Quaranteam: Phil's Tale Ch. 14

He hoped like hell he'd made the right decision there, but he felt like he wasn't going to be led astray trusting Linda. Plus, if things continued to shake out like how he expected they were going to, this was an important case study, assuring each other that women could have inter-team pairings as long as they were careful to avoid cross-contamination.

Social structures were getting completely torn to the ground and built back up again, and with many women having to deal with sapphic thoughts they'd never really had in the forefront of their minds, it was entirely expected they might fool around with long term friends who weren't necessarily in the same pod as them. They were even starting to work on 'referral priority' for the Oracle system, where a woman in a current Team could request a friend or colleague come join that Team, and the person in consideration would have priority access to getting their Oracle results crosschecked against the existing Team.

Phil headed back to the poker table and settled in for several more rounds. Around ten o'clock, there was a ring at the door once more, it having been almost twenty minutes since any children had come around, but Andy went to diligently answer the door, and Phil noticed that Niko headed off after him almost immediately, as Phil's hackles immediately went up as a familiar voice hit the edge of his hearing...

...Covington.

God, Phil hated the prick. The more digging he'd done into the man, the more he suspected he might have been one of the people behind the back door into the Oracle system that they were still investigating. He hadn't been able to figure out who it was on Cunningham's team who'd been bought off, but clearly it had been someone, and that person had covered their tracks well.

They were far enough away that Phil couldn't hear what they were specifically talking about, but there was something odd about the entire conversation, the way that that Andy was standing, looking almost confrontational, with Niko's hand on his back, her body leaning into him as much as she possibly could.

Phil had made it a point of learning how to read people lately, and it was surprising how nervous Niko seemed. This was a young woman who'd been on hand when the first wave of men had died at New Eden's base, who'd stared down death more than a handful of times, and yet, she seemed like she was terrified of how Andy was going to react.

After a couple of minutes of talking to Covington, they shut the door and then Niko pulled Andy off down the hall towards Andy's study, tugging him in, closing the door behind them. Phil wished like hell he could be a fly on the wall for whatever conversation was happening there, but moments later, he was distracted by Aisling and Linda making their return to the living room, giant shit-eating grins on each woman's face.

Phil stood up from the poker table, since it was clear Andy was going to be a few minutes, so they were taking a break in between hands, and moved over to join Linda. "Don't you look like the cat that ate the canary?" Phil chuckled, whispering quietly to his partner.

"Phil, I have something vitally important to tell you," Linda whispered, blushing a bright shade of red. "If we're hiding military or scientific secrets from Ireland, I regret to inform you I'm probably responsible for whatever leak we had, because I'm pretty sure that woman ensorcelled my fucking mind. Whatever she asked, I would've told her."

"That good?" Phil laughed.

"Jesus wept, Phil," Linda said, her voice still low and quiet. "I don't know how that man can still be walking around with that banshee in his life. She might not be human. It was fucking unreal. I'm very fucking glad she's with Andy and not you, because you'd have been drained dry."

"So... good then?"

"Fucking great, but not something I'm going to make a habit of doing," she said. "I don't think I could fucking handle it."

"Never thought I'd see the day when the great Linda Hayes was shaken to her core," Phil said, shaking his head, clearly enjoying himself a great deal.

"Fuck you, man," Linda teased back. "I've seen some shit."

A minute or so later, there was another ring at the door, and Aisling moved over to answer it, a couple of children standing outside yelling 'Trick or Treat!' Ash moved to give them candy, but then stepped back into the foyer for a second. "Hey Phil? Somebody's here to see you."

"Me?" Phil said. He hoofed it across the living room and over to the foyer to see Miguel Cunningham standing behind a couple of children, one dressed as Spider-Man and the other dressed as Wonder Woman. "Hey Miguel, how'd you know I'd be here?"

"I didn't, but I spotted that monster Covington walking away from here just as we were about to get in the car and head home, so I thought I'd better come up here and see who lived here, only to see your car in the parking lot," Miguel said to him. "I know who's responsible for giving back door access to the Oracle. It's that weasel, Ed Decker. I'm pretty sure he's getting paid off by people like Covington to have their requests simply override whatever results the Oracle should be spitting out by giving out junk data. I think I see a way to figure out everyone who's been incorrectly assigned this way without us having to do individual spot checks on every pairing we've done in the last month."

"Finally," Phil sighed. "A bit of good news. What've you got?"

"Listen, these people are so fucking lazy, they didn't even bother to randomize or alter the custom outputs each time. It just spits out an 98.7% match each and every fucking time, with no variation or deviation in any way, shape or form. Now, we're going to get some false positives if we just pull up all the matches that were 98.7% matches, but if we run the raw data a second time, the false information's going to pop up, as long as it has a new query number."

"I'm guessing you've already put together a spreadsheet of how many matches we need to rerun?"

"I have. It's about five hundred."

"Jesus, that many?"

"It looks like we're only getting between five and fifteen a day now, so maybe they know we're onto them or maybe they're trying to tamp it down and not get caught. Maybe they've all got full houses now and no desire to add to them further, or maybe they're just waiting for new clients to come in and fork over money and provide a list of names."

"Anyone on the requested list I'd recognize?"

Miguel sighed, nodding. "That's the biggest problem. They're basically all names with some level of recognition. Actors, musicians, athletes, models... if you can think of someone who might've ever been on a Maxim Hot 100 list, I bet they're probably on there. A number of them are even here or coming here right now."

"Anyone I'd recognize?"

"A couple of pop princesses, one from the top of the current charts and one from the 90s. More than a few former Playboy Playmates. Some actresses, some I recognize, some I didn't. That one woman from the big sci-fi series is already on her way here. Same for that woman who was in the ballerina films my wife loves. We've gotten lucky in that most of the truly big name celebrities are married or in well-publicized relationships, so they can't be requested without raising a lot of red flags, but the longer this goes, the more we're going to see that kind of excuse fade away, because those women's partners are going to die, and then those women are going to be vulnerable, and if we haven't fixed this fucking problem... that's on us." He looked down at his hands, realizing they were shaking a little, then looked back up at Phil. "Sorry, I sort of went on a tear there."

"Yeah, well, I understand, Miguel," Phil said, patting him on the shoulder. "Over the next couple of weeks, we need to fix this. Together."

"I hope you're right, Phil."

"Me too."