It was now mid-December. More than ten million people were rushing to catch up with the last activities, then another week or so of travel to their hometowns to celebrate Tet. She thought everything would go smoothly like the four seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and then Spring again. But before she could lay down on the soft mattress in her apartment on the eastern outskirts of the city, she received a text message from her department head, the “Smile” system based on smart technology had just crashed globally. It was expected to take at least four hours to restore. Everyone gathered at the headquarters to deal with the incident.
The message in the company’s internal chat group made everyone just drop a surprised emoji, then quickly sit up, change clothes and grab their laptops to go back to work. In confusion, digital citizens suddenly faced with a series of automatic features of pre-set browsers would stop. Everything would become chaotic and confusing. She knew how dangerous it was because this artificial intelligence software had failed globally twice. Both times, people estimated the damage in the billions of dollars.
She walked to the corner of the street where the IT cafe was open all night, for the techies who had to work in this building. Turning into the street was a short road, lined with office buildings on both sides. This place was known as the technology heart of the city. Because most of the world's largest corporations had their representative offices here, each brand was a building. She pushed open the door of the lobby of the building where her company worked, swiped her chip-embedded employee card to enter the elevator, and pressed number 24. She knew tonight would be a long night. The 24th floor would be lit up and there would be people rushing to update many things so that the automated systems could be restored as soon as possible.
Inside the building everything was anxious, but outside the street the atmosphere of Tet was still bustling.
***
Nam said it was a bug in the code to integrate data and synchronize to the server. The “Smile” server was being attacked by a group of hackers. The chatbox could not be compatible with the data, leading to thousands of responses from users, a serious error. At the same time, the drawing part based on the design features of smart technology did not give the correct sketch according to the user's request. All the economic assessments that were the premise of stock analysis were almost all wrong in high amplitude, leading to the purchase orders being reversed, players reacting across the exchanges. The stock value fell miserably in the US, UK markets, and spread to Asian exchanges. The report was only two A4 pages long, but it made the entire programming team of twenty people stunned. Tracking down the error code in parallel with the parent corporation as well as sending notifications to the customer companies that had paid for this integrated software.
The atmosphere in the office was tense. Eyes were glued to the screen all the time. Phone calls via Meet were ringing continuously. The team was divided into two groups. One group was looking for code errors, the other was handling incidents. She was in the second group, starting to interact with customers as well as drafting a document announcing the global outage. She revised and revised her notice but was still not satisfied with it. Because since the day artificial intelligence software appeared in this life, all drafted documents only needed to be requested with the most detailed keywords, the rest was just a click, the screen instantly displayed a 90% complete notice. She only needed to re-read, correct spelling mistakes, or punctuation, line breaks to the correct order of a document to be able to send it, all operations took only fifteen minutes. But, when this smart technology crashed. Everything had to be drafted with her mind. How long had it been since she had drafted a document herself? She sighed. An hour passed. She had yet to reply to a long line of emails from clients and partners. She exited the chatbot. She made herself a cup of instant coffee and stood looking out the window of the 24th floor.
Down on the street, the crowd had thinned out. From above, she looked at the city with four main axes dividing it into four directions: East, West, South, and North. The buildings gradually grew taller. From one complex to another luxury shopping mall. When she was little, she longed to go from the suburbs to the city center to eat Bach Dang ice cream, to go to the Zoo, and many other things that a child of those difficult years dreamed of. Suddenly, she stood here, watching the city drift into the night with a technological event that was making the world go crazy. Her heart was filled with many things.
Just the day before, Nam was sure that this Tet holiday would be a big bonus. Thanks to the development of smart technology, her company has developed many software to speed up work efficiency for many industries. Contracts are pouring in, the president is smiling brightly. After the pandemic, this is the year the company has grown at a dizzying speed. Nam's programming department has doubled its number of members in just the past year. From one department, it has now been divided into many groups and each group is a specialized department. In that cheerful smile, Nam is confident that if he collects enough bonus money plus the savings from more than six years of struggling in this city, he will be able to buy an apartment in the North of the city. The apartments are built on land that used to be a swamp. The apartments are moderately priced, for workers with relatively stable incomes, and have an installment payment mechanism when proving income and having a labor contract. This land always knows how to light up the dreams of anyone who chooses it. Come and stick with it. Just be kind to this land!
She was still looking at the street when the phone rang. It was two in the morning. The call made her feel that the night would not be long.
***
Her house was in the East of the city, which at that time was still a vast grassland, where people herded cows. In the summer, she and her friends often ran through the rain to play pretend soldiers, or in the windy seasons, the whole group was busy flying kites until the afternoon, making the adults frantically look for them. In the East of the city, there was a small river that watered the childhood of poor children. After bathing in the river and catching fish, the whole group only waited for free time to call each other to join in and make jokes. The riverbank had a clump of custard apples, which was always the gathering place for the whole group. Much later, when the land changed, people planned to re-plan the East to become industrial zones, the children of that time scattered in all directions. She followed her family to receive compensation and move to an apartment complex built on the city's resettlement land fund. She and a few others still clung to the East of the city.
Time passed, when she grew up, she met Thanh again, the boy who used to be the leader of the group of children who crossed the reed fields in mock battles, or who performed tricks of jumping from the plank bridge into the river every time the tide was high. It was late one afternoon, she went down to the IT cafe to buy a glass of orange juice, to replenish her vitamin C after a cold. The boy in line before her turned around after paying, and they looked at each other. She hesitated, and he frowned, as if he was thinking. She immediately guessed it was Thanh because of the mole on the tip of his nose. The boy also recognized her because of her short hair, just like before. Once, when she was little, the boys wouldn't let her play soccer with them. They said she was a girl, so how could she play soccer with boys. But, seeing all her friends rushing to fight for the ball, how could she sit on the grass and watch. She went home and lied to her parents, her long hair was so hot, sweat soaked her collar, she asked to cut it short. Mom seemed to accept, although dad kept shaking his head and sighing, regretting her thick black hair.
Now she still has short hair, the hair that has followed her throughout her childhood and adulthood because of habit. And also because that day, when she appeared with short hair, the boys seemed to like her more. They called her name first in every game. When she moved away, she remembered Thanh running a distance of more than two kilometers just to tell her to keep her hair short. When asked why, Thanh just shook his head, then ran back to her. Leaving behind in the wind some faint words, she only had time to vaguely remember that they would meet again. That year, she was only fourteen years old, and Thanh was just the right age to enter high school.
Thanh looked at her, unconsciously rubbed his head with his hand, smoothed out a few short strands of hair, and then laughed. He chose a high table overlooking the square. Thanh followed his parents to the west of the city. Thanh's grandmother still liked to live in a house with a garden, so at that time the west side still had vacant land. The compensation money was enough to buy a large area. Later, the urbanization speed was dizzying. The west side also saw many towering buildings springing up, turning the purely agricultural fields into an industrial zone that attracted many immigrant workers. Thanh's family also sold some land, using the money to do business. Thanh also used the money from selling the land to study abroad for six years, brought back a degree, and became a technology expert of one of the largest corporations in the world. The leader of that day also sat in the position of leader of a representative office of the corporation in this city. The building Thanh was working on, located at the end of the street, was the most majestic and largest in the city's technological heart.
Since the day they met again, Thanh sometimes texted her to go out for lunch together. Sitting and reminiscing about old times. Thanh said she might have to find the gang from back then, more than ten years of no news, everyone was different now. Thanh was now tall and strong, only her tanned skin and the mole on the tip of her nose had not changed. She often joked, but she was different now. The short-haired, dark-skinned girl from back then had grown into a fair-skinned, rosy-white girl, her figure was no longer dry but slender with enough curves to make the boys sometimes glance at her. One thing she had not changed was her short hair and the idea in her head. Thanh was always the leader.
***
She had just hung up the phone when Nam's voice came from behind her. The error status of the chatbots was not only in the free versions but also in the extended versions, as well as the paid advanced professional versions. Almost paralyzed. The chatbots all hung up the message "unavailable". The night began to be quiet. The streets were deserted. Nam joined the company about six months after her, but Nam's ability was superior with many browsers he created himself, conquering many demanding partners. In just two years, Nam had taken the position of head of the programming team specializing in receiving high-value orders. Many female colleagues said that smart technologies could not be as smart as Nam. The young man graduated from a domestic school, then studied abroad for two more years before joining her company. Nam had the acumen of a good programmer. Contrary to his cold appearance, when it came to work, Nam was enthusiastic and dedicated.
Nam left the harsh Central region with its scorching winds and seasons of sand blowing into his rice bowl. Since he was a child, Nam had decided that he had to escape the hardships of his hometown. This sunny southern city and its skyscrapers were Nam's dream. Nam threw himself into studying. Nam hunted for scholarships throughout his university years. All those efforts returned Nam with a worthy position today and a desirable income in the context of an economy that was just recovering from the pandemic. But, Nam still had one thing to do. That was the distance from the North of the city to the East of the city that would connect Nam's emotional bond. Would she take that train with Nam? That was the question she had been hanging on since last year's year-end party. In a drunken stupor. Nam hesitantly took her home. At Ben Thanh station. She got on the train going east. Nam turned into the station going north. The trains still crisscrossed this city. One can quickly disappear into a crowd of tens of millions.
Nam said it was an application programming interface bug. It started with the text-to-video chatbot. The bad guys discovered it and hacked into the browser code, paralyzing the software. After the parent company's senior engineering advisory team met to resolve the issue, a team of programming experts gathered to start working on it. The vulnerability was discovered and the intrusion feature was locked. Now they were patching the vulnerability. The leader of the vulnerability patching team was a Vietnamese. Someone she knew. Someone Nam had seen her meet at the IT shop that time.
She knew who it was after hearing the leader's phone call. She was still standing there. Nam was still beside her. The wind of the mid-December days rustled the square.
***
A series of newspapers and radio stations reported that a young Vietnamese engineer had successfully fixed a programming interface error less than four hours after the global chatbot crash. The representative of the parent company of the software with billions of users invited him to the company headquarters to honor him, but he refused. In an open letter to everyone, he told about his journey of living and growing up in a poor neighborhood in the East of the city, he also talked about a megacity with a series of trains connecting the four gateways of this city. And, he talked about a happy Tet coming to his people. People create programming. Programming creates smart software. But, no one programs for Vietnamese Tet. Because it has been deeply ingrained in the subconscious of the gentle people living on this S-shaped strip of land. Tet is a reunion, Tet is the beginning of new things full of life energy ahead. He chose not to go to the company headquarters to receive the honor, because he thought, at this moment, what he craves most is the Tet of his hometown. This season, no matter where they are, all Vietnamese people want to return home to celebrate Tet. Therefore, he cannot leave Tet.
She read the article on a late afternoon at the IT cafe. The square was filled with Spring music. Nam pushed the door open and walked in, greeting her as he prepared to return home to celebrate Tet with his family. She could not program her heart, because it was not a smart software created by humans. The heart belonged to emotions. There was only one thing she always hoped that all of Nam's dreams would be lit up most brightly on this earth. Nam's figure blended into the hurried crowd of the late afternoon.
She slowly walked to Ben Thanh train station, catching a train back to the East of the city. On the train, she met Thanh, the leader of her youth. Thanh could not program Tet as an artificial intelligence software, but Thanh could program her own Tet, a Tet connecting trains from the West of the city to the East. Of course, in that Tet programming, there was definitely only one chatbot, her.
Late afternoon. The city lights up brilliantly. The trams head towards the Spring streets.
(Posted on the special edition of Labor Weekend Spring At Ty)
