Chapter 2: Ah, That's the Great Puzzle

Omar thrust out his hand to Naomi, “Good to meet you!” Then, he turned back to Rosa, “I heard you might be able to help? You always were good, but now you’re making house calls too?”

Rosa laughed, “Not exactly. Naomi and I have been trying to figure this out on our own and have hit a brick wall. I thought you might be in a similar situation. If so, maybe we could put our heads together? Assuming it doesn’t violate any of your company’s confidentiality rules, of course.” 

Omar smiled, “Rosa, I’ll never turn down extra help from you. I think we can find a way to help each other without breaching our companies’ privacy policies.”

Rosa clapped her hands together and declared, “That’s great news, Omar. Things are looking up." 

Soon, Omar was introducing Rosa and Naomi to his team, which was also small. Everyone was dealing with cutbacks. 

“Michael and Pradeep, meet Rosa and Naomi. Rosa is an old colleague of mine. We thought we’d temporarily team up to see if we could figure out how to deal with this computer virus.” 

They all shook hands. Then, they found a conference room and started to compare notes. They started with the obvious questions, like “How bad was your company impacted?” and “What have you tried so far to fix it?” But it wasn’t until Naomi asked about the “naptime” link that things got interesting. 

“Have any of you clicked the naptime link? What happens when you do?” Naomi asked. 

“What link?” asked Pradeep. 

“The ‘Shh. It’s naptime’ link,” she said, using air quotes. “It comes up every time you try to search for answers on the web.” 

Omar and his team all looked at her. 

“We haven’t seen that link. The squirrels always eat the search button or move the cursor when we try to do a search.” 

“The squirrels?” Rosa and Naomi asked in unison. 

“Yeah,” Pradeep responded. “You know, the squirrels that took over everyone’s computers. The virus we’re all trying to fix.” 

“We’ve seen sloths, but no squirrels,” responded Rosa. 

Everyone stared at each other for a beat. 

Rosa turned back to Pradeep, “Can you show us what the virus looks like for you?”

"Yeah, sure."

Pradeep pulled up a browser while Rosa and Naomi looked over his shoulder. Then he started to search for “How do I stop the squirrels?” Before he could click Search or hit Enter, a virtual squirrel skittered onto the screen and grabbed the Search button. 

Naomi’s had no words as the squirrel started gnawing on the button.  

“Huh,” said Rosa. “I didn’t think this could get more interesting, but I was wrong.” 

Omar continued the thought, “Sloths and squirrels. There could be a whole zoo full of virtual animals out there terrorizing people’s computers.”

Rosa added, “Too bad they’ve taken over everyone’s phones too. Otherwise, we could start calling around to see what other people are seeing.”

And then, as if on cue, Michael’s cellphone rang. 

At first, Michael just stared at his ringing phone. He probably would have kept staring at it, but Omar interjected, “Maybe you should answer that.”

“Uh, right,” he said as he swiped the answer button. “Hello? Oh. Hi. [pause] Yeah, no problem. [pause] Wait, Hun? When did your cellphone start working again? [pause] I mean, there’s been a major computer virus going around. People haven’t been able to use their computers or their cellphones. When did your phone start working again? [pause] I see. OK, I’ll see you tonight.” 

Michael put down his phone. Everyone stared at him. 

“She says it never stopped working for her. She just called me to ask me to pick up something up at the store on the way home.”

“This thing has been going on for days,” said Pradeep. “How could you not have figured this out until now?”

“We’ve both been working a lot. We haven’t had a chance to talk much.”

“Where does your wife work?” asked Pradeep incredulously. “You’d think something like this would come up!” 

“She’s a second-grade teacher.”

“Oh. I guess she doesn’t use the internet much at work.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I don’t really know, actually.” 

Rosa joined into the conversation, “But you said it hadn’t gone down for her. That means she had been using the internet still. Does she use it at home?” 

“Yeah, she uses to look up lesson plans and recipes a lot. She’s always texting with her family.”

“Interesting,” said Rosa, “Has she done any of those lately?”

Michael shrugged, “Not sure. Like I said, we’ve been working a lot. I’ve been here trying to figure this out and she’s had parent-teacher conferences.”

“Right,” said Rosa. “Well, maybe we should try some of those things. You know, texting family and looking up recipes. Let’s see if they work for us.” 

“Can’t hurt to try,” commented Omar. 

So, they all pulled out their phones and started searching for recipes. No problem. Next, they texted a few family members. Again, no problem.

Then, they branched out. They tried to check their email. This time, the critters came back. Together. The squirrels and sloths both invaded their screens. The same happened when they tried to check the news or text their colleagues. 

“So,” said Omar, “Our virus has an agenda.” 

“It looks that way,” agreed Rosa. 

“An agenda?” asked Michael. 

“It will allow certain activities, but not others,” replied Omar. 

“And it’s targeted,” added Rosa. “The animals seem to be location specific.”  

“Good point,” said Michael. 

“I’ve never seen a virus like this,” said Pradeep. 

“Yeah,” replied Naomi. “I wonder how widespread it is.” 

“Well, it’s probably impacting a lot more people than us,” said Omar. “What are the chances that Rosa chose to visit someone from the only other company that was infected?”

Everyone nodded.

“I mean, that’s interesting,” said Pradeep, “But how does it help us solve this? We already knew it was probably pretty big. And who cares about what animals show up on our screens? The issue is we can’t work.”

“True,” said Rosa evenly. “But if it manifests differently for different people, it might be doing more than popping up animals on people’s screens.” 

“Good point, Rosa,” said Omar. “Let’s pursue that. How about we split up, contact as many people as possible, and see what we can figure out? We know this is big, but we don’t know how big. Let’s see if we can find out.” 

“Sounds good,” said Rosa. “We should probably go about this methodically. Shall we make a list of questions we want to ask people and the types of people we want to find?”

“Yeah,” said Naomi. “We know that Michael’s wife, who’s a teacher, wasn’t impacted. So, we should think about the people we know, what they do, and try to contact the most diverse set of people we can.” 

“Won’t that be hard?” asked Pradeep. “Pretty much everyone in the Silicon Valley works in tech.” 

“I know a lot of people who don’t,” responded Rosa. “I can make sure we fill out the non-tech demographic.” 

“I can see if my wife can help,” said Michael. “Also, we don’t necessarily have to limit to people in this area. It seems like we can text our families. We can try texting or calling people outside the area.” 

“Yeah, OK. I’ll try to call my parents back in India,” said Pradeep. 

“What about the questions?” asked Naomi. “What should we be asking?” 

“Well, there’s the obvious ones of course,” said Omar. “Have you been having any computer problems lately? If yes, can you describe it? Which activities have been impacted?” 

“Also, how long have you been experiencing the issues?” added Naomi. 

“Have you found a fix?” added Michael. 

“Do you really think we’re going to get that lucky?” asked Pradeep. 

“Probably not,” answered Michael. “But it can’t hurt to try.”

“OK,” said Omar. “It’s 1:00 now. How about we meet back here tomorrow at 9:00?” 

Everyone nodded. They had a plan.