Chapter 24: Sebastian's Web

I'd left the City offices and gone back up to the Prep Centre. I needed to talk to the IT folk about the other part of my plans. As usual there was a problem finding a parking place with Clegg Meat Products trucks all over the place.

Eventually I managed to squeeze the car in and headed into the building. "I've got an appointment," I said to the receptionist. "Sebastian in IT?"

"Sure," she said, punching a number into her phone. She spoke into the mouthpiece, "Seb? Visitor for you." She put the handset down and turned back towards me. "He'll be over in a minute. Take a seat."

I'd barely the chance to thank her before a figure appeared through the door from the admin areas. He looked like Murdoc from Gorillaz. It ain't a great look, even if you're a cartoon, but he seemed friendly enough. "Hi," he said, "you'd be Larry."

"Yeah, hi. Have you got something to show me?"

"Sure," he said, "come on through and meet the team." He showed me through, back along corridors I'd seen when I'd first visited the Prep Centre. We got to a door. It had a card pinned to it, 'Seb's Harem'. Sebastian stopped. "Just before we go in, let me explain a couple of things. All the team I've got working on this are pick-ups, not staff. They all think they're working their tickets too — Do a good job and the bonus is a free pass out of here. It isn't true, of course but it's a hell of an incentive."

"OK," I said, "sounds like good use of resources to me."

"Like your style, man," Seb said and opened the door.

I saw what they meant by the sign on the door. The team was six girls, not one of them could have been over twenty years old. They all wore mini kilts in different tartans, they all wore white shirts, some of them tucked into the waist bands of their kilts, some loose, one with her midriff bare and the shirt knotted up under her tits. They all wore thin, straight, black ties, some knotted up to their throats, most loose showing beneath the collars that were routinely put on when pick ups were booked in to the Prep Centre.

I looked appreciatively as they busied themselves at their tasks. "I like your style too," I said.

"Well," said Seb, "I guess it's a bit of an indulgence but a man's got to give in to his enthusiasms. Come over here, I'll give you a demo — the site that is, not the girls," he grinned. "214," he called and one of the girls turned towards us. It was Jackie. She didn't appear to recognise me. "Show us the site, please."

Jackie slid between us and sat down at the keyboard. A few taps brought up a web site in her browser window. "OK," said Seb, "this is the entry portal, it's a pretty ordinary BDSM photo and video gallery site. All the usual membership features, forums, all that sort of stuff. This bits not finished yet but it'll do for now. To get beyond this you need a security token and some souped-up encryption software which Jackie here has developed and when you're in you get this..."

The page was headed up, "Larry Ross — My Control Centre". Underneath were panels headed up "My Projects", "News", "Catalogue", "Search & Snatch"

"Let's deal with the easy ones first, said Seb. "The 'News' section is pretty self explanatory — they can get details of forthcoming auctions, special offers and so forth, we'd feature videos of the prize items in upcoming sales and they can select live web cams of particular cells to view lots as well. The section headed up 'Catalogue' is just a list of any of the stock that we have on hand at any one time with photos and the key details about them. There are sort options so they can view the catalogue by age, height, racial characteristics, colour of hair and so on. We can also put up a series of video clips for each of them too. I thought we might have a sort of rotating view as standard, a short interview and then anything that showed off particular skills."

"Fine," I said, "that sounds pretty much like what I had in mind. What about the other areas?"

"Well, you know you said people wanted to feel we were solving their problems, meeting their specific needs. The other two areas are meant to deal with just that. Look at this. I've mocked it up on the basis of your last few projects."

I looked at the 'My Projects Area'; there was a short list: 'Kalinin's Son Project'; 'Kalinin's Councillor's Project'; 'Clegg Video Project'. Jackie clicked on the link to the 'Kalinin's Son Project'.

"Buyers can set these up themselves," said Seb. They fill in a requirements form. They can get at a copy of that through here. Our progress reports and video footage — surveillance for example — gets published through here. They can feed-back on specifics as they see how things are going and using this we'd get their OK before any pick up. That should mean we have less redundant stock — we quite often pick up a girl for a specification and discover later that she doesn't quite fit in some way; then she's back in here for resale at whatever we can get for her."

"Right, right. I could see that working. What about the 'Search & Snatch' area?"

"Now that's the bit that's really clever, thanks to my little team of lovelies here," he gestured at the girls who had all gathered round to watch. "This is really intended to open up the buyers mind to the opportunities out there. Try it yourself."

Jackie got up and let me take her place. I clicked on the Search & Snatch button. Up popped a form. Down one side was listed a series of links under the heading 'My Saved Searches' with the unpromising titles of 'Test 1'; 'Test 2', 'Test Search Blondes' and so on. In the middle of the form was an array of tick boxes. At the top it said, "Search & Snatch : Explore our on-line database of a wide range of possible UK products. Search on the basis of your choices. Choose those that you think you would like to own. Clegg Enterprises will provide a customised quote for acquisition and delivery.' I looked more closely at the tick boxes. One provided for age ranges, one for colour of hair, one for racial type, one for skills and qualifications, one for height another for weight and so on.

"Go on," said Seb, "try it."

I found myself thinking of Rebecca. Suppose I'd been looking for someone like her. I ticked a number of boxes; 26-30, English / British, 5 foot 4 inches, 110 — 120 pounds, blonde, flight attendant." I hit the "search" button — it occurred to me after that 'submit' would hardly have been appropriate.

I'm not sure what I expected but I certainly hadn't expected the response, 'List Mode. Your search has found 124 entries. These are listed below by name. To select an alternative order click here. To refine your search please return to the previous page. To see this search in display mode click here. To save these search criteria in My Searches click here.' Beneath the text at the top of the screen was a long list of names. I scrolled down. Sure enough there was 'Hales, Rebecca'. I clicked on the link up came a page with Rebecca's details and a photograph which looked as though it had come from her Atlantic Airlines personnel file. Under 'Employment' it said; 'Last known employer 01/06: Atlantic Airlines'. I went back to the previous page and tried clicking on 'Display Mode'. The same list appeared but now with a short summary of each person and a thumbnail picture alongside.

"Extraordinary!" I exclaimed, "how can you possibly have all those on file?"

Seb grinned. "Tell him Jacqueline," he said. "This has been your contribution."

Jackie turned around in her chair. "The data comes from a number of sources. We haven't built a database here. We plant a small programme, a virus I guess you'd call it, on the servers of certain companies. Then when we do a search we poll each of those servers. Our virus does a search on that database and sends the results back. The system at this end collates the results, combines data for similar looking responses and presents it to the user. Easy."

"Easy," I said. "But what are the target systems? I still don't understand how you're getting the data."

Seb butted in. "Come on," he said, "you used to be in the software business. What proportion of companies uses standard software packages?"

"Pretty much all of them these days, I guess. For some parts of business people still develop their own programmes but generally it's not worth while."

"So for personnel, HR, say?"

"No, you wouldn't bother developing something customised. It's going to be far cheaper to buy a package or use a service."

"Exactly. So what we've done is to develop a virus that works with the five or six HR database packages that make up about 90% of the installed systems. Then Jackie here has managed to load that virus on virtually all of the major temp and executive placement agencies and a few of the major employers too. We reckon we can get access to around 250,000 records relating to women between the ages of 18 and 40 say; anyone who is on their books or has applied for a job via an agency. They're supposed to clean off old data but none of them do."

"But the photographs?"

"They all do that now. Take a digital photo at the interview, stick it on the file. We strip the photo out just like any other data. The systems ought to have sufficient security to stop anything like this but most of these guys have pretty sloppy security and even the people that do have good systems — the banks say — their focus is on keeping you out of financial applications not the HR stuff."

"And as long as their security doesn't spot us we can go on querying their data."