Quaranteam: Phil's Tale Ch. 08

"And there's no way you can back track who's come in from where?"

Eric tossed his hands up in defeat. "Like I said. The data's all designed so that the backdoor mimics it perfectly. What with the script you've got here, I don't even know why the backdoor exists other than someone wanted to guarantee, and I do mean guarantee, that they could send person A to person B, no questions asked, no chance of rejection."

"I can think of a handful of people who might have demanded that level of power, although I wonder if they know exactly how dangerous it can be to them."

"Probably not," Eric chuckled. "I mean, if I was the coder who had to put this in, I'd have told the client, 'don't over use it otherwise it may have problems,' but beyond that? Caveat emptor."

"Let the buyer beware indeed," Phil said.

"Hang on, back up," Linda said. "You're telling me there's a way for a man to just... to just fucking take a woman he wants?"

"Well, yes," Eric said, "but it could also be just as easily used the other way. Men are given priority when they're put into the system, but the backdoor can also be set up to anticipate a person coming in, like a spider laying in wait. Once a man is put into the system, the spiders laying in wait get to see it before it goes into the main pool. It looks like they're also starting to forcibly relocate living men, but we all knew that was coming sooner or later."

"Did we?" Linda asked.

"Well, I did," Eric laughed, "but then again, I'm watching big data boards for this whole mess like my life depends on it, which, y'know, it might." Lily snuggled up against his side, wrapping her arms around him.

"So, what," Lily asked. "They're just going to move dudes from one place to the other?"

"Not all of them, but a lot of them, yeah. The farming communities are getting hit the hardest, so lots of that land is getting redistributed. Tons of that stuff is automated machines these days, but you still need human oversight on it, so some of the denser urban clusters are getting broken up and people are getting scattered around the country a bit more. There's still going to be your major metropolitan areas, but they aren't going to be anywhere near as densely populated as they were."

Phil nodded. "I saw what they're doing for places like NYC and other big metro areas with large skyscraper apartment buildings or condos. They're giving an entire floor to a household, and telling them to knock down any doors or walls they want within reason. So those forty and fifty story skyscrapers now just have forty or fifty households in them. They're sort of becoming mini-cities, because typically those buildings are also converting one floor into a cafeteria/restaurant, so that they can stay within the protective walls of their building most of the time. Like, a skyscraper becomes like a little mini colony ship."

"That's fucking crazy," Lily said. "And people are okay with that?"

Eric leaned down and kissed Lily's forehead. "More than okay, it seems like. Contentment and satisfaction in your typical colony building is higher than almost any other type of settlement."

"Almost any other?"

Phil chuckled, shrugging. "The 'mansion cluster' approach of New Eden still has the highest, but it also cost the most to set up. They're trying small-to-mid contained cities as an approach in a handful of locations - the Pacific northwest, some of the skiing towns up in Colorado, a handful of the mid rural south east towns. We'll see how those turn out."

"You're sure I have to let them send more bitches at my man?" Lily grumbled.

"He's at, like, 40% DuoHalo resistance right now, Lil," Phil told her. "Believe me, you want that number as high as you can fucking get it."

"Yeah yeah yeah..." she muttered. "Fine. Fine. Open the floodgates. Start sending bitches left and right at him until he's guaranteed to live through this shit, but they'd better understand he's mine first and foremost."

"Trust me, Lil," Eric said to her. "I'm positive the system has you flagged as a massive alpha, and they won't send anybody to butt heads with you. That said, if you've got any friends or girlfriends you want to bring into the house and keep safe..."

"It means sharing them with you, which I'm not happy about," Lily told him. "But it would be nice to have a couple of my girls around to make sure I'm not going crazy or anything. And you say it'll run them through a compatibility check first, make sure the horse won't upset the apple cart or anything? Since you've got so much faith in this code."

"You know as well as I do, Lil, that no code is perfect," Eric replied, "but if you want to bring a couple of your friends in, either the system will reject them upfront or we'll make it work."

"Thanks for this, Eric," Phil said, patting the laptop before tucking it under his arm. "You and Lil have a chat, see if there's anyone you want us to run through the script for you, and I'll get your friends moved to the front of the line."

"Thanks dude," Eric said, standing up with Lily, as they started to walk him and Linda out.

Linda had been unusually quiet during the whole conversation, and Phil had learned one thing - that meant she was absorbing information and thinking. When they got out to the car, they climbed in and in the privacy of the Tesla, she finally spoke on what she'd been thinking about.

"Who the hell has access to make a backdoor like that?" Linda asked him. "Cunningham clearly didn't do it himself. How big is the Oracle team?"

"I think there's somewhere between eight and twelve people on it, including Cunningham, and it could be any one of them," Phil said. "I had Eric take a look at it because he's excellent at spotting buried code, things that are tucked in and hidden, meant to look like something else. The rest of the team probably doesn't even know it's in there, and if I called it out to them, they'd probably freak out, and it'd just disappear and reappear later. Better that I know it's there and they don't know I'm onto them."

"I guess," she sighed. "I just don't like the idea of any woman being sent to a man she'll hate."

"I don't like it either, Linda, but if they do it too much, it'll blow up on them and then we'll know where they're going."

"Yeah, okay," she said. "Let's just get home."

She drove the car back across New Eden, stopping to grab some BBQ to take home, Phil having texted their cook, Winnie, that they were bringing home carryout tonight. She shot back a message saying that they should not make any other stops on the way home. Phil called to asked if everything was okay, and Valerie, the house manager, answered.

"Look, Phil, I don't want to worry you, but Audrey's acting a little weird, and I'd just feel better if you could get home and check on her," Valerie told him.

"Weird how?" Phil asked.

"Twitchy. Impatient. I know it says here she dosed up from you just a couple of days ago, but it's almost like she's near the nine or ten day mark."

"Okay, we're almost home, don't worry."

A few minute later, they were pulling into the garage at the house, and as soon as the car pulled into the garage, Audrey was rushing into it, pulling the door open, lunging in, shoving her lips against Phil's in a messy kiss.

"Phil. Fuck me. Right fucking now," Audrey said to him, her eyes a touch reddened.

"But..."

"NOW."

Shit, Phil thought. Better give her what she wants...