My one o’clock consultation appointment today was Ivan Hukutchakokov, from the Russian Embassy. He flopped down, obviously miserable, on the couch by the window. Clients who do that are almost always caught up in a highly intractable situation.
“Is highly intractable situation,” he confirmed as he sat up half way to open his laptop and place it on a nearby chair, “that I am reluctantly forced to deal with. Here, see for yourself.” With that, he pressed Enter, and a full screen video began.
It started quietly enough, as what was apparently a Web cam or perhaps a closed circuit security camera panned slowly across a nondescript cube farm. A score of geeks peered intently at LCD flat screen monitors, obviously hard at work on various information technology tasks. Then, without warning, the sound of chanting voices echoed into the room, very softly and very far away. At first, all that could be discerned was that the chant was human voices, repeating the same word, over and over in a distinct, demented and disturbing secundus paeon foot. The effect was immediate – the geeks stopped working and gazed about apprehensively. In a moment, the chant grew louder and its words became ominously audible – “De-VEL-op-ers, De-VEL-op-ers, De-VEL-op-ers…”
“[Expletive] a duck!” a young fellow shouted in Russian (with a thick Georgian accent) as his head popped up from his cubicle in a classic prairie dog, “it’s them!”
In an instant, mass panic broke out. It was clearly evident that no contingency plans had been formulated, too – some workers hid under their desks, others, seized by panic, bolted desperately for the exits, and many of them just sat there, frozen like deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck. Several frantically attempted to destroy their computers – throwing them to the floor, beating on them with paperweights or hastily detached office chair arms; two of them actually drew pistols and fired them into their machines’ hard drives.
“De-VEL-op-ers, De-VEL-op-ers…” the chant became a roar. Screams emanated from the corridors outside.
“Run! Get the [expletive] out of here! Now!” a young woman shrieked in excellent English as she darted past the camera, “It’s the [expletive] BSA!” obviously not referring to the Boy Scouts of America.
“De-VEL-op-ers, De-VEL-op-ers, De-VEL-op-ers…” the demented chant grew to an improbable crescendo, at last exploding into an inchoate and thoroughly disturbing whoop as a squad of manics in black appeared, spreading mayhem in every direction.
In the course of my work, I have had occasion to view some pretty raw stuff – my clients have shown me unedited footage of countless atrocities, war crimes and egregious violations of international codes of conduct from the many and varied far-flung corners of the globe. So I can say with some authority that what I witnessed today was totally shocking. Difficult, indeed, even for me to watch.
“The horror, the horror,” I exclaimed as I saw the attackers callously administer nearly unspeakable tortures.
“My God,” I murmured in hushed and astonished tones, “thermonuclear noogies! Mexican pink bellies! Louisiana Indian burns!”
“Brazilian [expletive]-twisters,” Ivan added, pointing at the screen. “You can see them doing it to those people over there. Men, women, they don’t care – they grab, they hold the victim down, they twist. Look, look, two of them at once on that very nicely stacked blonde girl, just over here in upper left hand corner of screen! It must be udder agony, I should think.”
“Christ!” I interjected, so completely appalled it didn’t occur to me that I should correct Ivan’s English. “Not Singapore cootie rubs! This is unbelievable! No! No! Now they’re giving people atomic wedgies! Oh, the humanity!”
“As you Americans say,” Ivan assured me, “you ain’t seen nothing yet. Look over here. See those two with that… apparatus?”
“Jesus Christ!” I yelled over the screams in the video. “What the hell is that?”
“Is custom torture device,” Ivan explained. “Power source is MS Robotics battery bank. Controller is xBox 360. Electrodes are constructed from Zune earbuds and wiring. They attach them to… ”
“You mean,” I interrupted, “those… demented monsters… are from… Microsoft?”
“That is exactly problem,” Ivan confirmed. “Are Microsoft nerd-jas.”
“What, in the name of all that’s holy,” I beseeched, “is a nerd-ja?”
“Multinational corporate commandos,” Ivan related, clearly disturbed by the concept. “Trained in… intellectual property enforcement techniques perfected by none other than Bill Gates himself. Notice how… crazy they are?”
“It’s pretty hard to escape noticing, actually,” I admitted. “What’s up with that?”
“A.B.C.,” Ivan confided ominously as he turned down the video sound, providing me with a modicum of relief, for which I was honestly grateful. “Stands for Autologous Booger Consumption. Was Gates’ idea, but Steve Ballmer took concept to logical conclusion. Gates said, have nerd-jas eat their own boogers right before attack, but Ballmer said, have them pick noses for hours, days, even weeks before raid. Collect boogers on paper towels, and dry boogers out, store in… what you call… those plastic candy containers… Pixie…”
“Pixie Stix?” I offered.
“Yes, yes, is pixie sticks,” Ivan nodded. “Microsoft Nerd-ja eat candy from sticks while training, save sticks, then load with dried boogers. Then, just prior to raid…” Ivan mimed a Microsoft nerd-ja, chugging down boogers from a Pixie Stix container. “They take all at once. Drives them wild!”
“I’m beginning,” I confessed, “to regret having eaten oysters for lunch.”
“Tell me about it,” Ivan ruefully remarked. “Last week, was my birthday. So for my lunch, I spend big fist full of Euros on blinis and caviar. Then I go back to Kremlin and my boss makes me watch this. Two minutes and I am in men’s room. Everything comes right back up. Complete waste of money!”
“My sympathies…” I interjected.
“Also, last week birthday I am forty. So then I am thinking this really [expletive]! Then I am wondering, how rotten can my miserable life get?”
“Well,” I reflected. “It’s only a number you know, and…”
“I found out how rotten,” Ivan spat, “very quick. After that, they send me to Russian Embassy in Washington DC; say visit Tom Collins, ask him!”
“Um, yeah,” I cautiously responded. “I can see what you mean. But now that we’re on the subject, could you tell me what, specifically, you were sent here to ask me?”
“Am getting to that,” he assured me. “You know what happened after Microsoft nerd-ja raids spread across Russia, doing things like this to people using pirated copies of Windows operating system and MS Office? Big stink gets out of Russia; then New York Times prints article. And what does article say? It says Russian FSB is targeting NGOs – environmental, political dissidents, you name it, okay? And FSB is using lack of Microsoft licenses for organizations’ software to harass them!”
“How fiendishly clever,” I observed.
“You are saying that again,” Ivan concurred. “Is thinking worthy of FSB itself! Terrorize all software pirates in Russia and fix so they get to blame FSB for it! So tell me something, can you?”
“I’ll try,” I gamely volunteered.
“Microsoft was found guilty of big breaking of American business laws in your federal court, correct?” Ivan squinted at me expectantly.
“They sure were,” I confirmed.
“But your government,” Ivan declared, pointing out the picture window at the White House, “it still does business with Microsoft, yes?”
“It certainly does;” I acknowledged, “to the tune of billions of dollars a year.”
Ivan leaned forward, curious. “How can this be? How can US government do business with known criminal organization like Microsoft?”
“While you’re here in the Nation’s Capital,” I advised, “I suggest you pose that particular question to Aneesh Chopra and Vivek Kundra.”
Ivan stared at me quizzically. “Who are they?”
“The Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Officer of the United States, respectively. Perhaps they can tell you.”
“Okay,” Ivan shrugged. “Since, as you say, I am here anyway, maybe I will ask them. So,” Ivan continued, “FSB called bull [expletive] on Microsoft right away, you bet your bottom Yankee dollar! So then they come to us with deal. They say, Microsoft will announce they will give free licenses for all Microsoft products to all NGOs, political dissent groups or anyone else in Russia who is afraid government wants to get them, so FSB cannot use unlicensed software as excuse for raids on their homes and offices. Then Microsoft says, if Russian government lets Microsoft keep doing nerd-ja raids on everybody else, Microsoft will turn over list of NGOs, political dissident and all other organizations that are afraid of getting raided by Russian government to FSB. Then FSB will have names and addresses of everybody they want to crush…”
“And all you have to do,” I quickly deduced, “is come up with some other pretext to raid them!”
“Sure,” Ivan chuckled with a sly smile. “Establish past due on electric bill… get some noise complaints… act on anonymous tip, whatever, then raid them because of that. Is standard police work. Nothing to it.”
“Sounds like a marriage made in heaven,” I assessed. “So what’s your problem?”
“Both Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev,” Ivan flatly stated, “are deeply concerned about potential damage to Russia’s image and prestige which might occur if relationship with Microsoft becomes public.”
“That’s certainly understandable,” I agreed. “But frankly, there’s only one sure way to mitigate this.”
Ivan leaned forward expectantly. “Yes? And that is?”
“Russia has to stop using Microsoft’s inferior pirated proprietary crap and switch over to open source software.”
Ivan froze, clearly stunned, and remained motionless for over a minute. At last, he spoke. “Impossible. Writing viruses, trojans, malware and worms for Microsoft Windows and Office is presently sixteen percent of Russian gross national product. Another twelve percent is dot-NET based gambling, pornography, phishing, pharming, email spam, sugar-daddy, sex tourism and mail-order bride scam Web sites and applications. ‘Close down Russian oil industry,’ you might as well ask.”
“In that case,” I cautioned, “there’s probably not much I can do for you. Consequently, this consultation is free of charge.”
“Just as well,” Ivan told me as he packed up his laptop and got ready to leave. “I was going to pay you in rubles.”