Perry Portly and the Fake DNA Results, by Gary Gocek
Perry Portly and the Fake DNA Results, by Gary Gocek
Perry emerged from the stairwell and Della met him. "Well?" she asked.
Perry only answered, "Remember this – 36 dot 24 dot 36 dot 115." Della texted it to herself.
"What's that, Carrie Ann's measurements?" asked Della.
"What? Nooooo." Perry explained, "It's an IP address. We need a Windows PC on the Internet," Perry said. "I enabled remote access on a PC in the AI center, but they'll figure it out pretty soon, so we don't have much time."
Perry and Della trotted down the street to the Pittsford library where Della pulled a laptop out of a backpack.
Perry started the Remote Desktop Tool and punched in the IP address. Perry opened some files in the DNA project and
began typing furiously. After a few minutes, he said, "There. I set up the neural network to ignore changes made
from the AI center's network subnet, and protected the files with the password 'F@irport'. The reports should now
begin showing normal results. We can check the discussion forums later.""
"Fora," corrected Della.
"What? Oh, yeah," agreed Perry.
Just then, Carrie Ann walked over. "Della! And Perry Poorly!" Perry corrected his name, not that Carrie Ann noticed. "Well, what brings you two to the Pittsford library?"
"Oh, just making sure the Fairport library is keeping up with the best library practices," Della said. "You guys here is Pittsford are always using the latest and greatest."
Perry interjected, "What's up with those programmers in the AI center? And, don't you work in the Fairport library?"
"Oh, those AI guys are always pushing monstrous amounts of data through the library's network. I go over there and bat my eyes and it seems to help for a few days. And Fairport, I'm just there to help out when the county reduces its budget and won't keep on enough aides."
Well, it actually seemed like a logical explanation.
Perry still wondered, what of the AI center people? Where are they from, and why did they implement such an elaborate hack? As he wondered this, an error window popped up saying that is remote connection had been terminated.
"Didn't you say something about social media?” Della asked. Well, no, Perry hadn't said anything to Della about social media, but he had wanted to check on that comment from Pippelini. Sure enough, Perry could only find a chicken soup recipe posted by his grandmother and a connection named Glover Perrin, presumably the same Glover Perrin from whom Perry had received that mysterious email while still in the Fairport library. Just as mysteriously, that email was no longer in his inbox.
Perry clicked on Glover's name, but there was nothing in his timeline. He glanced at Glover's connections. Three connections to Glover were listed, "Pippelini", "Semphorsky" and "Joltakanda". This Glover guy was clearly trying to tell Perry something. All three of those connections claimed to be from "Blackbeenie", the notorious, anarchistic hacker group.
Perry and Della ran back to the AI Center. Just as they arrived, the Jacob's Ladder device collapsed. They ran through the wreckage and down the stairs and into the computer room. They were shocked to find all the programmers were gone.
"We missed them. The hack is over, but the perpetrators are gone."
©2020, Gary Gocek, https://gary.gocek.org/, @garygocek, gary@gocek.org