[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts. Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts. This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo Gets Planned) left off.]
Before he got too far, Mo turned to Darren. "Which tree?" He looked at her for a second, a blank look on his face. Then understanding surged through his face.
"I went that way," he pointed to a set of trees across the park. "One of those over there." Mo nodded and headed off. She had needed to find a private place to squat all during Arthur's planning session.
On her way back, she scanned the Brownian soup of homeless bouncing the park. When she got back, Darren had not moved. She ask, "which one had the antenna?"
He shook his head, "One of those over there. I don't remember exactly, they all look a bit the same. Male, if that helps."
Mo grunted and dropped it. "I'm going to sit here on the grass and commune with my parasitic passenger. Try and set up some partially secure communication. You gonna wander?"
"Umm," he said. "Yeah. See what there is to see."
"Okay," Mo said. "You might spit on a few or at least wipe your nose before shaking their hands. It may not infect them, but then again, it may." Darren grimaced but nodded.
Mo folded her legs under her and dropped to the worn turf. She closed her eyes and sub-voc'd, "Erics? You there?"
"Yes," hit her inner ear.
"I assume that you were listening in on all of that planning crap, right?"
"Yes."
"Thoughts, comments?"
"Given our situation, most of it seemed sound. My only issue is with the car. It does not seem necessary to acquire it, given the risk. Melissa and Arthur are most likely to be recaptured."
"Yeah. Probably. We'll wait out the two hours, but I doubt we'll be seeing them again. Anything else?"
"Yes. While you have been discussing and urinating, I have been examining the tools that you mentioned. VPNx and TORx are both adequate. What is 'Saddle_Z.strap'?"
"A tool for getting a trojan horse into someone's system so it becomes part of your botnet."
"Then 'Reins_Z.strap' is the control executable. And 'Whight_Space.strap'?"
"That acts as a virtual execution space for suspicious scripts, then closes down on them. Basically, it allows me to accept a suspicious connection, analyze it and kill it without compromising the full system."
"May I then suggest combining the 'Saddle_z.strap' and 'Whight_Space.strap'?"
"To what end?"
"My supposition is that, when you attach your antennae, you will be bombarded with requests attempting to compromise your system. By combining the two, you should be able to reverse those attempts and compromise the requesting system in turn."
"Probably. I've done similar things in the past." Mo remembered her attempt to zap Gabriel's system when they first met at the Blue Bear. Then, she had not zombi-fied the local transients' systems so much as spoofed them into thinking Gabriel was the more attractive target. A redirect DDOS as apposed to a more controlled attack. "So I have a homeless botnet. What does that get me?"
"I will be able to redirect all of our in and outbound traffic through that 'botnet', switching nodes for each packet we send or receive."
"Cool. That's what TORx does with servers, but this will confuse the issue even more. Can we throw VPNx in there, so that we can continue to use the bot-net even when we aren't in local transmission range?"
"That appears feasible."
"Great. How much of the scripting can you do? I can probably do the 'Saddle_z' and 'Whight_Space' marriage; I cobbled the two together in the first place, but any help..."
"I will make an attempt to combine them and forward the result for you to review."
"Perfect. Oh, before I forget, did you catch that stuff about the infection rate of your bacterial parent? How long will it take to infect people here in the park? Does it take more than a touch or do we have to lick them or something?"
"To optimize the transfer, an exchange of bodily fluids is preferred. Then, the infection needs to spread in the host body until it comes in contact with the embedded electrical system. A critical population of bacterial cells needs to amass on the conducting wires before the transfer can be made."
"And that means how many hours in meat space?"
"From initial infection to a node able to become part of The Whole can take from five hours to thirty."
"That's longer than I was hoping. But I guess there's nothing for it."
"If your goal is to create a distraction and to flood the capturing party's system, then I believe that I can expedite the infection by incorporating my source code into 'Whight_Saddle.strap'. Then the biological infection becomes unnecessary."
"Yeah. That's great! Let's do that."
"The downside is that the compromised system can be repaired with a basic system wipe as you were attempting to do several nights ago."
Mo looked around at the crowd in the park. "I think their system hygiene is roughly the same as their personal. It will cause enough of a distraction just like that. How long will it take you to put something together?"
"I have my first attempt that combines 'Saddle_Z.strap', 'Whight_Space.strap' and my own source code available for your review. As I mentioned, it is called 'Whight_Saddle.strap' and can be found in your local document storage."
"Oh. Great." Mo closed her eyes and pulled up the file. "Uh, what scripting language did you use?"
"I did not use a scripting language. Those are all crutches for your word trained minds. This is created directly in machine code."
"That's great, but I can't read that. Any chance you can reverse compile it?"
"My apologies. I will convert it into something more acceptable to your skills."
"You don't need to be snooty about it."
"Again, I apologize. I was not attempting to color the comment in any way."
Mo sighed. Working with a semi(?) intelligent program was not the same as collaborating with a development team. Not that she had been good at working with others, anyway. A few seconds later, 'Whight_Saddle.script.strap' appeared in her documents file. She opened it and started her review.
