CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Two Versions of Reality

THE E-MAIL FROM DAVID WETTERGREEN TO HIS ZOË project colleagues and staff caught me and many others off-guard. It began by referring to the spate of positive publicity the project had received over the previous few weeks, even though it was months after the OPS. The e-mail arrived at a time when I was involved observing other robotics projects. I had not been in touch with Wettergreen for a while.

As I read the beginning of Wettergreen’s e-mail, I imagined how satisfied Wettergreen and Waggoner were at this moment. In this day and age, science and technology are anchored in positive publicity. But then, suddenly, Wettergreen’s e-mail turned strange.

UNFORTUNATELY, THIS WILL BE MY LAST MESSAGE TO ALL OF YOU. I REGRET TO SAY THAT I AM LEAVING CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY.

DURING MY RECENT TRIP TO THE CMU QATAR CAMPUS IN DOHA, I WAS APPROACHED BY A MEMBER OF THE AL AKSA MARTYR’S BRIGADE. HE EXPLAINED TO ME THE GREAT EVIL THAT THE UNITED STATES IS SPREADING IN THAT PART OF THE WORLD. AS HE CONTINUED, I WAS HORRIFIED TO REALIZE THAT MY WORK WITH NASA AND THE CMU QATAR CAMPUS IS AIDING AMERICAN OIL IMPERIALISM. HOW COULD I CONTINUE WITH THESE TERRIBLE TRANSGRESSIONS ON MY CONSCIENCE?

SO, I REGRET TO SAY THAT I WILL BE RETURNING TO THE MIDDLE EAST AREA TOMORROW, PERHAPS NEVER TO RETURN. MY BROTHERS AND I WILL CARRY THE JIHAD INTO THE DESERT SANDS. PERHAPS, GOD BE PRAISED, I WILL BE ABLE TO ADAPT THE ZOË PLATFORM TO AUTONOMOUSLY CARRY MUJAHADEEN WARRIORS AND ROUT THE INFIDEL. REMEMBER ME IN YOUR PRAYERS. ALLAH KEEP YOU ALL SAFE.

—DAVID

P.S. HERE IS MY NEW CONTACT INFORMATION

MUHAMMAD AL WETTERGREEN

SECRET AL AKSA TRAINING CAMP

MAIL STOP #37

JERUSALEM, PALESTINE 65902

At first, obviously, I doubted the legitimacy of Wettergreen’s e-mail. He was, after all, the project director and its chief cheerleader. I immediately considered e-mailing Wettergreen or some of the other project members to see if the message was legitimate, but before I acted, a second e-mail appeared on my computer screen, sent directly to Wettergreen, with all members of the LITA list-serve copied. This e-mail referenced Wettergreen’s original e-mail, and communicated this cautionary and frightening warning—IN BOLD!

FROM: NASA INSPECTOR GENERAL <IG-FBI@ARC.NASA.GOV>

THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN FLAGGED BY AN AUTOMATED CONTENT ASSESSMENT SERVICE AS A POTENTIAL THREAT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ACCORDING TO USA PATRIOT ACT, PROCEDURE 0401, SECTION 1US3R, WE MUST NOTIFY YOU THAT THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY WILL BE INVESTIG.

PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS AUTOMATED MESSAGE-YOU WILL BE CONTACTED SOON.

At this point, I began to believe that the e-mail was plausible. I knew that Wettergreen had recently visited Qatar where Carnegie Mellon had established a campus, and he was planning to travel extensively in the area with colleagues in search of sites for developing and testing other robot projects after Zoë was completed.

And the truth is, much of the work in robotics performed by Carnegie Mellon and most other universities in the United States is supported by the military, especially the Department of Defense. The technologies developed at Carnegie Mellon for NASA could easily be adapted for fighting and surveillance apparatus. This is a fact of life at the school that is rarely discussed but eminently apparent.

While Wettergreen seemed like a rock on the outside, perhaps he was finally buckling under the pressure to make it all work. On the surface he had seemed completely unaffected by the problems with Zoë, confident and articulate in stating the objective of his research. But underneath, who could really know how people will respond to an overwhelming buildup of pressure? Even the strongest and most settled personality can sometimes break and do things that are totally uncharacteristic and self-destructive. I flashed back to the scene in the airport with David Wettergreen breaking the news to his wife that, after being away for so long, he intended to go directly into the office before he could spend time with his family.

I had met Dana Wettergreen for coffee at a Starbucks close to their house one afternoon months after our brief and somewhat embarrassing airport encounter. A math and business major in college, she is a stay-at-home mom, cyber-schooling their two children. “My husband is an amazing person,” she told me. “He is fair, honest, decent, and operates with integrity. He is even-keeled, patient, and not emotionally volatile.”

When I told her that his robotics crew and the science team held him in great regard (“They admire Red, but they want to emulate David”) she was surprised that people would recognize something valuable in being calm, patient, and methodical—not causing problems—not being that “all over the place person” that Red Whittaker is. “The Red thing is so much sexier.” She confirmed her husband’s claim that he never worries about the projects he is working on. The one “worry” on his mind now “is how to support all the people who are counting on him to keep their jobs.”

It is interesting to see how many researchers working at Carnegie Mellon are forced to modify their orientations once they become successful. As they gain support for their research, they are necessarily elevated to a management role, losing connection to the vision that initially guided and inspired them. Their managerial responsibilities can become so all-consuming that they are forced to delegate the scientific tasks to others, so that they can keep the project and the staff afloat. Alan Waggoner and Reid Simmons admitted that they are somewhat disconnected from the day-to-day scientific substance of their projects. Perhaps Wettergreen had lost his center and was feeling overwhelmed by his responsibilities. Everyone has a breaking point, I thought.

The day after receiving the Wettergreen e-mail, I e-mailed Alan Waggoner, the senior statesman of the group, and asked if he had any insight into what was going on with Wettergreen, if the e-mail was legitimate, and he answered, in part: “Lee, I am out of it, just like you.”

Now I was even more perplexed, but I e-mailed back one more time, explaining that I was out of the country at the moment at a conference; otherwise I would have walked over to the Robotics Institute and knocked on Wettergreen’s office door.

A few hours later, I received another message from Waggoner. “Lee, think about it. What day is today?”

I looked at my calendar. It was April 1.

I was flabbergasted and embarrassed that I could be so out of touch; I was not in Slovenia, after all, just Vancouver, Canada. But I had not paid attention to the date and I had forgotten all about last year’s April fool’s gag. When Wettergreen went to the High Bay, April 1, 2004, Hyperion was missing. He searched all over and couldn’t find it—until he went into the tiny office shared by Jonak, Smith, Teza, Heys, and a few other staffers. Hyperion was jammed into the room. An unidentified group of cohorts—no names mentioned—had disassembled Hyperion and reassembled it in the office, waiting for Wettergreen to happen upon the robot in the morning.

But it also occurred to me then that both April fool’s jokes were symbolic of certain aspects of the Zoë project—and of so many things that seem to be happening in such a broiling technological hotbed as Carnegie Mellon, where geeks and code monkeys sustain the drive, energy, and overall spirit of the place. Both tricks were brilliantly conceived and executed (Wettergreen revealed that he had received follow-up messages allegedly from the FBI, as part of the April fool’s boondoggle), as one might expect from a CMU geek.

At the same time, the tricks were inappropriate and troublesome, as are many youthful pranks. It is often difficult to remember how young and, sporadically, immature the students are. Hyperion had been damaged during its magical emergence in the tiny office, and this year many of Wettergreen’s colleagues on the LITA e-mail distribution list had either been taken in like me or disappointed with the poor taste inherent in the messages. It was Carnegie Mellon in a nutshell: Youthful exuberance leading to ingenious resourcefulness and an occasional inadvertent faux pas.

Here too was the sum and substance, nuts and bolts, of their erstwhile leader, David Wettergreen—thorough and responsible, unflappable and forgiving to the bitter end. When I asked Wettergreen whether he knew the identities of the perpetrators and, if so, would there be consequences, he told me that he could guess the people responsible for the prank, but that he had no interest in confirming it or following up with recrimination. “I would have preferred that it had not happened,” he said, “but I am not opposed to having a little fun, even at my expense. As long as nothing gets broken and no one gets hurt, and the project moves forward, a few jokes and tricks are fine with me.”