiments in the world.”
SciNet’s CEO was in his early thirties, had an MBA from Harvard, and was all business.
“I fail to see a problem with any of that.”
“Well,” Desmond said, “the issue is that Rapture and Rook, in particular, aren’t paying for their equipment. I can see the credit card transactions on the back end. They’re using cards and bank accounts tied to two companies: Citium Holdings and Invisible Sun Securities.”
The CEO was getting annoyed. “So?”
“So, we have two third-party companies buying massive amounts of scientific equipment and shipping it to these legitimate private research firms.”
“Again, how is that a problem?”
“I’m not sure it is, but I think we ought to look into it. We’ve created something new here. What if someone’s taking advantage of it? What if SciNet is being used to launder money somehow? Like Mexican drug cartels, the Mafia—”
“Okay, Desmond. I think you’ve been watching too much TV. We’ve got what we need here.”
Management was in no hurry to question their best clients. The company needed the transaction volume, and Citium Holdings and Invisible Sun Securities were providing plenty of it.
But Desmond couldn’t contain his curiosity. He looked the companies up. Both were dead ends. They didn’t seem to exist beyond a few corporate records. There were no offices, no websites, not even phone numbers. They were like shells with seemingly endless amounts of cash.
Another mystery, closer to home, did get solved: Peyton was going to attend Stanford Medical School. She told him at her apartment one night, over dinner—lasagna she had cooked that was the best meal he had eaten in some time.
“That’s great,” he said. “It’s nearly impossible to get in.”
“I was worried, honestly.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
“I know you will. It’s why I wanted to stay here in the area. I don’t want us to be apart. We have to start thinking about the future.”
The words we and us hung there in the air, present but unacknowledged.
Peyton used those words more often after that. She talked about the future more frequently. She asked whether he wanted to have kids. Where he wanted to live: in the city, a suburb, or the country, as he had done growing up. What sort of life he wanted his children to have. What he thought work-life balance should be for people with kids. Whether he wanted to travel if they had the chance.
Desmond found himself utterly unable to answer her questions. As the months went by, she began to apply more pressure, subtle at first, then more directly. Desmond’s answer was always the same: that he was so focused on work at the moment that it was hard for him to imagine these scenarios.
“It’s like a train in a tunnel. You don’t know what’s on the other side. How can you say what you’ll do when you come out?”
That set her off. “You’re not a train in a tunnel, Desmond! We’re real people. It’s not hard to imagine.”