Sabotage

A fictional story on real technology with real role models.

By Alex Ruby [~ 10-15 min]

Translated by Helen Veitch.Julia_Sander

Julia stared helplessly at her mobile. She shook her head in anger, and her blonde ponytail bobbed about vigorously. She needed to get in touch with Stuart as soon as possible. She was reporting on the evolution of his company. This evening was his most important meeting so far. Everything depends on this, he had told her an hour earlier. If she wasn’t mistaken, and assuming the whispered voice was referring to the same Stuart, then she couldn’t afford to wait a second longer.

But he was not picking up. His stand was three halls away, at the other end of the tradeshow, and her next press interview was in less than five minutes. Julia tapped his number for the third time. His mailbox again.

Sabotage1_ENHer gaze wandered impatiently to the stand two rows diagonally opposite. It was designed with a black piano finish, but no name. Judging from the invitation and their physical presence at the show, this was not a company that liked to leave anything to chance, and they would certainly not accept unpunctuality with a friendly smile. Behind the unostentatious reception desk, there was a private room that was protecting behind closed doors whatever it was concealing from curious eyes.

She didn’t like being late. Her heart pounding, she called another number and watched an elegantly dressed young man take her call. Barely minutes later, she arrived breathless at Stuart’s company stand. He came over immediately. “Why aren’t you answering your phone?” she ushered him into the corner of the display, behind a robotic arm. “Someone has sabotaged your system,” she hissed. “Impossible,” he shot back in disbelief. “We have secured everything — the connection was encrypted. How could anyone have heard about it?”

“They were talking about a brand-new development: robotics and Big Data. It can’t be a coincidence!” She filled him in with what she had overheard someone in the toilet stall next to her speaking in hushed tones about. The conversation was clearly about a particularly high-performance circuit using special software that could process enormous amounts of data in parallel and speed up the process by intelligently distributing the data across the individual logic blocks of an FPGA. Just like Stuart had explained it to her during their interview this morning: analysis in real time — the killer app in robotics.

Particularly if people and robots were going to work together hand in hand, this would be of existential importance in coordinating its movements. When the talk had even been about the specially developed electro-optical modulator that was coupled to the system to transport the signals even faster, her discomfort had mounted.

“I can’t believe it.” Stuart was almost lost for words. “We went to such lengths to keep the project secret.” Frustrated, he asked again whether she was completely sure that they had been talking about ion injections and not implantations.

Sabotage2_ENShe was fairly sure. It was heart-breaking. They had even referred to frequencies of around a hundred gigaherz. Frequencies like this would not be possible without minimizing the optical loss within the electrodes, which would require the charges to be inserted into the substrate of the semi-conductor with minimal resistance and in a stable state. That would be ion injections, Stuart confirmed. There didn’t seem to be any doubt. Everything pointed to Stuart’s design.

However, the worst part was not that someone had got a foul line on his secret project. As far as Julia understood, his pilot system had actually been manipulated. The presentation — the proof of concept for his client — was going to be a disaster, and the bitterly needed contract would disappear into thin air. Stuart hadn’t brought his pilot to the trade show. He had developed a web interface to remotely control the system from wherever he happened to be.

He had dubbed his system The Bench. Every process had been recorded, and saved to the cloud, by a video camera that was part of The Bench. This had enabled his colleague to follow his experiments throughout the development process. Stuart slumped down on one of the two stools, downhearted. The agonizing question as to what he should do now was written all over his face.

“All is not lost yet!” she tried to cheer him up.

AnetteAs much as Stuart was keen to find out how someone could have heard about his design, this was of secondary importance. Right now, the main thing was to figure out what exactly had been tampered with. Had the hardware been switched or had they used another piece of software? Stuart had to correct the fault.

Ideally, he needed to get the entire system to a safe place where nobody could barge in any further. He had exactly five hours to do this. Otherwise, his company would be doomed. This was the contract he needed most. Julia frantically tried to come up with a solution. She wanted to help him. But she only had fifteen minutes. She couldn’t, and didn’t want to, push back the interview with the other company a second time. She was fascinated by the secretive invitation.

At the last second it came to her, when a call from Anette flashed up on Stuart’s phone…

Read the full story here

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2022-06-10T23:03:42+01:00

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