June 5, 2009.
Two thick envelopes rapidly found their way through the miles of inter-office mail stations onto the desks of Aarti and William. The envelopes proudly displayed the Ubatoo logo and the words “Welcome Aboard,” for anybody and everybody to see. Aarti and William were offered full-time jobs the day after their diet pill breakthrough was officially deemed a success. Advertisements for “miracle pills,” “diet of the year,” and “no exercise needed, burns the fat for you” were reaching the most susceptible demographic faster than ever, and the meticulously targeted audience was vigorously buying everything they were selling with renewed hope. The advertisers were ecstatic.
Before they had unpacked their belongings in the “intern pit,” Aarti and William found themselves seated in their own offices close to Jaan. Whether their good fortune was a reflection of their impressive work or the desperate need for Atiq to hire wasn’t clear. But one fact remained—in the first week, they had received what the other interns would struggle to obtain throughout the rest of the summer.
Walking through the doors into Building 11, it was impossible for Stephen not to instinctively peer into the offices he passed, hoping that one of the occupants would be serendipitously looking up at just the right moment and would engage him in conversation about their latest project or even inquire about his. But that didn’t happen. If Aarti needed something, she found Stephen herself, Jaan’s only communication was through e-mail, and William—well, he was better left alone in his office anyway.
Despite the lack of communication with those three, Stephen had little to complain about. In exchange for every last bit of his ability to think, Stephen’s waking hours were taken care of entirely. A typical day’s schedule deviated little from the previous day or the next day, and consisted of the following:
8:00–8:30 a.m. |
Wake up. |
8:30–8:45 |
Walk to Ubatoo. |
8:45–9:15 |
Get omelet, cappuccino, or fresh smoothie on way to desk. |
9:15–11:45 |
Work. |
11:45–12:00 p.m. |
Gather group of other interns for lunch, and debate about the best café to try. |
12:00–1:15 |
Lunch Get sushi at least two times per week. Get lobster if featured. Get veal if it’s on the menu. |
1:15–1:30 |
Walk to a far cappuccino stand to get a bit of exercise. |
1:30–2:00 |
E-mail/chat with other interns about work. |
2:00–3:00 |
Meet with data-mining team to get updates. |
3:00–5:30 |
Work. |
5:30–6:45 |
Dinner (Any café other than where lunch was eaten). |
6:45–8:30 |
Goof off. |
8:30–12:00 a.m. |
Work. |
12:00–1:00 |
Walk outside with Kohan and any interns who want to join. |
1:00–2:15 |
Late night snack and coffee at desk while working. |
2:15–2:30 |
Walk home. |
2:30–3:15 |
Hang out with Molly. |
3:15–8:00 |
Sleep. |
Between meetings and dedicated work time, more than eleven hours a day were spent working. It wasn’t that Ubatoo demanded this schedule; distractions, if desired, were ample. A few weeks into the internship, the annual intern versus scientist baseball outing was held on a perfectly manicured field on the grounds. When Kohan and Aarti left to join the others, Stephen promised to catch up later. He knew he wouldn’t, though. The similarity between these events and a senior citizen three-day all-inclusive cruise with perky, vacant, over-zealous “fundirectors” relentlessly reminding everyone how best to have fun was inescapable. He had just spent the last two and a half years in a too comfortable, too easy job—he had no need to relax now.
One notably absent entry in the schedule was Jaan. He rarely spoke to the interns after the first week. Jaan’s e-mails, which he sent every few days, were terse: the name, contact information, and relevant background about the latest advertising client who needed help. Stephen’s job was to determine how to improve the client’s advertisement campaigns—just like Aarti and William had done in their first days. If not diet pills, it was gym equipment, lawyers, videogames, movies, banks, airline tickets, candy, and the list went on and on. Whatever it was, it was advertised on Ubatoo.
The moment a new advertising client learned that their assigned contact, Stephen, was “just an intern,” they rattled off a litany of projects for Stephen to complete immediately. But the five minutes of thought that some mid-level manager had given to his marketing campaign the day after his boss had yelled at him for being sloppy, simply couldn’t compare to the concentration that Stephen put into his work, into finding what information the raw data held and how to best coax it free. None of the clients had played with the raw data from their company’s competitors. Most hadn’t even bothered to play with their own. Before the first conversations were through, nobody remembered that they were talking with “just an intern.” Many were just silently thankful that Stephen wasn’t vying for their own job.
The little discoveries and breakthroughs Stephen made for the advertisers were appreciated—and expected for all of the interns hired. This work was too easy. But boredom was never a concern. Stephen spent hours beyond what was expected, even for an Ubatoo intern, learning how to leverage Ubatoo’s vast infrastructure and harness all the computation power available. He was also one of the few interns beginning to recognize what was possible with all the data Ubatoo had amassed. Nobody limited what Stephen did; the data, resources, and knowledge were ready for the taking by anyone who bothered to reach for them.
Ubatoo’s cocoon—this was why it was created. He knew it. Ubatoo knew it. However anyone wanted to spend their time—working, playing, learning, eating, relaxing—it could all be done without leaving the sanctuary of Ubatoo’s grounds. From the moment of waking to the moment before sleep, his thoughts stayed at work. If not yet his soul, at least his mind and wearied body belonged to Ubatoo. The ivory tower of research in academia was never as completely pristine as the world he was in.
As for the little part of his life that occurred almost four blocks from Ubatoo’s grounds, he and Molly had moved in together, as planned. It worked out without any of the hitches everyone had warned him about. Though his schedule would have destroyed most relationships, with Molly being just as enraptured with her own work it made their absences all the less pronounced. In their times together, they rarely talked about work. They were both too far in the trenches and minutiae of their own research to bring the other one up to speed; it would require too much effort. Besides, the relationship was still new, and there were plenty of other, more typical, ways of spending the forty-five minutes they had together before they fell asleep.