Zero Day_ A Novel - Mark Russinovich [7]
Greene interrupted Jeff’s thoughts. “I’ve got a meeting with the other partners and need to give them something. How long, Aiken? How long will this take, and how much of our information can we get back?”
“I can’t say, in all honesty. Not at this point. I’ll let you know as soon as I can make an assessment.”
“All right,” Greene said grimly. “I’m told you’re the best. I need you to prove it.”
3
DETROIT, MICHIGAN
MONDAY, AUGUST 14
9:21 A.M.
Buddy Morgan, balding, fifty-three years old, overweight, returned from his coffee break four minutes early. A twenty-three-year veteran of the United Auto Workers, he had the right to select his own shift; that’s why he was working now. The supervisor, a longtime drinking companion, didn’t give him any grief while the new robots did what they were programmed to do.
Not like the old days, not at all. Buddy had served his time on an air gun, the last eight years of it driving three nuts home to partially mount the right front wheel of the Ford Taurus. God, how he’d hated those never-ending days.
But that was behind him. Now he had seniority. As he told his wife, June, he was nothing more than a grease monkey. The robots did all the work. His job was to make sure they stayed online.
It was a helluva system, he had to admit. His domain was fourteen of the robots, “turkeys” as he called them. Each consisted of a massive arm mounted on a squat pedestal. At the working end of the arm was the “head,” complete with a “beak.” This was the part that did the welding, fast, accurate, untiring. The whole “gaggle”—he was unaware that the proper word was rafter—was run by the master computer. He monitored a dummy terminal at his workstation, but had no control of the system. That was work for the college boys.
Buddy spent most of his shift at his station, glancing at the monitor, then up at the slow-moving assembly line, then at his turkeys, nodding and twisting in their odd dance. The area around the workstation was filled with the smell of electronic welding and a not unpleasant sweet aroma of fine oil that came from the robots. His nearest coworker was a hundred feet away, and that was just fine with Buddy. Most UAW brothers were a pain in the ass.
Buddy’s job was simple enough. He walked behind the turkeys and checked the moving parts for signs of a problem. This rarely happened. Japanese-designed, the things were built in Korea and could really take it, he often said. On a regular schedule, he pulled one off-line for examination. Not pulled, exactly; he pressed a large blue plastic button that caused the robot to retreat from the assembly line five feet. There he lubricated certain points, in all just six; then he wiped the entire machine down, though that really wasn’t his job, but he liked his turkeys looking good; then he pressed the blue button again, and the docile thing slid back in place.
The amazing part was that the other turkeys knew one of them was missing—something to do with the programming—and they simply assumed the job of the one he took off-line. Amazing. Really amazing. If you didn’t get laid off, this automation thing was a wonder.
At first he’d been surprised such high-tech turkeys required manual oiling at all. He’d figured they’d designed that into them. His trainers explained that they had originally been self-oiling, but factory managers, in an excess of cost-mindedness, had put the robots on the floor without adequate supervision. There had been some real problems. They might be twenty-first-century marvels, but a certain number of turkeys required the presence of a human. The solution had been to design them so they had to be serviced regularly.
But for the most part, his fourteen turkeys worked untended and to perfection. They were completely silent, as far as he could tell. The only sound came when they zapped the frame