La Biblioteca de Segovia como CRAI

Reuben, MadFast and Brianna were all in Felix, a local hangout that

Reuben particularly liked. Something about the décor, the fact that the club was fashioned around a James Bond motif made it interesting. And while some of the patrons could be a bit snotty, the manager and Reuben knew each other by this point, and Reuben always felt at home here. Being a Monday night, it was relatively quiet, which was how Reuben liked it.The bars and clubs in Adams Morgan were always such a nightmare on the weekends, what with all the weekenders coming in and filling the places. On top of that, a select but aggravating few always got entirely too wasted and copped a curious attitude. It was like they were trying to play urbanite hipster like it was some charade born of false bravado. None of that was going on tonight, since it was just locals, and sedate ones at that.

MadFast drank some of his beer, looking around at the various televi- sion monitors.The movie of the hour was “Thunderball,” and it was on every screen. Sean Connery looked in on the club from several angles as he sought to forestall a nuclear disaster. “This place is hella cool. But why’s it called Felix?”

Reuben smiled, turning on his bar stool. He pointed up at the Statue of Liberty cutout above the bar. “Felix Lighter, James Bond’s equivalent in the CIA, who was from New York City.” He grinned. “After all, we are in Washington, DC, not London, right?”

MadFast smiled, “Right on!”

Brianna smiled at the two. She’d been watching their antics back and forth all evening.They were still jacked up with excitement from the day’s work, and she was just having fun watching them both. “What do you think is going to happen tomorrow?” she asked.

Reuben and MadFast looked at each other. Reuben put down his mar- tini, slowly moving as he figured out the best way to answer this question. “Well, the client is going to be freaked, I hope.They should be, that’s for sure.The vendor can either fix the software, deny the bug, or try some other unknown thing. But I doubt DoJ is going to use this crap as-is. And I don’t know how the software can be debugged well enough in a short time, with all the stuff we’re probably going to find.”

MadFast interrupted a swig of his beer, cutting it short as he nodded vehemently. “Yeah. Some of these things can be a quick fix, but I’m bet- ting the larger problem is that they’re going about input handling all wrong.They assume everything will be given to them as it should be, but they need to specify what’s right and reject everything else. It’s not an easy thing to change, it’s the kind of thing you have to start doing from the beginning, when you first start writing your code.”

Brianna nodded, not entirely understanding what he was talking about. “So what happens to the company that makes the software if they can’t fix it and the DoJ won’t use it?”

Reuben shrugged. “They’ve got a problem, then.They might even go under. But what else can we do, recommend that the Department of Justice implement a large-scale VPN infrastructure that anyone could rip apart in a few minutes? I know this sounds callous, but they shouldn’t have

gotten into the VPN business if they weren’t planning on learning how to write secure code. It’s kind of important that security-related products be secure themselves, even more so than with other software.”

Brianna took a sip of her martini. She loved martinis, and they made such good ones here, of course. “I guess you’re right. It’s a shame though.”

Reuben was sympathetic, but only so much. “Yeah, I know. But here’s how I look at it. I’ve got a job to do, and I need to do it to the best of my ability. Here it comes down to the fact that I’ve got a clear duty, and I have to perform that duty. I do feel kind of bad for ZFon if they fold or even if they lose the deal but stay afloat. But that’s not important, I still have my duty to perform. And if I forget that, I could be responsible for something really bad happening because people counted on me to do my job, and I failed them. I just have to detach from it a bit and focus on my job.” He sipped at his martini again, smiling a bit to try and soothe her.

MadFast joined in gently.“Besides, he’s right.They shouldn’t have gotten into the business if they couldn’t produce a safe product.That’s how you have to think about it when it’s at this level. It’s not like when Windows 98 crashes while you’re playing a game on it.This is serious, a problem with this would be exploited by criminals, terrorists, God knows who else.This isn’t the kind of problem that just makes you pissed that you have to reboot before you can play again.”

Brianna winced at that thought, realizing the stakes involved now. “I’m glad I don’t have your jobs,” she said.

Reuben and MadFast looked at each other, jointly realizing for the first time that it might not be entirely average that they loved their work so much.

Washington, DC: Tuesday,