Three weekends ago, New York unwittingly played host to Microsoft
employees' annual exercise in paranoia— a two-day competition known
as "the Game," during which teams of Microsofties in black vans
equipped with cell phones, global positioning system devices,
laptops, and a wireless Internet connection engage in a battle of
wits.
This year's Game, designed to simulate a paramilitary
antiterrorist training session, sent 11 teams rampaging through New
York and parts of New Jersey for approximately 27 hours in search of
a fictional terrorist named Alice Price. But in its quest for
verisimilitude, Microsoft caused several high-security panics, most
notably at the World Trade Center Marriott, where the company rented
a suite that functioned as "Terrorist Headquarters." While cleaning
the room after the event, Marriott staff noticed vials lying in the
trash that were labeled "radioactive waste." Fearing contamination,
they notified the police and the Port Authority, who evacuated the
entire 14th floor while working to identify the liquid. It turned
out to be Palmolive dishwashing soap.
Allen Morrison, spokesperson for the New York and New Jersey Port
Authority, said that "although it created a serious disruption,
there was no intent to break laws, so we did not feel an arrest was
necessary. However, it was a terrible idea to leave those vials in
the trash." After assessing the total damage caused by the incident,
Alan Reiss, director of the World Trade Center, viewed the
occurrence less charitably. In a letter mailed to Bill Gates last
week, Reiss complained of the "serious incident . . . in which no
less than four police and public safety agencies were involved."
Reiss chastised Gates's employees as "insensitive" for "planting
vials labeled as radioactive material at a facility that was the
victim of one of the most notorious terrorism incidents in American
history."
The two hotel employees who discovered the vials were treated for
trauma because they thought they had been exposed to radioactive
material. Besides the Port Authority, the New York Police
Department, the New York City Fire Department's Hazardous Materials
Unit, and the New York City Office of Emergency Management were all
on hand to help evacuate the 14th floor. In closing, Reiss exhorted
Gates to "temper his employees' fantasy games with a reality check."
Microsoft had no comment, other than to reiterate that the Game is
not organized by the company.
The Game, which was started by Microsoft Windows program manager
Joe Belfiore while he was still in high school, is in its ninth
year. Winners traditionally get bragging rights, but this year a
small trophy was added to the spoils. According to J. Allard, a
Microsoft general manager and the competition coordinator, the
intent was to make this event one of the most memorable. "I guess we
succeeded," he told the Seattle Times. Using excerpts of the
Unabomber manifesto and videos of terrorist footage as clues, Allard
and his crew of high-tech conspirators coordinated the event from
"Mission Control," a luxury suite at the Waldorf-Astoria. The
competing teams, which paid their own expenses, caused two other
minor disturbances during the Game— a team was questioned by police
in a New Jersey park for suspicious behavior while planting clues,
and another inadvertently set off the alarm system in a Columbia
University building.
New York police made no arrests but seemed perplexed by
Microsoft's elaborate game. As one security officer put it,
"Microsoft must be working these guys way too hard if this is the
way they blow off steam."
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