The Number of the Bug

270.

In the setting of the trap one must caution against any premature misfire. Imagine being caught in your own trap, the horror, indignity, humiliation, pain - or worse. Is the courage necessary to act a part in a live drama more than or less than that of the hunter loading-up for bear?

Davis considers his predicament. All his deepest fears are realized as he mentally rehearses his play. He wishes he had the time to memorize his lines, but neither time nor script exists anywhere other than his imagination - and the virus insert The Queen is laboring over. His role will be improv, a nightmare for most comedians, but the comedy panacea for a select few. Or as he winks to his former drill instructor, 'we're looking for a few good hens.'

Saunders, sensing his confidence might be ebbing, tries her best to comfort and console, after all, her part is equally important and perhaps doubly difficult. She has backup. She will watch in the shadows, a dark booth in a dark sports bar inside a den of thieves, to ensure that should anything go wrong - as the odds insist they will - that the damage will be superficial.

As the fool and his money are soon separated, so is the novice gamer and his cash. Davis will have to uncork a masterful performance to set the stage and then carry it off. Without a trial run, without complete confidence that the scam will even work and, worst, without defense of any caliber greater than five fingers on each hand and a black belt in Akido, he considers the many possibilities and his response for each.

Saunders insists that he is perfect for the swashbuckling part, all he has to do, she coaches, is be natural, "simply imagine you are in the fourth quarter of a tie game and the coach calls your number."

Three time zones away The Queen sits at a workstation in the team office examining code with an urgent efficiency. She looks for ways to increase the odds of success in the sting, currently, she estimates, to be just slightly better than even.

"There are variables involved outside of the binary," she tells me, "I can easily code any response to any circumstance, even change the odds at the last second, but the human element will also play a role. And I can't put too large a finger on that scale before they, the guys making millions, smell a ghost in the machine and shut it down."

"Remember that it doesn't have to be bullet-proof and go undetected forever, just long enough for Davis to claim victory and offer the ill gotten gains back to their proper owners in a proof of concept gesture of good-faith," I offer in the hope of diminishing the tension, currently as thick as a red brick.

"Understood," she says adding, "wait, let's assume they have a security embed hiding somewhere in the code, that triggers a cascade of subsequent actions, until a decision is reached….." she enters a lightning fast line of code that, as we have learned, when you change even a small part of the whole, you have successfully changed the whole, and whispers, "Eureka!"

She tilts back in her chair like a kid doing a wheelie, balancing on the two rear legs as the program runs through page after page of her testing simulation.

"This represents the exact time it will take for Davis' alternative win to pass security and be safe, in other words the bug I just fed is madly running around looking for a happy meal and finding all the fast-food joints closed, continues to circle, and search and circle and…."

"And on and on until somebody hits reset?" I ask, completely befuddled.

"In layman's terms, yes, until somebody, most likely their head of IT Security, turns it off, waits one minute and then restarts, or consider it a million dollar moment."

"I thought that was myth."

"That's what we want you to think, otherwise how could we charge a thousand dollars an hour to troubleshoot?"

She sits watching the program hunt for a digital meal it will never find, glancing occasionally at her watch for the crucial elapsed time.

"Will twenty minutes be enough?"

"If it's not, we're in the wrong business. Nice job."

I call Davis' number with the news.