Part 16 (1/2)
The karate guys started to drop into fighting stances then froze as the others started spitting, waving their arms and yelling: ”You f.u.c.king want this?” ”Who you f.u.c.kin' lookin' at?” ”Come on then. Come on.”
Then the gesticulating fighters leaped into the attack, and the defenders fell back with clumsy blocks. Only two of the karate guys one black belt, one brown roared into the onslaught and slammed their opponents back with heavy punches.
”Good.” Petra nodded to the pair. ”Everyone else, shape up.”
Josh was chuckling.
I'm cold and sweating, about to pee myself, and he finds this funny? My G.o.d. funny? My G.o.d.
For the rest of the session, Petra dropped the disorienting antics but kept the pressure on. By the end, the visitors were responding well, their previous fighting reflexes now operating under conditions of adrenal overload, laid down in the amygdala, the brain's emergency response system. The old training would now kick in under circ.u.mstances where they might have frozen before. It wasn't any kind of cognitive strategy that Suzanne had instilled in her clients; but the mechanism was clear enough... and still, even now as they wrapped up the training session, touching fists or bowing to each other, frightening to observe.
”Can one of you close the place up?” Petra pulled off her sweat-soaked T-s.h.i.+rt her sports bra was black then pulled on a sweats.h.i.+rt bearing the words: I FIGHT LIKE A GIRL SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR b.a.l.l.s. ”I've got an old buddy here to beat up.”
”Or I could buy you a drink,” called Josh.
”Guess I'll let him off.” Petra winked at her students. ”Nice work tonight.”
In a pub called the Thin Stiletto, Suzanne sat with Petra while Josh went up to the bar.
”Your students are impressive,” said Suzanne.
”The visitors did all right.”
”Now that their conditioned reflexes are triggered by appropriate cues, in the context of ma.s.sive adrenaline dump.”
”They just needed to field-strip what they knew, and take control.”
”And you like empowering people.”
”Uh-huh. You're good, aren't you, Dr d.u.c.h.esne? Plus, you understood what was going on, even though you're not a fighter.”
Josh came back with Petra's blackcurrant-andlemonade and Suzanne's coffee.
”You girls are such boozers. By the way, Suzanne left her phone at home.”
”Good.” Petra saluted him with her gla.s.s. ”And yes, it was one of my officers that redfanged you that little warning.”
”Thanks. Back in a mo.”
While Josh was paying and fetching his drink it looked like c.o.ke Petra checked her own phone, then nodded.
”No one's listening here and now.”
”What about Josh's phone?”
”Oh, he's secure, except when he's talking to you. He and his mates use PFUC crypto among themselves.”
”What's that? You did say pea-f.u.c.k, didn't you?”
”There's a polite version, but the truth is it stands for Pretty f.u.c.king Unbreakable Code.”
Suzanne realised that she had missed something.
”When you say someone's listening in, you mean the police, right?”
”Official authorities, let's say.”
”So why is that a problem? We all want Richard back.”
”And some of us might bend the regs to do so. In management circles, that's called breaking the law.”
”Oh.”
When Josh returned, he toasted them both.
”Your health. Tell me, you still run s.h.i.+eldIx 3 for security?”
Petra said, ”You're really not supposed to know that.”
”So let's say, hypothetically, you were logged on. You'd be running a session pool with its own flows, processes, and threads. Marked with your user ID.”
”Hypothetically, I'm a grandma and I know how to suck eggs.”
”Uh-huh. So if you kick off a querybot hypothetically that would create a second session pool for it to execute in. Right?”
”Sure.” Petra looked at Suzanne. ”You following this?”
”I only speak French and English.”
”You hang around with buddy boy long enough, you'll get fluent in Geek for sure.”
”For G.o.d's sake,” said Josh. ”Now, a second pool with whose user ID?”
”Same as the first session pool. I log on, create a new pool, it picks up my user ID automatically.”
Josh smiled. ”Automatically is the keyword du jour. Subst.i.tute a subcla.s.s instance for the controller, and you can adopt chief security officer privileges.” is the keyword du jour. Subst.i.tute a subcla.s.s instance for the controller, and you can adopt chief security officer privileges.”
”You're joking.”
”If someone's installed a monitor, like some old Observer pattern distributed across the net and with heavy use of proxies then you're effectively s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with its Observers list.” Josh pushed a memory flake across the table. ”That's all you need. There's another copy of the bot code, too.”
”Good, cause I deleted the one you sent me. Just as well, since we had an internal audit including full phone scan today. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.”
Suzanne took a sip of air, realised she had finished her coffee, and put the cup down.