Satyr Play 03 Pt. 01

"Are you hunting tonight, as well?" Raymond asked.

"Yes, but not for food. I'm searching for the serial killer. I hope to track him to his lair so the authorities can capture him."

"The authorities haven't been very successful so far. I heard through my contacts on the police force that he struck again, and this time he killed two of New York's finest. The police are trying to keep a tight lid on that story," Raymond said grimly.

Meixiu looked at him in dismay. "That will make things much, much worse! I must tell my friends!"

"Before you go, could we trade contact numbers? We meet so few like us, and you are so much more!" Eleanor asked, hopefully.

Meixiu watched them for a moment, then nodded. She slipped her cell from a hidden inner pocket as Eleanor pulled her cell out as well. Smiling at each other, they traded numbers.

"Be safe, Meixiu," Raymond said, and she smiled at him.

"You too!" Meixiu said, then hopped backward to land ten feet away on a stone stair railing of one of the homes behind her. Showing off, she launched herself across the street onto the roof. Her last glimpse of the couple was their shocked expressions. Giddy, she slipped down to the street level on the other side of the homes before realizing this was another street of infrared spotlights. She opened up her gait and raced down the lane at her top speed, looking like nothing more than a streak of pale white light. She was always a step outside the cone of light thrown from the floodlights. She leapt sideways into an alley and slowed to a more sedate pace as she exited onto a busier thoroughfare. She spotted a taxi and flagged it down, using her will to pull the driver over to the curb.

Slipping into the back seat, she smiled at the driver and gave him the brownstone's address. Once they were moving, she slumped back on the cushions. She pushed the driver's mind just a little more so he wouldn't remember her when she left and wouldn't talk while he drove her home.

She was exhausted. Her showing off led to her wasting all of her energy. She would need to see Henry tomorrow.

Stupid Meixiu!

-=-

Eleanor shared a look with Raymond. "Can we do that?"

He chuckled. "Not even on our best day."

"She's a fascinating one! How did you know she was watching? I missed that entirely," she admitted.

He sighed. "I would have missed it too, except I happened to glance upwards as I handed you the money from my pocket. I just caught the briefest glimpse of her."

They hooked their arms and began to walk back to the main avenue to catch the subway. "Did you feel the strength of her presence?" Eleanor sighed in wonder.

"Didn't I say Hell's Kitchen would be good? Dinner and a new friend!" Raymond said, suppressing a smile.

She looked up at him and swatted his arm when she saw the twinkle in his eye.

"Come on, Mr. Funnybones. Let's go home. Tomorrow is another day."

They walked in comfortable silence for a while as Eleanor's voracious mind ticked over the possibilities their new friend represented. "Maybe we can arrange to meet Meixiu again," she suggested.

"We don't want to look needy," he quipped.

She sighed and rolled her eyes as they stepped out onto the sidewalk on 8^th Avenue and headed for the subway. They'd had enough excitement tonight.

Chapter 19

Henry climbed down the stairs of the private jet onto the paving before a large hanger. He'd rather enjoyed the flight from New York to Washington. The view had been spectacular as they flew in over the nation's capital. Mahati assured him that they would have time to walk the plaza and see a few monuments before they flew back to New York.

He'd assumed they'd fly commercial, but the NSA insisted they take advantage of their hospitality to the fullest. So, here they were.

Henry grinned at Mahati, who rolled her eyes mildly at his childlike enthusiasm before moving forward with Henry to greet their hosts.

Director Granger reached out and shook Henry's hand firmly. "Good to see you again, Mr. Gable."

"Nice seeing you again as well, Director Granger. Please call me, Henry."

"As long as you call me Wallace," he returned, pouring on the charm.

Henry gestured to his traveling companion. "Please let me introduce Mahati Chandra, VRL's External Legal Counsel."

Wallace shook Mahati's hand but looked surprised. "I assure you, you didn't need to bring a lawyer to the demonstration today."

The lawyer in question fielded that one. "We're aware of that, Director Granger. I'm merely here to ensure any questions you or your team might have regarding the contract can be answered as I represent VRL as well as Mr. Gable. I'm here for him if he has any questions, too."

"I see. Please call me Wallace, as well."

"And you may call me Mahati."

The man nodded. "Shall we go?" They followed him over to the waiting black limousine. It was preceded and followed by two black SUVs. Henry shared a look and a smile with Mahati as the security reminded him of Roy's.

The drive through the city was quite enjoyable as Henry took in the scenery while Granger did his best to describe what they were seeing while selling up the idea of living in such a beautiful and historic city.

They pulled into the Homeland Security headquarters' grounds and made it through the security gate with minimal delay. After they parked, Wallace guided them to the main administration building, where the tech team was waiting for the demo. On the way, he pointed out the facilities and what they were for. Henry felt like he was getting a tour of a university by a recruiter before applying.

Inside the admin building, the Director took them through a series of halls and doors until they walked out into a vast chamber at the base of tiered seating.

Henry balked as he looked up at the crowded auditorium. He scanned the group, and there had to be at least sixty people sitting in the audience.

He turned to the Director as butterflies duked it out in his stomach. "I thought I was just giving a demo to a few cybersecurity teams!" He recognized a few faces in the lower tiers: the Tech Leads he met before from the NSA, Robert Miller, the FBI, Yasmin Brooks, and the CIA, Laurence Franklin. They weren't sitting together this time but instead had people around them. Watching how they were only conversing within their areas, Henry realized they were separated by agency. The center group was all strangers, so were probably the Homeland Security group.

The Director of the FBI, Charles Starkley, and the CIA, Maurice Hall, were standing before the first tier of seats speaking with another man Henry didn't know.

The rows further up were occupied by strangers as well.

Director Granger frowned as he looked up at the seating as well. "Give me a moment." He left to join the other Directors.

Mahati joined Henry. "Are you well?"

Henry looked away from the eyes watching him. "Ever have a nightmare where you're in school and have to make a big presentation in front of the class, but you suddenly realize you forgot to put clothes on?"

Mahati smiled. "No, I've never had one of those."

He shook his head. "I assumed it would be a small group of developers and admins. Not this!"

Director Granger was returning with the leaders of the agencies.

"Henry Gable, Mahati Chandra, I'd like to introduce the Director of Homeland Security and host for this event, Stephen Dawes."

Henry shook the man's hand, as did Mahati.

"So, this is the young man who commands such attention from all of these agencies," Dawes said with a wry smile.

"It was your people who let the rest of these yahoos in," Wallace grumbled.

"We have many divisions who showed interest in an unbreakable firewall. Some of these scientists are claiming it can't work as the documentation suggests."

"I hope your agency had them all under a non-disclosure agreement before they were given access to the documentation," Mahati said calmly, holding Stephen's eyes.

"And what role are you playing?" Dawes asked as he moved closer to her.

"I'm VRL's legal counsel. I'm the one you deal with if we have a breach of contract," she said, not giving an inch.

Henry cleared his throat. "I haven't actually given them their software and documentation yet."

Mahati raised one perfect eyebrow as she continued to look into Stephen's eyes. "So, whose documentation did you distribute?"

Henry looked to Wallace, who shook his head, then Starkley, who also shook his head. These two men glared at Hall, who scowled. "What's the biggie? We all knew Dawes would have to get on board once we signed on, and he has access to all these eggheads. I knew they'd pick it apart to see how it works."

"Do you even know what a non-disclosure agreement is?" Wallace asked wearily.

"Bite me, Granger," Hall growled.

Henry looked to Dawes. "Were any of them able to grasp the basis for the firewall?"

Stephen begrudgingly broke eye contact with Mahati and turned to Henry. "No, they didn't. What I got instead were demands from each of them to be included in your demonstration today."

Henry nodded and looked to Mahati. "Next question, do we proceed?"

"There is a financial penalty for Director Hall, but if he agrees to pay it, we can proceed," Mahati said.

"What's it gonna cost? A couple thou'?"

"Did you even read the contract?" Granger retorted.

"And what part of bite me didn't you understand?" Maurice snapped.

Mahati smiled. "As Mr. Granger noted, the amount is clearly spelled out in the contract. Breach of the confidentiality clause carries a fine of one-half of the purchase price."

Hall's jaw dropped. "That's one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars!"

Mahati pulled a tablet PC from her purse with a stylus. She pulled up the contract for the CIA and went to the page where contract breaches were outlined. She checked the box for Breach of Confidentiality and added her signature and the date. She looked to the CIA Director. "Your signature, please."

"I'm not signing that!"

Mahati waited for a second, then looked to Henry. "Our business here today is concluded."

"My agency hasn't received the software or training," Dawes said with a frown.

"But you did receive documentation outside the legal terms of the contract. That issue must be resolved before further transactions. It's outlined very clearly in the contract."

Dawes scowled at Hall. "Sign the form."

"I'll need two witnesses as well," Mahati said with a smile.

With an angry expression on his face, Maurice signed the tablet. Wallace and Stephen were the witnesses.

"I could just say you forged my signature," the CIA Director snapped.

Mahati tucked away the tablet and faced the group. "The signature plus your biometrics the tablet recorded while you faced its camera are incontestable in court." She turned to Henry. "We may proceed."

The Directors were watching her uncomfortably as she'd handled them all quite effectively. Henry did his best to hide his smile.

Instead, he nodded and looked to the podium. There was a server rack standing next to it with a blade server installed. He turned to Dawes. "Who on your team will be doing the application install?"

The Director gestured to someone sitting in the center of the lowest row. A slim woman in her mid-thirties moved to join them. "This is Billy James, our Network Security Specialist. Billy, this is Henry Gable." Henry was surprised by a name that didn't match her dour expression. She was remarkably unremarkable in her grey suit jacket and slacks over a white dress shirt and black shoes. Dishwater blond hair worn short, pale hazel eyes, and thin lips, there seemed to be no spirit in her eyes. He had the eerie sensation he was addressing one of VRL's artificial workers.

Henry forced a smile onto his lips, and they nodded to each other. He pulled a memory stick from his pocket and handed it to her. "This is the software for Homeland Security and your documentation. Did you build this test bench server?" he asked her.

"Yes. We couldn't get the network cards you specified in time for the demo," she said with no inflection in her voice.

He frowned. "Let's do a quick check under the hood to see if that's going to be a problem."

Henry walked over to poke around in the server's device manager interface. He dropped to the command line and ran some test scripts. After reviewing the output, he sighed.

"We can do the install. We can do the configuration. We can even do some mild testing, but we can't do any true performance testing. These NICs are going to tank if we put them under heavy load, and they will lock up at maximum load." Henry explained to the Directors and Billy.

"What's a NIC?" Wallace asked.

"Sorry, a Network Interface Card," Henry explained. "You need to use the ones specified in the documentation and have spares on hand."

"I understand the install is quick. We're all busy men. Let's get this going," Dawes asserted impatiently, obviously still smarting from Mahati's win.

Henry nodded to him, then to Billy. She walked to the podium and had the large projection screen on the wall behind them displaying the test machine's interface.

He faced the audience again, and they settled down. The Directors of their separate agencies went to sit with their people. Someone brought Mahati a chair to sit in at the room's side, so only Henry and Billy were at the front.

Henry picked up the wireless earpiece and microphone. He slipped it on and pressed the power button.

"If you can hear me, please raise your hand," he said with a tight throat.

All of the guests raised a hand.

"Great. Hi, I'm Henry Gable. I'm the CIO of VRL Investments in Manhattan, New York. I wrote the software I'm going to demo the installation and configuring of this morning. It-It's based on the code my brother Stanley designed." He gestured to the server rack. "The test bench is currently configured with network cards that are not optimal, so we won't be doing any performance testing." He looked to the woman on the stage with him. "Ms. James has the software on the memory stick. Go ahead and insert that, and let's get started.

Billy held up the memory stick, then they got to work.

With the woman's assistance, they installed the application and configured it. Instead of seven minutes, it took about fifteen, as Henry described each step to the audience.

"That's it. Functioning firewall. Simple so far, right?" Henry said, looking at the faces, and no one was arguing. He nodded to himself. "Okay, now let me take you through the functional menu."

He asked Billy to take them through the menus one at a time as he described the features. The room was mostly silent as they took in the information and made notes. When they reached the end of this part of the demo, he scanned the audience and saw a few impatient faces.

"So far, it looks like a nicely featured interface, but you'd like to see it in action, yes?"

A few people actually called out yes. Henry smiled and turned to Billy. "Can you display the external web address for the firewall up on the screen?"

The IP number popped up on the screen. "Okay, people. There is the target. Please have your people connect to this address to try to break through." He looked to Wallace. "Director Granger, due to the poor performance of these inferior network cards, please don't aim your code-cracker at it. You can have individuals attempt to break in."

He looked to Billy. "Keep that IP number on the screen and please open a window with the monitoring options and open the threats report."

The screen displayed a grid showing just a few connections attempting to breach the firewall. A few more appeared, and then a dozen more showed up. Henry looked up at the seating and saw the groups crowding around their experts as they made their own breach attempts.

As they worked on hacking or cracking the firewall, Henry left his mic on the podium and wandered over to see Mahati. "I think it's going well," he said, and she nodded with a smile.

"The software seems very simple and easy to use," she admitted.

"Yes, that's the magic. It's the mystery underneath that contains all the wonder," he said with a smile.

Mahati froze. "Magic?" she asked cautiously.

His eyes widened as he shook his head. "No! I was just being dramatic! It's all science."

Mahati just shook her head as she watched him.

"I was very impressed with how you stood up to Dawes and Hall," he said quietly.

She smiled again. "Thank you."

He saw the group was becoming restless, so he went back to the podium and put the mic back on.

"Any questions?"

Hands went up all over the hall, and Henry's expression fell. So much for a quick meeting followed by much sightseeing. Henry pointed to a gentleman four tiers up as he was waving most energetically.

"Lawrence Prescott! I've seen the documentation on your firewall. It shouldn't work."

Henry just smiled at him.

Flustered, the man continued. "Page 125 shows a diagram describing how this... channel layering works, but it's impossible."

Billy opened the documentation on the memory stick and went to page 125. She put it up on the big screen.

The audience grumbled as they also seemed to have a problem with this.

Lawrence called out once more. "There is nothing in this that explains how you are yielding the results you are reporting."

Henry looked to Mahati then back to the scientist. "It's the processor."

"Yes, we can all see the diagram refers to the processor. But they won't produce secondary channels, as you indicate. It's not designed to produce more than one thread," Lawrence said wearily.

"Sure, but this chip's quantum tunneling effect does," Henry said as he went to Billy's terminal and moved the document three more pages along where his diagram showed the second and third channels trapping hacker traffic.

He looked back at the audience as the room had gone silent, all eyes on him.

"Did I fart or something?" he said into the silent room.

"Did... did you say Quantum Tunneling?" Lawrence asked.

Henry nodded. "Yeah... it's not a documented property of the chip, but it's really handy for building these layer traps." He looked around the room, and everyone was still staring at him. "Has no one here ever thought to measure energy consumption and output on these chips before? Waste heat doesn't account for all of the discrepancy. It's the tunneling effect. If you can identify it, you can utilize it for multilevel coding."

It was like Henry had thrown a lit Molotov cocktail into their midst. The scientists exploded into two camps, those scoffing at his outrageous fantasy and those connecting the dots and shouting excitedly about the potential. Then, they turned on each other.

Shortly, the Directors approached him with their Tech Leads in tow, so Henry faced them. "Uh, I didn't intend to start a scientist war."

"What's this quantum tunneling thing?" Wallace asked.

"In simple terms, it's the potential ability for an electron to pass through a solid barrier. The chips are being designed smaller and smaller, so the barriers are thinner and thinner. An electron can move from a transistor on one side of what should be a solid barrier to another transistor on the other side. I just found a way to make that work for me in a controlled way," Henry said with a shrug.

Robert was looking at his boss with wide eyes.

"What?" Wallace asked in annoyance, a little unnerved by the intensity of his underling's gaze.

"We don't have the tools needed to measure this effect, nor do we have the means to utilize it," he said.

"That's only because you weren't aware of it happening. Now, you have an application that proves it works and knowledge of the processors which produce the effect. You're smart. You'll figure out how to measure and utilize it. Take a lesson from the astronomers. Sometimes you have to look at what's missing to find what's hidden in plain sight. The beautiful thing is, even when you know how it works, that does nothing to diminish the security it offers." Henry grinned at them.