To A Thief by M. K. Dreysen - A Story of Trying to Be A Little Too Smart About It...

"I am an ambiguous demonstration for the possible futures available," the speaker on the wall told her.

"Does that mean anything? I mean, besides the fact that you're dealing with a little bit of an unknown, unknowable world," the lady returned.

"While I understand that you've given an answer in the form of a question, I am afraid that I'm unable to parse the general meaning of your question. Please try again."

"There are days where I wonder if I've chosen the right form of work," the lady finished. "Fine, let's try it again. What's your general programming statement?"

The rest of the interview went according to the plan. The AI was stable, so far as she could tell. A little limited, just a security protocol, but then this was the public facing part of the machine. The inner workings weren't available, unless she could provide some form of access.

A fancy security protocol, of course. The plebes sitting in the office weren't just set down to face the muzak anymore. A little bit of company propaganda, a little bit of internet access if they wanted, carefully filtered and all data sifted for pretty little nuggets. There were possible benefits to entertaining one's guests, if one were to be so inclined as to provide them with a welcome mat, as it were.

The lady could have gone further. But there were other prying ears listening. The guy sitting in the other chair, nervous and clutching his magazine, could have been a new job hire, a contractor, or someone from the company's warehouses called onto the carpet.

Or, he could be a plant, well-trained and playing his part. The odds of that were a lot lower though, when someone officious came out of the elevators to escort him to somewhere in the rest of the building.

"I apologize. Ms. Wright did say that, if allowed, she'd be happy to let you have limited access to the upstairs coffee room."

If the guy who'd just left was any indication, the company wanted no random dweebs walking the floors. The AI could let her on or off at any floor if it wanted, give her some room to breathe, but there'd be a human walking along with her everywhere she went.

The movie jumped into her head. "Oh, sorry, I just needed another caffeine jolt, wow are these conference calls boring." Or, "Hey, did you need the bathroom, it's just around the corner." Like that, someone just happening to wander along and poke their head into her space whenever the opportunity presented.

"Maybe next time. I'm hoping this is the first visit of many."

"I look forward to reading your reports," the company AI told her. And then it played some Fleetwood Mac, not Tusk or anything like that, this was one of Christine's songs.

The lady looked at her watch. Two in the afternoon, the AI must have been following some researcher's productivity generating music profile.

She smiled, too. How many of the people listening to this were even old enough to know which song the thing was playing? She had a thing for old music, her great-grandparents' music in this case. But that had to be a rare hobby these days.

The elevators dinged at last. The lady didn't need to look at her watch. Forty minutes, basically, just enough time to, if she'd wanted to, get nervous, fidget.

Try the AI's programming, since she'd been alone for twenty minutes. Ask a few probing questions where no one obvious was observing her. The social hacking part of the business. Too bad, really, that the AI was a clue.

There were many reasons to get rid of human door minders. The first one was that an AI that could entertain visitors while it summoned human minders, was more than capable of recording those visitors. And catching out the ones who'd made the mistake of attempting to slip past the first level gate guard.

Evie Wright came out of the door of the elevators, smile set on her face and power walking. "Mysha Rodriguez? I am so happy to meet you!"

The lady rose from her couch, hand outstretched and the answering, precisely professional smile on her own face. "Thank you, Ms. Wright. I just hope that I'm up to the job you've got in mind."

The job. Probably the best explanation for the controls keeping her so carefully observed in the building. Evie Wright needed someone who could break into a competitor's building, and security, and walk out with a small, innocuous little secret.

Problem being, such a person was just as capable of doing the same thing to her company. And there was no way of knowing if, or which, one of her competitor's had already hired Ms. Rodriguez to do the same job in reverse.

The woman calling herself Mysha Rodriguez, for the purposes of this meeting, had to admit: in the reverse situation she'd be acting under the same suspicions.

Of course, she'd have a bit different approach. Like not meeting at the company's office building in the first place. It was like keeping their computers safe. If the IT department didn't know that a minimally safe computer was one that was never connected to a network, and could never be connected to a network, she'd eat her hat.

Then again... the internet had told her every bit of this building was owned by the company Wright represented herself as an employee of. The names for each floor were different, all of them subsidiaries of the holding company that sat on the top floor and ran the whole thing.

That was the premise, anyway. The addresses on the corporate papers were all public record. But if someone were up to it, ready to pull off a really elaborate con, they could set things up to look like exactly what Mysha was seeing.

No use being that paranoid, she told herself. You're here on spec.

Still, the information could be useful, someday down the road. If someone ever did hire her to probe this particular company, some familiarity with the way they operated might just be the difference between success and failure.

Mysha followed Evie Wright to the elevators, and then the sixth floor.

"I'll bring you down to Mr. Zylhada's office when we get done, Ms. Rodriguez. He's got another meeting that's running a little over, he asked me to make sure you were comfortable, answer any questions you might have in the meantime."

Cool my heels, Mysha told herself. If the company's what they say they are, just a hazard of timing. If not, well, it's par for the course. Either way... "I hope it's nothing major. I'd hate to drop into the middle of a crisis."

"Just the normal chaos. Monday morning, there're always a few problems to catch up to after the weekend."

The two chatted a bit, Mysha trying a few minor parries and getting nowhere. Evie Wright was very good at her job.

The conversation was just about finished, the pauses getting longer as Mysha tried to think up interesting questions, when the phone flashed on Evie's desk. "That's Raul. Looks like they're finished now." The lady stood up from her desk, and Mysha followed automatically.

She'd noticed Evie's desk was just about sterile. No kid's pictures, no calendar with pictures of whales or Hawaii, nothing. Was it a scam? Maybe this was just one of those offices that kept their people jumping, no personal space to get comfortable in. Could she ask?

"Oh, just timing. Raul requested me when he moved over to the main offices, I've only been here a couple weeks and I'm still settling in."

Sure, Mysha told herself. Logical explanation, and no way to check it without sounding like she was doing more than passing the time. Nerves, that's what she needed to show, simple questions. "Hopefully it's not a big deal working with the bigwigs?" she asked.

Evie laughed as she opened the door to Raul Zylhada's office. "I'll admit, it's a pretty big difference. Out at the warehouses, I'd go weeks at a time without seeing anybody from corporate, and here, I can't turn around without stumbling over one of them."

"A few weeks and you won't know the difference."

"Probably. Hopefully, you'll go through it yourself and we'll get a chance to compare notes. Good luck!" She shut the door behind Mysha.

And then it was time to stick her hand out and get on with the interview. Raul Zylhada came around the desk, hand out, "Good morning, Ms. Rodriguez, I am so glad that you could meet with us. Need anything before we get started, coffee, water? There's a bathroom just down the hall. I know how the traffic can be."

Another chance to snoop, if she wanted to. Another chance to get caught snooping. "I'm ok for now, unless you've got a marathon for me?"

The man chuckled. "That's next time. For now, an hour or so here, then I'll buy lunch."

Let's get down to the business, Mysha translated. The hard core of it would at least wait 'til the next meeting. So this one was just his way of checking her out in person.

With only basic descriptions of the company's problem. Computers, guaranteed, networks electronic and human. The whole thing boiled down to a too close relationship with what should have been a rival company. "One of those accidents of pre-history. Our founder helped them out thirty, forty years ago, partnered on a few contracts, gave them a leg up."

"And your company wrote the contracts with a little bit of eye toward the future."

"That's exactly right." Shared IP, shared resources, audits here and there.

Computer networks in common. "And now you're worried they might be seeing more of your internal networks than you bargained for."

Zylhada lost his smile at that point. "We want the relationships to continue. They've been profitable, and the people on their side are good to work with."

"But?"

"But... Let's say they've snagged a couple contracts recently that they shouldn't have had any business getting. They don't have the expertise to back it up, unless..."

She smiled. "Unless they've managed to get a hold of your data and re-engineer a few of your processes."

Her response was, apparently, just the right way to bring Zylhada's smile back. "And that's the reason we asked you to come in."

She shrugged. "I have to warn you up front. The odds are good they've just managed to find the right person in the right place at the right time. Some academic frustrated with the publish or perish rat race, or a government employee looking to cash out. I hate to spend your money, and it'll be a pretty penny whether I find anything or not, and end up just following the trail to a Ph.D. with time on her hands."

He frowned again, but the expression was brief. "I get that, and if it happens that way, at least we know. Hell, if so, maybe we'll get lucky and find another one waiting where they found that one. If not..."

"You'll know where to shut them down and keep it from happening again."

"Bingo." Zylhada devoted the rest of the meeting to his description of the networks the companies had in common, at least the computer networks. "The personal, well. Most of them are the usual thing, they've hired a few of ours away over the years, we've returned the favor. Plus, we still have those shared projects."

He didn't mention names, then. Once they reached a happy stopping place, he turned her loose to visit the toilets, then offered lunch when Mysha returned. "Anything special? There's a new pub down the road, they've only been open a few weeks. I haven't had a chance to sample it, you up to a bit of an adventure?"

So long as it wasn't trying too hard, she wanted to say. Instead, she said "Sure".

Fortunately, the place wasn't. Trying too hard, that is. Just good burgers, a handful of local brews on tap, there were curries and a handful of other adventures on the menu, but she didn't push it.

Zylhada waited 'til lunch was served to give her a few of the names that had been on his mind. Most of them had no meaning to her, yet. That could wait until she got home and let the internet inform her.

There was a name that was missing. Mysha had put two and two together from the list of operations Zylhada listed in common with their partner companies, her targets. How to ask, though? "Isn't that the plant you brought Ms. Wright over from?"

The man wasn't much of a poker player, not from how low his face fell when she said it. And the way he seemed to assume that she had more of a motive for asking than she'd started the question with. "I'm sure Evie wouldn't have anything..."

Mysha didn't care what they were doing behind closed doors. Office canoodling wasn't her brief. It was the hole in his perceptions that she was now much more interested in. Problem being, if they were screwing on the off time, maybe they were just family hiding the connection from the company nepotism rules, who cares, Mysha needed to know. The connection was the obvious one. Was it the right one? Wright wouldn't be the first executive secretary taking advantage of her connections.

Nor Zylhada the first executive to dip into the company's ink.

Mysha would have to be careful, one way or another. Raul's automatic defensiveness meant even just checking Evie Wright off the list was going to be harder than it needed to be. "If you trust her, so do I. But what if someone's setting her up to take the fall? You'll want to make sure she's protected, clean as a whistle. You don't want someone in your own company playing politics with your own secretary." That ought to do it. If he was going to protect her, whatever the reason, Mysha could use his instincts.

"Right, ok, of course." He was relieved, his shoulders relaxed, the automatic smile almost all the way back from wherever it had retreated to. "Do you need to interview her? Or can you do everything from the network?"

Where Wright wouldn't know about it unless she absolutely had to. "I'll need a significant level of access to your computers to pull that off."

"I can get you administrator privileges for everything. You've already been listed as a new IT hire."

Mysha was impressed, and a little worried. It was her natural home, after all, if she had any sort of home inside one of the companies she worked for. The impressive thing was that he'd set it up without her having to pry it loose. Most times, the keys to the kingdom took a lot more work than this.

She should have known better. The fact of the access was easy enough to establish. The suspicion of the Vice-President in charge of the IT networks that joined all the subsidiaries into one whole beast was a hurdle of a different sort. "I don't understand," the lady told her.

Mysha gave Mrs. Ana Burr her best ingenuous face. "I'm not sure I understand it, either. Mr. Zylhada said something about making sure we didn't have to come back and bother you about anything as the job develops. This way, I'm out of your hair."

"I get the part where you're a new hire for networks. What I don't get is why you're not working for me directly."

That much, Mysha didn't need an oracle to read. Burr wasn't quite to the point of slamming books down, but she was close. There was no question that she was bugged by it. Was it power taken away? "It's a short time gig," Mysha offered.

"What do you mean?"

Mysha danced up to the truth. "I'm an auditor for an outside firm. If I understand things correctly, one of the contracts the gang upstairs signed gives their partners the right to audit you, networks, storage, everything, for security purposes. I need the accesses to do the audits, but if I were to actually come in under your authority..." Would she get the point?

"You'd compromise your position as an auditor."

Bingo.

Burr relaxed after that. She wasn't happy about it, who would be, someone coming in with the power and the right to snoop through everything in the company's electronic demesne, and nothing she could do about it but smile and nod. Mysha didn't care that Burr wasn't happy about it, all she wanted was for her counterpart to accept it.

And let Rodriguez go on about her business. Mysha knew that every login was now precious. Every process she set running, Burr would be logging and watching. But that was ok. There wasn't any need to copy anything across the network, not yet. If it came to that she had the means to hide copies behind other processes. First though, first thing, because maybe just maybe, was to check out Evie Wright.

Network accesses, permissions, where was the lady in question allowed to go, when she went along the e-highways and byways? The list was impressive. Local plant and warehouse managers could keep her out of some areas, but otherwise she could see every drive in the company.

All the hundreds of daily reports, the detritus of years of electronic buildup, old expense reports, calendars, quote sheets, loadouts and EPA permits. File after file and none of it of any particular meaning to Mysha. If there was anything in the company's daily noise, she'd be weeks teasing it out.

What about logins? The next level, the world away, where did Evie go to, when she needed to talk to the world?

The idle time, after four, four-thirty at the latest, and before eight in the a.m., that was when Evie was away from her desk. Had she ever logged in after that? Ignore the cell phone email log ins, if Mysha had to read emails it could wait. Ignore the payroll logins, same thing with paychecks and insurance. It was the logins to other things, the company laptop and private network access.

On the company desktop, the one sitting on her desk, was everything she'd ever done the generic? Internet browser, the default, were there any signs of other browsers? How 'bout other software, non-standard downloads, tools that most wouldn't have any need for or even know existed? Encryption tools?

Software, bytes, everywhere. Mysha dug, and dug, and found only the obvious, at least as far as the drives that administrators could see. There were other levels, weren't there? She'd have to remote into Evie's computer. She'd have to remote into every computer. There were no secrets on the open network.

Which is as it should be, Mysha reminded herself. We are too far removed from ye olden days, she admitted, and Wright was a savvy operator. How else, she'd made the jump to the big office, she'd done her time in the here and there. She'd know that her life was always subject to someone doing exactly what Mysha was doing. Worth digging through just because the company required it.

What did it feel like, Mysha asked herself. To know, every day she walked in Evie Wright would know that there was the possibility there, someone staring over her shoulder, reading her emails, scanning her history and logins. Just in case the company was threatened, or maybe just because they needed dirt because they always needed dirt.

It had been a while since Mysha had needed to feel that way.

Or, rather, since it had mattered. The feds, some precious few big time companies, quite a few other countries around the world, all would, if they knew about her or just by accident, be happy to dig through Mysha's life the same way she dug through Evie Wright's now. But that was a hazard of the job. There was a reason she bought new computers for every gig, and then wiped and donated them to the landfill when she was done. If there was nothing to find, there could be nothing to be nervous about. Was Evie that disciplined?

Mysha examined the network files of the others on her list, plant managers and engineers, forklift operators and lab techs, a secretary or two, even an IT hand. All had either worked with the other company, the target company, worked for them at one time, or had otherwise been involved. Probably more than a few of them were just Raul fishing, hoping there'd be a little bit of dirt to be found. Or they were on the list because that's what Raul could think of, just find the obvious ones, get them out of the bin or into the bin.

Whoever they were, however their names had come to her, none of them were foolish enough to leave "Here's the file where I sold the company down the river" files laying around where someone could find them.

Then again, from Mysha's point of view, what would she expect? In a world of thumbdrives, why would anyone with physical access to these computers need to leave anything around? Sneakernet would more than suffice, load up the files, drawings and schedules, hell, account numbers, a gig or two at a time, and then walk on over to wherever, a kiosk at the library would do. And email would do the rest?

Why then this tedious business? Three long days and nights of sorting and snooping through the network drives. Then, after hours when Mysha knew that the vast majority weren't logged into their desktop machines, remoting in to their machines and going bit by bit through their private drives. Why do it?

Same reason a forensics team still dusts for fingerprints in an age where latex gloves are a stop at Wal-Mart away from anywhere. Because most didn't bother. It took an iron will to follow the discipline Mysha did, to build up the habits of a pro. And...

Evie Wright didn't seem to have that discipline. Close, oh so close, she'd come just that far to not leaving a trace Mysha could find with this slow, tedious, boring search. Oh so close.

It was the chat program. The one the company used, a standard one, it came installed on every computer. Free for most, companies bought the more secure version that they could control. Either way, it logged in by default, let everyone know whether the computer operator was awake, away from the desk, whatever.

It logged all conversations, too. Not all of the video calls, just when and where and who. But certainly all of the messages, text was cheap storage. And only on the local disk, the company wasn't that paranoid. Today, maybe tomorrow would be different, these were just sitting there, waiting for a day like this. When Mysha was hunting backtrail.

Wright had treated the video conferencing like she suspected she was being watched. Only internal calls.

She'd been a little more forthcoming over text, though. "What's up" to friends, "How's it going" to her daughter.

"Be ready, I'm sending something to you tonight" to the lead engineer at the target company. Multiple times, all the same message. They'd started a year or so ago. A couple a month or so, until about six months into it. Then every week. And lately?

Every day. Did she know the ride was coming to an end? No. She'd been paid more, that's all.

Electronic payments. That was the other breadcrumb, sitting underneath a Personal folder, where the family pix were stored, lists of this and that, videos of what was outside the window, login information for personal accounts she'd need to access during the day.

That's where Wright kept the folder marked deposits. She was a good little bookkeeper, she printed out every paystub after they were electronically deposited into her personal checking account. W-2's, W-4's, insurance paperwork and 401k statements.

And files marked as extra, with a date. The dates started just a year or so ago, once a month, then more recently once a week, and, finally, once a day. Weren't that a funny coincidence, Mysha asked herself. And what was the payment, Mysha wondered, how much on the barrelhead, that they'd pay so promptly? Fifty cents, micropayments, a lite habit for light work?

'Oh, my, no,' Mysha whispered to herself. Then she whistled, because that's the only response, staring there at each payment worth more than any month's salary Evie Wright had drawn over the same period. 'And every day, too. How many years of retirement did you build up, Ms. Evie?'

If there was a date certain for Evie, a glide path to the gold watch and the dribbled out pension and the little bit of 401k, then she'd managed to move it up by a good few years. Or maybe make sure she didn't need to worry too much about whether the Social Security Administration could ever get their act together. Either way?

Either way, someone had found her price, and it was a pretty penny indeed, all things told. Maybe the CEO wouldn't sneeze at the amount total, maybe he would, but for someone down in the trenches where the money was made?

It was enough; Mysha set a bot to crawl through Wright's machine and copy every file. And then she set another one, just to copy the contents of the incriminating folders. This one was a lot faster, and it should be more than enough evidence needed. Companies didn't need a lot, there would be no need for evidential procedures.

"Someone set her up," Zylhada told her.

It was the obvious response. "What about the chat records?"

"How hard would it be, if they were already going through all that work?"

Not too hard, Mysha had to admit. Easy script to change the handle in the responses, another to merge the files into the chat records. "I admire your ability to trust your secretary. It's your money. You just have to tell me one thing."

"What's that?"

"That you're prepared to hear the answer you don't want to hear." The most likely answer, given what they had, was that Evie Wright was exactly what her hard drive testified to. Greed, revenge, jealousy, some combination of all three, that's what the machine had to say about it.

Was it telling the whole truth? How was she going to prove the negative?

Mysha started at the top. If she'd decided to set Evie Wright up to take a fall, how would she go about doing it? First thing, she'd need... not just access. The operating systems were a little more sophisticated than all that. The network drives, those a little outside hacking could get to, but the inside drives, the private ones where Evie's little bit of trash had been found, that she had had to have direct access to the machine. She had to be sitting here in the office to get to it. The IT department had set their remote access permissions to a very specific set of servers, whitelisted and hard-wired down to the serial numbers on the network cards. This too could be fooled, of course, but why?

Not when the easiest way to bypass that was a thumbdrive in the pocket and a few minutes alone with the machine. Maybe an administrator's password, maybe a cracker's code or two, that would speed things along. The right people running it, it would take five minutes, tops.

Five minutes that Mysha suspected the AI would know about. "Are you able to break down security footage for me?"

"I assume you have a search pattern?" the disembodied voice replied.

"I do. Anyone accessing Evie Wright's computer besides Ms. Wright." Most times, that sort of request would be a nightmare. Too many hours of blank footage, too many bits dumped on the floor because they'd run out of space and reason to keep the footage.

Evie'd only been sitting at that desk, in this office, for a few weeks. And sure enough, there someone was, not an IT jock fixing things up for her after hours, either.

Just Mr. Raul Zylhada himself. Sitting down to his secretary's desk, a couple times; after hours. And then just a couple days ago, in the few minutes before Evie showed up for work. The day Mysha had come to visit the first time. "Load everything up, then come back and check to make sure it was all as you wanted. But, and here's the point, why the hell are you going through this song and dance, if you know you're the one who set her up?"

The whole thing stunk, Mysha told herself. To High Heaven, and beyond. There were aliens circling the galaxy, accusing each other of passing gas in the spaceship, that kind of stink. What kind of idiot sets her on his own trail? Either he wanted Evie to take the fall, and he was playing the part, "I just know that someone set her up," he'd say, to whoever came and asked. "My hands are tied," was the implied tagline.

Or, what? "I wanted someone to catch me?"

In which case, Mysha told herself to fold up the laptop, walk out of the building, burn the identity and the computer and the laptop, and don't have anything to do with these people ever again. Sure, a few weeks' work lost, it was better than getting tangled up in someone else's psychodrama.

She didn't. There had to be a story here. She wanted to know what it was.

"Evie's my god-daughter." He sat across his desk from her, head down, staring at his lap. "When I started working under the table, I'd taken this promotion, Evie was on the other side of the state from me. She didn't have anything to do with any of it, she was nice and safe."

"And then, somebody begged you to get her a promotion."

He shrugged. "My sister, her mom. Evie's her youngest, Anias worried Evie wasn't getting anywhere. Evie's got a degree but she was stuck at the plant. If she was here, maybe she'd get on a promotion path to somewhere."

"And then someone started asking questions about what your competitors were up to."

The rest of his confession was easy. He'd been waiting to tell someone all about it; here at last was his audience.

The hard part was the gun he was holding on her. He'd had it in his lap the whole time, where he thought she couldn't see it. Now he brought it up. An ugly little stainless steel thing. Ugly or not, it would do the job. "You know the AI is recording this," she pointed out.

"Sure. And it'll be happy to wipe the recording when I ask it to. There's not enough disk space in the world to hold all the recordings, so a few extra blank spots in the recording won't matter six months from now. Not for a random time in a random day."

"About that..." She'd done her homework. The AI had its recording. And it had called the cops for her.

They came in to finish up, Evie Wright in their wake. That was the only point where Raul Zylhada showed any remorse. "Why the hell did you have her here, listening to this?" he whispered, tears breaking out now as the cops led him past his niece in tears. "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry..."

"She's the other corporate officer I report to," Mysha reminded him. "And I rather thought she'd be best off seeing it herself."

Evie made sure the payoff matched the offer letter. "It might take me a couple days to get it paid out. Upstairs are going to have kittens, breech presentation."

"And I'm sure you'll need a few days to recover, yourself. Your uncle..."

Evie hugged herself, stared at the floor. When she finally lifted her face, there were traces of tears down her cheeks. But there were no traces of remorse in the clear green of her eyes. "That sonofabitch. I can't wait 'til I tell mom."

Mysha imagined a flash of steel, knives and plates and forks scattering across a Thanksgiving tablecloth. She didn't envy Evie and her family's path forward. She shook Evie's hand, thanked her, and told her good luck.

Mysha did check the AI's permissions on the way out of the building. No surprise there, all access denied was the only response. That's ok, she told herself. One way or another, she'd be back soon. The company was a target now, a known, live vulnerability. They'd be fighting off the vultures; Mysha had a feeling she'd be back in sweeping up the pieces soon enough.

That, or maybe she'd be circling overhead herself.