“She won’t die, exactly,” Elaine said. “Hadaly-Actual is here and she’ll live on.” “Aren’t we obliged to at least try?” “No,” the two AI’s said in unison. “It is Hadaly’s persona, her decision,” Elaine said. “I know we don’t have time to get down to brass-tacks about the definition of what-is-alive, but right now Hadaly…Eigen … Read more
“I can’t upload a sample of the virus,” Elaine said. “It’s extremely contagious and I cannot let it escape the quarantine. I activated the Tesla-Faraday-Voynich barrier for that purpose. And the eldritch EMP generator has been at red-line since I activated the seal; it’s on a tripwire discharge failsafe. This virus is not escaping this … Read more
“Coming in loud and clear,” Frog said. “What now?” “I have established the diagnostic net,” Elaine said as she caught a rolling chair, sat in it, and then slid it across the room to another workstation. Her fingers danced across the keyboard like a concert pianist at a recital, flourishing single-handedly time-to-time to gesture in … Read more
[Vulnerable by Kyt Dotson is a short story in the Black Hat Magick series. It is the second-in-sequence after Invincible, published earlier on this blog.] — The Machine Bay beneath the basement of the Engineering Center sat in a state of potent silence. Its various machines and workbenches waited in sepulchral quiet until a single command from the … Read more
“I found out something interesting about Tango’s professors,” Hadaly said. “Is it related to your cheating ring investigation?” Elaine asked. She’d been engrossed in data collating behind her goggles—the empty antechamber and the stairs had become her personal data laboratory. On the ground floor, Frog fielded phone calls with other colleges pretending to be an … Read more
“Well, that was cryptic,” Frog said after Tango logged out. Tango didn’t spend long on World of Warcraft, but he did spend long enough to deliver some confirmation to Hadaly about the academic cheating. He didn’t mention any upcoming meeting with the dean or why he was contacting her; instead he dropped the names of … Read more
“With all the relevant data points,” Elaine said, “we can see that someone is using some sort of extremely sophisticated statistical magick to affect the outcome of tests. Now, it’s similar to but not exactly like the Improbability Engine that took hold in the minds of Brad and Larry. The type of effect we’re seeing … Read more
The “highly orchestrated action in Student Records” would begin to play itself out in mere minutes; but Elaine found herself far away from the activity: across campus, standing right outside the Engineering Computing Commons in the air conditioned antechamber of Engineering Wing H. Frog sat on the stairs fiddling with a small laptop open on … Read more
Brad Wright and Casey Vargas stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the semicircle of people that made up their DarkNet ARG team while Frog stood away from them and explained the nature of the operation. At first, the team took to her with suspicion—they knew that she’d been spending time with Brad, but they … 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