Chapter 13 Part 2

Felicia and Telray were not interested in spam, however. What they were planning to do with the technology Sal could only guess, but he knew the implications.

Sal wasn't now dead because Telray had hired him to be a guinea pig. Telray had implemented Felicia's algorithm, and wanted to see whether a very talented deceiver such as Sal could break it. Instead of using the algorithm for the detection of spam, however, Telray intended to use it to make long-lasting adaptable changes to the holonosphere. In the instance that Sal had been employed concerning, they were using the algorithm to cancel out changes. The reason Sal could not place the hill he had been hired to was because the algorithm was in the background calculating out prior states and nullifying his changes. He couldn't break through because the holonosphere along with the algorithm was being used in such a way as to reinforce physical reality.

When Felicia had tol him this, Sal had grimmaced.

"Even if I were to believe what you say," said Sal, "there is no algorithm that exists that does not have a weakness. It's just a matter of time before someone breaks it. More than likely, I will be that person."

Felicia had smiled a condescending smile. "Well, if you feel that way, Mr. Grimone, I will be happy to provide you with the extra time you need to make that happen. In front of us on this table is a glass of water. Why don't you produce something small and less challenging than a hill in it? How about a simple pencil?"

"Just give me the time and I'll get it done," replied Sal dismissively.

"I'm sure you will, Mr. Grimone. I suppose I will leave you to your work."

Sal made it a point NOT to pay attention to the swishing way in which Felicia left. He really would have preferred his adversary be male. It was easier to keep things in perspective that way, and to keep his mind from wandering down evolutionary corridors that were only distracting.

Since she had left, Sal had been staring at his interface, trying to find inspiration. The one advantage he had now was that he knew what was going on, and how it was being done. He just needed to find a way to break it. He also needed to do it in secret.

As far as Sal knew, Telray wasn't paying him for his work this time. Perhaps if he proved useful and found some hole they might, but he didn't care to become their in-house debugger. If he found a hole, he would keep it to himself. More than likely, Telray would be monitoring everything going on in his interface, but that didn't concern him.

Since Sal had made a career out of deception, he had taken the appropriate steps to ensure that his interface would be guarded in case a situation like this ever arose. In a prescient moment, he decided that he might need to deceive someone someday concerning what he was doing. That time was now. He developed a system that was a subinterface to his normal interface which was only accessible if he provided the appropriate key phrase. He had thought long and hard about what his key phrase should be. It needed to be something hypothetically believable in the context of whatever it was he was doing so as not to raise suspicion. He decided it needed to be a common error--something someone might say then correct themselves on. For him, that phrase was "colon slash colon---correction colon slash" while in diction mode which he frequently used to rattle off key pieces of code. It was a common mistake, but one he did not make. If he did accidentally make it, he had another keyword to turn it off. Better to have it easily on when needed and experience accidents than unavailable.