Hidden Dream in The Cloud

Since Chiron Aristóphanes ran his program at Amibor Corporation three days ago, he was feeling really nervous. Even as an authorized and expert employee, he knew that his program could be found anytime, and certainly he would be fired because of that.

It was the year of 2024.

Chiron started a grid-computing style protein folding program, adapted from the open source site from Genomma Digital University. He did a lot of adaptations to run the grid computing architecture into processing units that fitted at the giant cloud infrastructure from Amibor. He hoped that eventually would finish the 2-week processing window and would not be discovered. But he perceived how wrong he was. His boss just called with a heavy voice, asking him to go immediately to the Security Department, they would have a meeting with the director. Of course his boss was not happy and he felt he would be fired.

Yes, at the meeting room, his boss and the security director were showing some very serious faces. The director began:

“Chiron, we know that you ran the protein folding, an unauthorized program; we know that you managed to camouflage several bunches of code to seem that the code is an inoffensive internal operating system utility; we know that you were running them along our cloud infrastructure all over the world, using slots of time only when it would not compromise the payload from virtualization balancing. We know also that you copied it and adapted from Genomma Digital University. Is that correct?”

Chiron just nodded his head agreeing. The director continued:

“Now, it’s 2:58PM. We will need to do a few questions more in order to tell you the next steps. You know you did very wrong and you are in trouble, but things can get worse if you do not collaborate from now. At 3PM our CEO and a scientist from Genomma Digital will enter into videoconferencing and will ask you questions. Is it ok for you?”

Chiron underestimated his crime. Probably he infringed more rules that he expected and some cops outside would soon take him to the prison… he was nearly dropping a tear.

But he stopped, as he saw two legendary faces at 2 videos. He was staring static at his CEO Lou Fratello and Eli Lucas, the Chief Scientist from Genomma, for the protein-folding program. The CEO began straight to the point:

“Chiron, good afternoon. I will ask direct questions and considering you are not in a good position right now, I recommend that you answer those with absolute sincerity. I will take this in account to offer you the best way out for this. Deal? Chiron said yes almost in a pleading tone.”

“Why did you do this?”

“Well, I had no other place to do this. Even at the University site, I saw that Mr. Lucas always did public requests to have more computers joining his grid effort to advance in science and medicine. Amibor, with his huge volume of servers and processor power would fit this perfectly to run the protein folding program much more quickly and really contribute effectively with his research. Amibor and all our customers would not have any impacts considering this size.”

“Chiron, I know the cloud story, where it gradually took the infrastructure that would be for the grid computing, even for scientific applications, and a certain nostalgia that aroused in some people. I will remind you on the purpose of our organization, which is selling cloud solutions to the market. Are you a nostalgic guy? Again, why did you do this, Chiron? Fratello was now pressing him.”

“I did for my mother. She is developing the Alzheimer Disease, and I know the findings from the project from Mr. Lucas will benefit those patients, like my mom. The discovery of new drugs depends on this research. I assume my errors. I am sorry and ready to know what will happen with me.”

“Easy! Mr. Chiron.” Fratello spoke a little louder. “What you did is not correct, but it was a good job fooling us. Let Mr. Lucas talk with you now. He has another question, I believe.”

“Yes, I have.” Eli Lucas was a typical academic man, with a calm and smart aspect. Chiron felt immediately a full respect to him. “Chiron, I had some understandings earlier with Lou. The thing is, will you join us to run this program from a cloud corporation like Amibor? I mean, you will leave Amibor as an employee, but you will manage the relationship with technical experts from Amibor and also coordinate the grid revision from our code, to fit it into a heavy cloud infrastructure?”

“Yes, but…” Now Chiron was astonished. “How…”

Lou Fratello looked at his watch and shot his final consideration.— Chiron, if you want to collaborate we will forgive you, and this project will fit in the TIR Law, The “Law of Tax Incentives for Research”. We were searching for adequate projects during the last months. Also you will donate your entire code to Amibor, we will use anyway we want. Of course, we need to adapt a lot into our security premisses. Well, for that we will forgive you, as you checked with Mr. Lucas, you will be hired at the University and will of course keep the hope concerning your mother. Second option, you are fired and we will prosecute you. Choose now.

Chiron Aristóphanes chose and next week he really began to play at Digital Genomma University. A very serious game.