Data Security Specialist Lurdite sat at his desk and stared cross-eyed at all six of his displays. Morgan Distributed Servers, his employer, had been hit by another attack. It was the usual Denial of Service crap, smokescreening a ‘spear-phishing’ (a wonderful terran term) attack on the CFO.

Lurdite splorched in contempt of the attackers. The CFO couldn’t find his ass with three pseudopods, six LIDAR beacons, four flight controllers, a heat-lamp, and two holographic topography projectors. He didn’t even read his own emails, and Lurdite knew that the secretary (who actually did read the CFO’s emails for the fool) knew her stuff.

Display four ‘dinged’ with a process complete indicator. Tracing software had backtracked the Denial of Service attack, located the server(s) in question, and passed the info along to the needed forms.

Display five ‘dinged’ with an addendum. One of the servers used was a Morgan server (owned through three shell companies to hide their true market share) which meant that Lurdite was able to automatically ID the customer, the purchasing line of credit, the banks involved, the code involved, its origin and changelogs, and a host of other little details.

Display one ‘dinged’ that all needed reports had auto-completed, passed automatic review, and were ready for electronic signature.

Lurdite let the forms sit and wandered to the brew unit in the corner of his office. He would review the forms manually, of course. His colleagues mocked him for the process, but then none of them had had a front-row seat to watch a Terran hacker in action. Forms, particularly auto-generated and auto-filled ones could be faked, modified, duped.

The brew unit burbled and hissed, dripping out the brown elixir of Lurdite’s new life: synth-caffeine. He had given up on the stimulant bulbs during the flight away from earth, along with many other things. Real caffeine was detrimental to his psychological processes, according to medical studies, but the synth stuff was cheaper and non-psychosis inducing, which was nice.

Lurdite sipped at the bulb, then frowned. It tasted slightly different. Sweeter? Lurdite flipped a tendril, dismissing the concern, and splorched back into his chair.

The forms scrolled by and the synth-caffeine drained down.

Display six ‘dinged’ with an incoming message.

Lurdite pursed his tendris in consternation. A resume? Why would HR be forwarding a resume to him of all employees? He opened the message and scanned the header. A terran? And a so-called ‘white-hat’ hacker at that? Lurdite got another bulb of synth-caffeine and sat down to read.

Name: Cinder Rose.

Planet of origin: Terra.

Race: Post-Terran (cybernetic consciousness(individual)).

The synth-caffeine slipped from Lurdite’s tendrils. No way. No way was it possible. SinderRoze was still alive, walking free, and she wanted to work at the same company he did?

The floor-cleaner bot scooped up the broken bulb and the brew unit made a new one. Lurdite picked it up and sipped. Definity something different in the synth-caffeine. Lurdite checked the settings to make sure, and to take his mind away from the gribbling horrors threatening to crawl their way out of the pit. Lurdite frowned at the brew unit. What in the void was ‘chocolate’? Tasted good, whatever it was.

Lurdite shrugged it aside and went back to the resume. The cover letter was nothing particularly special, the references included some obscure off-planet links (what resume didn’t in this day and age?) and the expected links back to Terra.

Lurdite skipped the CV summary, knowing it would have more of the same. Instead, he went to the attached supplementals. One in particular caught his eye: ‘Autonomous brew unit taste optimization’. Lurdite frowned. His brew unit had gotten a software update a few hours ago.

Brew units, once their OS had been optimized, have just enough data storage space and spare processing power to run a small bit of additional code. This code can be anything that fits into the available resources, and the example presented here is a taste-optimization program. It is to be noted that this program…’

Lurdite turned to look at his brew unit. It sat there, innocently staring back at him.

Lurdite skipped to the end of the supplementals, pulling open an oddly named file called SwedishFishTheorem.txt. It was locked, password protected. Lurdite frowned, then threw a string of random characters into the field.

Wrong password. Lurdite nodded, he expected that, he wanted to see the hint (if there was one.) There was. ‘HS Lurdite, Terra, the Day of the Wolves.’

Lurdite tried his old Censor ID. Only two people knew what that was. Him, and a long-dead Terran who wasn’t actually dead.

The file chirped and opened up.

Hey Lurdite, long time no see.

Hope you enjoy your new synth-caffeine! I did what I could to make it taste a bit better, and if you don’t like it, then you’ve got the code needed to tweak it as you see fit. I tweaked all of your office bots so they should better cater to your needs now.

-Cinder

P.S. Swedish Fish Theorem: the idea that, in an increasingly impersonal universe, a personal gesture goes much further.

Lurdite looked at the .txt file. He looked over at his brew unit. It was no longer the same machine. It now had a small spare of Terran intuition in it. A scrap of self-improving code set to adjust his bulbs of synth-caffeine to his personal tastes, donated (and installed) as a gesture of good will.

Ludire sent the resume back to HR with a note that, yes this candidate was who she said she was. Yes, HR should hire her post-haste. And no, Lurdite anticipated no problems working with her.

Three minutes later and a face appeared on Lurdite’s second display.

“Hello SinderRoze. Or do you prefer to be called Cinder now?”

“Cinder will do! My analog body’s currently in shipping, and I need someone to sign for it at this end, so I can sign for my effects. The shipping guys apparently think I’m just a bot, not a living System Spirit.”

“Sure thing Cinder, I’ll be down in a bit.” Lurdite killed the connection, splorched into his chair, and started to shake uncontrollably.