Synopsis of "The Expert On Everything"
For Overview of novel and 3 representative chapters, see ….
Edward David Gil
edwarddavidgil@yahoo.com
SYNOPSIS of "The Expert On Everything "
Young CHARLIE SANDERS is offered a six-figure job after only thirty seconds into an interview at Vector Systems, is mistakenly handed the company's only technology prototype that erases the concept of privacy (code-named "Wallace", It fits like a snug hearing aid and can maintain a conversation), becomes the CEO's key man, is pursued like prey by more than a few interested parties, including a Governor with presidential ambitions and a few U.S. Senators, and begins receiving death-threats from the technology itself, which now has its own ideas. Did I mention his girlfriend breaks up with him? It's always about a girl, isn't it?
Charlie, in his late twenties, arrives at Vector Systems, in San Francisco, for an interview. He asks the man's assistant, MORTIMER, if his interviewer, BARTON SIMON, the Chief Operating Officer, has a mistress and what kind of car he drives. Barton himself suddenly springs out of his office door, gives him his answers, and then says he has some questions for him. Thirty seconds or so into the interview, and after fielding a call from the California Governor, Barton stops being polite and asks Charlie who he is and what does he want? Charlie decides to go for broke and play it the way his old college buddy FLOOKY would and responds, "I haven't a fucking clue." Barton now smiles and offers him a job on the spot, starting out at one hundred thousand and reporting to the head of business development, AMANDA PETERSON.
While being given a walking tour of Vector by Mortimer, Charlie reflects on starting this day in the apartment of his girlfriend, DAWN STONE. Charlie has been without a job for nearly a year, and had moved in with Dawn to save money. We're introduced to Dawn herself, waking up from a rather wild dream and thinking about Charlie - now at his interview - and how her friend EDMOND "FLOOKY" WILLIAMS went beyond her expectations in arranging it, as a secret favor to her. Flooky had done business with the powerful Meckert family of mutual funds and knew of a new company that the leader of the family, PORTER MECKERT, had started.
We meet Porter Meckert himself, holding forth at a Vector board of directors meeting over lunch in the Napa Valley. On the board sits his sister, MAGGIE MECKERT, who is one of the few people that can talk back to Porter, although JOANNA GLICK, Maggie's friend on the board, gives it a shot, coaxing Porter to speak further about his theories on developing a planetary political system.
We're now introduced to the most unlikely "Greek Chorus". Any tension at all between talking heads during a live television broadcast has the same effect as an accident on the freeway: you can't take your eyes off it. It was the only plausible explanation for keeping TIMOTHY O'NEILL and LATANYA STILLWELL paired as the hosts of ‘Guns and Butter' on the CBT Cable Channel - because they hate each other. It comes through during every show, and it explains why ratings are consistently through the roof. Today, being interviewed on the show is one Amanda Peterson, Charlie's new boss at Vector. She is grilled by a sexually charged Tim O'Neill about what Vector is up to and she re-takes control by pointing it out that, whatever it is, it will be good because it will pass the ‘Turing Test" which is that a technology must be so intuitive to interact with, that you honestly can't tell if you're communicating with a human or a machine. Later, Amanda Peterson and Tim O'Neil proceed to have the beginnings of a post-interview tryst in
Charlie runs to tell Dawn the good news at "The Holodeck", an inside spot in the city where hard-core immersion experiences inside any classic television show is arranged. While hunting the hot female alien with green skin from the original Star Trek series, Charlie reflects on how he and Dawn met. Charlie had wanted to experience what it was like to be a doorman at a popular club a couple of years ago and asked his friend who owned one if he could step into the role for one night. It was done, and Charlie just as replaces King Kong-in-leather up walks Dawn and a girlfriend with their name on his clipboard. He was smitten and wanted to rip off his mask and really introduce himself, but couldn't because he really was just the doorman. He would have to wait until the second time they met to do that. Right now, Charlie is dressed up as Capt. Kirk and an athletic and lovely green female alien, complete with green antennae, jumps him and pins him. It's Dawn, and Charlie and Dawn make love on another planet.
We meet Flooky at a dinner Dawn arranged for Charlie's celebration of his new job. Flooky was Charlie's roommate in college for a semester and is a genius confined to a wheelchair. Flooky has a crush on Dawn. Flooky orders wine for some attractive women at another table and, after dispensing some in-your-face-no-bullshit advice to Charlie, decides to have a liquid meal of the alcoholic kind. Neither Flooky nor Dawn tells Charlie she asked Flooky to intercede with Vector.
We sit in the first Vector company management meeting called by Porter. Mortimer is ordered by Barton Simon to bug the room and watch particularly close Mr. ASSAN BASSALI, who Barton brought in to head sales. There is an unspoken agreement that Assan will not use his incredible power to instantly hypnotize people against anyone at Vector, but Barton was taking no chances and didn't want Porter Meckert hypnotized during his first meeting at his new company. Barton now sits at the table and looks around and mentally dissects and analyzes each person attending: Amanda Peterson, leading business development; Assan Bassali, handling sales; TULA SWANSON, the head of publicity who thinks she should be looking for a husband instead; SIVA VENTKARAMANU, Vector's chief technology officer who leads his code-writers as though a type of Buddhist cult leader; DAVE DASH, chief operating officer and former special ops soldier trying to navigate a very different jungle; CLIFFORD HUMPHREY, head of marketing with personal money problems and needing this job to work out. Porter makes a surprise entrance into the conference room from a hidden door in the middle of the wall and very calmly proceeds to scare the hell out of everyone in the room, even jeopardizing their options if they do not succeed in launching his product, which is due out shortly he was assured by Siva. Porter makes a particularly criticizing comment about some of the marketing prototypes he's seen and Clifford Humphrey goes white and throws up on the table, ending the meeting.
Charlie meets Amanda, his new boss, for the first time and she can't help but notice that he's not the least bit intimidated by her. Amanda has a brainstorm: actually put this young punk to work and use him to sniff out what Siva and his programmers are actually doing with the new technology that Meckert raves about. Charlie accepts the mission from his new liege with aplomb and, just for the hell of it, tells Amanda that he thinks her office may be bugged. She takes him seriously and immediately leads him out the door and out the building, across the street.
Just across the street from the office building is a bakery owned by SAMMY SOLOMON, a wealthy, retired divorce lawyer who was the top gun in his field for so long he became bored and opened his bakery to attain a more simple life. Sammy is listening to a tale of woe from his nephew, Clifford Humphrey; Sammy is a tough love kind of uncle and just as he's whipping Clifford into shape in walks Charlie and Amanda. At first neither notices the other but Amanda happens to look up from her table with Charlie and is stunned to see Sammy, standing in front of her. A screaming match ensues between them and Sammy makes Amanda cower with the mere hint of their shared past. But the best is saved for last as Sammy comes to slowly realize that she works for the same company as his nephew, currently in such pain. The inevitable solution hits Sammy just then: "Cliff, meet your new best friend, Amanda Peterson, who, I'm sure, will watch your back and even scrub it if necessary."
Meanwhile, Barton Simon is reluctantly entering into a company-mandated shrink session. He hates these impromptu things because they were insulting, and because they were led by his own assistant, Mortimer! Porter Meckert was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them and he had taken into account Barton's ability to attract and then repel world class talent. It was all about getting the timing right and Porter Meckert was having Mortimer monitor Barton's state of mind. Outside, at the same moment, Amanda is busy having a nervous breakdown, sobbing in the middle of the street on her way back to the office.
On Dave Dash's office desk is a photo taken on his wedding day, walking under a gauntlet of raised swords held by an honor guard of Marines, and another candid photo of Dave shooting an air rifle at a carnival while his wife held a huge, stuffed white bear and laughing in a way that clearly showed how proud she was of her man's prowess. Just outside of his empty office, Dave Dash was, in fact, sitting in a chair outside his office, alongside the desk of his secretary, Mary King, and was laughing way too much at his own jokes. Mary is tall, dark-haired, with a stripper's body that she unsuccessfully tries to hide in dresses and suits that she buys one or two sizes too large so as not to further accentuate the curves. Dave can never get Mary to pay real attention to him and he decides to give up trying for today. As Dave is leaving he runs into Clifford Humphrey at the building's front door. Cliff is now like a changed man and exuberantly invites himself along to Dave's planned workout at the Dolphin Club. Dave, at first taken aback, quickly decides that hanging out with Cliff will make him more desirable to the ladies, and so tells Cliff to get his gym bag.
Charlie, following Amanda's orders, discovers the programming department, such as it is, with incense burning and programmer-acolytes sitting all over the floor, huddled around their screens as though they were keeping warm by them. By the time he is introduced to Siva, Charlie was feeling like he had entered the real, actual Twilight Zone, which meant he was therefore back in familiar territory and so he loosened up, regained some confidence and actually heard himself ask Siva. "Do you lead a cult?"
Siva's eyes twinkles and a broad smile spreads east and west across his face. "Why, yes I do." "That is most perceptive of you."
Uh, really? I was only kidding.
No, you weren't. You were just pretending to, and thereby hid your true question in plain sight."
Charlie stopped right then and there. No games. Not with this guy.
"Very good. You are fully conscious to ask such a question. You are awake and honest. Therefore, I do have a mission for you."
"Thanks but I've got one already. Can't have too many missions I always say."
"This mission will lead to your goal of understanding why the company exists." Siva then says something in his native Indian dialect and, from one of the larger, multi-screen campfires, one of the acolytes gets up and brings over some papers which he hands to Siva, then goes back and sits down in front of his multiple screens.
"This is what Amanda Peterson will require to do her business development. It will satisfy her."
"What is it?"
"A schematic representation of how the system works - only basic of course. An overview of what she would call the ‘value proposition'. I assure you she will find it all quite useful in making promises to other companies that we will provide a useful service."
Charlie now smiled. "You had this ready for anyone who pressed you on your progress, didn't you?"
"You are the first to come here and ask."
"You're joking. How long has Vector had you all working on this?"
"Six months, although all of us have been working on this system privately for about six years, independent of our work for our previous employer."
"Now wait a minute. We're talking about a system to help people access any information anywhere, anytime over any communication device they can come up with - telephone, PDA, Internet - right?"
"Well, that clears things up."
"You must be more precise with your questions but I will answer your implied question: that is not all the system does."
"Oh, I figured that out already. You're also able to track everyone using the system, right?"
"That is correct, but still not all the system does."
"Well, let's stop there anyway. Isn't that a huge privacy issue?"
"There no longer exists the concept of privacy. Our technology has reduced the question to simply one of ethics: how a person does one thing is how they do all things."
Siva further informs Charlie that he comes well-recommended and will play a vital role in keeping the only prototype of the technology under wraps until all is clear. Charlie is sure confused but he knows having the schematics would be a good thing.
"Mr. Sanders, you have already begun even if you don't realize it. You are an experiment. I know the outcome already but there are others who need a demonstration. You are, of course, an employee of Mr. Meckert's and, as such, have your obligations. These will in no way interfere with the experiment. I am sure you will find power to be exhilarating." Siva then tells Charlie that the technology itself will answer any further questions Charlie may have, but Charlie just takes the schematics from Siva and leaves the programming department.
Tula Swanson laments her P.R. position inside Vector and, in a spasm of self-awareness, decides not to go for the gold (ring around her finger) but instead to make Joanna Glick, on Vector's board of directors, her new best friend and worm her way onto the lonely lady's foundation and become a "partner" in administering it. Tula decides she wants access and influence instead of a white picket fence and the good news is that she has lunch scheduled today with Joanna so she can immediately get to work on her new life's ambition.
Tula and Joanna go to a restaurant where they are noticed across the room by Barton Simon who happens to be dining there as well, and having an intense discussion with Edmond "Flooky" Wilson! Flooky is all business and almost contemptuous of Barton's inability to extract Vector's technology for "The Man", who is employing both of them.
Barton tells Flooky, "The timing is bad."
"Look, you called me." Flooky responds, "You want to know how The Man wants this played and I'm telling you. Now, if you can't handle it, just tell me and I'll take care of it. You think you're the only guy I've got on the inside?"
Charlie and Dawn are in the San Francisco house in which Dawn rents the ground-floor attachment. But they are in the main house itself, specifically in the master bedroom's large hot tub where Dawn is luxuriating and Charlie is nervous the landlady will abruptly return and discover them. Dawn assures Charlie that her landlady, Joanna Glick, is back East working on her newest charity organization and lets Charlie know that she took a look at the Vector's schematics he brought home. Dawn things Charlie should get out of there now but her message gets mixed in with discussion of their own relationship and Charlie is left confused and a little hurt, and will definitely stay with this six figure imitation of a job, thank you very much.
Assan Bassali is driving to a business appointment in Los Angeles and was the only one of nine boys who made sure the family had drinking water and rice by bartering and stealing as required. His early teenage years, when he and two of his brothers moved to to live with an uncle, began his education. He learned to speak four other languages - not uncommon among the youth of Morocco The most valuable lessons had proven to be those of his initial two years in Fez, visiting the village wise man on the mountaintop. It was here he acquired his "gift" and discovered his phenomenal aptitude for ancient practices shown to him. He learned the art of penetrating a man's mind with his voice and his willpower. Americans, he had discovered, had a word for this phenomenon: hypnotism. It was thought a parlor trick, or more accurately, a show to be given from a stage, but no one ever thought it was "real" enough to be a part of his or her everyday lives. Today, Assan's meeting is with the vice president of corporate alliances at Disney who turns out to be rather obnoxious and condescending. Therefore, Assan hypnotizes him, in his own office, into signing a one-sided deal favoring Vector.
Porter Meckert is meeting with an old friend, who is currently the U.S. Secretary of State, when he receives a phone call with distressing news: his Chief of Technology has died
Barton Simon explodes in Amanda's direction when he is informed that Siva is dead, and Amanda retreats to her office. She realizes she had given Charlie instructions to find out what the programmers were up to. She asks him. When Charlie responds by showing her rolled-up schematics and says he has the description of the value proposition Amanda grabs him and literally runs into Barton's office, where it suddenly dawns on her that she had done so without even taking a look at the schematics herself. Charlie must have had all last night to pour over it and she just made Charlie indispensable; she could have been so herself with just a little patience and thinking ahead. She is sick to her stomach at her horrible blunder.
Inside Barton's office, Charlie is telling him, along with Mortimer and Amanda, what Vector's technology does - sort of. Their initial response is basically, "What else does it do?" But before Charlie can be grilled any further, the phone rings. It is Porter Meckert informing them that he will need a resource for his conference call with Wall Street analysts and business journalists in ten minutes. Amanda's nightmare scenario becomes true right before her eyes: Charlie is chosen to be on the call with Meckert since he is the only one, besides the non-communicative programmers, that can speak to the technology points and provide technical back-up for Porter Merckert.
A total of twenty-two analysts are huddled around their speakerphones in five different offices in
New York, with lunch messily spread out on all their respective conference tables. Porter and Maggie Meckert are sipping tea in their apartment in Manhattan hovering next to their speakerphone and - in the Vector Systems office in San Francisco - there stands Barton, Amanda, Dave, and Mortimer. Charlie is sitting at Barton's desk in front of the speakerphone, with the papers he brought to Amanda spread out in front of him. Dave is unconsciously standing at attention.
One of the analysts eventually gets to the point:
"Ok, sir, let's come back to the reason you initiated this analysts' call which is the death of your chief technologist. I just can't imagine how you move forward without his expertise and guidance to the rest of your I.T. department. Aren't you dead in the water?" Porter confidently informs them that, as horrible as this is personally, Vector Systems had just come out of beta and were on the verge of announcing their entry into the market anyway.
Another analysts asks how the technology works. Porter throws Charlie to the wolf pack.
"Charles, are you on the line?"
"Uh, yes, I am", Charlie suddenly lifts his head up and was now perched in his seat like a bird.
"Good, let's give the analysts something to sink their teeth into - but not too much, now. We're not giving the farm away today. Let's get into it a bit."
"I have a question for you, Mr. Sanders," a voice with a harsh accent spoke, "What's the programming language?"
"Well, it's, ah, it's B.M.F.S." Charlie felt his throat tighten.
"Gotcha'. I don't know that one."
A few more uncomfortably tough questions cause Charlie to speak up again. "BMFS doesn't work off the internet. It's an intranet - its own dynamic and adaptable system, and it can learn. It can be extended to work with applications and its internal sniffer technology can access databases worldwide using artificial intelligence. It doesn't just react, it anticipates and can infer and it constantly compares its forecasts against reality, learning if it makes a mistake. Think of a beehive. The system uses billions of - I think they're called ‘autonomous agents' but think of them like bees - going out into the world every second to collect updated data, and seek out new sources of data. It can handle literally an unlimited volume of data and resolve it into relational data bases and it constantly data mines these huge data warehouses to compare and contrast conditions and teach itself what is real out in the world so when you ask the system a question it is, literally, the expert on whatever subject matter - on anything; on everything." Porter and Maggie turn and look at each other and Maggie mouthed the word "wow" to Porter who nodded appreciatively and jotted down a note on a pad near the speakerphone. Charlie continues.
"You're not speaking to a human being. You're speaking to the BMFS system directly and it answers you."
"Wait a minute, are you telling me you can talk to a bunch of servers in plain English and it talks back?"
"Yes. That's correct," Porter broke in and took over.
"Limited vocabulary? Have to be careful how you modulate words?"
"No. You speak exactly the way you speak, any accent. We have fifty two major languages programmed into the system."
The analysts are amazed at what they are hearing and begin to ask if they can get their hands on one. One wants to check out something about his ex-girlfriend, others want to examine more closely other companies they are responsible for following. The conference continues on like this for another thirty minutes with not one more question about Siva Ventkaramanu or his staff's ability to actually deliver. Porter gently brought the call to a close.
Everyone congratulates Charlie on his fantastic job of jumping right in and watching Porter Meckert's back. Mortimer, however, has been browsing the schematics and tells Charlie he sees no reference to a "BMFS" programming language.
"How do you know that's what the system is called? Did Siva tell you verbally?"
"No, I made it up." Says Charlie.
"Oh, I see, ok, fine. Any significance, or a random choice of letters?"
"Well," Charlie hesitated, "it stands for ‘big mother fucking shit'. I just panicked when he asked and it was the first thing that popped into my head."
Charlie makes a beeline back to the cavernous programming room, and speaks with Dini, who had first introduced Charlie to Siva just yesterday. The programmers around them were all staring so intently into their monitors that it was as if there was a very detailed pornographic show going on that they were all lost in; or they were all playing at the same virtual shoot-em-up game, betting real money.
The intensity could actually be tasted in the air. Was this some reaction to the news of Siva's death? Did these guys decide to lose themselves in their work as a sign of respect for their leader…or were they, perhaps, working against a deadline of some kind?
"Didn't Siva say there was a prototype of what you guys were working on?" "Yes," Dini smiles a congratulatory smile, nodding his head up and down a bit for emphasis. "Follow me, please."
Dini shows Charlie the technology.
"You've got to be kidding. This is the only one? This is it?"
"How many are required to demonstrate that it works?"
"Well, you've got a point there, but what about being able to give samples out to potential clients? You know, give them a ‘test drive'?"
"This is the only one." Dini says, his brow getting slightly furrowed, as if pointing out some self-evident truth and so why debate the issue.
Charlie stands there and shakes his head, then looks down at the device and begins to study it more closely. The earpiece was transparent, soft, molded plastic and it was shaped such that it would fit into either ear.
"You don't actually need the keyboard. You can push this button, here, the one marked ‘verbal' and, if you then keep the keyboard within five feet of the earpiece, you can merely speak your inquires and listen to the responses with the earpiece." Dini explains.
"Holy shit. This is like a Star Trek gizmo. Who wouldn't want one of these? Wait - if I use this verbal mode, then how does this thing know I'm speaking to it and not to someone else, or myself?"
"You address it by name, of course."
"Ok," says Charlie, grinning like a kid on Christmas morning now, "I'll bite, what's its name?"
"Wallace."
Charlie raised an eyebrow, "How did you come up with that beauty?"
"Richard Wallace is the inventor of ‘A.L.I.C.E.', which stands for Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity. Our early work drew on some of his insights and Siva thought it was a suitable homage to Mr. Wallace to name our system after him, whom we consider to be the great-great-grandfather of our system. Unfortunately, Siva and Mr. Wallace had a falling out after Mr. Wallace won the Loebner Prize for the second time. That's an annual artificial-intelligence competition where developers from all over the world have their systems compete for a panel of judges, who rank them on how well they pass the ‘Turing Test', which is based on the work of the British mathematician, Alan Turing, who used simple ‘imitation' games, initially, to determine if machines could think. Turing would put a person and a computer in one room and an interrogator in another. The interrogator would talk to both using a Teletype machine and the goal was to determine which was the human being and which was the computer. If the machine fooled the interrogator into thinking it was a human being, then it was ruled to have passed, and was considered ‘intelligent'."
Charlie smiled and shook his head, "You boys with your toys. So why the fallout between Richard Wallace and Siva?"
"Because," said Dini, "unknown to anyone until after the Loebner competition was over, our system was actually one of the judges."
"Ok, said Charlie, "Earpiece in. I'm ready to rock and roll. Wallace, how are you feeling today?"
"Since I am a machine I do not, by definition, ‘feel', however, being a sentient being, I feel that I am. With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?"
Charlie's eyes went wide, like a cow.
"This is Siva! Siva is talking to me! Where is he?"
"No," Dini said very delicately but seriously, "It is Siva's voice. Wallace was fed his entire vocabulary, in every language he speaks, using Siva's voice."
"He asked me a question! He asked me who I am. He can't do that! How can he do that?" Charlie was almost running in place he was so excited.
"Ask Wallace," said Dini.
"Wallace, my name is Charlie. I'm your new master, Genie. How can you ask me questions?"
"This one learns by asking questions. I wished to learn your name. it is my pleasure to make your acquaintance, Charlie. Your reference to being my ‘master': is this perhaps inspired by the book entitled ‘101 Arabian Nights', or perhaps the American television comedy entitled ‘I Dream of Jeanie'?"
"The Latter, Wallace"
"Humor reference, I assume, Charlie. Correct?"
"Well, yes, I was making a joke."
"Adjusting."
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