Intentional Consequences

by Charles Harris

  John Matthews caught Eva at the bar and asked, “How’s Daneva Tech doing?” Debbie’s husband, John, was a corporate attorney specializing in technology companies.

  “We’re making great progress on our image editing software,” Eva said. “With our latest AI algorithms, we can not only create altered photos and videos—deepfakes, in the current lingo—we can detect alterations made by less sophisticated tools. Steve Cole, my old classmate and co-founder, is doing a solid job as CEO. We’re planning on beta testing this summer. Our investors are ecstatic, especially the government guys.”

  “Good stuff, Eva. Dan must be proud of you.”

  “I wish. He’s an engineer, which means he’s more focused on his own toys at JPAC than anything I’m doing with Daneva Tech. I’m used to it. Besides, I keep him at arm’s length on Daneva’s technology. No reason for him to know the details.”

  “It’s a good rule,” John said. “Wish some of my clients remembered it. If you don’t know something, you can’t spill the beans to somebody else, even on accident.”

  The party went on for a couple of additional hours, with more dancing and swimming. Scott Perkin’s Speedo and Bob’s tan-through trunks got a lot of looks from the women on the dance floor. Eva made a mental note to buy Dan some short stretchy trunks like Bob’s. Dan had worn a version of those on their last trip to St. Barth’s, but Bob’s were thinner and sexier. She didn’t think she’d get Dan into a Speedo.

  All the women danced with all the men, although they stayed with their partners for most of the slow dances, which could get a little erotic from the intimate contact. Eva enjoyed dancing topless with all the guys, slow or fast. Li pulled Dan back onto the dance floor every time he sat down.

  It was another Fun Party, but the drone had taken its toll.

  Late afternoon was typically the time when the Fun Party guests changed out of their wet swimsuits and put something else on for dessert and the evening fun. Tops for the women were usually optional, or at least minimal. Given the drone’s effect on some of the guests, Eva wanted to do what she could to keep the party going. Slipping into her bedroom, she stripped off her thong and tied a long sheer green jungle print pareo low around her hips, leaving her left leg bare to her waist and providing little cover for her naked body beneath.

  Back by the pool, Eva turned down the music and yelled, “Hey, everybody, I’m going to bring out desert in a few minutes. Coffee, tea and expresso will be on the bar, along with after dinner drinks. I’m also putting some fresh Hawaiian orchid leis on the bar, so please take one for whatever you’re wearing. Let’s have some more fun!” I hope we can do that, she thought as she slipped a white lei over her tan breasts.

  As Eva expected, the drone didn’t seem to have much effect on what the guys changed into. Most of them just reverted to some version of what they were wearing when they arrived. Dan put on long madras lounging pants. Eva was more concerned about the women. The results were mixed. Most of the women put on short shorts, beach pants or long pareos. A few stayed topless with their Hawaiian leis. More pulled on sheer tee shirts or unbuttoned shirts tied open at the waist.

  Li was the surprise. Standing in her short black skirt at the far side of the pool where she’d left her beach bag, she pulled her open weave bikini top off and slipped a narrow black silk scarf with red and gold dragons around her neck, draping it loosely across her bare breasts. Smiling, she stepped out of her thong and tossed it into her bag.

  As the sun dropped lower in the clear afternoon sky, the guests helped themselves to the Keurig and expresso machines and more drinks. Everyone ate dessert. After spending some time with Dan giggling about her dragon scarf blowing off her breasts when she walked, Li pitched in to help Eva manage the refills.

  During desert, Debbie caught Eva alone and said, “This drone thing really shook me up. I’m not embarrassed about showing off my breasts. I just feel so vulnerable. I had no control over that drone showing up and I have no control over what happens with that video.”

  Eva said, “I know. We all feel that way when our privacy gets shattered. Trust is so important to human relationships.”

  Debbie said, “Just so you know, while I’m concerned about the video, I don’t want this crazy incident to ruin the fun we’ve all had together. I’m not running and hiding. We need to help each other through this.”

  Hope they all feel that way, Eva thought. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said.

  As the guests finished dessert, Li surprised Eva by pitching in to clean up, picking up empty glasses and beer bottles and attracting a lot of attention flashing with her outfit. Standing with Li later, Eva said, “You don’t seem bothered by the drone.”

  Li said, “No. Although it was strange, I am not concerned about whatever it was doing.”

  Eva said, “Your scarf is beautiful. Are you used to wearing things like that?”

  Li said, “Thanks. No, this is not usual for me. You probably remember what I had on at your other party here. I wanted to do better to fit in this time.”

  Eva said, “You did well. A big change from your first party. Where did you and Scott meet?”

  Li said, “It was a blind date. One of my friends who works at Dell invited us to a tech meet up so he could introduce us. I’m in tech marketing and Scott works for a company here that provides outsourced system administrators. So far, we have had a good time together.”

  Eva said, “Did you grow up in Austin?”

  Li said, “No, I was born in China. I spent most of my school years in New Zealand. A lot of wealthy Chinese bought houses there so their children could have a British-based education. I went to Tsinghua University in Beijing and obtained an MBA in marketing at the University of Notre Dame. I have been in the United States ever since, although I try to get back to China frequently.”

  Despite Eva’s best efforts, the evening ended earlier than most of their Fun Parties. No one wanted to be rude by leaving too soon, but Eva could tell the drone had sucked the fun out of the party. Better to write this one off and rebuild spirits next time, Eva thought. We just need to be sure there will be a next time. By eight o’clock, the guests were covering up and moving toward the front door. In her white lei and sheer long skirt at the door, Eva joined Dan in hugging and kissing their guests goodbye.

  ◆◆◆

  Later that evening, after their friends had left and Dan and Eva had enjoyed the benefits the party had on their sex drive, they were sharing some cognac on a double lounger outside by the pool under one of the propane heaters. Dan was in boxers and a tee shirt while Eva was wearing a purple lei and white lace bikini panties. “What did you think of the party?” he asked.

  She said, “The drone killed the Fun Party atmosphere. I was even feeling vulnerable—not from being videoed topless, but from having our personal privacy shattered. Before the drone showed up, it was another great party. Lots of good dancing.”

  “You were as hot as you always are.” he said. “I don’t know if you noticed or not. You were driving the guys crazy with those slow dances by the pool.”

  She smiled. “Would have been tough not to notice. Bare breasts on bare chests tend to do that, with or without a drone.”

  Chapter 2

  By 10:00 a.m. Sunday morning, Dan was at the office, unloading the drone. Eva was home, doing an online road race on her Peloton stationary bike.

  After the race, Eva rinsed off in the pool shower and air dried on a lounge chair by the pool. Wrapping a towel around her waist, she made a salad for lunch and ate topless by the pool while she read the Sunday Times on her iPad.

  Looking up, she gazed across her heavily landscaped back yard. Enclosed on three sides by privacy fences and thick hedges, the three-acre lakefront property was a secluded oasis filled with oaks, flowering trees, and beds of Texas wildflowers. A huge deck made of native Austin limestone flowed from the house around the long, narrow pool. At the far end, a hot tub jutted off to one side. The pool was perfect for swimming laps, as wel
l party fun. We’re so lucky to have this place, she thought. I never expected I’d ever live in a house like this. She smiled. Of course, I never thought I couldn’t.

  The house was a one-story modern that hugged the land. Tall windows flowed across the back, while small high windows ensured privacy from the front. Set back from the street at the end of a winding wooded drive, the house had an attached three-car garage and a separate art studio building with an extra guest suite.

  Two hours later, Eva was dressed and in her studio for a Skype video call with Steve Cole. Eva liked video calls for business because they kept people from multi-tasking. She also liked letting her callers see who they were dealing with. For video calls with her Daneva Tech team, that usually meant wearing a tee shirt like the software developers. On video calls for her art business, it often meant sporting something sexy and stylish. With Cole on the call, today was a tee shirt day.

  Eva gave Cole a report on the drone invasion at their party, not mentioning what people were wearing at the time. “Dan thinks it was a surveillance drone, maybe trying to do some network probing or business espionage on his company. He didn’t seem to think it had anything to do with Daneva Tech.”

  “We’ll double check our network logs. I’ll get with Dan on what he’s seeing and doing.”

  Cole provided an update on Daneva’s image editing software, which they called VADS, for Visual Alteration and Detection System. “The dev team’s making breakthrough after breakthrough. The system now uses 33 separate factors to alter a photo or a video in ways unlikely to be detected. Most of these are AI-based, with ongoing machine learning from our growing database. The exciting thing is we’re now able to apply this whole process in reverse, in effect using the same 33 factors as forensic tests to identify alterations to digital photos and videos. Camera noise is especially cool. As you know, it’s the detection side that’s really going to set us apart.”

  “Fantastic,” Eva said. “Congratulations to the team!” They talked about some of the detection results. Cole displayed examples by screen share, zooming in on the algorithms used to identify inconsistencies in facial expressions and head movements in videos.

  “Where are we on the VADS software decoy we’ve been building?”

  “Our outside cyber experts have cleared it. It’s basically ready to deploy. By the way, In-Q-Tel told me last week the CIA and the FBI are getting more concerned about China’s spying in the U.S. They used to view the Chinese primarily as hackers. Now they say the Chinese are putting more agents on the ground and combining physical intrusion with technology-based intrusion. They’re also targeting smaller companies and universities because they have weaker cyber and physical security defenses—companies like ours.”

  “That’s disturbing. Tell me again about our decoy.”

  “It has most of the tools for editing and creating altered images, but it excludes the VADS algorithms for detecting fraudulent images. So, you can use it to create fakes, but you can’t use it to detect them. The editing and creation tools degrade as the decoy is used. The decoy also includes a tagging algorithm that alters a small number of pixels across an edited image to record identifying information like software version, date and UTC time of the edit or creation and, if location data is available, the location identifier. If any of those tagging features are removed, the code will lock and destroy itself.”

  “I’d rather have it lock their machine and destroy everything on their network.”

  “I know you would. It’s hard to do. Plus, the Feds discourage it. Things like that have a nasty habit of escaping with unintended consequences. Remember the Stuxnet virus on the Iranian centrifuges.”

  “Yeah, I know. Back on the tagging, wouldn’t the altered pixels be discernable?”

  “Theoretically possible, but out of a million or more pixels in a typical image, we can scatter them so the chance of detection is extremely low. Elimination of the special pixels in data compression or editing is more of a risk. We can control where the special pixels are randomly dropped so we can find them.”

  “You know my opinion on this. We need to deploy it. If our other cyber defenses fail and the bad guys get in our network, I want to lay a trap that has at least some chance of exposing them. Setting them up with a decoy to download is better than sitting around feeling helpless. You know me. I don’t do helpless well.”

  “Good. We’ll add the decoy to our network today. Remember, the real source code and our other crown jewels will remain on computers that have never been connected to the internet.”

  ◆◆◆

  Dan made it home by 3:00 p.m. so they could keep their date to go out on Lake Travis for a few hours. After the drone incident, Eva was ready for some fun.

  Because it was created as a giant reservoir to contain flash floods, the water height of Lake Travis fluctuates dramatically. To deal with this, the boathouses and docks are designed to float. To reach their boathouse, Dan and Eva followed a limestone paver pathway that wound over 400 feet across their gently sloping back yard to a platform with an open electric tram. They took the tram down a steeper rocky slope to another platform near the water. From the bottom platform, they walked across a suspended metal gangplank to the boathouse. As Eva liked to explain to their friends, even with the tram you learn quickly not to leave towels, drinks, blankets or anything else at the house.

  The afternoon was beautiful, with temperatures in the high seventies. Dan had on his favorite boating outfit—bright blue board shorts and a white polo shirt. Eva was wearing a white cheeky bikini bottom topped by a short-sleeved rash guard made of semi-sheer mesh fabric with yellow and white flowers. The top looked like it was airbrushed on. Eva brought along a short white lace kimono coverup in case they stopped some place where she wanted a little less exposure.

  Almost 5’10”, with short dark brown hair and penetrating green eyes, Eva was cute, athletic and just sexy enough to be enticing but not threatening. She had an outgoing personality and a passion about life that she’d inherited from her mother, who grew up in Valencia, Spain. Dan had asked her out the first week she showed up at his high school at the beginning of their junior year. She had thought he was worth at least one date. Dan was a math and computer whiz with some nerdy tendencies. He was good looking, with sandy hair, blue eyes and friendly smile. He was also a star defensive back on the football team. Most important to Eva, he respected her art and intellect as well as her looks. From that first date on, neither one of them had dated anyone else.

  By the time they graduated from high school, they had both been accepted at three top-tier colleges: Carnegie Mellon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. All three had superb programs in visual arts as well as engineering and computer science. Whatever else might happen to them, they were going to college together. They went to Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, where Dan’s dad had also graduated.

  They were married a week after they received their undergraduate degrees. Dan went on to get his master’s at CMU, while Eva worked days at the Carnegie Museum of Art next to CMU and added to her growing portfolio of digital art in their small apartment at night.

  After working on babies for eight months, they learned Eva couldn’t conceive or bear children. For years afterwards, they rode an emotional roller coaster thinking and praying about adoption, surrogates and medical breakthroughs. Following five years of prayers and late-night talks, they finally walked away from having children the only way they could.

  They were coming up on 13 years of marriage this summer. Although both were driven, Eva had learned they were motivated by vastly different needs. Constantly competing with his father’s success, Dan needed acknowledgment, which he measured as grades, wealth and recognition. People and personal relationships were well down his list. He had decent social skills but turned them on only when he thought they’d help him get something he wanted. In contrast, Eva was motivated by creativity, friends and good times. She worked hard and expected he
r work to achieve success, but she wasn’t burdened by a fear of failing or the need for constant reinforcement. Setbacks for her were opportunities to learn and move ahead. While Dan was always measuring his progress against some benchmark to feed his ego, Eva was flying free, looking forward to what she could become.

  When Eva competed with Dan, she was good-natured about it. When Dan competed with her, he expected to win and often pouted when he didn’t. Initially, Eva would fight to the finish in a head-to-head contest. Over time, she learned when she needed to step back to let Dan have the edge on the things that fed his self-esteem. None of this lessened her expectation of being quietly in control on the important things, which she nearly always was.

  At the boathouse, they retrieved the keys from the locked key box and pulled out flotation vests and some extra towels from the equipment trunk. They rode their two matching Kawasaki Ultra jet skis for almost an hour, sometimes racing each other, sometimes riding together and sometimes just idling and talking in the afternoon sun.

  After returning to the boathouse, they took out their 27-foot Sea Ray speed boat and cruised slowly around one side of huge lake. They pulled in at one of their favorite marinas across the lake for burgers, fries, beers and a little country music. Eva’s outfit drew enough admiring glances that she just carried the coverup. She smiled, knowing Dan was loving the attention. She liked it as much as he did.

  Taking the boat back on the lake, Dan and Eva wrapped up in a blanket and watched the sun set. As dusk fell, they made love on the sun deck. They idled back to their boathouse in the dark. Dan pulled the blanket around them as he hugged Eva tightly from behind.

  Chapter 3