Forever Yours
©2025 Elder Road Books - Lynnwood WA
Chapter 19: Deep Water
KAITLYN CALLED Sunday evening to tell him she was back in town. Of course, they’d had a few dozen text messages through the week, so Henry already knew she’d placed second in the national tournament. They made arrangements to go out to dinner the following Saturday.
Monday afternoon, Henry took some time to grab a cup of coffee and hang out in the student lounge. He often saw members of his cohort there and wanted to discuss how to test his counterattack software app.
“You dirty bastard!” Dan growled when he joined Henry.
“Hey! What a collegial greeting. How’s it going, Dan?”
“You know how it’s going. My computer is trashed,” Dan said.
“What? How’d that happen?”
“Jesus! Stop playing so innocent. You knew some of us would probe the defenses on your server. You set a trap. Now my computer is in the shitter.”
“Whoa! Wait a minute! Don’t tell me you tried to get past our corporate server firewalls!”
“Of course I did! I’m not the only one. You grabbed testers who are curious and always want to dig a layer deeper. You had to know we’d test your servers. You didn’t have to nuke our computers.”
“Are there more than you who tried?”
“I can’t imagine I’m the only one. You could have at least given a warning.”
“First off, don’t scrap your computer! Nothing’s damaged on it. All you need to do is change the file type on the system core. Secondly, I really didn’t think any of you would test it, especially since you knew who it belonged to. And third, I just installed the app on Saturday and was waiting here to catch people to figure out a way to test it. You jumped to the head of the line. So how did it work?”
“Now you want a testing report? Shit, man! It worked fine. I’d just gotten past the first level of the firewall and all of a sudden, my computer was toast.”
“Hmm. Suggested improvements?”
“Besides don’t kill my computer? At least give a warning. People figure they’ll get rejected from a good system, not that they’ll get attacked. How did you even identify the computer?”
“Pretty much the same thing you’d do as a hacker to find the server you want in the first place. I trained a narrow AI to trace the proxy chain to the source. As soon as the source was located, the counter was implemented,” Henry said. “Why should all computer security be based on defense? This is just a next step in the process.”
“I don’t know that I agree with that. It seems unethical.”
“Ask Josh. Here he comes,” Henry said.
Josh scowled at his two study partners.
“How was your break?” Henry asked.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to play bright and innocent,” Josh growled.
“You, too?” Henry asked. “Did all my so-called friends try to hack into my computer this weekend?”
“It was supposed to be a joke,” Josh said. “We were just going to leave a token that would put fireworks on your screen when you logged in.”
“You guys all get bombed by this asshole, too?” Leonard asked as he came up to the group.
“How many of you tried to hack into my corporate server?” Henry asked. “This is ridiculous!”
“Only those who knew you are Open Cloak,” Josh said. “Except Lisa. We didn’t let her in on the hack-a-thon because she lives with you.”
“She rents an apartment from me,” Henry corrected. “But I’m glad she wasn’t involved. It would have made things complicated.”
“I broke a nail!” Simon said as he came up to the group.
“Well, at least you can’t blame me for that,” Henry said.
“When you killed my computer, I slammed my hand down on my duvet and snagged the nail. It was terrible! You nasty man!”
“I’m not sure I should even tell you all the fix for your computers,” Henry said.
“Just reinstall the system,” Leonard said. “Worked fine.”
“It’s easier than that,” Henry said. “Just change the file type ID of the core file. I wasn’t out to do any serious damage to anyone, even if you were trying to break into my secure corporate files. If you guys had waited to check in with me today, I was going to ask for volunteers to test the security software. I just installed it Saturday night. Thanks for running the test without me.”
“Dude, seriously. It was just a joke,” Josh said. “We never expected to have a counter-attack launched on us.”
“Which brings me to the question of ethics that Dan brought up,” Henry said. “Not whether or not it was ethical for you all to launch an attack on my company—even as a joke. Dan felt it was unfair of me to install a trap that would disrupt an attacker. He feels that computer security should all be passive.”
“I don’t see that as a problem,” Leonard said. “If you’re doing it for real, you should corrupt the bios and ROM. Teach the bastards a lesson they will never forget.”
“I didn’t want to do permanent damage to anyone,” Henry said.
“Plant a virus that keeps corrupting the computer and all its files, even when it’s been reformatted,” Simon said.
“Oh, that’s nasty,” Dan said. “I guess I see your point. I still think you should have given some kind of last second warning. ‘Retreat or die!’ Something like that.”
“That would just be a challenge to the hackers I’ve known,” Leonard said. “If you use that kind of warning, make sure they die.”
“I don’t know whether I want to ask you for a copy to install on my own system or to hope I never see it again,” Josh said.
“Well, it’s not for sale,” Henry said. “Not until I’m sure it can’t be used as a tool against the one deploying it. I’m not even sure I’ll leave it on our server. Which is not an invitation for you to ‘test’ it again.”
When Henry told Lisa about his development and the study group’s ‘test’ of it, she was horrified.
“Why didn’t they invite me?” she asked. “I’d have been suspicious of the whole thing because of our conversation on counterattacks.”
“Yeah, well, they didn’t tell you because we ‘live together,’” Henry said.
“We don’t live together!”
“That’s what I told them. But please do me a favor and don’t try to hack into the server.”
“Why would I do that? I’m attached to the server. And I’ve got some designs to show you later this week,” she said.
“That’s great. Let me ask you this. The guys said I should have given them a warning before I attacked their machines. What do you think?” he asked.
“You mean you actually succeeded in attacking them?” Lisa said. “I hope you trashed their computers!”
“Not quite. I corrupted the system core file. It’s not even a difficult fix.”
“But it worked! Congratulations!”
“Warning?”
“Well, a warning would probably thwart a percentage of attacks itself. You aren’t really out there laying a honeytrap for hackers. There’s another percentage who would see the warning as a challenge to step up their attack further. In gaming, we always give an out. I mean, the object of the game is to get to the ultimate level and win, but you can’t do that if the game just randomly eliminates you. Even if it is an ambush, there’s a clue that there’s a threat. You see the monster and have a chance to retreat or engage. That kind of thing.”
“But I don’t want to challenge them to get past me. I want the challenge eliminated,” Henry protested. “Our so-called friends will probably try again to see if there’s a way around the counterattack. All I can do is step up the penalty they’ll pay if they do.”
“If you’re concerned about them, then a warning is definitely in order. What about if it’s a hacker from Russia trying to steal your latest AI design?”
“I’d just eliminate him.”
“Like he was a linebacker after your date.”
Henry stopped and looked at Lisa. He’d acted instinctively against the guy, picking his most vulnerable point. ‘Did you kill him?’ she’d asked. ‘Don’t know. Don’t care,’ he’d responded. Of course, two weeks later, the linebacker had been back on the field. If they met again, Henry was sure the guy would try to kill him.
“Should have made sure,” he sighed. “I hear you.”
Henry and Kaitlyn had fun on their movie date Saturday. The movie was a very sensuous portrayal of Cleopatra, played by one of the top actresses of the decade. Henry was happy to watch her, whether he was interested in the movie or not.
When the show got out at nine-thirty, they went to a nearby pizza place and had a loaded pizza with Cokes. And they talked about the movie, as well as life.
“So, she had an oracle she consulted about Caesar,” Kaitlyn said. “But it was so obscure to hear that he was one but not the only. She immediately went out and killed her brother-husband so Caesar could be the only one.”
“But, of course, she was then forced to marry her younger brother, who was only like five at the time,” Henry added.
“She eventually got rid of him, too. But then Marc Antony came along.”
“Isn’t that the nature of oracles?” Henry asked. “They never give a straight answer, so whatever happens you can say, ‘The oracle said this would happen,’ no matter how far you have to stretch it.”
“Why do people bother?”
“Do they still?” Henry asked.
“Heck yes. That’s what astrology is all about. Fortune tellers. Tarot cards. I ching. Magic 8 Ball. They’re all forms of oracles people seek out to tell them what is going to happen in the future, or just to find the answer to a puzzling question.”
“What question would you ask?”
“When is Henry going to actually make a pass at me?” Kaitlyn asked. “The suspense is killing me.”
“The oracle says, ‘The alignment of the stars makes the future cloudy.’ I hope that is sufficiently obscure so that it will come as a complete surprise when it happens,” Henry laughed.
“When—not if. I think I’ll check my horoscope when I get home.”
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