Abzu

Distraction does set the mind at ease

/ staticsky

As has been the case before, our team lives and relaxes by doing the work – work on our project (or project adjacent) – work they hopefully still love, and especially now when there is nothing else.  Again this morning, and I think perhaps every morning from now on, begun with the team gathering in our central area.  The status brief portion of the status meeting was indeed brief – as work on anything at all had just began. It was mostly teams announcing what hardware they need immediately and that for what items they would be filling out additional sacred forms.  

Next, and perhaps in reality the most important part of the meeting, was the status about – us.  Our people, this place, what we have learned.  Janice started by first thanking everyone who had volunteered to help with Sally, i.e. being Sally’s escorts, guard the bathrooms for her, etc.  And she made an announcement that got a cheer, Sally talked with other kids yesterday.  As much as Sally loves us and has fun with us, let’s face it we are all adults, perhaps not in maturity, but definitely in age.  So a lady named Jane (wait, why does Lady Jane sound familiar?) stopped by Janice and Sally’s room short of breath and told Sally she had rushed over because she realized that Sally had never been invited to the meeting which had just started. Since she noted Sally wasn’t online she had rushed over to let her know.  [there were chuckles amongst the team about this glorious example of Abzu’s high tech organization].  What meeting?  Oh, it was Sally’s introduction to some of the other kids in Abzu.  Sally’s slate (Abzu supplied, not this one) had been configured with the, get this, The Intecela – the Abzu wide grid.  Sally had more access than anyone on our team.  The call went well – it sounds like, surprise, surprise, the other kids are pretty geeky too.  None of them are in our Cela so Lady Jane (I’m sticking with that) is going to arrange a field trip soon for Sally to meet them all in person.  More cheering all around.

After that great news the meeting got pretty lighthearted. Chen noted that he and Erik had a chat with some folks from another group that works on our floor.  They didn’t tell Chen or Erik what their projects entailed because supposedly our team is supposed to go into the science fair all “tabula rasa.” Yeah, that won’t be hard.  Anyway they did let Chen and Erik know that our team is nicknamed The Sims around the Cela. While we don’t know anything about anyone, it looks like they know what we do, I wonder if they know more about what we do than we do.

The general reaction to the nickname was met positively by the folks that had even heard of the old game. When Chen started explaining the game he went off on a tangent about putting all the sims folks in a pool and then building a fence around it so they couldn’t escape and they all would swim themselves to death, there was an uncomfortable hush until Alice chimed in with a very loud aside “guess I better double check his code.”  Chen laughed the hardest.

“Sims it is” I ended the meeting with, and then called out folks to work on the early stages of Visual POV.  Kaitlin and Adit of course because it eventually will segue into POV but also Chen and Makda to work on a basic VR device so we can quickly get private communication happening outside of just Sally’s slate.  Makda is part of Kaitlin’s team and seems to have an affinity for retro-tech like Chen – once they have the parts we’ll have our private chalk board up and running in a day (or two)

I desperately want to talk to Janice about “us” and that seems incredibly selfish with everything else going on.  I just have to wait.  And how does “us” work in a Cela anyway?  The truth is this is a prison for us, certainly a very interesting one, but it is a place we can’t leave – and it is weird that fact seems to be normalized already.

I think this is why my entries have been longer and more regular – I have internalized I have nothing else I can do, which is a lot more restricting than my previous situation of just not doing anything else.

And Adit, this is weird.  This “blog” has always been a semi-personal journal, the fact that we are also now formally using it as communication between us makes it awkward.  Just wanted to put that out there.

Smile for the camera

/ staticsky

Big Day, Long Post.  Yesterday’s meeting with Stan was a good reminder that we need to be on our best behavior.  Otherwise, I guess its jail.

But I don’t even know what good behavior is.  I’d assume it would be doing a good job, but I don’t know what we are supposed to be doing.

The best way we can behave is just to make sure we don’t get caught saying something bad.  We are definitely being watched and I think it is safe to say that whatever we say is being heard.  As Greystle turned this project away from our goals I know a lot of the more esoteric disciplines in our team was starting to feel ignored, unfortunately none of us are being ignored now.

When the full team had shown up, and started to unbox some of the items that had arrived from the sacred forms, I whistled and gathered everyone over.

“Hey guys, I wanted to give you an update.  Let me start by saying I don’t know exactly what we are doing, so this isn’t going to be the best update.  There is a huge cloud infrastructure available to us that is more than we will ever need, and when I say cloud I mean some cave a couple of hallways away.

But first, and this is important, look anywhere in this room and wave.  Know that there is a monitor somewhere here that just displayed your wave.  Now with your best ASMR whisper say hello to Stan.”

I couldn’t think of a subtle way of letting everyone know, and if I whisper it to everyone or write it on a note to show it surreptitiously, I think that’d just be worse.  But the reaction was very unhappy.  And the only way to get them happy was to give them work, really work.

“While we are waiting on what the new job is, there are still some things I think we should continue some of our old work.  I know all the data is lost, or I assume it is, but I’d like it if the task force on Tangent could plan for a presentation to us this week.  Honestly, just say where you think the data was leading you to conclude.  Obviously, no charts, or real data.  Just what you learned.  I think it would be good to know.  Like, why was, if it really was, Tangent more violent.”

I divided the teams into three groups, the Tangent task force, folks to set up their equipment as it was starting to pile up.  And then a third group consisting of Kaitlin, Janice, and Adit, but before I could explain my really good idea (Visual Point of View – and I’m seriously proud of myself) over an intercom Stan’s voice boomed.  “Rob, come see me at my office.”

I know Chen thought better of it the second he said it, but I’m sure it was a hard idea to suppress, he looked at me and said “oooooh, you’re in trouble.”  I should have been worried about whatever repercussions to my announcing our surveillance state was, but truthfully I was worried I might have forgotten how to get to his office.

Even though I knew what I was walking into, the wall of monitors and the window to a cave of servers caused me to make a, hopefully inaudible, “oooof” exhale.  Though I admit I really was freaked out about how hard the push back would be for my “smile for the camera” bravado.

But… nothing.

Instead Stan barely gave me eye contact beyond acknowledging that I had come in.  He was just putting a slate in a shoulder bag.  “Hey Rob, just wanted to let you know that we’ll be ready in a couple of weeks for you all to begin, in the meantime just keep your team busy.”  

Then as he walked me to the door he mentioned the most hilarious thing, “At the end of the week every team in this Cela is putting together little presentations of what their broader project is.  Think of it is a high school science fair, put up a poster or two of what you are doing on a fold out table and just talk to folks and answer their questions.”  And then he finally looked at me.  With a smile he said, “seriously this is a lot more effective than it sounds.  You get to mingle around see what other people are doing and start riffing off each other.  Then full docs and info are up on their corners of Abzu’s grid for more detail. “  Stan stopped, “you all are stuck here, try to have fun.”  And then out he went through a door into one of the long hallways. I had thought that door was just a closet.

The team hadn’t left the central meeting spot.  I stepped back down into the center.  I looked at Chen and gave a thumbs up.  “Okay, change of plans, 4 groups:  1 unpacks and builds up our local infrastructure, the Tangent presentation group, and 2 new projects.  Who here misses high school?”  I knew there would mostly be groans, but it almost seemed exclusively groans.  “I need some folks to work together and whip up infographics and handouts.  We’re going to a science fair on Friday and we need something for our booth.”  Crickets.  “It’ll be a good opportunity to find out what other people are doing here behind their closed doors.  There might be some good ideas we can use.”

And as I started to say before, we’re going to need some of the department heads to work on a new simulations feature.  I never liked how we need to set some time aside and make a special effort to render a visual of what was happening on Alpha.  What if we could just type in the camera location, put on goggles and look around and see from our own eyes what was happening in real time?”  Janice’s face had a look of distress, I smiled in her direction to try and reassure her.  “We can use one of our slates to run the lamest simulation possible.  One of these conference rooms, we can just move around objects in the simulation for testing.”  

Afterwards we kind of all just milled around in our little office center.  Then there was a mass exodus to the cafeteria and I got to hear the team talk about work again.  We all had something to do.  I heard Chen volunteer to be the “eye candy” at the booth.

Stan’s the Man

/ staticsky

Stan came into “my” office today, luckily after I shook myself awake. The request forms they used here have such a horrible layout that the brain wants to shut down in revolt. I assume this is purposeful as it probably cuts down on the amount of requests that are made.

He wanted to talk to me “in his office.” For some reason I had flashbacks of high school whispers of “ohhh he’s in trouble….”

Stan has an office in the simulations lab too, behind what I had thought was just door to an electrical closet was yet another hallway (seriously, how massive is this place?). The hall ended with another door that opened into a very roomy office. On one wall sat his desk with oak cabinets behind him. That scene would have been at home in any office park office building. Another wall however was all monitors, each monitor flipping through video feeds that seemed to cover the entire simulations lab floor. I’m sure Stan wanted me to see that both as a threat and a warning. We were watched. It was a given, but it was something else to see it in living black and white. Seriously it was black and white. This place seems to have no limit to its budget and scale and they can’t be bothered to spy on us in color?

But as spectacular as the wall of monitors was, the wall across from it was a wonder. I think it was a window (or an amazingly clean video monitor) to the server farm. But it was massive. They aren’t doing just a hundred or so tangents, they are doing thousands, tens of thousands. Server rack after server rack in a warehouse sized hole in the rock. We must be on the outer edge of Abzu because the server farm was sitting there surrounded by bare rock. It looked so fake honestly, like an underground factory from an old sci-fi film back when they used matte paintings instead of digital imagery.

Stan just wanted to reinforce the importance of this project, and how seriously “everyone” was taking this. It’s far beyond Greystle now.

I didn’t get to discuss what was of most interest to me: What “this” is. He just showed me his office and then pushed me out the door since he just “wanted to show me around a bit,” but that he had another meeting to go to.

Game night again tonight. It looks like we are using proper Abzu etiquette because our game is exactly where we left it. Adit would know if any piece had been moved.

First day at the office

/ staticsky

Wow, it’s amazing how spreadsheets can bring you back to reality.

Today I learned where the sacred form is. There was a stack of them in my office. Now I can requisition anything from toothpaste to all the computers we’ll need for the team. In fact I can request more forms with the form.

Today Stan Winston escorted me and Adit to the Simulations lab. I guess we work weekends. Abzu is a surprise behind every door. Down one flight of stairs and down yet another identical hall was a door labeled “simulations” (yes – in lower case). You open the door and zoom you are in a glass corporate office building, without the windows to the outside world. Rows of offices with glass walls, a cubicle farm that went on and on to the point of parody; this was going to be big.

“Welcome home,” Stan said with all honesty. I think I had just witnessed some kindness. I was allowed a few minutes of acclimating before the rest of the team showed up: Janice, Alice, Kaitlin, Erik, Chen, everyone.

In the middle of the cubicle farm there is a clearing and a sunken open space. Though there are meeting rooms, this is probably the only place large enough to hold all of us if there is a team wide meeting.

I introduced everyone to where we would be working and I showed them the sacred form from which all things derived. The assignment over the next couple of days was to fill out the forms for everything they needed. Each group was to get a meeting with me to go over their needs (and their forms) and I’d approve them. We were starting from scratch. Most of the cubicles had no chairs and none of the offices had desks (which made the chairs seem so lonely).

There were lots of questions I couldn’t answer, the most important being of course how we were to access the server farm or if there even was a server farm or were we to spec it out all over again. Other questions centered on how to get Alpha back up, did we have any access to earlier backups of the Alpha code with which to jump start this project. And of course, my favorite: What the hell was this project. I didn’t know that either.

I did have one piece of hardware though, and it held the only piece of information I had. Stan gave me a laptop with access to my corner of the Abzu grid. Nothing there except a meeting on my calendar for Thursday to discuss servers. Hopefully that will answer some of these questions.

The highlight of the day was the mess hall on the simulations floor. It was massive and had an Italian Market theme, and it was the first time we got to “mingle.” Yes, we got to mingle with other inhabitants of Abzu. In fact Stan instructed all of us as to the importance of this. This cela was the ultimate think tank, and information, thought, and retention only grows when it is expressed face to face.

A nice theory and the people I met seemed nice, but very reserved and cagey about what they were working on. It actually was pretty uncomfortable. Hopefully communication and sharing will gain with time (as will our access to other research areas). Maybe to increase mingling we should have a mixer. Deck out the mess hall with ribbons and mirror balls. Serve bad punch. Bring up the awkward another notch.

Cela Defined

/ staticsky

As we lay on the bunk beds earlier tonight I got it into my head that it was fun to say “Cela!  Cela!” as if I was Marlon Brando outside in the rain crying for Stella.  I’m not sure from what movie.  Adit let me know that it wasn’t as funny as annoying – and he let me know that cela wasn’t them being hip and mispronouncing cellar either, but rather it was Sumerian for “temple.” That’s kind of weird.

…

Okay, I think Adit’s been asleep for quite a while now, so hopefully the light of the slate won’t bother him.  I’ve given up on trying to sleep.  To be honest insomnia still kind of freaks me out now.  I guess I should feel somehow victorious that a sleepless night isn’t Orexinal but rather a brain that just won’t shut up!  The combo of being exhausted and not being able to sleep is, well, tiring.  

But I’ve got so many questions in my head from today, I can’t sleep, and I know I can’t answer any.  I wonder if I knew answers could I even affect change for my team and make this somehow better.  At the very least I’ve got to figure out if there is an “outside” place, a room with trees and plants, full spectrum lights.  Something to make sure we all get our Vitamin D absorbed and our circadian rhythms keeping the right beat.  Of course I’m probably thinking of pointless things because soldiers have lived in places like this for decades, and subs have been around for over a hundred years.  I guess I mostly want something like that for Sally, she needs some kind of normalcy now.  

…

Okay now this is really getting ridiculous, it’s going to be morning soon, and my brain is coming up with stupider things to ruminate on.  Like what if this whole place is an oligarch’s Anunnaki cult temple or something.  Tomorrow will I walk into a room with tapestries outlining Gilgamesh’s adventures?

 

Orientation

/ staticsky

Had two meetings today. One mind numbing and confusing, the other mind blowing and confusing.

Let’s discuss the boring one first: Facilities Orientation.

The most interesting part of this was that just two hallway turns away behind non-descript doors was a huge lecture hall.

We were told what the hours of the mess hall were, and that there are others but we need to receive permission from our Project Manger (Stan Winston) to visit them. A portion of the hall is open 24/7 for socializing (because formica and tile scream relaxation and community).

We learned about the requisition forms for everything from office supplies to bed sheets. But I wasn’t told where my office was (do I have an office?) or where to find these forms.

This presentation lasted 4 hours with one bio break. I think I reached a new spiritual level as my spirit lifted away from my body in revolt. That happened when we learned that there is no running in the halls.

I repeat no running in the halls. Well praise be.

After that we were lead into an adjacent room where a brown bagged late lunch was waiting for us. I realized that if I exited to the hallway from this room I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to my room. I’ve now declared that Adit must be my constant companion if nothing else for his ability to find his way back from anywhere.

When we were let back into the lecture hall there was a noticeable increase in guards. I’m sure that meant the next lecture was so boring that they were there to prevent us from running out of the room screaming.

And then my mind was blown.

This place is huge. We don’t have full access yet, in fact we probably never will but in the coming weeks we’ll get more and more access (if we behave ourselves). The entire facility has over 100,000 people. Though it is one facility there are many sectors: literal and virtual firewalls, biological filters. Gated communities with their own redundant systems. They don’t have emergency separation procedures, because these sectors are basically already separate; moving between them is infrequent and requires lots of red tape. Basically it is like entering another country; you’ll need a Visa. They call the sectors celas (Guess they’re too cool for the word cellar?). We’re in Research Cela 1 – catchy.

We’re the primary research sector (sorry ‘cela’), but there are others.

And then he briefly described the research done there: they’re building the future. As far as I can tell DARPA has gone big time with pretty much every other government research division (NIH has a secret research division) is represented here along with some universities. Greystle R&D is here as well and gets paid for their funding via rights to technology… I think. An underground and unaudited patent factory. Lots of money is going into and out of this place.

He tried to put a good spin on it, pointing out that the majority of projects was science for science sake, but I doubt that. They believe in cross discipline interaction, so basically after we’ve acclimated to the place we’ll be allowed to “mingle.”

And what is this place? Abzu. I thought that was a goofy name, but Adit just told me it is Sumerian for “primordial sea.” Okay, that is kind of cool.

The best part of the day was learning that Janice and Sally were only a few blocks away. Yes, each intersection of halls is a block. As stupid as that is that really helped me figure out how to move around the place.

Seriously I can’t tell you how happy in makes me to know those two are so close.

Afterwards Janice, Sally, and I started to play Go together in the Mess Hall. Yes there is a stock pile of games in the cabinets along the wall. Sally’s day was a guided tour of the exercise room and library. They have a huge online curriculum for her, but she said it was a very lonely day. She couldn’t get access to the wider Grid, so she couldn’t even message her old friends. Bur her spirits seemed high and she and I were a team against her mother. After a hour though we were just too tired to go on (it was a long day and nobody slept well last night).

I don’t know what the correct mess hall etiquette is, but we left a piece of paper on top of the board that says “don’t move.” I guess will see tomorrow if that works.