A Fight With A Cannon

Ed asked me if I had read Victor Hugo. I wish I could say it were on a bench on one of the trails that ran through the old Microsoft campus, perhaps next to a flower bed or a fountain or "Lake Bill". But that would not be true – it was in a dark office with cheap blinds in an anonymous office building. I don't know if it's been torn down, but I hope it has. 

At the time, I didn’t know how old Ed was. Ed died about ten years ago, so I have since learned that he was in his seventies when we worked together. I haven’t had the pleasure of working directly with someone of that age since. I am the worse for it. 

Ed was a mentor of mine because he was wise, and insightful, and giving of his time. We had no formal schedule. Sometimes I’d wander down to his office, or we would hang out after a meeting, or we would just bump into each other and chat for a few minutes. Not all our interactions were meaningful, but all were memorable.

I’d had a rough year at work prior to meeting Ed. I was on a dream team with a dream job. I was working on exactly what I wanted to work on, with people who were much more talented, and smart, and motivated than me. I had reconnected with what I loved: math, operations research, and coding. Then the economy tanked, and Microsoft laid off several thousand employees, including nearly all of the experimental organization of which my team was a part. When the layoffs went down, our team was one of the only ones spared in our org, but only because we were moved into a much larger organization in a different part of the company. During the course of this change my manager and greatest supporter was obliged by circumstance to depart, leaving me as the leader of a small team in unfamiliar waters, surrounded by unfamiliar people who did not believe in and did not understand why we were doing what we were doing. Despite directives to shut down our small team and “align” with the charter of our new organization, I lobbied layer upon layer of management to preserve our team, and our charter, making the case that what we built was a small jewel to be placed in the very center of the strategic crown. Despite small victories, and the fact that I was right, I wasn’t really convincing anyone. Ed could see it. I could see it, but I couldn’t accept it. I kept lobbying, and fighting, and revising my arguments. Even the victories felt like losses.

So Ed asked me if I'd read Victor Hugo. I knew that Hugo wrote Les Miserables. I hadn’t read it, but had seen it performed. But I knew already that Ed wasn't going to say something about Les Miz; that would be too obvious. Ed had started his career at IBM in 19XX, for some small value of XX. He was raised in the mainframe age, toiled and experimented and built through the minicomputer era, through the PC era, into the compute cluster era, and into what would become the age of cloud computing.

He forgot very little. 

Which is why, when he asked me if I knew of Victor Hugo, it was not to reference Les Miz, but “A Battle with A Cannon”. On a French ship of the line, a twenty four pound cannon breaks free of its moorings, causing chaos and destruction. 

It was the fault of the gun captain, who had neglected to fasten the screw-nut of the mooring-chain, and had insecurely clogged the four wheels of the gun carriage; this gave play to the sole and the framework, separated the two platforms, and the breeching.

The gun whirls around deck, placing everyone aboard at risk. The gunner heroically steps in: 

Suddenly, in the midst of this inaccessible ring, where the escaped cannon was leaping, a man was seen to appear, with an iron bar in his hand. He was the author of the catastrophe, the captain of the gun, guilty of criminal carelessness, and the cause of the accident, the master of the carronade. Having done the mischief, he was anxious to repair it. He had seized the iron bar in one hand, a tiller-rope with a slip-noose in the other, and jumped, down the hatchway to the gun-deck. 

The gunner is assisted by a haggard passenger, who turns out to be a general. Together they subdue the gun. The gunner is then addressed by the captain of the ship in front of an anxious crew, and the captain turns to the general to decide the gunner's fate.  

The general takes the Cross of Saint Louis from the captain's uniform and pins it on the gunner, to the cheers of the crew. Then he says: 

Carelessness has compromised this vessel. At this very hour it is perhaps lost. To be at sea is to be in front of the enemy. A ship making a voyage is an army waging war. The tempest is concealed, but it is at hand. The whole sea is an ambuscade. Death is the penalty of any misdemeanor committed in the face of the enemy. No fault is reparable. Courage should be rewarded, and negligence punished.

The gunner is shot.

I apologize for spelling out what is obvious, but Ed wanted me to consider myself in the position of the captain, and whether I would be willing to both receive a medal and be shot for my service. The point of this story is not to share what happened. (I was shot.)

I have thought about this story, and Ed, many times since. I learned that sometimes, I am the gunner. Sometimes, I am the captain, dealing with a gun careening around on deck, in danger even though I wasn’t around when the cannon was loosed. Sometimes I am the general. Other times, I am the fucking cannon. Sometimes I think I might be the boat. And once in a while I am a pirate, the wind on my face and a cutlass loose in my hand, peering through a looking glass at the chaos and smiling at my prize. 

In times of stress or confusion, whether pangs of regret or rivers of injustice, I call to mind a boat, a cannon, a gunner, a captain. Who is the gunner? Who is the captain? Who is the boat? Who is the cannon?

I wish I could ask Ed. Not because he'd answer, but because he'd understand.