The Hegemony Compound, Thursday
From: unready%cincinnotus@anon.set
To: Demosthenes%Tecumseh@freeamerica org
Re: Ill help you
So, Mr. Wonderboy Hegemon, now that you're no longer Demosthenes of "freeamerica.org", is there any good reason why my telling you what I see from the sky wouldn't be treason?
From: Demosthenes%Tecumseh@freeamerica.org
To: unready%cincinnatus@anon.set
Re: Because ...
Because only the Hegemony is actually doing anything about China, or actively trying to get Russia and the Warsaw Pact out of bed with Beijing.
From: unready%cincinnatus@anon.set
To: Demosthenes%Tecumseh@freeamerica org
Re: Bullshit
We saw your little army pull somebody out of a prisoner convoy on a highway in China. If that was who we think it was no way are you ever seeing anything from me again. My info doesn't go to psycho megalomaniacs. Except you, of course.
From Demosthenes%Tecumseh@freeamerica.org
To: unready%cincinnatus@anon.set
Re: Good call
Good call. Not safe. Here's what. If there's something I should know because you can't act and I can, deaddrop it to my former cinc at a weblink that will come to you from IComeAnon. He'll know what to do with it. He isn't working for me any more for the same reason you're not helping. But he's still on our side-and, fyi,[?] I'm still on our side, too.
---
"Peter, you're not in a position to see what the Beast is doing."
"Father, I know what I'm doing."
"He's got time for everybody. He's friends with every clerk, every janitor, every secretary, every bureaucrat. People you breeze past with a wave or with nothing at all, he sits and chats with them, makes them feel important."
"Except for Natalie. But yes, he's a charmer, all right."
"Peter-"
"It's not a popularity contest, Father."
"No, it's a loyalty contest. You accomplish exactly as much as the people who serve you decide you'll accomplish, and nothing more. They are your power, these public servants you employ, and he's winning their loyalty away from you.
"Superficially, perhaps."
"For most people, the superficial is all there is. They act on the feelings of the moment. They like him better than you."
"There's always somebody that people like better."
"Peter, when the Beast leaves here, who knows how many people he'll leave behind who like him well enough to slip him a bit of gossip now and then? Or a secret document?"
"Father, I appreciate your concern. And once again, I can only tell you that I have things under control."
"You seem to think that anything you don't know isn't worth knowing."
"And you seem to think that anything I'm doing is not being done well enough."
A few hours later, John Paul found Peter in a meeting with Ferreira, the Brazilian computer expert who was in charge of system security. "I'm sorry to interrupt," he said, "but it's even better to tell you this when both of you are together."
Peter was irritated, but answered politely enough. "Go ahead."
John Paul had tried to think of some benign explanation for his having tried to mount a spy operation throughout the Hegemony computer network, but he couldn't. So he told the truth, that he was trying to spy on Achilles - but said nothing about what he intended to do with the information.
By the time he was done, Peter and Ferreira were laughing - bitterly, ironically, but laughing.
"What's funny?"
"Father," said Peter. "Didn't it occur to you that we had software on the system doing exactly the same job?"
"Which software did you use?" asked Ferreira.
John Paul told him and Ferreira sighed. "Ordinarily my software would have detected his and wiped it out." he said. "But your father has a very privileged access to the net. So privileged that my snoopware had to let it by."
"But didn't your software at least tell you?" asked Peter, annoyed.
"His is interrupt-driven, mine is native in the operating system," said Ferreira. "Once his snoopware got past the initial barrier and was resident in the system, there was nothing to report. Both programs do the same job, just at different times in the machine's cycle. They read the keypress and pass the information on to the operating system, which passes it on to the program. They also pass it on to their own keystroke log. But both programs clear the buffer so that the keystroke doesn't get read twice."
Peter and John Paul both made the same gesture - facepalm. They understood at once, of course.
Keystrokes came in and got processed by Ferreira's snoopware or by John Paul's-but never by both. So both keystroke logs would show nothing but random letters, none of which would amount to anything meaningful. None of which would ever look like a log-on- even though there were log-ons all over the system all the time.
"Can we combine the logs?" asked John Paul. "We have all the keystrokes, after all."
"We have the alphabet, too," said Ferreira, "and if we just find the right order to arrange them in, those letters will spell out everything that was ever written."
"It's not as bad as that," said Peter. "At least the letters are in order. It shouldn't be that hard to meld them together in a way that makes sense."
"But we have to meld all of them in order to find Achilles's log-ons."
"Write a program," said Peter "One that will find everything that might be a log-on by him, and then you can work on the material immediately following those possibles."
"Write a program," murmured Ferreira.
"Or I will," said Peter. "I don't have anything else to do."
That sarcasm doesn't make people love you, Peter, said John Paul silently.
Then again, there was no chance, given Peter's parents, that such sarcasm would not come readily to his lips.
"I'll sort it out," said Ferreira.
"I'm sorry," said John Paul.
Ferreira only sighed. "Didn't it at least cross your mind that we would have software already in place to do the same job?"
"You mean you had snoopware that would give me regular reports on what Achilles was writing?" asked John Paul. Oops. Peter's not the only sarcastic one. But then, I'm not trying to unite the world.
"There's no reason for you to know," said Peter.
Time to bite the bullet. "I think Achilles is planning to kill your mother."
"Father," said Peter impatiently. "He doesn't even know her."
"Do you think there's any chance that he didn't hear that she tried to get into his room?"
"But ... kill her?" asked Ferreira.
"Achilles doesn't do things by half-measures," said John Paul. "And nobody is more loyal to Peter than she is."
"Not even you, Father?" asked Peter sweetly.
"She doesn't see your faults," lied John Paul. "Her motherly instincts blind her."
"But you have no such handicap."
"Not being your mother," said John Paul.
"My snoopware should have caught this anyway," said Ferreira. "I blame only myself. The system shouldn't have had that kind of back door."
"Systems always do," said John Paul.
After Ferreira left, Peter said a few cold words. "I know how to keep Mother completely safe," he said. "Take her away from here. Go to a colony world. Go somewhere and do something, but stop trying to protect me.
"Protect you?"
"Do you think I'm so stupid that I'll believe this cockamamy story about Achilles wanting to kill Mother?"
"Ah. You're the only person here worth killing."
"I'm the only one whose death would remove a major obstacle from Achilles's path."
John Paul could only shake his head.
"Who else, then?" Peter demanded.
"Nobody else, Peter," said John Paul. "Not a soul. Everybody's safe, because, after all, Achilles has shown himself to be a perfectly rational boy who would never, ever kill somebody without a perfectly rational purpose in view."
"Well, yes, of course, he's psychotic," said Peter "I didn't mean he wasn't psychotic."
"So many psychotics, so few really effective drugs," said John Paul as he left the room.
That had been the morning.
The evening featured John Paul storming into Peter's apartment and yanking him out of bed like a teenager while Theresa banged on Natalie's door across the hall.
"Hey!"
"Have I got your attention now? Will you actually listen?"
[[ for the chief of staff; taken and adapted from orson scott card's shadow puppets, that goddamn terrible book ]]
To: Demosthenes%Tecumseh@freeamerica org
Re: Ill help you
So, Mr. Wonderboy Hegemon, now that you're no longer Demosthenes of "freeamerica.org", is there any good reason why my telling you what I see from the sky wouldn't be treason?
From: Demosthenes%Tecumseh@freeamerica.org
To: unready%cincinnatus@anon.set
Re: Because ...
Because only the Hegemony is actually doing anything about China, or actively trying to get Russia and the Warsaw Pact out of bed with Beijing.
From: unready%cincinnatus@anon.set
To: Demosthenes%Tecumseh@freeamerica org
Re: Bullshit
We saw your little army pull somebody out of a prisoner convoy on a highway in China. If that was who we think it was no way are you ever seeing anything from me again. My info doesn't go to psycho megalomaniacs. Except you, of course.
From Demosthenes%Tecumseh@freeamerica.org
To: unready%cincinnatus@anon.set
Re: Good call
Good call. Not safe. Here's what. If there's something I should know because you can't act and I can, deaddrop it to my former cinc at a weblink that will come to you from IComeAnon. He'll know what to do with it. He isn't working for me any more for the same reason you're not helping. But he's still on our side-and, fyi,[?] I'm still on our side, too.
---
"Peter, you're not in a position to see what the Beast is doing."
"Father, I know what I'm doing."
"He's got time for everybody. He's friends with every clerk, every janitor, every secretary, every bureaucrat. People you breeze past with a wave or with nothing at all, he sits and chats with them, makes them feel important."
"Except for Natalie. But yes, he's a charmer, all right."
"Peter-"
"It's not a popularity contest, Father."
"No, it's a loyalty contest. You accomplish exactly as much as the people who serve you decide you'll accomplish, and nothing more. They are your power, these public servants you employ, and he's winning their loyalty away from you.
"Superficially, perhaps."
"For most people, the superficial is all there is. They act on the feelings of the moment. They like him better than you."
"There's always somebody that people like better."
"Peter, when the Beast leaves here, who knows how many people he'll leave behind who like him well enough to slip him a bit of gossip now and then? Or a secret document?"
"Father, I appreciate your concern. And once again, I can only tell you that I have things under control."
"You seem to think that anything you don't know isn't worth knowing."
"And you seem to think that anything I'm doing is not being done well enough."
A few hours later, John Paul found Peter in a meeting with Ferreira, the Brazilian computer expert who was in charge of system security. "I'm sorry to interrupt," he said, "but it's even better to tell you this when both of you are together."
Peter was irritated, but answered politely enough. "Go ahead."
John Paul had tried to think of some benign explanation for his having tried to mount a spy operation throughout the Hegemony computer network, but he couldn't. So he told the truth, that he was trying to spy on Achilles - but said nothing about what he intended to do with the information.
By the time he was done, Peter and Ferreira were laughing - bitterly, ironically, but laughing.
"What's funny?"
"Father," said Peter. "Didn't it occur to you that we had software on the system doing exactly the same job?"
"Which software did you use?" asked Ferreira.
John Paul told him and Ferreira sighed. "Ordinarily my software would have detected his and wiped it out." he said. "But your father has a very privileged access to the net. So privileged that my snoopware had to let it by."
"But didn't your software at least tell you?" asked Peter, annoyed.
"His is interrupt-driven, mine is native in the operating system," said Ferreira. "Once his snoopware got past the initial barrier and was resident in the system, there was nothing to report. Both programs do the same job, just at different times in the machine's cycle. They read the keypress and pass the information on to the operating system, which passes it on to the program. They also pass it on to their own keystroke log. But both programs clear the buffer so that the keystroke doesn't get read twice."
Peter and John Paul both made the same gesture - facepalm. They understood at once, of course.
Keystrokes came in and got processed by Ferreira's snoopware or by John Paul's-but never by both. So both keystroke logs would show nothing but random letters, none of which would amount to anything meaningful. None of which would ever look like a log-on- even though there were log-ons all over the system all the time.
"Can we combine the logs?" asked John Paul. "We have all the keystrokes, after all."
"We have the alphabet, too," said Ferreira, "and if we just find the right order to arrange them in, those letters will spell out everything that was ever written."
"It's not as bad as that," said Peter. "At least the letters are in order. It shouldn't be that hard to meld them together in a way that makes sense."
"But we have to meld all of them in order to find Achilles's log-ons."
"Write a program," said Peter "One that will find everything that might be a log-on by him, and then you can work on the material immediately following those possibles."
"Write a program," murmured Ferreira.
"Or I will," said Peter. "I don't have anything else to do."
That sarcasm doesn't make people love you, Peter, said John Paul silently.
Then again, there was no chance, given Peter's parents, that such sarcasm would not come readily to his lips.
"I'll sort it out," said Ferreira.
"I'm sorry," said John Paul.
Ferreira only sighed. "Didn't it at least cross your mind that we would have software already in place to do the same job?"
"You mean you had snoopware that would give me regular reports on what Achilles was writing?" asked John Paul. Oops. Peter's not the only sarcastic one. But then, I'm not trying to unite the world.
"There's no reason for you to know," said Peter.
Time to bite the bullet. "I think Achilles is planning to kill your mother."
"Father," said Peter impatiently. "He doesn't even know her."
"Do you think there's any chance that he didn't hear that she tried to get into his room?"
"But ... kill her?" asked Ferreira.
"Achilles doesn't do things by half-measures," said John Paul. "And nobody is more loyal to Peter than she is."
"Not even you, Father?" asked Peter sweetly.
"She doesn't see your faults," lied John Paul. "Her motherly instincts blind her."
"But you have no such handicap."
"Not being your mother," said John Paul.
"My snoopware should have caught this anyway," said Ferreira. "I blame only myself. The system shouldn't have had that kind of back door."
"Systems always do," said John Paul.
After Ferreira left, Peter said a few cold words. "I know how to keep Mother completely safe," he said. "Take her away from here. Go to a colony world. Go somewhere and do something, but stop trying to protect me.
"Protect you?"
"Do you think I'm so stupid that I'll believe this cockamamy story about Achilles wanting to kill Mother?"
"Ah. You're the only person here worth killing."
"I'm the only one whose death would remove a major obstacle from Achilles's path."
John Paul could only shake his head.
"Who else, then?" Peter demanded.
"Nobody else, Peter," said John Paul. "Not a soul. Everybody's safe, because, after all, Achilles has shown himself to be a perfectly rational boy who would never, ever kill somebody without a perfectly rational purpose in view."
"Well, yes, of course, he's psychotic," said Peter "I didn't mean he wasn't psychotic."
"So many psychotics, so few really effective drugs," said John Paul as he left the room.
That had been the morning.
The evening featured John Paul storming into Peter's apartment and yanking him out of bed like a teenager while Theresa banged on Natalie's door across the hall.
"Hey!"
"Have I got your attention now? Will you actually listen?"
[[ for the chief of staff; taken and adapted from orson scott card's shadow puppets, that goddamn terrible book ]]