Shodan didn’t appear to mind, as he waited to find out what would happen next, another message popped up: “You’ve been asking about Bitcoin on the forums. I don’t know how much you’ve googled on the subject, but I think that I can answer most of your questions directly if you don’t want to wade … Read more
Special Agent Ellis Warren found himself clearly out of his depth. Years of training as a field operative, extensive hand-to-hand experience, and seminars in profiling aggressors didn’t give him any edge against the pixelated fox-like creature on his computer. He’d spent the better part of the day trying to get into a discussion with the … Read more
“Actually, no,” Elaine said. “Neither of these Universities shows a great amount of anomalies. What is anomalous here is that ASU generally receives a lot more graduate students from out of state than they do from their own undergraduate population. In this case, the opposite is true. Something Dr. Fedora said earlier today got me … Read more
Zane enthroned himself in his ergonomic computer chair in the living room as he, Elaine, Frog, Roger, and Hadaly all held an audience by the flickering light of the numerous monitors. Each one currently displayed scenes from different video games as they cycled through downloading all the various media feeds that Zane consumed during a … Read more
She waited for the girls to seat themselves before gradually descending back into her own. The sway-backed leather seat seemed to swallow her whole. “Today I received the most astounding surprise,” Fedora said. One of her spider hands scrabbled for her spectacles—a strange pair of glasses that looked entirely out of place on her thin … Read more
Frog grabbed her safari hat and snugged it atop her head. She flung the door to the hallway—she paused a moment there, a silhouette framed by the sudden brightness of the Computing Commons flooding into the dimly lit room. “I’ll tell Zane we’re going, I think he’s downstairs doing homework on the atrium computers,” she … Read more
The next day landed on a Friday, the results of the winners from the previous day’s DarkNet exploits would be revealed after the majority of classes for the day at ended 5pm. According to Elaine’s intelligence on the subject—from Zane via Frog mostly—it looked like his ARG team had tied with Brad’s team due to … Read more
“When she does go to prom on this leg, she’ll be able to wear a dress that shows off her legs. It will have a similar complexion to the rest of her body and only someone looking very closely will be able to tell that she’s wearing a prosthetic.” She jabbed a thumb over her … Read more
With the welding visor down, Elaine couldn’t see anything except for an augmented reality interface and the subject of her work: a miniaturized servo-actuator designed to add extra mechanical strength to some myofiber muscles inside of a prosthetic leg. The new myofibers involved a torsional nanotube carbon yarn awash in electrolytic fluid to bear away … Read more
“Schemes involving code breaking, I suspect,” she said. “I watched this World War II documentary on the History Channel where they talked about Enigma Machines and codes…I think that’s what they were working on. He and the rest of his Poker Night buddies—I’m not sure what they do on their Poker Nights, but it’s not … Read more