I stepped into the large harbor-front warehouse with more than a bit of trepidation. I've done job interviews before - they're supposed to involve office rooms with engineers in well-lit buildings. Not empty warehouses. In the middle of the night. Next to rusty dead-looking container ships. But my recruiter had been promising the sky was the limit on this one if I could get hired, so here I was waiting for...
"Excellent! You're five minutes early. My employer appreciates promptness."
I didn't scream like a girl and fall over - it was a perfectly respectable battle-cry as I attempted to dodge any incoming attacks. Unfortunately, I was wearing a trench coat, which is NOT what you want to be wearing when trying to dodge. It's pretty cold on the Boston waterfront at night, even this early in the fall, and that makes a great excuse for people who might ask me why I'm wearing a trench coat. From the ground, I looked up at a man in a suit who had been standing in the shadow of the door. "...Hi? Are you...Sebastian?" I stood up and pretended to be dignified while brushing dust off my coat.
"Yes, that's me. I appologize if I...startled you." The man was...dark. Dark hair, dark eyes, black suit, gleaming white teeth. Do humans have that many teeth? I'm pretty sure I don't have that many teeth. Why is he smiling like that? Cautiously, I reached out to shake the man's hand. His grip is firm and he's wearing white silk gloves - who does that anymore?
Collecting myself and trying to get my heart under control, I decided to assert a bit of my own authority - he might be the one hiring, but I was asked for by name. "Is there somewhere we can sit and discuss the job offer? It's a bit...unlit in here."
He snapped his fingers, and lights turned on throughout the building. A neat trick. It was nearly empty except some boxes in the far corner, some catwalks and an elevated 'managers' office above the main floor. The neater trick was the sudden appearance of a table and chairs five feet to our left - it appeared just as the lights turned on. Had it been there, hiding in the darkness? I blanked my mind, counted to three, pictured something unrelated, then reviewed my memories of the not-quite-impenetrable dark from when I walked in, before I was...startled. My eyes were closed, both for the visualization process and to adjust to the sudden light. No - those had definitely not been there.
I looked suspiciously at Sebastian, who was still standing next to the now-closed doorway and smiling even wider. I moved to the table and chairs, made sure they were solid, examined their tops for clues, and took a deep whiff. Modern, nothing obvious, no marks or cracks in the floor where they might have come 'up' through a trap door - and they smelled like machine oil, ozone and...sulfur?
I stepped back and took a whiff of the air farther from the table - the machine oil smell permeated, but the others were absent. Approaching again, I looked under the table - the floor was rough concrete, not well finished, but showed no obvious marks, and the bottom of the table...
Stamps? No...seals. Over-fancy and...wait, they have the names written around... I recognize at least... OK, that one doesn't belong there.
I looked at the seats arranged around the table. Then I sit at the chair next to the 'Naberius' seal - I was pretty sure I could use all the help with rhetoric I could get, and I honestly wasn't sure what to think about some of the other...labels.
'Sebastian' grinned even wider as he sat on the left side of the 'head' of the table - at least, I assumed the seat marked 'Lucifer' was the head. If I recalled (and I wasn't looking underneath to check), that one had been 'Ronove' - I'll have to look that one up when I got home, if he was even in the Goetia. I knew for a fact Lucifer wasn't...though that might just be because the Ars Goetia was just one chapter...
"Did you bring your laptop?" I was startled out of my musings by Sebastian's question. After a second's hesitation, I put my laptop bag on the table and pulled out my chunky, old, beaten up 'work' laptop. It had two 'original' parts left - the screen and the case. Everything else had been replaced at some point, so I supposed it was not technically that old - but it was still using a three-year-old processor. "Good, now connect to the WiFi."
I opened it, and it booted instantly. Solid state drives were nice like that. "Password?" He didn't say anything...so I took that as a challenge. There had been a 'network security expertise' requirement for this job, which was why I brought the 'work' laptop. I pulled up an old homework project - literally a homework assignment from when I was doing post-grad courses in CS - and ran it. A minute later, I found out the network password was 'Ar5Goetia' - cheeky bugger. "Ha, ha. Now what?"
He grinned wider. "Now, you try to keep your laptop running for five minutes." He sat back, and I started to hear from all around me a creepy, multi-voice, static-filled chuckle - it was very familiar. I checked my system and network logs - somebody was hammering my firewall. Oh, so that's how they were playing this? Suddenly, the 'creepy atmosphere' made a lot more sense. I was being tested by Black-hats. They thought they could put me off balance with a 'freaking the norms' routine. Well, two could play that game.
I let my firewall do its job while I looked for...ah ha! Bluetooth speakers. Grabbing a modified 'boosted' Bluetooth antenna out of my bag, I plugged it into the laptop and ran one of my 'prank' programs - the creepy not-voice coming out of the speakers cut off. As well as, apparently, the infra-sound I had been feeling-hearing since I walked in - I could suddenly hear the 'absence' of it. That explains why I've been so jumpy...clever. In place of that, a cheerful bit of music started up...before quickly turning to something less cheerful.
Sebastian's phone rang. My computer pinged. I turned the volume on the song down and looked up at Sebastian with a plain question on my face. He just smiled wolfishly and answered the phone, putting it immediately on speaker phone.
"Tha-a-at was a-a mistake, hacker." Oh, that was where I had heard the voice before. Someone had gone and made a SHODAN voice emulator. Cute. I was betting it was a complex text-to-speech program. "Your simple ma-machine has bec-come a-a part of-of me n-n-now. O-oh l-look, you-ou wer-er-er foo-oo-oolish-sh eno-ou-ough to-o-o leave-eave me-e-e a-a-a cre-ed-ed-it-it ca-a-ard..." I waited a few more seconds. "Wha-a-a-at...?"
I grinned, and decided to cut the emulator off before it could get any more annoying. "Stop that stupid voice program and listen for a bit. I'm not some idiot who's going to make a mistake just because of some creepy voices and weird building. The SHODAN thing was a nice touch, but way over the top. I'm betting you regret that, now that your processors are spinning their wheels as fast as they can go, yeah? You fell for the oldest trick in the counter-hacking book - you jumped right into my honeypot the instant I opened an 'insecure' connection on my box...and now you're infected. If you hurry, you might not have to re-install your machine's OS...but by that time, this test will be over. Happy hunting!"
"In-n-n-se-ct-ct-ct! I-I-I-" click. Sebastian hung up the phone as the song I'd started on the speakers finished up and I unplugged the Bluetooth super-antenna.
"So, any more tests?"
Sebastian smiled and shook his head. "No, I think Lord Phantomhive will be quite pleased by your performance. The contract will be forwarded to you...with a bonus, if you can start immediately."
I looked a bit concerned. "How immediately?"
A second later the doors opened again, and some professional looking men in uniforms started coming in with various furniture-sized boxes and other things that...looked like sci-fi movie props. "Very immediately."
When they rolled past with something I swear looked like one of the GladOS AI cores you toss into the disposal at the end of Portal, followed by a 'Sugar Rush Speedway' arcade machine...I suddenly have to wonder exactly how much of the past few minutes has really been a fake-out.
============================================================
Name: [Redacted]
Age: [Redacted]
Height: [Redacted]
Weight: [Redacted]
Location: Boston, MA, USA
Ethnicity: [Redacted]
Login: Kestrel
Access Level: Administrator
Charisma: (##===)
Intelligence: (#####)
Wisdom: (##===)
Sanity: [Redacted]
Fortitude: (#====)
Mech: (###==)
Tech: (#####)
Macguiver: (###==)
Applicable Skills:
Programmer, Sysadmin, Hacker, Cracker, Root
Electrician, Plumber, Carpenter
Video Gamer, TV Troper, Esoteric Trivia Specialist
Friends/Contacts at MIT
Complex:
Warehouse #13, Bay Circle
Boston, MA, USA
1 Floor (2.5 stories), with catwalks at 12ft.
1 Elevated Manager's office
Amenities:
Electricity
Internal-only WiFi LAN
Individual Firewalls
The building is a Faraday Cage
'Tenants'
Wreck-It Ralph (entire caste, in arcade machines)
H.A.L. 9000 (2001)
Agent Smith, the Architect, the Oracle, the Merovingian (Matrix)
Joshua (War Games)
MCP (Tron)
AM (I have no mouth and I must scream)
SHODAN, XERXES (System Shock)
GLaDOS (Portal)
"Not this again!" Minerva said. "Albus, it was You-Know-Who, not you, who marked Harry as his equal. There is no possible way that the prophecy could be talking about you!" - Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality, Chapter 84
"Excellent! You're five minutes early. My employer appreciates promptness."
I didn't scream like a girl and fall over - it was a perfectly respectable battle-cry as I attempted to dodge any incoming attacks. Unfortunately, I was wearing a trench coat, which is NOT what you want to be wearing when trying to dodge. It's pretty cold on the Boston waterfront at night, even this early in the fall, and that makes a great excuse for people who might ask me why I'm wearing a trench coat. From the ground, I looked up at a man in a suit who had been standing in the shadow of the door. "...Hi? Are you...Sebastian?" I stood up and pretended to be dignified while brushing dust off my coat.
"Yes, that's me. I appologize if I...startled you." The man was...dark. Dark hair, dark eyes, black suit, gleaming white teeth. Do humans have that many teeth? I'm pretty sure I don't have that many teeth. Why is he smiling like that? Cautiously, I reached out to shake the man's hand. His grip is firm and he's wearing white silk gloves - who does that anymore?
Collecting myself and trying to get my heart under control, I decided to assert a bit of my own authority - he might be the one hiring, but I was asked for by name. "Is there somewhere we can sit and discuss the job offer? It's a bit...unlit in here."
He snapped his fingers, and lights turned on throughout the building. A neat trick. It was nearly empty except some boxes in the far corner, some catwalks and an elevated 'managers' office above the main floor. The neater trick was the sudden appearance of a table and chairs five feet to our left - it appeared just as the lights turned on. Had it been there, hiding in the darkness? I blanked my mind, counted to three, pictured something unrelated, then reviewed my memories of the not-quite-impenetrable dark from when I walked in, before I was...startled. My eyes were closed, both for the visualization process and to adjust to the sudden light. No - those had definitely not been there.
I looked suspiciously at Sebastian, who was still standing next to the now-closed doorway and smiling even wider. I moved to the table and chairs, made sure they were solid, examined their tops for clues, and took a deep whiff. Modern, nothing obvious, no marks or cracks in the floor where they might have come 'up' through a trap door - and they smelled like machine oil, ozone and...sulfur?
I stepped back and took a whiff of the air farther from the table - the machine oil smell permeated, but the others were absent. Approaching again, I looked under the table - the floor was rough concrete, not well finished, but showed no obvious marks, and the bottom of the table...
Stamps? No...seals. Over-fancy and...wait, they have the names written around... I recognize at least... OK, that one doesn't belong there.
I looked at the seats arranged around the table. Then I sit at the chair next to the 'Naberius' seal - I was pretty sure I could use all the help with rhetoric I could get, and I honestly wasn't sure what to think about some of the other...labels.
'Sebastian' grinned even wider as he sat on the left side of the 'head' of the table - at least, I assumed the seat marked 'Lucifer' was the head. If I recalled (and I wasn't looking underneath to check), that one had been 'Ronove' - I'll have to look that one up when I got home, if he was even in the Goetia. I knew for a fact Lucifer wasn't...though that might just be because the Ars Goetia was just one chapter...
"Did you bring your laptop?" I was startled out of my musings by Sebastian's question. After a second's hesitation, I put my laptop bag on the table and pulled out my chunky, old, beaten up 'work' laptop. It had two 'original' parts left - the screen and the case. Everything else had been replaced at some point, so I supposed it was not technically that old - but it was still using a three-year-old processor. "Good, now connect to the WiFi."
I opened it, and it booted instantly. Solid state drives were nice like that. "Password?" He didn't say anything...so I took that as a challenge. There had been a 'network security expertise' requirement for this job, which was why I brought the 'work' laptop. I pulled up an old homework project - literally a homework assignment from when I was doing post-grad courses in CS - and ran it. A minute later, I found out the network password was 'Ar5Goetia' - cheeky bugger. "Ha, ha. Now what?"
He grinned wider. "Now, you try to keep your laptop running for five minutes." He sat back, and I started to hear from all around me a creepy, multi-voice, static-filled chuckle - it was very familiar. I checked my system and network logs - somebody was hammering my firewall. Oh, so that's how they were playing this? Suddenly, the 'creepy atmosphere' made a lot more sense. I was being tested by Black-hats. They thought they could put me off balance with a 'freaking the norms' routine. Well, two could play that game.
I let my firewall do its job while I looked for...ah ha! Bluetooth speakers. Grabbing a modified 'boosted' Bluetooth antenna out of my bag, I plugged it into the laptop and ran one of my 'prank' programs - the creepy not-voice coming out of the speakers cut off. As well as, apparently, the infra-sound I had been feeling-hearing since I walked in - I could suddenly hear the 'absence' of it. That explains why I've been so jumpy...clever. In place of that, a cheerful bit of music started up...before quickly turning to something less cheerful.
Sebastian's phone rang. My computer pinged. I turned the volume on the song down and looked up at Sebastian with a plain question on my face. He just smiled wolfishly and answered the phone, putting it immediately on speaker phone.
"Tha-a-at was a-a mistake, hacker." Oh, that was where I had heard the voice before. Someone had gone and made a SHODAN voice emulator. Cute. I was betting it was a complex text-to-speech program. "Your simple ma-machine has bec-come a-a part of-of me n-n-now. O-oh l-look, you-ou wer-er-er foo-oo-oolish-sh eno-ou-ough to-o-o leave-eave me-e-e a-a-a cre-ed-ed-it-it ca-a-ard..." I waited a few more seconds. "Wha-a-a-at...?"
I grinned, and decided to cut the emulator off before it could get any more annoying. "Stop that stupid voice program and listen for a bit. I'm not some idiot who's going to make a mistake just because of some creepy voices and weird building. The SHODAN thing was a nice touch, but way over the top. I'm betting you regret that, now that your processors are spinning their wheels as fast as they can go, yeah? You fell for the oldest trick in the counter-hacking book - you jumped right into my honeypot the instant I opened an 'insecure' connection on my box...and now you're infected. If you hurry, you might not have to re-install your machine's OS...but by that time, this test will be over. Happy hunting!"
"In-n-n-se-ct-ct-ct! I-I-I-" click. Sebastian hung up the phone as the song I'd started on the speakers finished up and I unplugged the Bluetooth super-antenna.
"So, any more tests?"
Sebastian smiled and shook his head. "No, I think Lord Phantomhive will be quite pleased by your performance. The contract will be forwarded to you...with a bonus, if you can start immediately."
I looked a bit concerned. "How immediately?"
A second later the doors opened again, and some professional looking men in uniforms started coming in with various furniture-sized boxes and other things that...looked like sci-fi movie props. "Very immediately."
When they rolled past with something I swear looked like one of the GladOS AI cores you toss into the disposal at the end of Portal, followed by a 'Sugar Rush Speedway' arcade machine...I suddenly have to wonder exactly how much of the past few minutes has really been a fake-out.
============================================================
Name: [Redacted]
Age: [Redacted]
Height: [Redacted]
Weight: [Redacted]
Location: Boston, MA, USA
Ethnicity: [Redacted]
Login: Kestrel
Access Level: Administrator
Charisma: (##===)
Intelligence: (#####)
Wisdom: (##===)
Sanity: [Redacted]
Fortitude: (#====)
Mech: (###==)
Tech: (#####)
Macguiver: (###==)
Applicable Skills:
Programmer, Sysadmin, Hacker, Cracker, Root
Electrician, Plumber, Carpenter
Video Gamer, TV Troper, Esoteric Trivia Specialist
Friends/Contacts at MIT
Complex:
Warehouse #13, Bay Circle
Boston, MA, USA
1 Floor (2.5 stories), with catwalks at 12ft.
1 Elevated Manager's office
Amenities:
Electricity
Internal-only WiFi LAN
Individual Firewalls
The building is a Faraday Cage
'Tenants'
Wreck-It Ralph (entire caste, in arcade machines)
H.A.L. 9000 (2001)
Agent Smith, the Architect, the Oracle, the Merovingian (Matrix)
Joshua (War Games)
MCP (Tron)
AM (I have no mouth and I must scream)
SHODAN, XERXES (System Shock)
GLaDOS (Portal)
"Not this again!" Minerva said. "Albus, it was You-Know-Who, not you, who marked Harry as his equal. There is no possible way that the prophecy could be talking about you!" - Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality, Chapter 84