OGAS

No one realizes that they're at a crucial juncture in the world and Soviet history.

They're meeting to discuss a nationwide computer network known in English as the All-State Automated System, or OGAS for short.

It looks to the project's chief architect, Viktor Glushkov, as if this meeting might be the meeting that decides the fate of OGAS once and for all.

However, moments before the meeting officially starts, Luskov is told by a Politburo ally and supporter, a guy named Kirillin, that things have changed.

Luskov sits quietly, nervously, wondering what has changed.

Then the meeting starts without two key Politburo members, Brezhnev and Kuzkin, both of whom are away from Moscow.

Brezhnev is in Azerbaijan celebrating 50 years of Soviet rule, and Kuzkin is in Egypt following the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

And while it is hard to say if the meeting would have produced the necessary support for OGAS with Brezhnev or Kuzkin there, there's no doubt that Gluskov saw this as nails in his project's coffin.