Botted
Shit
Sarah watched coffee pour from her plastic cup all over the parking lot gravel. She usually managed the juggling act of closing her car door, balancing her briefcase, purse and a manila folder in the same time, but this time the coffee cup added the crucial factor.
Sarah sighed and slammed her car door shut, distributing the weight between her hands. She walked briskly to the building nearby. Her caffeine fix would have to wait, but not for long. She needed that cup of coffee. She had managed to get only three hours of sleep the previous night. As always, she hadn't noticed the time and left work well after everybody else in the team had already left, but she still managed to get home before eight o'clock. The real problem was that damn experiment. She had tossed and turned all night, trying to figure out what went wrong.
"Watch where you're going, lady!"
Sarah gasped as she realized she had collided with a man standing in front of her. She mumbled, "Sorry" and kept walking, looking down. She hastened her step and found herself in front of the building's looming front entrance. Patricia, the security guard, smiled at her. They had known each other for a long time. Patricia didn't even ask to see her ID tag.
"How's it going, Dr. Lev?" Patricia asked, smiling.
Sarah smiled back. "Can't complain," answered Sarah as she walked through the metal detector. As always, the metal detector beeped. As always, Patricia just waved her along. Sarah entered a well-lit lobby. One of the walls was covered with a huge screen showing PR video clips. Various artworks were displayed in the lobby behind protective glass cases: statues, paintings, dioramas a.s.o. Sarah, however, didn't care for all that. She went straight ahead to the elevator banks. Above the elevator, hanging on the wall, was a sign: "welcome to Klass Biotech." One of the elevators was already half full and the door started closing. Sarah practically ran and managed to enter in the nick of time. She pressed a button on the control panel and smiled. She was happy to have reached it on time and not wait in the lobby. She mumbled an apology to the other people and looked around as the elevator made its way upwards. She didn't recognize any of the people around her, but they all wore the company's ID tag. Security was strict in the company. As her boss, Professor Ben, used to say, "Our commodity is information and knowledge."
Klass Biotech dealt mainly in advanced medical and biological research. Their HR division headhunted top academics from the entire country, doubling and sometimes tripling their salary. Sarah loved to work in Klass Biotech. Although money was important, what lured her in was the state of the art equipment, the generous research budget well above any university and freedom to choose whatever field she pleased.
The elevator bell rang and the door to the fifth floor opened. Sarah made her way to the door and exited. It was a short way to her lab.
Sarah opened the door to her lab and stepped in. The lab looked like a metal jungle. Computers hummed on desks. Centrifuges, incubators and various other machines ruled the landscape. Three giant refrigerators with biohazard signs on them hummed in the background. Sarah walked to her cubicle, navigating the maze of laboratory tables and equipment until she finally reached her own desk and switched on her computer. She used the time it took the terminal to boot to take a look at her darlings under the microscope's lens. They were swimming happily.
Sarah's field of research was nanotechnology, nano-bots to be precise. Those were extremely small machines, each much smaller than a millimeter and able of executing programmable actions and operating in conditions beyond science fictionws wildest dreams. You could inject thousands of them into a patient's bloodstream, ordering them to repair damaged blood vessels, take apart clots, interact with cells and so on. All that interested Sarah, but what fascinated her was communication between nanobots. By letting them communicate, nanobots resembled human neurons, firing electrical impulses at one another and creating a network. It was an innovative approach to artificial intelligence.
The metallic beep emanating from her terminal notified Sarah that her computer had become operational. The little icon at the bottom of the screen told her she had new e-mails. A click on the mouse showed her first one to be from professor Ben. Sarah once again marveled at the man's working habits. The e-mail was sent at five a.m. The man was like a vampire. When did he ever sleep?
Sarah looked at her watch after reading the e-mail. Professor Ben wanted to see her in about ten minutes. Her face frowned. A discussion so close after the failure of yesterday's experiment couldn't be a good omen. Sarah picked up a few pages and left the laboratory to Professor Ben's office.
Luckily, she didn't have to wait long, just two minutes fidgeting on a sofa, looking at Professor Ben's secretary and wondering what the hell was the problem.
"You can go in now, Dr. Lev," announced Prof. Ben's secretary or his personal assistant, if you asked her opinion of the appropriate title.
Sarah opened the door and walked into the office. She was always in awe when entering the office. The center was dominated by a long oak wood desk, meant for board meetings. A large computer screen stretched along one wall. A state of the art surround speaker system, hid cleverly in the walls, played Beethoven's ninth in a low volume. Reproductions of famous paintings by Dali, Picasso and Monet adorned the walls next to posters of electronic circuits and photos of chemical structures. One of the walls was made entirely of glass, showing a spectacular view of the city. It was near that wall that professor Ben stood, looking at the city below him.
Sarah was about to cough politely when he turned around and flashed one of his famous sharp smiles.
"How are you, Dr. Lev? Please sit down." Prof. Ben motioned to his personal desk at the end of the room.
Sarah walked to the desk and sat down on a metal chair, designed to look as though the occupant was actually floating. In front of her, prof. ben sank into a plush leather chair.
Prof. Ben was a practical man and valued his time as his most valuable asset; therefore he never beat around the bush.
"Dr. Lev, I'm sorry, but we're shutting down the nanobots project."
It took Sarah a few seconds for the meaning of the words to sink in.
"Prof. Ben, look. If it's about yesterday's experiment, I've done some thinking about it since I mailed you my progress report, and I'm confident---"
"Sarah", said professor Ben. Sarah stopped talking. She had never heard Professor Ben call her by her first name.
"This has nothing to do with yesterday. You are one of our top researchers and we highly value your work. You have made tremendous progress and have been a great team leader, but I'm sorry; you have to let go."
Sarah looked at professor ben's face. She blinked a few times, trying to hold back her tears.
"But why? I gave this project two years of my life. I haven't taken any holiday. I've worked overtime without asking for extra pay. I've left everything else. Why are you pulling the plug on me?"
Prof. Ben leaned forward. "It's not you, Sarah. The board is worried about the ethical ramifications of the project. They feel the technology is progressing too fast. The implications are unclear---"
"To hell, unclear!" Sarah cut professor ben. "This project could revolutionize medicine! We could cure diseases! Help people! Klass Biotech could earn billions!" Sarah raised her right hand and put her thumb opposite her index finger. "We're this close to a level 4 experiment in animals. Give me a few more months and I'm telling you, you won't regret it."
Sarah looked at Professor Ben. He swallowed hard and looked into her eyes. Sarah grabbed professor ben's right hand with both of hers, "Please, Professor Ben. You can't do this to me. Please give me a chance."
Professor Ben's eyes turned steel grey. He was not used to being contradicted. He pulled his hand as though snake bitten.
"I'm sorry, Doctor Lev. The project is terminated, effective immediately. Your team has already been dispersed, and its members have been routed to different teams. I've asked them not to talk to you, because I know how much your research means to you, and I wanted to notify you personally. As accepted in Klass, you have twenty-four hours to archive all of your reports and notes. You will dismantle your laboratory and prepare all equipment to transport to other rooms."
Professor Ben stood up and walked to the glass wall. He looked out of the window. "That would be all, Doctor Lev." He said.
Sarah picked up her papers and practically ran out of the room. She made it back to her laboratory in record time, trying to avoid the looks of people in the corridors who were troubled by her distraught face. When she reached the lab, Sarah crushed into the first chair she saw and cried for fifteen minutes until her tears were exhausted. Sarah looked around her, savoring the look of the laboratory one last time, looking at the computer terminals, the vials, the centrifuges and the white boards. Then she started taking everything apart.
Sarah spent most of the day taking care of her meticulous records. Every single file, data bit and number had to be recorded, should someone decide to pursue the research again. That was her primary concern. After every experiment and report were safely archived in the company's database, she wondered whether to talk to her team members. They were colleagues and their relationship had always been professional and never personal. After contemplating for a few minutes, Sarah decided against the idea. It would only make her feel worse.
