Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow

Author:Cory Doctorow [Doctorow, Cory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science
ISBN: 9781250757524
Publisher: Tor, Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2020-10-12T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

I saw Ray a couple times more around the office that week and it was as awkward as if we’d hooked up. More awkward. A mere exchange of fluids would have been less consequential. We hadn’t been practicing safe hex.

I ran into him with his roller-bag in the elevator lobby on his way down to catch his car to the airport. We were alone, except for the cameras.

“Safe flight.”

“Thanks. It was, uh, really great to work with you, Masha. I mean it. You’re doing amazing work here, and you’re personally, well, you’re good at your job. If you’re ever in Fort Meade, look me up. I’ll get you a tour. Maybe we’ll hire you away from these private-sector types.” He smiled. He looked sweaty.

“I don’t think Uncle Sam can afford me. There’s a certain manner to which I’ve grown accustomed to living.”

“I hear ya. Maybe I’ll hit you up for a job, then.”

“Above my pay grade, Ray, but I’d write you a reference.”

His elevator came, sparing us one more instant of excruciating banter. He shook my hand—sweaty palm—and left.

I didn’t hear from him again until someone from the National Reconnaissance Office visited to work with us on merging satellite data with cellular location data and quietly slipped me a thumb drive, telling me that “Ray said you’d take care of it.” My stomach did a slow roll when he said those words, half-convinced that Ray had been caught and this was a sting, half-convinced that it wasn’t a sting, but that Ray was getting drunk in seedy Falls Church bars and telling anyone who’d listen that there was a chick in Mexico City who’d take their leaks off their hands no questions asked and see that they found a good home. It was hard to tell which would be worse, honestly.

I spent the rest of the day trying to find a way to sneak off with the NRO guy—American-born Chinese, Caltech comp-sci guy, anime hair—but he dodged me. When I saw him with his roller-bag, I took the service elevator to the ground floor and beat him to his airport car.

“I need to fill in some damaged baggage paperwork,” I said. “You don’t mind if I ride with you, right?”

He knew he was licked and threw his bag in the trunk without a word. He rated a town car with a privacy screen between the passenger compartment and the driver. It wasn’t secure, not even by the standards of Ray and his phone-in-the-freezer balcony routine, but I made a point of putting my phone in my bag and then putting that in the trunk where the NRO guy could see it. He sighed and put his phone in the front compartment of his roller-bag.

Once we were under way, he turned on the radio—a Control Machete marathon that a local station had been heavily promoting—and cranked the bass all the way up, which either meant that he was into jeep beats or he believed that audio bugs had a hard time contending with bass interference.

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