The Book of Jobs - what Steve is doing on The Cloud

Thursday 27 September - Day 23 of 30

Steve woke up this morning and decided that the best course of action to avoid the splitting headaches caused by cognitive dissonance, was to walk down two roads at the same time. He would continue to pursue the path of transformation into the “new Steve”, and he would also continue to do what “old Steve” did best—solve problems for Apple.

Once he made this decision he felt relieved and optimistic. After all, he had years to become a new person on The Cloud. Many people up here were eager to help him, and the great thing was, he liked these people. He was glad to learn from Gandhi and Dr. Kübler-Ross and Isaac Newton and his friend John Lennon. Being a long-term resident of The Cloud offered amazing opportunities to converse with the greatest intellectuals and creative visionaries of history.

Now he could relax and let his mind loose on solving the problem of how to circumvent the communication blackout with The Earth. It was only a one-way blockade. Cloud residents were free to receive and read all kinds of communications from The Earth. They just couldn’t communicate to The Earth. If transmissions were coming in, there must also be a way for them to go out.

Was it possible that people were just blindly following the Big Guy’s rules? That no one had ever challenged him and actually tried to get a transmission through to Earth?

Steve was reminded of his trip to The Beyond. When he had first brought up the subject of the Big Guy at the genius meeting—who was he? where did he live? why did he get to make all the rules?—his fellow geniuses had seemed almost shocked at his temerity in asking such questions. In the end, they had rallied and built his spaceship, and in just a few months the first-ever trip to The Beyond had become a reality. Too bad that it turned into a fiasco, but you never know until you try.

All day at work in the iTower, shelving opera scores and hunting for mis-shelved books, Steve thought about the communication problem. It was Gandhi, the guru of non-violent protest, who had correctly thought that Siri might be helpful. But Gandhi had no technical knowledge, just a whole lot of wisdom and intuition. Einstein was far too theoretical. Edison was from the wrong era. Fuller and Wright specialized in building concrete structures, not communication lines.

Finally, Steve decided to talk to the writer Douglas Adams, a guy who definitely had a ‘think different’ approach. In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Adams had invented an entire world where magic happened, and that’s what Steve needed. And Adams probably knew his fellow Brit, Arthur C. Clarke, the mind behind 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke had to be on The Cloud—he died only a few years ago. Clarke had proposed a satellite communications system as far back as 1945. Surely he would have some ideas on communications in 2012.

Steve had a course of action now and couldn’t wait to get started. But first, he needed to distribute the invitations to his Deathday party. It was only a week away. He fretted over the lack of a mail system on The Cloud. It was going to take forever to track down all the geniuses and personally hand them their invitations.

He didn’t have time to waste. Apple needed help right now, before the negative reaction to the map app and other glitches in the new iPhone release reached critical mass. It was totally ridiculous, but what Steve needed most right now was a way to find 14 eccentric geniuses in a hurry.

 But how?

(to be continued tomorrow)