by tlaero » Sun, 15Aug02 00:15
Finding Miranda
Lucas drummed his fingers on the faux-wood table. Why did he come early to these meetings? They never started on time. He told himself that he didn't want to be late for a meeting presented by a director with a VP in attendance. He'd even come close to convincing himself that was it when then the real reason walked in.
Miranda was wearing a frilly yellow jacket with matching pants. Every edge that touched skin sprouted a white lace fringe. The exception to this was her feet, where she wore calf-high boots with two inch heels, making her even taller than normal. She wore a white sunhat with a large brim and carried a lacy sun umbrella. It was overcast outside. It had been for the last two weeks.
Nothing about Miranda's outfit surprised Lucas. Of course, he'd never seen this particular one before. But in six months of working together, he'd never seen her wear the same outfit twice. This one was pretty reserved--it scored low on "the Miranda Scale"--but it made her stand out like a sore thumb. Everyone else in the room wore drab gray suits.
Most of the other people present didn't know Miranda, and their reactions ranged from a hastily covered snicker to an outright perturbed frown from the VP. If she even noticed any of this she didn't show it. She just set her umbrella down on the table and grabbed a spare tablet. Without so much as a look around, she sat down and started reading. Lucas focused on his own tablet, but found himself frequently glancing back at her. The way her hair--straight and all brown even though yesterday it had been fully braided with gold accents--rested gently on her shoulders. The way her deep brown eyes seemed to pierce into the tablet. The way her lips set naturally into a slight smile. It didn't matter what kind of outfit she wore or what weird things she did to her hair, Miranda's just being in the room held Lucas's attention.
He frowned and forced his eyes back to his tablet. Not that he'd ever worked up the nerve to tell her any of this. He'd come early today because leaving at the normal time would have resulted in them walking over together, and he didn't know what to do with himself in such a situation. As usual, a tide of embarrassment washed over him. He wasn't this incompetent with everyone. In so many ways, Miranda was unique. But it was only a small comfort that everyone else in the division seemed equally unable to approach her. And, if she recognized any of this attention, she never let on.
Mikhail Romanov breezed into the room quietly, set his tablet on the table, and said, "Are we ready to begin?" in accent-free English. In this transplanted company, many of the newcomers tended to fall back on their native tongues. But English was the only common language spoken in this area and, as director of security, Mikhail wasn't about to let people get lax on anything. He gave the room a second to object, and then pointed to Lucas, "Okay, we've got a developer to keep me honest," he then turned to the VP, "and a vice president to be the decision maker. This should be a short meeting, as this is the fourth division that has bought off on these coding standards." That he had ignored the six other people in the room didn't seem to bother them, though Lucas felt a bit subconscious for having been singled out.
"I'm sure you're all aware of the whys for our coding standards, so let's skip to section two and look at some examples." Most of the people in the room tapped their tablets at the same time, though it was clear that the VP was reading mail, not the standards proposal Mikhail was going through. Lucas cast a covert glance at Miranda and saw that she was frowning down at her tablet. He wondered what was wrong.
Mikhail started to speak again, but Miranda interrupted him. "Excuse me."
In a friendly voice, he responded, "Yes?"
"Have you had a black-hat check your code out?"
He shook his head and, in a less friendly voice, said, "No. As you know, we're a legal company."
She shrugged, "We could have one do some free-lance. Those guys practically think in code. They could help find any flaws in this."
Now a bit cold, he replied, "There are no flaws in this."
She looked back at her tablet and said, "I'm sorry, but yes there are. Right here--"
He cut her off. "Look, miss..."
With a cautious expression, she replied evenly, "Miranda. Just Miranda."
"Okay, Miranda. This code has been inspected by the best security people in the company. There are no flaws in it."
Her face fell into a slight frown. Continuing to keep her voice even, she replied, "Well then you're going to need to find some better security people. Because on line forty-eight--"
Mikhail's face became red, and he yelled, "Miss Miranda! As best as I can tell, you're here to take notes. So why don't you sit quietly, do your job, and let the big boys do theirs?"
The room went silent. Even the VP looked up from his mail. Miranda, her face emotionless, focused her probing eyes on Mikhail and just sat there. Lucas's eyes darted back and forth between the two of them. "Come on," he thought. "Smile. Laugh. Do something to suggest you're kidding." But Mikhail didn't back down. He just glared at Miranda.
After an excruciating ten seconds, she silently stood up and turned toward the door. Lucas's heart sunk into his stomach. He had to say something. He had to do something. This was Miranda. He couldn't let Mikhail's treatment go uncontested. But, as she walked to the door, he couldn't find anything to say. Or was it that he couldn't find the nerve?
When she reached the door, Mikhail took a breath and said, "As I was saying."
Lucas ignored him. In fact, everyone in the room ignored him. They were all watching Miranda. And, from the way they were shifting in their chairs, most of them were feeling self-conscious. It was equally clear that everyone was surprised when she didn't go through the doorway. She walked past it to a whiteboard on the far end of the room, where she picked up a marker and started writing. Her back was to everyone, so no one could fully see her words.
While most of the room tried to figure out what Miranda was doing, Mikhail continued on as though she had left. Lucas looked down at line forty-eight and read it over again and again. It was a relatively complicated piece of code, but he couldn't see anything wrong with it. He focused again on Miranda. She was actually handwriting something, not using the voice recognizer, and her letters were strikingly smooth and readable. This was rare in a world where no one wrote anything by hand.
Finally, Mikhail gave up and turned his attention to her. The room waited in silence as she finished what she was working on. Then she stepped away from the wallboard and turned back to face them. In an emotionless voice, she said, "Excuse me, Mikhail. Perhaps you can help me with something. But I'm going to need you to use really small words so that any floozies in the room can understand." Even Mikhail cringed a bit at the raw emotion she poured into that one word. Innocently, she continued, "What would happen if a hacker ran this code," she pointed back to the board, "against line forty-eight on your tablet?"
She'd written an entire program, with perfect syntax. Though short, it was complex. It took Lucas a minute to figure it out. Mikhail caught on a second later, and he immediately turned ghostly white. Most of the rest of the room couldn't follow it, though the VP gasped and said, "Oh my God." He turned to Mikhail, "Did you say you're running this code on production systems?"
Miranda's program would exploit a flaw no one had ever considered. Every system in the company ran semiautonomous AI programs. And, if Mikhail's code was running on one of these systems, Miranda's program would cause the AIs to destroy it. Now red faced with embarrassment instead of anger, he stammered, "How did you--"
Keeping her face passive and her voice emotionless, Miranda interrupted him by saying, "Seems obvious to me." She walked back to her seat, sat down, and focused on her tablet.
The VP said, "Mikhail, am I correct that she just invented a new class of hacker attack?" Dumbfounded, Mikhail nodded. The VP continued, "Well then. I suppose we should name it then."
Continuing to look at her tablet, and with no irony in her voice, Miranda said, "Call it 'The Floozy Attack.'"
Everyone except Mikhail snickered. But Miranda looked up and fixed the VP with a stare that said in no uncertain terms that she was serious. He coughed in spite of himself and said, "Okay. 'The Floozy Attack' it is."
Mikhail looked queasy.