Tipología

“So, what shall we have for dinner tonight?” asked Reuben.

“Hey man, whatever is fine with me. Everything has been great, I trust you. Just nothing tooweird. Brianna’s told me about your love of dan- gerous sushi.”

Reuben chuckled. “Ah yes, the fugu. Fear not, I don’t think it’s even in season right now.There are only a few weeks a year when it shows up on the menu.” Reuben was adventurous with regard to food. It was perhaps more accurate to say that he was extreme, being willing to try almost any- thing once. He’d eaten fugu, also known as blowfish, on more than one occasion.The thing about it was that if it was prepared incorrectly, the neurotoxins contained in much of the fish would contaminate the edible

parts, and the diner would not survive to the end of the meal.The flavor was subtle, and something he enjoyed quite a bit. He knew Kenji-san, the owner of the restaurant, and that if he was still alive and kicking, the fugu was still being prepared correctly.There was no doubt in his mind that Kenji-san looked forward to the arrival of fugu each year more than Reuben did.

“Well, we haven’t had Chinese food in over a week. How does that sound to everyone?” Brianna suggested.

Reuben looked at MadFast, who looked back. “Sounds good to me,” MadFast said in reply to the unspoken question.

“Okay, let me grab the menu!” Brianna cheerily went off into the kitchen to look in the cache of delivery food menus for the right one.

MadFast and Reuben looked at each other, both thinking about the same thing…work. “Do you think we’ll get anything to go on

tomorrow?” asked MadFast.

“I don’t really know. I hope so. I want to finish this project. Who knows what’s going on right now? But I don’t know what else to do but wait. Maybe they’ve been working on it over the weekend.”

MadFast snorted. “I damned well hope so! They’ve got a buttload of work to do if they want to fix that thing and keep the sale. It won’t happen overnight.”

“Might it not happen in time no matter what?”

“Maybe. But there’s no way we can tell one way or the other.” Reuben pondered what might be going on at ZFon at that moment. “Hmm. And if they don’t have our payloads to test, they might not be able to tell exactly what’s broken. So they either have to fix everything they can find in that section of the code, or they might miss what we found. If they come back to us with another build and it’s still broken, then they’re prob- ably screwed.”

MadFast drew the connection. “And that’s why DoJ didn’t want us to give them the payloads. Clever. I didn’t catch that before now.”

“I’m thinking Vince is even cleverer than we thought. Which is good, since it seems he likes us and how we’re doing. I don’t think I’d want to be on the other side of that coin though. But I wish he hadn’t put us in the position of telling them no when they wanted to see what we used to

bork their software. I felt like such a schmuck having to tell John.You just know they think we’re trying to screw them.”

“Yeah, no shit. But what can you do, huh? I mean, it’s the client’s wishes. And it does make sense, in a way.”

“True enough. But I also wonder what the deal is with that. Do they not trust ZFon to fix it? If so, why are they even considering their product anymore? What’s the deal with that?”

MadFast shrugged. “Maybe it’s too late for them to choose someone else at this point. Who knows? It’s that whole thing the guy was talking about before, about a ‘bigger picture’. I can’t guess what makes sense about using an insecure product, but whatever.”

They noticed that Brianna had long since returned with the Chinese restaurant’s menu. She’d been standing there, quietly listening to them talk, fascinated. “Should you guys be talking about this now?”

MadFast looked at Reuben for an answer. Reuben replied, “We can trust her.” He looked back to Brianna. “But are you comfortable with being trusted?”

Brianna fidgeted a bit. “That’s a good question. I love hearing you talk about this stuff, but I worry if you say too much in public. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

Reuben weighed this in his head. He liked exposing her to new things He liked the notion that in being open about his work, or at least the con- cepts within it, he helped expand her professional knowledge and broad- ened her horizons. He felt a profound sense of gratitude toward all those who, in sharing their knowledge with him, gave him the tools with which he built his mind and his career. And nearly deified amongst these was Mr. Donegal, who started it all those twenty-one years ago.

“Man, this is hard. I really want to share with you. But I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. How about this: we’ll make our discussion a bit more hypothetical to make it easier for you to bear, and you let me know if you’re uncomfortable. But one thing you must remember is that even as we strip off the details, what we talk about is to be kept secret. Once let out, information cannot be put back.”

Brianna thought about this, nodding as she considered it. “Okay, I think that will work.”

MadFast relaxed, glad that this moment had passed. He hated to feel like an intruder, and felt like he was intruding just now. Reuben smiled. “Good, then. Let’s order dinner.”

Washington, DC: Monday,