The Brave and the Bold

by Hans G. Schantz

  Amit and I each had standard laptops thoroughly compromised by the pervasive surveillance hooks built into all the latest gear. We compounded that by using Omnitia’s Omnimail like good, compliant young citizens with nothing to hide, sacrificing any privacy for the sake of “free” email. We used them for homework and everyday communication and any casual web browsing.

  Our secret work, we did on different machines. Rob was confident that the surplus military laptops we were using had none of the surveillance hooks built into standard civilian and commercial computers. “DoD isn’t stupid enough to let anyone compromise their own gear, not even NSA.” Amit assured me that his networking software would strip off or fake any relevant identifying information that could lead back to incriminate us.

  I hoped they were both right. I wasn’t so confident, though. I wanted better security and a good place to hide the notebook I used for reviewing and working on the Tolliver Library data and for communicating online.

  One of Rob’s carpenter friends had the answer. He built me a beautiful little bedside stand out of oak planks. If you pushed the pegs in back on either side, the thick center shelf would slide out. The end of the shelf popped out, and there was just enough space inside for my small secure laptop and a flat panel directional WiFi antenna – far more compact and efficient than the Pringles can antennas we’d been using when we first started wardriving for anonymous WiFi connections. When I wasn’t using the gear, it remained safely stored and hidden.

  Furthermore, I had an alarm clock with a built-in video camera. Amit got one for recording his sexual conquests in our dorm room, but I don’t think he ever managed to use it for that purpose. With the built-in motion detection, though, it made a good security camera. I set it on my bedside stand, pointed at the door.

  The final part of my security regime was detecting if someone had been in my apartment. There, I picked up a tip from Rob, and I carefully placed eyebrow hairs or fingernail clippings in strategic locations – on top of unused kitchen cabinet doors, between the front pages of my hollowed-out book safe. I clamped a fingernail between the closet door and the frame, so it would fall out if anyone opened the door.

  By the time I finished my security preparations, got back from the store, and made some dinner, I could eat my spaghetti in the confidence that I was moved in and ready to start work. After dinner, I packed a lunch, and realized baggies weren’t very good for storing leftover spaghetti noodles. I added storage containers to my shopping list, then I added note cards at the last moment. Amit taught me a trick where those notecards would come in handy. I made a second trip to the store. Satisfied I was as well settled in as I could be, I got a good night’s sleep.

  I showed up early for work the next morning. Turns out I could have slept in. A dozen of us were waiting to start work at 8 am. I took a page out of Amit’s game plans and played Master of Ceremonies for the incoming interns. I wrote my name, phone, and email on top of each of a dozen cards. I then started passing the notecards around the room, asking everyone to add their contact information on the next line and pass the cards along. In a few minutes, everyone had each other’s contact information. I’d been concerned there wouldn’t be enough time to complete that exercise, since we were supposed to start at 8 am. Now I had to come up with something else to keep the momentum going.

  “I’m Pete Burdell,” I kicked off the introductions, trying to keep my enthusiasm up. “I’m a junior at Georgia Tech, studying physics and electrical engineering. Looking forward to a fun and exciting summer here in Huntsville.”

  “Hey! Great to meet you, Pete! Put ‘er there!” Another student held out his hand and when I clasped it, he took my hand in both of his. “I’m Jonathan D. Rice the third, call me ‘Johnny Rice,’ and I’m a ‘ramblin’ wreck,’ too! I’m a senior at Georgia Tech, studying management!” I thought I’d turned my enthusiasm up to eleven, but Johnny Rice was a turbo-charged package of relentless congeniality. “Fantastic idea of yours, Pete, with passing around these cards so we can all get each other’s contact information. There’s a whole wonderful city out there to explore, and I’m looking forward to taking it all in with all my new friends! Don’t let me monopolize the conversation, though. Who are you?”

  Taken aback by Johnny’s enthusiasm, the rather attractive girl sitting next to him replied, “I’m Kirin. I’m a sophomore in management at Georgia Tech.” She seemed a bit timid.

  “Wow! What a small world!” Johnny enthused. He’d completely pre-empted my own game plan to be alpha intern, and was doing it way better than me. Kirin was awfully cute, and I was looking forward to getting to know her better.

  By the time Johnny had worked his way around the lobby, I could only sit back in awe of his performance. He’d solicited everyone to introduce themselves, teased out a bit more information, and made everyone feel comfortable and at home. He’d helped a couple of Auburn students realize they both went to the same school, casually defused some tension with a hard-core Alabama fan, and even found something nice to say about Vanderbilt’s lackluster football program. He was a natural. I was having to work at being outgoing, and the difference was obvious.

  I got up and walked over to the receptionist, “Hi,” I glanced down at her name, “Julie, is it? I’m Pete Burdell. We were all supposed to be here at 8 am to start work, can you check to see what’s going on?”

  Julie assured me that “Rachel from HR” would be with us “soon.” I reported back to the group. Johnny thanked me, as if I were his assistant, and launched into a round with everyone telling their proudest accomplishment. I simply couldn’t compete with Johnny, so I settled into the role of being his number two, helping him out and following his lead.

  At 8:45 am we were “…still missing a few folks. Rachel will start with you when everyone shows up.” Johnny was still going strong.

  An hour later no other interns had arrived, and Rachel finally made an appearance, interrupting Johnny, who was in the middle of encouraging everyone to share the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to them.

  “Why have we been waiting so long?” Kirin asked Rachel.

  “Oh, orientation takes me a full hour, and I didn’t want to have to do it twice if someone came in late,” she explained. “I guess they’re no shows.”

  I thought about Rachel’s math. A dozen of us kept waiting nearly two hours in order to save her from potentially wasting an hour of extra work. Assume 2,000 hours per year. She’d have to be making… I did the math in my head… nearly a quarter million a year for that decision to make economic sense. I got the impression that math and analytical reasoning might not be among Rachel’s core talents.

  I sat through orientation – an explanation of basic policies, company rules, timekeeping, security, and the like. Rachel gave us a checklist and a stack of forms to complete. She clicked busily on her computer in the back of the small conference room while we filled out paperwork. I saw the reflection of Microsoft Solitaire in her glasses when she looked up in mild annoyance to answer the occasional question. Hanging out with Johnny and the rest of the intern crew in the lobby had been way more fun. Finally satisfied with everyone’s paperwork, Rachel handed out work assignments.

  “Off for a fun and exciting day of productive achievement!” Johnny led the crew into the hallway and pulled out a floorplan to help folks figure out where to go.

  I looked at mine. IT Assistant reporting to Dan Humphreys. I confronted Rachel with my offer letter.

  “Hey, Rachel,” I held my offer letter in front of her, “I’m supposed to be ‘Personal Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer,’ reporting directly to Travis Tolliver.” Uncle Larry had greased the skids at corporate to get me into that position.

  “Oh, that’s not right,” she said, condescendingly dismissing my offer letter. “We don’t have a ‘Chief’ Executive Officer, anymore. We no longer use the term ‘Chief’ out of respect for Native Americans. You need to read the Diversity and Sensitivity section of the Code of Cond
uct in our Employee Handbook before you make any more stupid or offensive mistakes like that.”

  I was not about to let myself be out social-justiced by any lame HR poser like Rachel. “The indigenous peoples of the Americas and their communities are rather diverse,” I reminded her in good social-justice fashion, “and generally prefer to be referred to by the name of their particular nation or tribe. Does the Employee Handbook really require disrespectfully lumping together those diverse communities of peoples as ‘Native Americans’?”

  Rachel was taken aback that I’d doubled down on her own social-justice virtue signaling. “I’m not sure if that was considered,” she said tentatively.

  “Does the Employee Handbook also explain the change in my job assignment?” I pushed my offer letter further under her nose while I had her on the defensive.

  I saw the smug look return to her face. “You must realize there’s no way to eradicate the misogyny afflicting corporate institutions like ours without recognizing the oppression intersecting the identities and rights of employees. It’s, like, really that simple.”

  That was both non-responsive and didn’t make any particular sense, so I cocked my head and waited calmly for her to continue.

  “The issue of misogyny in our workplace,” she finally added, “must be framed within a culturally-informed, feminist, survivor-centered, locally-focused, collaborative approach that doesn’t rely on the dictates of a distant corporate office alone. The historic oppressions of the traditional patriarchal workplace require remediation to ensure that the most consequential opportunities are made available irregardless of gender.”

  I parsed the buzzwords and checked my interpretation with her. “You unilaterally modified the job offers made by Tolliver corporate HR up in Tennessee.”

  “Exactly,” she beamed, “to take into account local conditions. Women continue to be underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math. Mr. Tolliver himself is eager to empower the contributions of promising young women like Kirin. He chose her personally to work with him, right outside his office.”

  Yeah, I bet he did. I’d been admiring those curves, I mean contributions, myself in the lobby most of the morning. And playing personal assistant – effectively being a glorified secretary – was going to be more “empowering” for Kirin than actual technical work?

  “You know,” she continued, “Mr. Tolliver will be attending the Social Justice Leadership Forum later this summer, and Kirin is going to have the chance to accompany him – meeting some of the most powerful and important people in the whole world. What a fantastic experience!”

  What a fantastic monkey wrench in my plans… I didn’t know what to say.

  “You need to get to your boss, you know,” Rachel said helpfully. “You were supposed to be there hours ago.”

  Yeah, because YOU kept all us interns waiting… but of course I couldn’t say that. Travis Tolliver and Rachel had between them undone all Uncle Larry’s careful maneuvering to get me to the Civic Circle’s Social Justice Leadership Forum. Obviously, Rachel wasn’t going to be any help. I took a deep breath to collect myself.

  “Where do I need to go?” I interrupted her as she’d already turned to head out the other door.

  “Where are you working?” She looked at my assignment. “You’re working for Dan Humphreys in… it?”

  “No, ‘eye-tee,’ not ‘it.’” I corrected her.

  “Oh,” she said dismissively. “You’ll have to ask Julie at the reception desk. I can’t possibly keep track of everyone.” She turned and left.

  Fifteen minutes later, I found Mr. Humphreys.

  “You’re late,” he welcomed me to his office.

  “HR ran long,” I explained. “They gave me a list of things to do,” I showed him my checklist.

  “Well then, get it done. And take this.” He handed me a cell phone. “That’s the help-desk line. You know computers, right? Answer the phone. Solve their problems. If you get stuck, have ‘em call me,” he handed me a card with his number. “It better not be that they forgot to plug their computer in or failed to try rebooting or turning it off and on again! OK?”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied.

  I stood in line again to get my photo taken for my badge. The keys office appeared to be closed early for the lunch hour I didn’t have time to take yet, so I thought I’d skip a step or two ahead and call to arrange to get my domain login and email account set up. Just then the helpline cell phone rang. I canceled my own call and pulled out the helpline cell phone. Missed call. From my own number. Great.

  I found Mr. Humphreys just as he was locking his door to go for lunch. “What do you want now?” he welcomed me back.

  “Any minute now,” I pointed out, “this phone is going to start ringing with interns needing to get email and domain accounts set up. You want to take this back,” I handed him the helpline cell phone, “or would you rather show me how to set up the accounts?”

  He looked at the phone and back up at me in annoyance at my unreasonable request. “You’re one of the kids with the clearance, aren’t you?”

  “It’s provisional. I’m supposed to have a polygraph exam later this week.”

  He looked at me… mulling it over. He unlocked his door and settled back into his chair with a disgusted grunt. Clickity-click, click-click, click, bang! He punished his enter key to vent his frustration at my interruption of his lunch. Password entered, the server woke up. He opened a file on his desktop and clicked. I heard a laser printer whine down the hall. Finally, he stood and trudged his way down the hall to the printer. I followed. He picked up a printout and turned around, apparently miffed that I was now blocking his way. I stepped aside and followed him back up the hall. He snagged a key from behind a picture hanging on the wall. “This is the spare server room key.” He gave me the impression that if I were halfway competent, I’d have figured that out on my own. He unlocked the adjacent door and returned the key to its hiding place. I followed him in the room. A couple dozen fans hummed from three racks of servers. He lowered himself into the chair and logged on.

  “Here’s a list of all the new intern accounts that need to be created,” he said, placing the printout beside him. “Click here to create an account.” He led me through the process of creating my own domain account. Then, he showed me how to create an email account on the company’s Outlook Exchange Server. “Got it?”

  “I think so,” I took his seat and studied the screen a minute. “So, will my login credentials allow me…” but when I turned, he was already gone. I poked my head out the door and looked down the hall. His door was shut and punctuated by an out to lunch sign. “If you need assistance, call…” It was the number for the help-line phone I was carrying.

  I decided I’d best keep myself logged into his account so I could be sure I could get some work done. It was some kind of server version of the Microsoft OS, but it looked and behaved a lot like Windows XP. I poked around the display and power settings to make sure I wouldn’t get logged off for inactivity.

  It was a good thing I had. In poking around the keyboard I suddenly found myself looking at the desktop for a different server. It took me nearly ten minutes to figure out that the print-screen button toggled the monitor, mouse, and keyboard to connect to a different server. I eventually found the original server I’d been using. I couldn’t figure out why there were two dozen servers. None of them seemed very heavily utilized, and some seemed completely idle – no CPU cycles, and no storage. I had to get back to work, though. And I had to figure out a way to exploit the access Mr. Humphreys had just given me.

  I had a brainstorm. I pulled up Mr. Humphrey’s account information and my own. I compared the two side-by-side. He was a member of a bunch of groups, “Administrators,” “Exec Council,” “Finance,” “Proposals,” “IT,” “Contracts,” “Production,” and a dozen more. I added myself to the same list of groups. That ought to give me the same privileges. I’d have to test that another time, though. I go
t to work on the list of intern accounts.

  An hour later, I had set up everyone’s account and finished eating most of the lunch I packed. Hungry as I was, cold spaghetti didn’t appeal to me, particularly if I had to eat it with my fingers from a baggie. I should have transferred it to one of the storage containers I got from the store on my second trip last night. Better yet, I should have brought my Boy Scout mess kit. I printed out login and password information for the rest of the interns – one page for each.

  I passed through the break area on my way back to the badge office. A partial plate of sandwiches was on the table. As I examined the food hungrily, someone grabbed one.

  “Can anyone help themselves to one?”

  “Sure,” the woman explained. Seeing the look of confusion on my face, she elaborated. “When the executives have guests, they sometimes cater lunches. They bring the leftovers here when they’re done. Help yourself.”

  The turkey and cheese in a croissant roll were even tastier for being free. I finished it off as I arrived at the badge office. I passed out a few of the login information sheets to the other interns waiting in line to pick up their badges. The rest, I left with Julie at the front desk. I figured all the interns would know how to find her.

  I found Mr. Humphreys back in his office. “The intern accounts are set up,” I confirmed.

  “Yeah, OK,” he replied absentmindedly, continuing to focus on the screen. With his left hand he reached out for a stack of printed emails and passed them to me. “Take care of these,” he said.