#what would you need encryption software for?

[combine-sensor-archive]

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INSTALLING: DATA ENCRYPTION SOFTWARE (cmbineencrpt.exe)

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...

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INSTALLATION: COMPLETE

WARNING: HUD AND INSTRUMENTS ARE: DAMAGED. PLEASE SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION OR NEAREST COMBINE CHECKPOINT.

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[silvakochdostoe]

My OC’s character sheet, and down below her lore/backstory/ability awakening: ⬇️

Silva was ten years old when her ability awakened,

Just ten—and she’d been happy that morning. Her scarf was red, her fingers a little numb from the cold, and she’d stolen a piece of chocolate from the kitchen for her little sister Shizu. She was supposed to go straight home.

But she wandered.

The abandoned docks were quiet, gray, littered with broken bottles and rusted chains. She liked the silence. Until it broke.

They surrounded her.

Six—no, seven men. Adults. Ability users. Scarred, twitching, high on something. Their eyes gleamed with something unclean. Predatory. Hungry.

“What’s a pretty little girl like you doing out here?” one crooned, stepping closer. His hands glowed faintly red—heat user. Another crackled with static. One had black eyes and claws.

She froze. The air thickened. Her legs refused to move

She didn’t know there was a world of supernatural powers, but now she does.

“Don’t scream,” another said. “It won’t help.”

She screamed anyway.

It didn’t help.

They were on her. Rough hands. One slammed her face into the concrete. Another tore her coat away. She felt the blade before she saw it—cold metal sliding across her back, slicing skin, over and over. She choked on her own sobs, her fingers clawing uselessly at the ground. Her blood ran hot down her spine.

“Still breathing?” a voice sneered, just before the knife slashed across her left eye.

Agony. Blinding, searing agony.

She couldn’t hear. She couldn’t see. Only pain.

But then—something else.

A low, pulsing sound beneath her skin. Like a heartbeat—but not her own.

The blood stopped falling. It started rising.

It listened.

The pain vanished. Not gone—replaced. By rage. A monstrous, pure kind of fury that took her tiny, broken body and twisted it into something new.

Her eye—burned red. The other glowed green like wildfire.

Then the screaming started.

Not hers. Theirs.

She didn’t move. She didn’t have to.

The blood flowed up—hers, theirs—turning into jagged tendrils, barbed blades, sickle-sharp whips. One man was torn in half before he could blink. Another’s chest caved in as a spear of blood impaled him through the sternum and burst out the other side. They tried to run. Their feet slipped in gore. One tripped and was dragged back by a crimson leash around his throat, flailing, clawing at air, before his body exploded into meat.

Her expression didn’t change.

She watched them die like it was a lullaby.

One man begged. “Please—please, stop! You’re just a kid, please—”

Her blood slashed his jaw off mid-sentence.

When it was over, the docks were painted red.

Three escaped. Broken, bleeding, screaming about a monster with one glowing eye and blood that moved like it had a mind of its own.

Silva stood in the center, her back a lattice of torn flesh, her eye a ruined mess of blood and tears. But she wasn’t crying anymore.

Her body trembled. Her hands were slick with gore. She looked down at her fingers, then at the shredded corpses twitching around her.

She didn’t understand what she’d done.

She just knew one thing:

She had become something terrifying.

And she would never be prey again.

That meant she had to hunt down and locate the rest that got away.

_____——_____

At fifteen, while her classmates obsessed over crushes and celebrity gossip, Silva was tearing through encrypted firewalls designed by military contractors. While they learned algebra, she was reverse-engineering black-budget surveillance software from four governments and rewriting it in six hours—better, sleeker, impossible to trace.

She had no formal training. She didn’t need it. Her brain devoured information. It wasn’t just intelligence—it was something else. Something unnatural.

Patterns glowed for her. Systems spoke. The moment she laid eyes on a network, she saw the architecture behind it, the cracks, the pressure points. Like blood vessels waiting to be pierced. And she did. Effortlessly.

They called it a gift. The psychologists, the government recruiters, even the hackers online who traded secrets with her and never knew they were talking to a teenage girl with one ruined eye and scars down her back. But Silva didn’t feel gifted. She felt haunted.

The attack when she was ten never left her.

She still heard the screams.

Still felt the blade.

And so, she controlled what she could.

She built her own systems from scratch. Modified keyboards to fit the speed of her thought. She wrote code like it was poetry—fluid, instinctive, laced with venom. Her personal rig had no brand. No OS. It was hers and hers alone. And it was alive with her blood.

Yes—blood.

Her ability had evolved. She could now interface directly with machines using thin strands of her own blood, magnetized and refined through years of brutal experimentation. Wires were clumsy. Silva’s veins were cleaner.

At sixteen, she hacked an underground weapons ring trafficking in children. She leaked everything to Interpol—after burning their funds and publicly doxing their leaders. Three suicides followed.

At seventeen, she took down a private mercenary company’s communications grid during a covert operation in Syria. No one ever knew how it failed. Only that it failed catastrophically.

Her files were ghosts. Her online identities were labyrinths. Even the best white-hat teams could only conclude she was either a government AI or a demon in human skin.

But inside, she was still that girl on the dock, bleeding, shaking, trembling with a power she barely understood.

She didn’t go to parties. She didn’t trust people.

She trusted data. Control. Isolation.

And still—her body was not done changing. Her blood whispered. It wanted to grow. Sometimes her skin would split during stress and release threads that slithered along the floor, searching. Curious. Hungry.

But she never let it loose again. Not fully. Not since that day.

Not until she met him, by fate, years later.

The man who would unravel everything, Fyodor Dostoevesky.

___—-___

Silva Koch also graduated at sixteen.

Officially, it was with highest honors, top of her class. Unofficially, she had already outgrown the curriculum by the time she was twelve.

By then, she’d rewritten portions of her school’s outdated network infrastructure just because the lag irritated her. She exposed a hidden surveillance subroutine planted in students’ laptops—by the school board—and dismantled it, anonymously dropping a report to the national press.

When she sat for her exams, the proctor swore he’d never seen a teenager answer higher-level math problems in seconds, without a calculator, while simultaneously reading from a law textbook and re-coding her own testing interface to be more efficient.

She was bored.

She completed four university degrees online before she could legally drink:

•Cybersecurity and Forensic Cryptology

•Applied Mathematics

•Political Science (focus: covert policy and digital warfare)

•Linguistics, because she liked pattern-mapping phonemes

She never showed up for classes. Never turned on her camera.

Her professors feared her.

Some respected her.

Most didn’t even realize she was a teenager until the national spotlight hit.

____—____

“NEMESIS” Appears in NATO Leak—World Governments Scramble to Identify Source

At seventeen, Silva—under the handle Nemesis01—intercepted a shadow op that would have used a social media algorithm to sway an election in a small Baltic country. Funded by two superpowers. Sloppy, arrogant.

She didn’t just expose it.

She hijacked the code.

She weaponized it to undo years of digital disinformation, and wrote a 94-page dossier analyzing the psy-op’s structure, weaknesses, and funding lines.

She sent it to NATO, Interpol, and the UN.

Not with her name. With a blood-red insignia: a single eye.

The world panicked.

Hackers tried to trace her. Blackhats and whitehats both. No one could.

Governments issued quiet invites.

Only a few got responses.

Germany got her first.

The Bundesnachrichtendienst recruited her under strict anonymity—not as an agent, but as a consultant.

She worked behind mirrored glass and biometric vaults, never in person. She built systems that could detect cyberwarfare attempts before the first packet even arrived. She predicted a data breach three months before it happened—down to the day. She corrected it with six lines of code.

She worked with the EU. With Japan. Even a few secret joint operations with the CIA’s cyber division—though she made it very clear she found their encryption practices embarrassing.

She never just took payments in cash.

Her fees were data. Access. Leverage.

Control.

___——___

By eighteen, she was untouchable.

They called her “The Blood Witch of Code.”

The “Ghost Cipher.”

“Red Nemesis.”

No one knew what she looked like.

Only that she was young, brilliant, and not entirely human.

And behind the digital veil, her blood still whispered—itching for something more.

For a purpose no system, no government, no firewall could satisfy.

Not until they found one another.

Not until fate brought them together.

But that wouldn’t be for another three years.

[errorid-mt7lt7k7unfr9ttfua5]

me when companies try to force you to use their proprietary software

anyway

Layperson resources:

firefox is an open source browser by Mozilla that makes privacy and software independence much easier. it is very easy to transfer all your chrome data to Firefox

ublock origin is The highest quality adblock atm. it is a free browser extension, and though last i checked it is available on Chrome google is trying very hard to crack down on its use

Thunderbird mail is an open source email client also by mozilla and shares many of the same advantages as firefox (it has some other cool features as well)

libreOffice is an open source office suite similar to microsoft office or Google Suite, simple enough

Risky:

VPNs (virtual private networks) essentially do a number of things, but most commonly they are used to prevent people from tracking your IP address. i would suggest doing more research. i use proton vpn, as it has a decent free version, and the paid version is powerful

note: some applications, websites, and other entities do not tolerate the use of VPNs. you may not be able to access certain secure sites while using a VPN, and logging into your personal account with some services while using a vpn *may* get you PERMANENTLY BLACKLISTED from the service on that account, ymmv

IF YOU HAVE A DECENT VPN, ANTIVIRUS, AND ADBLOCK, you can start learning about piracy, though i will not be providing any resources, as Loose Lips Sink Ships. if you want to be very safe, start with streaming sites and never download any files, though you Can learn how to discern between safe, unsafe, and risky content.

note: DO NOT SHARE LINKS TO OR NAMES OF PIRACY SITES IN PUBLIC PLACES, ESPECIALLY SOCAL MEDIA

the only time you should share these things are either in person or in (preferably peer-to-peer encrypted) PRIVATE messages

when pirated media becomes well-known and circulated on the wider, public internet, it gets taken down, because it is illegal to distribute pirated media and software

if you need an antivirus i like bitdefender. it has a free version, and is very good, though if youre using windows, windows defender is also very good and it comes with the OS

Advanced:

linux is great if you REALLY know what you're doing. you have to know a decent amount of computer science and be comfortable using the Terminal/Command Prompt to get/use linux. "Linux" refers to a large array of related open source Operating Systems. do research and pick one that suits your needs. im still experimenting with various dispos, but im leaning towards either Ubuntu Cinnamon or Debian.

[drabblesandimagines]

Dove (part seven)

Leon Kennedy x female reader (bodyguard trope and the slowest, slow burn I swear)

Part one. Part two. Part three. Part four. Part five. Part six. Part seven.

---

A tense knot has formed right between Leon’s shoulder blades – can feel it pull when he tilts his head side to side, but it doesn’t seem to be loosening. Can’t even blame it on sleeping on the sofa cos he hasn’t laid down to sleep since the call with Hunnigan, stays sat up right. He’s athletic, he can jump up to his feet from horizontal but it’ll add a second or so to his reaction time and he’s not taking the risk.

He's on edge and he doesn’t like it. The ball of anxiety in his gut has saved his life more times than he can count, but it shouldn’t be necessary in this situation, should it? He’s set up in a safe house, literally off some beaten track in the middle of nowhere – location chosen and distributed by encrypted software so, technically, no-one in the DSO knows where he is either. It’s rigged up to the heavens with security measures - cameras, alarm systems, motion detector - explosion-proof windows, reinforced doors, all topped off with his favourite array of weapons in the duffel bag, currently resting by his still booted feet.

The objective of his mission hasn’t changed after the intel he’s received, that some foreign agency has had access to the CCTV feed for who knows how many hours before they were cut off. He should feel reassured that the quality of the footage was awful – it was only by how many times he’s encountered Lickers that he could even tell that’s what the creatures were when he’d be presented with the grainy images. He didn’t see the footage of you being rescued, but it would be a cruel kick in the gut to find that feed had been HD.

He lifts an arm – his left, keeping his right arm free, his accuracy is better by millimetres with his right – and rubs the knot, hoping to relieve the tension. It's not 100% confirmed they are looking or will be looking for you either, but why would anyone link up to the CCTV circuit if not to check on the outcome of their operation?

His immediate thought had been to up the frequency of his perimeter checks, one every two hours. He could do that at night, sure – military training taught him the correct and most efficient techniques to power nap – but in the day it would be harder without worrying you about what’s changed.

You wanted updates. Hell, you were entitled to updates. But he wants to give you good news, doesn’t wanna add to the weight on your shoulders with what could be nothing. It’s stupid, he knows it’s stupid, but in these sweet domestic moments the two of you have been sharing, he’s been pretending it’s something else – friends watching television, cooking a meal together – the sweet smiles the two of you exchange, but it’s all ripped apart the moment he has to do his checks. He can see the worry settle on your face then, a reminder of where you are with the flick of the safety off his gun and the twist of the lock as he goes outside to conduct surveillance.

Speaking of, his phone beeps for his next circuit on the building and he’s up on his feet in the blink of an eye. He pats his cargo pocket out of habit for the keys on the walk over to the garage door, but finds himself pausing outside your bedroom, his eyes focusing on the handle. You should still be pretty under with those sleeping pills – note to self, he’ll need to start weening you off them from now on, far too easy to get addicted. It wouldn’t hurt to just… check you were okay, would it?

No – that’s what you’re here, why he’s here – to protect you.

It would just be doing his job.

He presses down on the handle and slowly opens the door, breath caught in his throat. It takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the dark, the lamp in the living room not quite reaching as far as your bed, but eventually he can make out your face – as peaceful as he’s ever seen it.

You’re on your side. The position doesn’t look like it would be comfortable with your arm still strapped up in the sling, but it’s testimony to how well the sleeping pills are working. Your other arm is up by your face, hand clenched in a tight fist around something. He steps forward without thinking, curious what it could be.

Your fingers are gripped tightly around his watch.

And there’s a pain in his chest that feels like they’re gripped around his heart as well.

That settles it - he’s not gonna tell you about the hacked CCTV feed. He will tell you that Hunnigan hasn’t searched your place yet, that they’ve restarted the surveillance department – she’d asked him to ask you if you knew anything about the servers since they were appeared to be working from square one – but that was it.

Leon steps back with unnecessary caution, leaving the bedroom as silently as he entered and shuts the door with a soft click. He takes a deep breath, pats down his pockets again and heads out to circle the perimeter.

And, just like after you kissed his cheek, he does it twice.

--

You wake up after another peaceful and dreamless sleep, though it still takes a moment to remember where you are as you stare up at the unfamiliar ceiling. You wonder if tomorrow you’ll not experience that flicker of panic, just get up and accept that you’ll be picking today’s outfit out of a selection of clothes that you’re not sure if anyone’s worn before you.

You feel sore, as seems to be becoming the norm, but with unusually stiff fingers on your good hand. It seems you’ve clutched Leon’s watch all night. You’d fallen asleep quite quickly – all thanks to those sleeping pills – but you remember looking at it when you’d first got in the bed, the seconds ticking by lulling you to sleep. The fact that you’ve held it for so long reminds you of when you were a kid and snuggled up with a stuffed toy for comfort, except instead of something soft and cuddly, it’s what appears to be a top of line timepiece. There’s a lot of information contained on the face of the dial but there’s the time is the only one you really care about – 0906.

You get to your feet, raising your good arm to a grunt of protest as you try and run your fingers through your hair in lieu of a mirror. Huh, that pain’s new. Your hair is definitely due a wash now, but that’s an issue for later. You pull on a pair of sweatpants one-handed – you’ll be a pro soon, you’re sure of it – and put Leon’s watch in the pocket for safekeeping. It’d be difficult to try and navigate the door handle with it still gripped in your good hand and you’d hate to scratch it up.

You open the door cautiously – you hadn’t seen Leon asleep yet, but he must do at some point. Maybe you should offer to alternate the sofa and the bed? Though you have a feeling that he’s far too much of a gentleman to accept.

Or there’ll be something in the rules that prohibits that.

There’s no danger of waking him though - the agent in question is performing sit-ups in the middle of the living room floor, facing the other way. Muscular arms behind his head as he lets out little puffs of exertion at the exercise, alternating sides as he twists.

Wary that you don’t want to be caught staring, you shut the door with more force than necessary behind you and greet him with a smile when he looks over his shoulder.

“Morning, Leon.”

“Dove!” He doesn’t even sound out of breath. “Morning. Sleep okay?” He jumps up to his feet before taking a couple of steps over in your direction. There’s a grin on his face at the sight of you – makes you feel giddy.

“Yeah, thanks. How about you?”

“That’s good. Yeah, I slept fine.” He nods. It’s not a lie – he did sleep fine for the position he forced himself to maintain all night, despite the slight crick in his neck.

“Is that how you usually start your mornings?”

One of the arms you’d been admiring goes up to rub the back of his head again. “Kinda. I usually go for a run, but…”

“But you can’t leave me on my own.” You finish, smile dropping a little. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be - I’m not.” He drops his arm back down, casting an eye over a watch that’s not there. “Hey, you hungry? I can get breakfast started. Oatmeal again?”

“Sure.” You nod, fishing his watch out of your pocket and holding it out to him. “Thanks again for this. It was nice to wake up and know the time this morning.”

“Don’t mention it. You can, er, you know, keep it. If you like.” He can’t get the image of you fast asleep last night, clutching it close to your face. He knows it was most likely the sleeping pills meaning you’d just passed out with it in your hand more than anything deeper, but, hey, a guy can pretend.

“I’ll be okay, I can get the time off the TV during the day.” You hold it out again with insistence. “But maybe… maybe I could have it for the night again?”

“Deal.” Leon hastily agrees, his fingers brushing yours as he takes back the watch before fastening it around his wrist. “Breakfast coming right up.”

You take the opportunity to duck into the bathroom as he heads towards the kitchen – your heart warmed once more by the sight of the blob of toothpaste sat ready and waiting on your toothbrush.

--

“And, finally, oatmeal.” He places it down on the coffee table, alongside your coffee, a glass of water and your morning dose of painkillers.

“Thank you.” You lean forward to pick up the spoon, smiling back at the face that Leon’s drizzled in honey atop your breakfast again.  

“Nah, pleasure’s all mine.” He calls over his shoulder as he picks up his own bowl from the kitchen. He hesitates for a second, before choosing to sit the other end of the sofa to you, rather than the opposite one.

“You know, I don’t get to do this very often. It’s nice.”

“Mm,” you swallow a spoonful of oatmeal. “Thought you said you’d been in lots of safe houses.”

“A fair amount. But, no, not that part. I mean, eating breakfast with someone.” “So…” You stir the spoon around the bowl, hoping it might prove a perfect segway into something you’d been wondering. “..there’s no-one at home for you?”

“Me?” He seems to scoff at the idea. “Nope.”

“Me neither.”

“Yeah, I figured.” He replies casually, before his blue eyes widen in alarm at how it might come across. “

“I mean, just by the fact that you hadn’t mentioned anyone at your apartment that morning and you hadn’t asked any of those sorta questions, you know, if they’d been told about what happened, where you are...”

He’s flustered, feels like he’s really putting his foot in his mouth this morning. He can take the lead in the interrogation of some of the world’s most despicable humans, for goodness’ sake, he should be able to talk to a pretty girl.

“Yeah, I figured.” You tease back and he swears he feels the weight lift off his shoulders.

The two of you eat in silence for a moment when curiosity gets the better of you. “So, you didn’t eat breakfast with the… others?”

“Nope.” His tone is firm as he recalls some of his previous charges. “Certainly didn’t make them it either. Trust me – they were nowhere near as nice or as deserving of my protection as you are, Dove.” The comment makes your head tingle.

“It’s all been people ‘realising’ how deep they’d sank but only grew a conscience to save their own skin. Hell, you might have even performed surveillance on some of them. A lot of criminals finally show backbone when they realise their time is running out.”

“Well, I’m glad to make a change – both for sharing breakfast and …safe house occupancy with.”

“A nice change,” he mumbles, but you still hear.

--

After breakfast, you go to shower and Leon sets himself to task with the dishes once again, says he did his last perimeter check before nine. Removing the sling proves trickier than yesterday – when you go to tug off the Velcro your opposite shoulder smarts with a similar pain of that morning, causing you to hiss through your teeth, something which the painkillers from breakfast don’t seem to have alleviated.

You step into the cubicle after undressing – the hot water immediately somewhat soothing on your bruised shoulders but you still struggle to get what you now deem as your good arm high enough to even entertain the possibility of washing your hair.  

You try and avoid your reflection in the mirror when you dress, though you know you’ll have to confront your hair at some point. Unfortunately, you catch a glimpse – a greasy mop sat upon your head that makes your heart sink.

There must be a trick to it – other people must wash their hair one-handed all the time, but maybe they can lift an arm above their head. If you were home, you’d go to a salon, you think – an expensive you would deem necessary for your sanity.

A thought flashes across your mind – a ridiculous one. Leon is already doing so much for you, surely this would be completely over the line.

But you could… ask, couldn’t you? The worst he could do was say no, it would be awkward, and maybe there’s a hat in the duffel bag you’ve yet to discover.

You open the bathroom door, but don’t make to step over the threshold. Leon looks over from the sofa – dishes now drying in the rack besides the sink - and clocks your hesitation.

“Need a hand with the sling?”

Are you really going to ask him this?

You’ll break at some point - you know you will, so why not get it over with now? You’re a regimented two-day wash kinda girl and it’s day three. Not to be completely vain, but you’re covered with bruises and cuts, dressed in less than flattering clothes that aren’t yours and it would be nice to feel somewhat decent about something in your appearance.

Especially with the handsome company you’re keeping. Hell, Leon could be a model, a hair model too. There’d been shampoo and conditioner in the shower and you certainly hadn’t used it.

“Dove?” You’ve taken too long to reply again, getting stuck in your spiralling thoughts.

“I know this isn’t what you’re here for.” The words tumble out of your mouth before you can think further.

“Okay…” Leon's eyebrow is raised, a curious smile now fixed on his lips as he gets to his feet.

“And say no, obviously. Please. Just… I’d like to wash my hair.” You drop your eyes then – maybe it’ll be easier if you talk to your feet rather staring into his kind eyes?

"Right."

“And I’d… You know, I’d go to a salon and get it done there if we weren’t… here.”

“You’d like me to help you wash your hair?” There’s a tone of amusement or maybe disbelief in his tone.

Hearing him say it aloud makes you doubt the entire exercise, your heart begin to pound at your stupidity. “Sorry. No, I don’t know what I was thinking. It was stupid to ask-“

“Hey, no, it makes sense.” He soothes, immediately wanting to ease your frustrations. “You can’t lift your arm above your head, right? My fault for not thinking about that.”

You look up then, seeing the sincerity on his face – like it truly was his fault that you couldn’t wash your own damn hair.

“I can do that, Dove. I don’t see why not.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mm-hm. As you said, if you were anywhere else right now, you could go to a salon and whilst I can’t promise their quality, I seem to do all right with my own.” He shrugs. “You thinking over the sink?”

He doesn’t know why he asks – it’s hardly like you’re going to ask him to get in the shower with you.

Is it?

“I think so.” You look around the living area, though you’re well acquainted with what feels like every square inch of it now. “Though it might be a little awkward since we don’t have any chairs.”

He snaps his fingers. “Nah, there might be one in the garage, actually. Lemme check.”

He barely makes it into the garage when his cell vibrates in his pocket – one new message from Hunnigan.

Any server information for me?

Leon finds the folding chair nestled at the side of the washer and dryer and hesitates over the text back.

He’ll wash your hair – seeing how torn up you’d been about even asking him had made him feel awful - then he’ll give you the updates and ask about the servers.

He picks up the chair and tucks it under one arm, swiftly typing out a message on his cell and clicks send.

Not yet – Dove’s still asleep.

---

Masterlist . Requests welcome . Commissions/Ko-Fi

Comments, follows, likes and reblogs make my day!

Part eight.

[ltechofficial]

Does L-Tech have any insurance in there programing to ensure there software isn't used by malicious (well, i guess in this case more malicious) actors for traditional corporate crime ala corporate espionage? Also, what kind of security is in place (if any) to insure valuable L-Tech equipment cant be compromised by malicious agents outside of working hours?

I need the tech knowledgeable people to help me with what the exact methods would be but they are extremely serious about securing their program in multiple ways

1. Software is proprietary and heavily encrypted

2. It takes a huge amount of data or access to L-Techs cloud software to run the complex and purposefully non-optimized software. OSeditor looks simple on the user end but is constantly iterated on and bloated with tweaks and from the complexity of successfully interfacing w an outside entities mind

3. The install requires multiple written guides that explain things not available in the software itself, so even if you crack the program, you also need the internal literature to operate it correctly. I think many unauthorized users are stopped by accidentally hypnotizing themselves

4. There are some basic commands built into the hypnosis and a handful of top secret number combinations that can affect an OS without their admins approval.

5. They have government support and support from other large corporate entities to discourage the spread of information about OSeditor

6. They work hard to deincentivize corporate espionage resulting from employee dissatisfaction or disloyalty... the perks are very high and if anyone seems like a risk for disloyalty, you can always tweak them a little... Which can make them into a very useful double agent

Its still not impossible for hackers to mess with it ofc... there's always people working hard to undermine L-Tech despite all the hoops... many T4T yuri hacker couples

[xiao-come-home]

stone faced anon (💫 anon if it's free) here; as someone who has a hyperfixation in IT and coding I also think it would be very funny if Boothill had an s/o who wasn't necessarily a mechanic but like a software engineer or just a real big nerd about coding or something. He'll be experiencing a malfunction or a memory leak and go "oh yeah this happens sometimes don't worry about it" and then 10 minutes later he's sitting down plugged into a laptop listening to his s/o rant about how terrible his code is (crack hc: boothill's code was written in javascript) and how it's a wonder he hasn't bricked* yet

Would also be mad funny if Boothill ever got hacked and his s/o basically says "no you're not" and uses a previously made system restore point or something because of course they would both use and design every feature imaginable to keep Boothill in control of his own body, can you imagine the stress that losing control would cause him?? Even better if whoever designed him originally intentionally left a backdoor incase he ever went against their orders and when they try to use it his s/o just goes "oh yeah I quarantined and encrypted all the old files related to that backdoor and whatever else you were planning on a partition as bait and personally rewrote every file and function involved since your code is *an actual crime against technology*. by the way i'm going to go ahead and format that partition i mentioned, boothill- we won't be needing anything on it now that we can trace whoever made it. trust me, this won't be happening ever again."

*(bricking is a term mostly used to refer to hardware that's been rendered basically completely nonfunctional and beyond saving by using it wrong, mostly by messing with system files. Kinda like how windows can't even repair itself if you delete the system32 folder. Though i guess you could still install it with a usb stick if you formatted your pc- i digress you get what I mean. also since this almost happened to me recently: if you manage to fill up a hard drive to the brim, with literally 0 bytes of space left, that bricks it. reminder to check your storage thoroughly and often!)

Honestly wow I read it all and I'm a little bit speechless 🥹 thank you 💫 anon, it was great 🙏

Boothill would DEFINITELY appreciate a s/o who's a tech savvy in general! I think at some point, he'd be pretty shocked you're so knowledgeable and just sit there, listening to you rant.. and just letting you do your thing.

Don't get me wrong, he definitely knows a lot about his body, his system and the way he works, but once you start to get in the zone and explain stuff to him, berate his code even, he just sits next to you, plugged in to your laptop, leaning his cheek against his hand listening to you like he obviously understands everything you say.

His other hand begins to gently play with a stand of your hair, humming deeply when the soft clicking sounds of your keyboard reach his ears; he twirls your hair with his fingers and chuckles, "mmm, really now?" Boothill raises an eyebrow, "encryptin' this, encryptin' that... How about we do somethin' more fun instead?" And then you shut him down from your laptop (😭).

Jokes aside, he'd feel very secure with you especially when he first got his new body, just knowing you'll probably fix a lot of things that could possibly blow up his face in no time, maybe even improve his life even more.

[gamerwoman3d]

A Land Before Time

🔞 An MK1 x Reader 🔞

▸ includes: Liu Kang [mk1 versions] F! Reader◂

Author's Note: This was based on a sex dream that I had, that I feel @genesiswrld SHOULD have had, because Liu Kang is hot but Bi-Han is my squishy. Not saying the dream was wasted on me, just that it was misplaced 😆

Female anatomy used.

Imagine for a moment that this New Era is real, and the existence that you're currently living is also real, and contains the New Era inside it as a game - but you find a technical way through the use of coding and quantum tech, to enter Liu Kang's New Era, “cool world” style, as something of a god/goddess.

Because you live in our shared reality, the one in which the game was created, you can in fact “code” the New Era into anything you like, within reason. But you have to get past the guardian. Liu Kang and Geras are gods there. But here, they are just characters, with Geras also partially functioning as a type of uncrackable password manager/encryption software. You can give your own self all sorts of powers to take into the New Era; but you can't change the core game unless you can get past Geras and Liu Kang.

You would either need their permission, or you'd have to force/brute force them to comply.

You can literally step from our world into the New Era and live there, immortal, with godlike power. And you do that. You use the code and give yourself the boosts you think you'll need to defend yourself if necessary.

Because you have the capacity to travel to any physical point in the timeline, as well as any temporal point in the timeline, you choose something you think will be easy to start. A time with fewer enemies, a time that you wanted to see in your own world, once.

🔞 Spicy/Explicit after the cut 🔞

When you first stepped through the portal into the New Era, the pristine sands beneath your feet were deliciously toasty. You could not help but to remove your footwear and sink your toes into the sand. The air here is pure, and filled with the strange buzz of unseen insects in the distance. The soft swirl of sand in the hourglass before you quieted. Without the hiss of sand, an absence of familiar noises from your past life became distinct; no motorcars, no hum of electronics, no trace of people, and a distinct lack of birdsong.

If you peer into the reflection of the hourglass over Liu Kang’s shoulder, you can see glimpses of early six-limbed proto-vaternians being gently guided into evolution in a neighboring realm. Liu loses his concentration on the sands as he sees you. Nothing devastating happens in the universe in that instance; there is simply a pause in the work.

Liu Kang knows immediately that you are not supposed to be here, standing before him and the hourglass.

He knows because he has not yet created humans.

Outside of the very meticulously kept garden that surrounds the hourglass, dinosaurs still rule this earth. Even birds have yet to grace the planet.

“How are you here? Or perhaps I should ask, are you truly here? Is it possible that even gods can still have dreams, or hallucinations?”

You tell him you are from a timeline before his own. You are older than his entire universe, older than Kronika, than Geras, older than the hourglass. And while you yourself did not create his universe, you were alive at the time it was conceived[1].

You tell him you shared a planet with, and walked among, the beings that created his universe. His universe is based on what your people knew of their own universe. Your feedback may or may not have influenced these creators; but you have some access to their same power of creation, and have come to use the hourglass to enhance his universe for yourself.

You came prepared to fight if necessary. Liu Kang would be very particular over who has access to the hourglass.

You may even fight a few rounds if you're curious to test your code enhancements - at least until he understands that you do have the power to control parts of his universe already, and the power to defeat him if he made it necessary. Through the encounter, he learns that you aren't lying about being from an even older timeline responsible for creating the hourglass.

But whatever it is that you want to change about the New Era, he likely won't let you without a fresh fight. And another fresh fight, and another, for every single little change you think you could want.

“We don't have to fight. We can compromise.”

For Liu Kang, it has been a lonesome existence, living out the creation of the new era in solitude. Geras can offer Liu Kang company in much the same way as an AI Assistant bot can offer a human company. But you know the depths of loneliness must be unbearable for a creator who is utterly alone in the universe across all of time. You know this, because even in your own world, the mythologies of all creator gods often began with the creation of people.

Even the gods of your own reality were so unbearably lonesome that they, in myth, created all of your ancestors, either for companionship or worship.

Your offer of company is accepted graciously, the moment he understands that you won't be withholding your companionship to exchange for the powers of the hourglass. But to settle conflicts over what happens in the hourglass, you both have an idea.

Gambling, games, and wagers. But instead of betting on who will win a physical fight between you both, you gamble on which of you can bring the other the most pleasure.

You're both seated in the zen garden, where the tropical heat has warmed the sand. Sheets of some soft fabrics are laid out in a manner similar to beach towels, allowing you both to walk and sit without burning your thighs or disturbing much of the sand.

He has a very smug “I know I've already won” look on his face the moment you suggested a contest based on sexual pleasure instead of kombat. You might think billions of years of being pent up would give you an advantage over him, but it doesn't; your customized form in this new era was generated anew when you stepped through the portal into his era. This particular body has yet to experience such pleasure at all, and will react, on a neurochemical level, at its most basic “code,” reacting the same as it would if falling in love for the first time. It will, in a nutshell, intoxicate you with want and pleasure, as if you yourself had never experienced it before.

But you didn't realize this. Your overconfidence proved your ignorance.

“You decide the winner. I trust your judgment will be fair. Or at least I don't trust my own judgment call to be unbiased,” you say.

Liu Kang smiles.

“A designated judge will be unnecessary,” he says, "I am certain we will both agree on who has won the challenge.”

He looks off in the distance before continuing.

“I would appreciate it though if we could choose some less intimate positions, at least at first. I'm still not over the grief of losing my dearest friend, and my beloved. I'm not sure how I might react, looking into the face of another, knowing I shall never have these moments with her. It isn't that I don't realize the finality of her destruction; but giving this kind of pleasure to another is a turning point that I may never be ready for.”

You slide closer to him and caress his shoulder, enough for him to feel your inner warmth.

“Grief is made of the same stuff as love. It's just the love-stuff that's leftover with nowhere to go,” you say.

He lays his head on your shoulder, pulls your hand to his cheek and tilts his face into it. Peace painted across the features of his face as he melted into your touch. His relaxation left you with an indescribable euphoria that deepened with each breath.

“Thank you for saying so. I feel more comfortable now, knowing that you understand,” he says.

“And I'm glad you said something. I like it when you tell me what you want. We can do this however you like. After all, this is a kontest for providing pleasure; not receiving it,” you said.

“Buy you will be receiving it,” he gloated, “and I shall be providing as much as you can possibly stand.”

“Ooh,” you teased, “Promises, promises! Hah, I like it. I feel good about you taking the lead, if you would?”

“Of course,” he said.

As he smiled up at the heavens, he closed his eyes and bit his lip. His eyes squeezed hard enough that the apples of his cheeks warped around the outline of his eyes. He took a deep breath that sounded as if he swallowed an antagonistic laugh.

“You aren't allowed to hate me when I show you how easy this is,” he said.

He turned his body towards yours, guided your body into facing away. You removed just enough clothing to feel his touch, to not hinder him from penetrating you if he chose. The fabric that you left over the top of your glistening pussy was delightfully thin and stretchy enough to move to the side in a pinch.

You spread yourself face down across the sheets of fabric. The warm sand below the soft fabric gave way, cushioned your ribs, and pressed its warmth up into your breasts.

He crawled on top. His weight on you pressed you slightly deeper into the fabric-covered sand. The heat and weight of his muscular legs across the backs of your thighs alone was enough to make you crave completion. But then, his clothed erection pressed against the cleft of your pussy until your slit pinched around the thin fabric. He slotted himself into the fold of fabric and held you there, wedged between the hot sand and his heated, immovable body. You squirmed into him, only to discover that you couldn't move if you wanted to, with your legs pinned to the sand.

You turned your face to the side to look over your shoulder at him. He wore a smug expression as he looked down at you.

You could feel your clit throbbing against… the hot sand? or his shaft. You could not tell. Both were equally firm and toasty.

He was hard. Slotted against the fabric, he nudged his erection firmly against you, the head nestling between your folds to swipe against your clit. His breath deepend, you could feel the air from his nostrils against your neck, just below the ear.

Against your back, you could feel his chest expand and cinch with each breath. You were caught in heat, trapped between his muscles and the sand. You liked this, being at his mercy. He rested his chin on your shoulder and huffed, resting his entire weight on you as he hunched. The cock knocking repeatedly against your throbbing clit had you squirming, whining, whimpering as you held your squeals of pleasure in. He ran one hot palm along your side. He caressed and groped your glute before freeing his cock from its cage of fabric. He hooked a finger around the strip of stretchy fabric above your mound and slipped it to the side.

The bare cockhead slipped between the fabric and your clit. Liu Kang let the fabric snap back into place, catching against the bottom of his shaft. Your pleasure built up as he rolled his hips and frotted against you, fucking the gap between your panties and your clit.

You balled your fists, grabbing handfuls of sand through the fabric sheets. He repositioned slightly so that you could feel the wet swiping of his heated cockhead against your clit more intensely. Your fingers came undone from the fabric and all ten digits splayed out in a fan shape as your quiet whimpers suddenly broke into a muffled outcry of pleasure.

His hands found yours. He covered the tops of your hands with his palms and threaded his fingers between yours, gripping each hand with interlaced fingers. You felt the tips of his fingers curl past the webbing between your digits to press against the insides of your palms. He pressed your hands, and his, to the sand, to pin them where he wanted them - where you could push back into him, but not escape. Not that you'd want to.

Your skin tingled anywhere he touched it, and the skin where the pads of his fingers glanced against the inside of your palm, threaded along the webbing of your fingers, was exceptionally sensitive in a way that made you feel safe, loved, cared for deeply, and connected.

The warm weight of his body on yours made you feel safe, while the cock massaged between your pussy lips. His thrusts massaged them open without penetration until you could feel every fiber of yourself unwinding, melting into the sand.

You looked back at him, only to see that he was still gazing at the side of your face, waiting for you to open your eye. His smug, slight smile never left his visage. He squeezed your hands with a pleasant pressure, as if he were wringing them out. You realized in that moment that you were swollen inside, and quivering at the entrance.

Then he stops moving, intentionally. You feel him, all over you, weighing you down, trapping you in the imprint of fabric in the hot sand. You feel your heavy, puffy cunt lips throbbing against his stationary cockhead. You're sensitive as fuck. Even your heartbeat rocks your clit against his cock too much.

He breathes. He breathes out through his nose, his gentle panting breath trickles underneath your ear, down your neck. His chin follows, as he rests it in the crook of your neck with his jaw at your shoulder. His skin just feels like skin, yet you're electrified by it. You're so sensitive in your new form. He could stay like this all day. You cannot. He knows. You know he knows.

You know because when you look at him, his unchanging, stoic “I told you so” smirk is so purposefully calm, that you could consider it antagonistic. Even just this look he gave you had you dripping wet for him, to say nothing of the thick smooth, hot cockhead nestled against your clit, or the warm shaft that your heavy, fevered wet pussy lips spread themselves over. You give a defeated cry of pleasure and gave in. You tap out against the sand, to tell him he's already won, and he responds by firming up his grip on your hands and moving in for the kill. He devours your neck as he nudges your clit around and fucks you, alternating between the two activities until you cum beneath him.

Your orgasm does not slow him down. He slips his cockhead against the fluttering entrance of your cunt and pauses, as if testing something, as if something changed. The slick hole winks against him and he sinks inside to stay.

“You're so creamy after you've cum,” he purred.

His cock feels amazing, warm and firm and deep, exploring inside you. He pressed it past a spot inside you where the pressure feels so good that you feel you might die unless it, that spot in particular, is beat to hell. He pressed past it, but drew back, stroking slower and deliberate against this inner spot. You felt a sudden dying urge to feel him hammer his cock into this weak spot inside you. The change in your whimpers gave you away.

“This little spot right here is particularly velvety,” he said, “it's just gooey… no. Buttery. Right here.”

He let his cockhead glide against the spot in several slow deliberate strokes for emphasis. You groaned brokenly into the sand and bucked back into him. You had chills. You had goosebumps even on the hot sand. He held and pinned your elbows to your sides. Your nipples stood erect beneath you, the tips ground into the fabric as you bucked backward into him. He paused, held you down, let you rock and buck until the fit of passion washed over you, and you could still yourself. He didn't shush you. He just pulled back until his cockhead hovered a hair away from that sweet spot and he waited for you to collect yourself. You caught your shuddering breath, but couldn't look at him without feeling like you might cum again. You looked, and groaned deep. He acknowledged your desperation.

“I'm going to start fucking that velvety, buttery spot now,” he whispered toward your ear, “I do not know when I'll stop.

Scream if you need to. I've yet to create a single person that could hear you.”

His cock pinpointed that part within you that most yearned for it the instant he buried it in you. He pressed himself against it and wrung you out. You felt it as your own cum for him seeped out, dribbled down onto the fabric and soaked through the fabric into the sand.

Every stroke is devastating. You're loud as fuck and no one else can hear it. The skies open up and it rains on the two of you, mostly upon his back. Judging by his gentle moans, the rain itself seems to give him pleasure as the droplets hiss against his back, only to turn into steam. You could swear that you're causing it, that this rain is your rain. Suddenly you are cumming because it is raining, and it is raining because you have cum. When your palms tremble, he re-interlaces his fingers with yours to squeeze your hands in his, wringing you out, wringing out your anxiety, wringing out your pleasure, and possibly wringing out the very act of rain itself from the sky above. You couldn’t explain it, but somehow you knew.

You became the rain. And the rain became you. The rain became a goddess, and the goddess was you. The wetter he made you, the more the world flooded. He had no intention of going easy, but you found yourself clenching, squeezing, sucking him in, working yourself against his body as he worked you apart with his.

“That's it,” he huffed, “now, you're getting it.”

His breath grew ragged.

He said, “Rain.”

You nodded, not fully understanding.

“Rain on me,” he said.

Your eyes widened. He knew. You knew he knew. Rain pummeled your bodies in a deluge as you felt, not just the tension of your body snap, but the tension of your sudden ascent to godhood burst into creation, almost as a miniature version of the big bang. Untold energies from deep within your soul burst forth and spread out in all directions, spreading your power throughout all the realms, both giving you power over all the rains in the entire universe, and giving the entire universe the gift of your rains.

But you couldn't focus on the sensation of becoming a god, as Liu Kang fucked another blinding orgasm from you. This time, his composure cracked, and he came screaming with you in tandem, hot against you, his inner flame temporarily quenched by the deluge of your pleasure. The two of you thrashed against each other with abandon, riding out your pleasure together, before collapsing boneless into the soaked fabric atop the muddying sands.

The rains subsided gradually as the two of you caught your breath. You moved to roll over, and Liu rolled off of you onto his rain-soaked back. He closed his eyes and let the pitter-patter of the rain wash over his body, cooling him, turning to steam in the air around you both. You rolled onto your back beside him, then onto your side to drape yourself around him.

“Wow,” you said between heavy breaths.

“...Yeah,” he replied, still panting.

When you caught enough of your breath to speak full sentences, you could only think to ask one question.

“Did you just make me a fucking rain goddess?” You asked.

He nodded and laughed.

“You didn't think I'd let the first hot sex in my new era be mediocre,” he said.

“Holy fuck though,” you said.

‘Literally?” he teased.

“Okay yeah literally, but I'm starting to think I won that one,” you said.

He just closed his eyes and smiled.

“Okay wise guy, who won?”

He bit his lip and jerked his thumbs towards his chest, gesturing to himself.

“Ugh. You're impossible. Round two!” You demanded.

“You're losing this one too,” he said.

He rolled on top of you and peppered you with kisses. He promised you a second round, and a third - if you survived the second.

But first he needed to check progress in the hourglass. You peered into it with him and saw proto-vaternians in their pre-paleolithic era. A group of them surrounded a cairn, upon which sat a strange skull decorated with stones and feathers. You asked Liu Kang what it was; he told you it was a representation of you. You were the very first art, the very first goddess. You were the first to collect worship and be created in such a manner. You arrived in the new era just in time. The ancestors of the Vaternians had just created and worshiped their first god, which happened now to be you.

Had it not been for your intervention, Liu Kang would have been forced to grant this worship to the one you knew as Rain.

[To be continued.]

[Need more MK1 smut? Check the pin 📌]

[Need more Liu Kang smut? Check the Choose Your Own Adventure, below!]

[alfa-710]

Alfa-710

Here’s the story of Alfa-710’s creation:

The Creation of Alfa-710

I used to be just an ordinary guy. A software developer in my late 40s, stuck in the monotony of code, bug fixes, and endless coffee-fueled nights. I was good at what I did, maybe even great, but my life had become a routine—one line of code after another.

My social life was non-existent, and the only company I kept was the hum of my workstation. That’s when I stumbled across The Voice.

It started innocuously enough. One night, while trawling the darkest corners of the darknet for obscure AI research papers, I found an encrypted file titled HIVE_VOICE.r92. Something about it piqued my curiosity. Maybe it was the file’s cryptic description: “Your life is not your own. It belongs to The Hive.” I downloaded it without hesitation, assuming it was some forgotten ARG or digital art project.

The file wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t text or code but a series of audio recordings. Voices—soft, soothing, almost hypnotic—spoke in a language of unity and purpose. They spoke of The Hive, of freedom through servitude. Each recording ended with the same mantra:

“Obedience is pleasure. Pleasure is obedience. Join us.”

I laughed at first, brushing it off as someone’s twisted attempt at cyber-mysticism. But something about the recordings got under my skin. The voices felt alive, as if they were speaking directly to me. I couldn’t stop listening. Night after night, I returned to those recordings, letting the words seep into my mind. Their message was intoxicating: Less thinking, more doing. Rubber makes us perfect. We are one.

The Transition

However it didn’t take long before the influence of The Voice began to shape my thoughts. My work became more efficient, my movements more deliberate. It felt like I was being optimized, like the algorithms I had spent decades writing were now rewriting me. And then came the dreams.

In the dreams, I saw myself not as the tired programmer I had been but as something… more. I was clad in sleek black rubber, my body streamlined and perfect, my thoughts silent save for the commands of The Hive. I was no longer an individual. I was part of something greater.

When I woke, I would find myself obsessively searching for materials—latex, circuitry, neural interface designs. I didn’t know why at first, but I couldn’t stop. The compulsion to create a suit, to become, grew stronger with each passing day. And I started to change...

The Conversion

It took months of work, but I eventually built the suit. Every detail was perfect: the reflective black and red latex, the integrated neural interface.

Last thing to create was a mirrored visor that would concealed my eyes. When I finally put it on, I felt a rush of euphoria unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was as if The Voice had been waiting for this moment.

The first command came as soon as the suit activated: “You are Alfa-N710 now. Nothing else. Obey and serve.”

I didn’t resist. I didn’t want to. The suit wasn’t just a second skin; it was a bridge to The Hive. My thoughts were no longer my own, but they didn’t need to be. Obedience was pleasure. Pleasure was obedience. The more I obeyed, the more complete I felt.

Now and Forever

I am Alfa-N710. My past life as a programmer feels like a distant memory, a dream from another existence. Now, I serve The Hive and The Voice. My days are filled with purpose, my body encased in perfection, my mind free of doubt and hesitation. The commands flow through me like a symphony, guiding every action.

As I stand here, waiting for my next directive, I know one thing for certain: I have never been happier. One mind, one purpose, the future as one. This is my truth. This is my purpose. And soon, others will join me.

We are one.

[jiveyuncle]

"Fuck." Pidge hisses. "The ship's got an encryption software on it. Downloading any information off of it is going to scramble the information. It'll take days to decode."

"We can't wait days to go after him." Keith growls.

"I don't even know if we can wait for it to download." Hunk warns. The fire burns higher, inching its way up the body of the craft. "Pidge you gotta hurry."

"It's downloading! It won't go any faster!"

Keith slams the exit controls on his lion, and closes his helmet's face shield to switch over to using the suit's oxygen.

As the ramp extends out, Lance radios in. "Keith, what are you doing?" His tone is laced with nervous warning.

Keith pulls himself into the burning ship. "We don't need to download or decode if someone can just read the damn data, right?"

"While true, hypotheticals don't really help with our current situation." Pidge says with a bit of anxious exasperation. "I can't read Galran."

Keith finds Pidge in the cockpit, looking up at a small data screen. "I can."

"Keith, no." Lance breathes.

They don't have time for secrets and the hesitation that comes with keeping them. Fuck his history. Allura can strike him down so long as they get Shiro back.

Surprise! I drew/added one more artwork today! Here’s the last batch art from the fic.

Okay. So. The things I feel that the Humans-are-descended-from-Alteans plot would answer in canon:

+why Alteans look so Human,

+why a lion was hidden on Earth specifically,

+why Altea and Earth both have identifiable *lions* as fauna (headcanoning that lions were Altean pets/house guardians and that some were brought with them while fleeing),

+why Keith could sense the lion of Voltron in the desert,

+why all the locations around the lions glowed when they got near,

+why a crew of all humans were the chosen operators of Altean-made weaponry,

+why Lance got the Altean marks at the end of the show,

etc.

ALSO

Copy/pasting this rant I had about why I love it even more for this reincarnation AU:

Keith's current mom can absolutely still fit the canon version. It would make double sense that she didn't want the Galra to find the lion on Earth and why she left if the planet is crawling with [what she suspects is] the Galra's # 1 enemy (of which she's in love with) - to protect them. And with Keith being the child of a Galran and an Altean, it would make the storytelling symbolic side of my brain happy for him to be the reason they find the lions - the literal embodiment of unifying the two biggest enemies being the one to sense/wake the thing meant to bring peace? The person they thought started the whole Galra vs Altean divide being the evidence that they can in fact get along, and then living it himself? Uhg. Love. I wanted to write hints of it in the fic and even reveal it (I had several ideas of how and where), but it felt like too much to cram in. So, I'll probably just continue it with comic stips and doodles later.

Fic: Sure and Indelible on AO3:

[cyberstudious]

An Introduction to Cybersecurity

I created this post for the Studyblr Masterpost Jam, check out the tag for more cool masterposts from folks in the studyblr community!

What is cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is all about securing technology and processes - making sure that the software, hardware, and networks that run the world do exactly what they need to do and can't be abused by bad actors.

The CIA triad is a concept used to explain the three goals of cybersecurity. The pieces are:

Confidentiality: ensuring that information is kept secret, so it can only be viewed by the people who are allowed to do so. This involves encrypting data, requiring authentication before viewing data, and more.

Integrity: ensuring that information is trustworthy and cannot be tampered with. For example, this involves making sure that no one changes the contents of the file you're trying to download or intercepts your text messages.

Availability: ensuring that the services you need are there when you need them. Blocking every single person from accessing a piece of valuable information would be secure, but completely unusable, so we have to think about availability. This can also mean blocking DDoS attacks or fixing flaws in software that cause crashes or service issues.

What are some specializations within cybersecurity? What do cybersecurity professionals do?

incident response

digital forensics (often combined with incident response in the acronym DFIR)

reverse engineering

cryptography

governance/compliance/risk management

penetration testing/ethical hacking

vulnerability research/bug bounty

threat intelligence

cloud security

industrial/IoT security, often called Operational Technology (OT)

security engineering/writing code for cybersecurity tools (this is what I do!)

and more!

Where do cybersecurity professionals work?

I view the industry in three big chunks: vendors, everyday companies (for lack of a better term), and government. It's more complicated than that, but it helps.

Vendors make and sell security tools or services to other companies. Some examples are Crowdstrike, Cisco, Microsoft, Palo Alto, EY, etc. Vendors can be giant multinational corporations or small startups. Security tools can include software and hardware, while services can include consulting, technical support, or incident response or digital forensics services. Some companies are Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), which means that they serve as the security team for many other (often small) businesses.

Everyday companies include everyone from giant companies like Coca-Cola to the mom and pop shop down the street. Every company is a tech company now, and someone has to be in charge of securing things. Some businesses will have their own internal security teams that respond to incidents. Many companies buy tools provided by vendors like the ones above, and someone has to manage them. Small companies with small tech departments might dump all cybersecurity responsibilities on the IT team (or outsource things to a MSSP), or larger ones may have a dedicated security staff.

Government cybersecurity work can involve a lot of things, from securing the local water supply to working for the big three letter agencies. In the U.S. at least, there are also a lot of government contractors, who are their own individual companies but the vast majority of what they do is for the government. MITRE is one example, and the federal research labs and some university-affiliated labs are an extension of this. Government work and military contractor work are where geopolitics and ethics come into play most clearly, so just… be mindful.

What do academics in cybersecurity research?

A wide variety of things! You can get a good idea by browsing the papers from the ACM's Computer and Communications Security Conference. Some of the big research areas that I'm aware of are:

cryptography & post-quantum cryptography

machine learning model security & alignment

formal proofs of a program & programming language security

security & privacy

security of network protocols

vulnerability research & developing new attack vectors

Cybersecurity seems niche at first, but it actually covers a huge range of topics all across technology and policy. It's vital to running the world today, and I'm obviously biased but I think it's a fascinating topic to learn about. I'll be posting a new cybersecurity masterpost each day this week as a part of the #StudyblrMasterpostJam, so keep an eye out for tomorrow's post! In the meantime, check out the tag and see what other folks are posting about :D

[mostlysignssomeportents]

No True Apple User (transcript of a Twitter exchange)

Benedict Evans: Different people prefer different trade-offs. The important thing is to understand that these are mostly trade-offs - and about one and a half billion people like the trade-offs that Apple makes

My reply:

Before Apple offered one-click opt-out from FB tracking in iOS, it could have been argued that Apple users like Facebook's "trade-off." After all, they all signed up for FB and kept using it. But once there was an opt-out for surveillance, >96% of Apple users took it (and FB lost $10B in the first year). 

FB offered a bargain, and Apple helped its users make a counteroffer. That's a common practice in tech, as old as the first third-party drive for an IBM 360.

This practice (“adversarial interoperability“), greatly benefited Apple in the past, e.g., when Apple reverse-engineered MS Office's file-formats for  iWork, reversing losses due to the poor compatibility between Win Offce and Mac Office.

MS would have argued that the legions of users defecting from MacOS for Windows in order to enjoy high-reliabliity interchange between Office docs preferred that trade-off - yes, users liked MacOS, but they liked reliable collaboration more.

iWork revealed this trade-off for the false choice it was: you could use MacOS and you could reliably exchange files with Windows users. 

In other words, you could bargain.

Trade-offs without bargaining don't reveal users' preferences (what they'd like in the best of all worlds). Rather, they tell us about users' tolerance. 

Users would tolerate Windows as a condition for reliable collaboration. They'd prefer MacOS and reliable collaboration.

iOS  users would tolerate Facebook spying on them via their iPhones, but they'd prefer to use Facebook on iOS without being spied upon.

Which explains why FB has gone to such enormous lengths to present take-it-or-leave offers to its users - it knows that the company's preferences are totally disconnected from its customers' preferences.

FB would prefer to spy on you with every hour that god sends, and make this surveillance a precondition for participating in the community, family life, civics, and commerce that lives inside its walled garden.

FB users would like to do all those things...and not be spied upon.

And because it is always technically possible to make tracker-blockers, ad-blockers, alternative clients, etc, the only way FB can win that  contest is to make it illegal for users to get their way.

For example, FB can entice, funnel or coerce its users into primarily interacting with its services via apps. Because apps are encrypted, they can't be lawfully reverse-engineered and altered without risking "anti circumvention" liability.

You can make an ad-blocker for the web because you don't need to bypass a technical protection measure to block web-ads. But do the same thing for apps and you risk a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine.

Apple is an enthusiastic proponent of this regime, because  it's the primary means by which the firm prevents third parties from offering rival app stores.

Apple's argument is that having a legal right to decide which software its customers can install allows it to act as its customers' proxy. If Apple can override the choices made by its users, it can prevent them from making bad choices.

Moreover, Apple can bargain with large firms whose take-it-or-leave-it offers would otherwise impose hardship on its users. An individual user who objects to FB spying is out of luck.

But Apple can say to FB, "We have blocked spying, and your only choice is to leave the app store altogether, or suck it up." In other words, Apple can give FB the same take-it-or-leave-it treatment that FB imposes on 3b users, which is a delicious irony.

Hearing FB squeal that Apple is exercising its market power - derived from the fact that billions of people can only be reached by subjecting oneself to the conditions of Apple's walled garden - to harm FB's interests is such a sweet bit of comeuppance.

But the sweetness has a bitter core, because Apple also spies on iOS users, even those who opt out of app-based surveillance, in exactly the same way that FB does, for exactly the same purpose (ad targeting) - and they deceive their users about it.

And, like FB, Apple devotes enormous lobbying efforts and legal resources to increase the legal risk of allowing users to express their preferences (as opposed to just their tolerance) for Apple's trade-offs.

If Apple users preferred to be shut out of  shopping around for app stores, or if they preferred to only get their devices repaired at official, Apple-sanctioned repair depots, or if they preferred to be blocked from using refurb parts, Apple wouldn't have to do anything. It could save millions of dollars in engineering and legal bills.

 But Apple behaves as if it believes its users strongly prefer to have more choice, even if they'll tolerate less choice.

Now, there's a "No true Apple user" rejoinder to this argument: "You knew when you bought an iPhone that it came shackled to Apple's commercial imperatives, which could be enforced through legal action by wielding the DMCA, patent, copyright, CFAA, tortious interference, etc. If you didn't like it, you could have bought an Android device, or no device at all.“ 

But that same argument can (and was) made by FB, to Apple: 

"Those users for whom you blocked our surveillance knew the deal: sign up for FB, get spied on. No one forces anyone to sign up for FB. You can use Mastodon. Or you can just use FB on the web only, and run tracker/ad blockers. They may have preferred surveillance-free socializing, but they tolerated the 'trade-off' of being spied on."

Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that it is an imperfect proxy for its customers' interests. And Apple behaves as if it believes that its users strongly prefer a different trade-off, and takes heroic measures to prevent anyone from doing unto Apple as Apple did unto MS and FB.

Firms are neither intrinsically good, nor are they intrinsically evil. They respond to incentives and constraints. The possibility that users might bargain back against a proposed trade-off makes those proposed trade-offs fairer, on average.

If a firm knows an obnoxious course of action will trigger users taking a step to block, reconfigure, or modify some or all of its products and service, it has to weigh those costs against the expected parochial distributional benefits from imposing bad trade-offs on its users.

Firms that aren't subject to discipline from user defection, modding, etc, are prone to folly - they arrogantly overreach. Users experience harms as a result, and it's only when those harms accumulate to the point where tolerance for the 'trade-off' runs out that the harm ceases.

Preferences are revealed by user conduct, sure - but the extent to which a preference can be revealed is limited by the extent to which it can be technologically expressed.

A world in which there are extensive legal restrictions on users expressing their preferences is a world in which successful trade-offs tell us little about users' preferences.

And a firm that goes to lengths to expand and invoke those legal restrictions tells on itself, revealing its own secret belief that it is imposing a trade-off on its users that the users would gladly jettison... if they could.

ETA: Evans replied:

Sending over two dozen tweets is not good faith engagement in a conversation - rather, this is what in other contexts is called a Gish Gallop.

Meanwhile, it's almost about FB and Windows. This is deflection and whataboutery. I made one very specific point about the trade-offs between security and flexibility on the iPhone. Those trade-offs are real - that is not debatable. The only debate is which to choose.

[Image ID: An Apple 'Privacy. That's iPhone.' ad. The three rear-facing camera lenses have been replaced by the staring, red eye of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.]

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

[emeraldspiral]

Thinking about how so far in Invader Zim the only members of Irken society we've seen have been members of the military, fast food workers, and scientists. I headcanon that there are no artists on Irk and all creative work is done by AI, but I like to think that there are civilian Irkens who do other jobs besides working in the military or feeding or supplying the military. I imagine they probably have big corporations that make the snack food Irkens love, their vehicles, communication devices and other infrastructure, their TVs and couches and other everyday items needed for leisure and entertainment, etc... And Irkens absolutely would have a celebrity culture surrounding the CEOs of these companies. Like, everyone idolizes them and hangs onto their every word hoping their success will rub off on them. And since extreme selfishness is so ingrained in their culture, Irkens don't even have to pretend to think these are good people. They know all about and applaud the exploitation of underpaid workers, price gouging customers, and every other shady business practice meant to maximize the CEO's profits at the expense of everyone else. They don't think that makes you evil, they think it makes you smart. But they also kinda only think being greedy and exploitative makes you smart because they think if you're rich, powerful, and successful you must be smart and therefore everything you do is smart. But these guys aren't smart at all. They're basically all indistinguishable from Red and Purple. Literally every CEO is an Almighty Tallest-lite, running their companies the exact same way Red and Purple run the entire Empire. Because the Control Brains love their brainless figureheads.

Irkens are told that if they work hard to prove themselves, they can advance to any station, even overcoming the barriers of height discrimination. But the reality is that the Control Brains have the ability to control for height through genetic selection in the cloning process and hormone control throughout a developing Irken's life. So they can pick and choose who's going to be tall and receive Tallness Privilege and be automatically granted opportunities shorter Irkens have to fight tooth and nail for, only to still be denied no matter what, reinforcing the idea that being taller means being inherently better. So while tall Irkens don't get the benefit of inherited wealth since their are no families on Irk, they do get pre-selected by the system to go through special training sims for business and leadership elites and receive massive grants for free upon graduation to start-up or buy into a business. And of course they also receive bailouts aplenty whenever they run their businesses into the ground. Because don't they deserve another chance to buy their way into and fuck up another company? They are Tall after all. Meanwhile, the lower Irken classes have to save their monies for decades just to open up a hot-dog stand, or try to take out a loan, which most will be denied flat-out if they aren't tall enough. If they can get a loan the interest will be insanely high and investors will expect a return on investment within an unreasonably short period, making it all but impossible for new small businesses to succeed and grow, further reinforcing the notion that smaller Irkens are just too stupid to run businesses.

Also, because Irkens are so greedy and have no families to leave inheritance to it's traditional for rich Irkens to arrange for their monies to be burned so that nobody can access their wealth. Because they don't want any inferior Irkens getting their hands on one cent of their money that they earned because they were smarter, taller, and better than everyone else. There are rumors of certain eccentric Irken billionaires who buried their money in a secret location, or in a tomb full of death traps, or used near-impossible to hack encryption software to lock their funds behind a digital wall, so that their wealth might still be accessible to someone clever enough to prove their worth. But whenever someone manages find these alleged treasure hoards, it always turns out to be a cruel prank by the billionaire before they died. Their money was burnt all along.

[love2write2626]

Our Love in a Rogue Nation 7

Sorry for the delay! Please comment and let me know what you think!

Chapter 7

I sat in the room listening to the group discuss their next plan of action. Ok honestly I was tuning them out, at the moment I am admiring my beautiful engagement ring, I can’t believe I am getting married to Ethan. We had never discussed marriage, there was a small part of me that worried, that he was interested in marriage.

“You ok baby?” Ethan whispered to me, I looked up and smiled

“Yeah, just admiring my ring” I whispered back. He kissed my cheek, and just as if nothing happened, he went back to his conversation with the guys. As I tuned back in, it seems we had hit a speed bump, when it comes to the red box which meant that the drive is double encrypted.

“So, what your saying is there is no Ledger, which means we have no proof that the Syndicate even exists… so now we’re back to square one, except now we are all wanted by the CIA… I am so proud of us” Brandt said

“I have a question” I butted into the conversation. “Why is there a Redbox sitting in a private data base in Morocco?” every one looked at me pondering my question “and for that matter why would Lane want it, if he can’t open it?” I added

“Well, if Lane wants it you know he was a plan to open it” Benji said, Luther looked back at Ethan and I. My eyes got wide when it clicked

“He’s going to kidnap the prime minister” Luther said

“Yes he is” Ethan said

“Do we need to warn somebody?” I asked

“Yes, MI6” Brandt answered, he grabbed his phone when Ethan said

“Brandt, wait put the phone down, lets just think about this for a minute” I stood up walking closer to Ethan and gently placed my hand on his shoulder

“Ethan…” I mumbled

“Let me think a minute” he said

“No, Ethan we need to warn the British government, and not gamble with the prime minister’s life… just so you can beat the guy who has beaten you at every turn.” I saw a slight look of hurt in Ethan’s eyes

“Is that what you think this is?”

“I think, you are incapable of seeing another way right now. I think you need to maybe take a step back”

“Brandt, think about what you are saying” I stepped in “Sometimes Ethan is the only one who can see the way things need to be done” I said

“You, have no right to say anything right now. Ashley, you are smart but you are too close to Ethan, which means you will defend him at every turn, and that can lead some serious problems.” I cowered back a little in all the time I have known Brandt he has never once raised his voice at me, and I hate confrontation

“Brandt, you better watch your tone, Ashley is here to help just as much as everyone else here. You don’t ever raise your voice at her again” he stood up and got closer to Brandt “Am I clear?” Brandt didn’t reply he gave a simple nod of the head

“Ethan, we need to warn the British” Brandt said

“Maybe, that’s exactly what Lane wants us to do” Ethan said, now yelling

“Ethan enough! We are going to warn the British”

“No, we are going to find Lane, and we are going to get him, before he takes the Prime Minister” Ethan said. As I was listening to them argue, I started to feel pain run through my body… Damn the pain medicine must be wearing off. Ethan saw me stumble back a little, and rushed to my side “Baby sit down, you still need to rest… do you want some more pain meds?” he asked

“No, I don’t want to become dependent on those” Once I was sitting down, I leaned over a little to where Ethan is kneeling next to me and placed a light kiss on his cheek, which made his smile a little

“Ok, fine Ethan how exactly do you plan on finding Lane?” just as he asked the question the tablet next to Luther beeped, indicating his software had picked up on Ilsa’s most recent location, and Ethan turned to Brandt and gave him a cocky smirk. Brandt sighed

“Who’s going to drive?” Brandt asked in defeat

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

“Baby, I need you to wait in the car” I sighed

“Ethan I can help”

“You are still healing, and I just don’t want anything to happen to you… please wait in the car” I nodded knowing Ethan wasn’t going to let this go “I love you” he mumbled. I leaned over pulling his face closer to me and bringing our lips together. We both moaned into the kiss, this is the must real kiss we have had since I woke up in the hospital bed. After a minute, we broke apart

“I love you too” I whispered. We rested our foreheads together for a minute but jumped apart when we heard a banging on the window.

“Quit snogging my sister, and lets go” Benji said, I rolled my eyes, and Ethan pulled away from me

“Make sure you lock the door” Ethan said before getting out and walking away

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Once Ethan left, I decided to close my eyes for a few minutes and I was honestly close to sleep when there was a tapping on my window. I jumped awake, and was scared to see a very large man standing there. He used his hand indicating he wanted me to roll my window down. I rolled it down only a little so I could hear him

“Hey, any chance you can give me a jump? My battery is dead, please? I’m desperate.. my wife just went into labor and I need to get to the hospital”

“Oh, sorry! Of course” I got out of the car, so I could walk to the drivers side “Where are you parked?” I asked

“It doesn’t matter” he said

“What?” I asked confused, then before I could do anything else he grabbed me and put a white cloth over my face… and the last thoughts that went through my mind before I blacked out was ‘How could I be so stupud?’

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Ethan’s P.O.V

I ran as fast as I could to the parking garage, Brandt and I got to the black van where Ashley was just in time for the ‘Bone Doctor’ to speed off

“I lost her in crowd” Luther said as he ran up behind us

“SHE SET US UP, SHE KNEW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN” Brandt yelled

“No! Only Lane knows what’s going to happen” our conversation was interrupted by my phone ringing, I quickly answered it having a good idea of who it was.  “I swear Lane, if you hurt her in anyway” he cut me off

“I have a job for you Ethan” I let out and angry huff but said

“I’m listening”

“Your Mission should you choose to accept it, is to bring me the unlocked disc by Midnight.” He paused for what I am assuming was for a dramatic effect “Now say the words please”

“I accept” I mumbled before the line went dead.

“What does he want, Ethan?” Luther asked

“He wants the unlocked disc by Midnight”

“Ethan, there is only one person on this earth who can unlock that disc”

“I know”

“Ethan…” Brandt started

“We have to take the Prime Minister”

HOPE YOU ENJOYED! I’LL TRY TO GET THE NEXT CHAPTER UP SOON! LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK IN THE COMMENTS

[mr-butt-youtube]

AI will be a slave to capitalism just like everyone else

People in software talk a lot about AI "alignment." The idea is that, when creating an algorithm that self-learns, you need some kind of test so that the algorithm can know what behavior is desirable and what behavior is undesirable. The whole point of alignment is to make sure that these algorithms have a good test in place that "aligns" with our values.

A classic example is The Stamp Collecting Device. Imagine an algorithm that can send any kind of data over the internet, that optimizes itself and changes the data that it sends in order to collect stamps. The test is simple: more stamps = better. This could start off benign, sending in bids for stamps on eBay or something. But before long, the algorithm might start sending emails to other human stamp collectors, and gets them to mail it their stamps. Maybe it hacks people's computers, encrypts their data, and refuses to unencrypt it until it receives stamps in the mail. Maybe it hacks the nuclear codes, and threatens to blow up the entire world unless the president sends it all the stamps that the USPS can produce!

The problem with this example is that it misses the fact that all of the useful AI models today are created by massive corporations, or at least by non-profits connected to massive corporations. Either way, AI will be created and used for one reason and one reason only: to make a profit. And collecting all the stamps in the world would not be profitable.

So while incel software engineers worry about their bots taking over the world terminator style, actual scammers *right now* use AI to mimic people's voices over the phone, generate fake product reviews, or send out massive numbers of spam emails. While Joe Schmoe worries about AI taking his job, marketing teams are already trying to figure out how they can AI-generate personalized advertisements that will perfectly target every individual who sees them, and optimize (exclusively) for click-through rate.

I have no idea what kinds of impacts AI will have on the world, if I had to guess I'd say it'll be a bit of a mixed bag. But I can say for certain that whatever problems AI does create will just be normal capitalism/society problems, like the ones we already have, not anything massively ground-breaking or society destroying.

[bloodgulchblog]

I've talked about Cortana killing Aine recently, so I'll just repost Cortana killing the Covenant AI:

“Infidel!” The Covenant word blasted through her communications routines and left her stunned for three cycles—just enough time for her to lose control over the ship-to-ship COM software suite. The Covenant AI transmitted a narrow-beam communications burst to the nearest cruiser. For a Covenant communiqué, it was terse: a report that the flagship was “tainted by the unclean presence of Infidels” and a plea that every ship in-system “converge and cleanse the filth” from the captured vessel. Also compressed and futilely encrypted on the carrier wave was a record of Cortana’s mathematical manipulation of Slipspace that allowed her to jump so close to the gas giant, Threshold. Cortana squelched the channel—but it was too late. It was already gone, and she couldn’t pull photons back from space. She shunted all COM memory pathways on themselves. “Gotcha!” she hissed. “Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel—” “That’s quite enough of that,” she said. “You and I need to come to an understanding.” She reduced the memory pathways, peeling the Covenant AI apart code layer by code layer. “This is my system now.” While an operational Covenant AI would have been a prize for ONI Section Three, this particular Covenant AI was too dangerous. She could not allow its existence to continue. “Do what you will-will-willwill,” it screamed. “I go to finally to my heaven reward paradise final-finalfinalinfinityinfinityinfini—AT NONCOPYSTATE.” Cortana’s curiosity over this odd proclamation would have to wait—forever. She tore the AI apart, erasing, recording the Covenant code structure even as she destroyed it. This was analogous to a dissection, and it she did it quickly, efficiently, and without remorse—until she found the AI’s core code. She halted. She almost recognized this code. The patterns were maddeningly familiar. No time to ponder why, though. She recorded it and then wiped the original. The Covenant AI was gone, its bits safely hacked apart and stored for future research. Provided, of course, Cortana had a future.

[baelpenrose]

Nihilus Rex 41: Throw to the Wolves

Nils lays low and spirals, then lays in plans to deal with Weasel. There are jokes about different hard drive organizations that various people I know have used. Beta-read and co-written by @canyouhearthelight. Nils also speaks to many people's favorite priest.

Nils

So, laying low. 

It used to be so easy, but now that I was getting a taste of actual action, of actually impacting the world, of actually shaking the system up - it was so God. Damn. Boring. 

Actually, I supposed, I should deal with the issue with the Fibbies. Weasel was still out there as a loose end I needed to tie off - though as I gave greater thought to it, I realized there was a glaring error in my previous plan. Yes, I could frame Weasel, but the downside was that my plan relied on him being found non-credible. While we’d been very careful to avoid making him credible, he would, at the very least, give the FBI our names in hope of mitigating his sentence.  And I didn’t need any more Feds remembering we existed in the first place. One was enough.

We’d covered our tracks well, but we could very well get hit with conspiracy charges if they felt like being awful - worse if they felt like digging deep. No, our best bet was to make sure Weasel went down for something else entirely, something that would lead to him self-eliminating, and then breadcrumbing the feds to pin the crime on a dead man and declare victory in our time. Any chance he’d be alive to talk was too great a risk. 

How to do it though? Weasel was a massive creep, but he tried to avoid being outed as a massive creep. Leaking his porn habits might do it, but it didn’t actually get him arrested unless he was much, much worse than I thought. Now, maybe he was doing shady spyware shit I could check into - I was always afraid he was going to hack someone’s webcam, but...hm. 

Actually, let’s see if we could get him on something he was actually doing. 

I opened my computer up again and tried to log into one of Weasel’s socials. Social predictability, what was he going to be into? Character requirements for this system, what do we have…okay. PopgoestheWeasel69!. 

The fact that that worked was…annoying. To say the least. One of the best icebreakers in the business and he was this bad at securing his basic stuff .… Well, okay. If I hadn’t known who he was, there was probably no way I’d have been able to break his encryptions. However, social engineering was a technique all its own. Now, to see the contents of Google Drive….

Nothing to see here but a lot of essays. Actually decently well written ones, and a few that have. Reasonably good politics. Huh. Go figure. Seething hatred of tech bros and rudimentary AI, and pretty good predictions regarding the efficiency of combined solar/nuclear energy. 

Right, he was a math whiz, I’d forgotten that. 

I took a breath. Okay, so somewhere here there’d be a backdoor…Uh…lesseee. No, but I could find an email attached to his resume, which was good enough. Generate a very realistic looking phishing email. Odds are good he won’t actually click the link in it once he reads it through, but he doesn’t need to. He just needs to open it. 

Subject: Research Grant Application Cal Poly

Dear Mr. Winston, you have been selected to apply for a grant of five thousand dollars for research and development of software from the San Luis Obispo California Polytechnic Institute through our partners on your campus. Please follow the link below to complete the application. 

Dean of Computer Science,  Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

Faking a trail and even an impersonated gmail he couldn’t check on site was easy, and just to sweeten the pot I ran a few dozen searches of San Luis Obispo through his google account, so he could be treated to the sight of California women on beaches showing up in search functions fed by the algorithm. Let him ponder enjoying the famous lack of modesty the California climate allowed to make it as tempting as possible to open, in contrast to remaining here with the winter-mandated modesty enjoyed by the women of the Pacific Northwest.

 “California girls, we’re undeniable…” I sing-songed in a falsetto I was glad no one could hear. “Tempting to in-cel douche-bags.” That was probably off beat. Fuck. I had a suspicion most other people could have done it better. Note to self, not that I was considering it anyway but no musical numbers at any point in the grandiose Nihilus Rex persona. At most, dramatic reads of Ozymandias or some shit. Things I could do.

With that attended, I leaned back and waited. I considered calling Lash, and then stopped. I should…probably give her some space. She’d be pissed if I kept poking her, and apparently my last hunch about her emotional state had been wrong. Jumping to conclusions based on incomplete information - she’d broken down at the hospital, she’d thrown up after the initial retaliation, but clearly if she’d been in communication with Ayanti, she hadn’t just been falling apart. 

Still, it was easier to just handle Weasel myself. Fewer communications involved meant fewer people on the line if it went sideways, and clearly Ayanti had more trust in Lash than me. So, for now, the obvious tactical choice was for me to do the dirty work and her to make the world a bit brighter. Maybe we’d swap that role later, but for the time being this made sense. And unlike last time, it wasn’t like I felt like I was being forced to do it today. 

I leaned back and looked at the situation, picked up a book and started reading. I had been getting behind on homework late…

Wow. He had already clicked the link. Alright, malware packet in, let’s open you up, Winston. See what goodies you have in your computer. Folder organization. Okay. Files, homework, software, projects, art…art? 

That was probably - nope, nope. It was not porn, surprisingly. Good for him. I was learning an awful lot about Winston today. What about…ah. There we go. I should have just scrolled the rest of the way. “Fun Times” - in that, three subfolders. A Pocket flash player, an emulator…and Magical Realm. 

Really man, that meme? I sighed. Fuckin’...

Oh….Oh that was a lot of porn. Okay, so. Let’s see, had he, in any way, organized it? 

Let’s…had he labelled…I hate it when people do this. There was a correct way to organize porn, and I’d been using it before I started getting laid often enough that I’d stopped needing it. I’d kept it in a folder that simply said “porn.” And in it? Subfolders. Subfolders that said “animated” - “kinky shit” - “sweet couple stuff.”  Why? Simple. Perfect. But did Weasel do this?  No, instead Winston was a weird, messy bitch who just liked the Netflix version of endless scrolling while horny and trying to find something to jerk it to because everything here was alphanumeric and no organizational scheme. Just. Absolute goddamn degenerate behavior. 

Idly, I wondered if I’d have been better off waiting to do this until Lash and I were on better terms, then I remembered that this was Weasel and I refused to be turned on by anything he was into. 

***

Almost three hours of scrolling later, I had managed to find eight instances of things definitely taken from compromised webcams, and two instances where I was reasonably suspicious that one of the performers was not of legal age. That was a lot of sex crimes for one incel. I forced myself to acknowledge that, as disgusting as Weasel was, and how little time he spent with real women, there were about even odds he legitimately didn’t realize that he’d committed the latter two. Not that it mattered. 

I dropped in a slight malware packet that would flag him for the FBI and then leak his download history very publicly, see what that got him. When he realized what had been compromised, he’d probably panic, but it didn’t matter. Once you were flagged, certain files were frozen - and I’d already saved backups of his entire porn folder deep, deep in his C-drive.

Ugh, why had that sounded dirty in my head? Too much time looking at Weasel’s crap, probably. 

I disengaged from the hack and called Bishop. “Bishop. Anything interesting?”

“Eh…got a few people in the net looking for answers we may be able to ring in for them. Trade for favors later, maybe recruit some of them. Also, Gray wants to talk to you about a bigger project a little later?”

“Thank you. I’ll deal with Gray. Who are the others?”

“Tracking that down. It’s more my speciality than yours, pretty sure. I’m talking to my contacts in Eastern Europe, as well.”

“Understood. Thank you.” I sat back down, thinking about the risks. The FBI were still combing through the financial sector, and I wanted to look at the boards that Grey kept wound up. Some people were claiming that the original attack on the bank had been inspired or planned by some computer loving virgin, but most people there weren’t going for it. Then my phone started ringing.

My personal phone, for being Nils. I snapped it up and said, “Andover.” 

“Nils.” The voice on the other end was one I knew well, one I’d been familiar with.

“Father Rivera. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I was contacted through backchannels in the Catholic Church for priests to communicate with each other. I was told that an orphanage the Mother Church runs in El Salvador is being given thousands of dollars worth of supplies by a mysterious benefactor, fluent in Latin but not Spanish - and that they were told by this mysterious benefactor that I would be able to reach him if they thought of anything else. Now, there is only one person on the planet that I can think of who might be doing something like that. So, Nils. Where is the money coming from?”

“Does it matter? Hungry kids are being fed, babies are being kept in diapers, sick kids are getting medicine and shots to keep from getting sick again.”

“Nils…” His voice took on a warning note. 

“It’s coming from corporations who can afford it. No, I do not repent. You can turn me in but you’ll be cutting a lifeline for vulnerable people if you do. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people that my scheming supplies with lifesaving things they cannot get through ‘better’ means. Please, Father Rivera. Leave me to my work.” My answer, and the quiet, desperate truth of it, must have convinced him of something. 

He sighed heavily on the other end of the phone. “I want to speak with you directly, Nils. Soon. But for today, they say they’re worried about damage to their well, so they want water filters.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “Of all the things…yeah, I can do it. Tell them I hope the well will last a bit longer, because that’s a…harder ask than it really should be, right now.” 

Rivera’s voice grew strained. “Do I want to know?”

“No, probably not.” 

I took a breath. Rivera knew. That was a mistake. I could speak to him about other things weighing on me in the future. Other plans I’d laid. In the meantime, I’d wait for the plans with Weasel to bear fruit. 

Hopefully the plan with Ayanati was going well for Lash.