How is it only noon?
He felt like he'd already put in a full day.
Part of him wanted to help make lunch - it always seemed like he should be putting in his fair share of effort, but Meela seemed to take it as her personal job and he didn't want to disappoint her. He settled for putting the table together while casting nervous glances at his phone.
It was already quarter after. He needed to turn it on.
Then again whoever it was, they were waiting on his convenience and could damn well sit tight for twenty minutes while he had a bite to eat.
By the time he was done - today had been some kind of Moroccan dish, heavy on the spices but low enough on the calories to keep both Seema and himself content. It was perfection, as usual. Meela could easily be a professional chef.
He had to wonder what other downloadable skills there were for the girls. They could be world-class experts in anything at all, it seemed like.
For the right price.
He doubted DynCorp would be giving him any free samples anytime soon. It would be incredible if it was so easy for ordinary humans to add skills.
Finally he sighed and turned the phone on. The girl stopped chatting with one another to watch his face.
There were two messages. No surprise there. The first was from earlier this morning and was one link that would allow him to contact Tatjana and whoever her superiors were.
Number two was the one he'd been waiting for. It was a link to a set of Level 2 files. There was no way to do this without taking the risk. He went for it.
Holy shit.
It was all in plaintext. There were dozens of files, sequentially numbered, with a set of attached scripts. Just downloading the whole thing would take nearly a minute.
Mike knew when he was outclassed. If these were accessed from DynCorp's cryptographics, then their system was already screaming at someone that the keys had been compromised. There was no way to prevent that. It was part of the math.
Somebody had taken a very big risk indeed to provide this to them. Assuming it was real.
He handed the phone to Reema.
"Can you examine these and give me your best analysis of how safe we are to use them on one of you? This could be a boobytrap"
Her face scrunched up into deep concentration immediately. She looked her most catlike at moments like this. She might have been hunting something small and squeaky in the grass. Her pupils grew huge, and her ears and tail quivered while she scrolled through the contents.
Eventually she looked up, and her pupils were still big and round.
"May I take this to the main deck?" she said.
"Of course," he said, waving his hand. "Let me watch though, I'm curious to see."
She scurried down the hall, phone in hand.
Meela and Seema looked uncertain about what to do. Meela was standing with the plates forgotten in her hands, tail flicking back and forth. Seema was staring down at the table silently.
This was potentially pretty big for all of them, after all.
"Come on," he said. "Forget about the dishes, do it later. Lets go watch Reema do her magic."
Their ears pricked up instantly, and Seema looked relieved.
"Thank you Master," she said.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"Never mind that, let's go watch," Mike said. He was as anxious as any of them.
Reema already had half a dozen windows open, and Mike's phone lay at her side, turned off again.
"It's three matched keysets, Master," she said. "As far as I can scan for consistency and the file structure, they appear valid. Entropy levels don't suggest any encrypted content. I can do a higher order analysis, but it would take at least two hours. That would point out any substructured layering that looks like code."
Three keysets. One for each of them.
"Owner key and corporate counterkey?"
She shook her head.
"Three sets of multiple keys. Owner keys yes, but the headers identify administrative maintenance keys as well. I think this is everything."
Mike whistled.
"The full set? We would have complete access?"
She turned and looked at him, her eyes wide.
"I think so."
Nothing is ever simple.
He looked at Meela.
"Tempting set of files, aren't they? Everything we wanted. Dumped right into our hands."
Meela nodded. She was frowning.
"Yes Master," she said. "It's worrisome."
Seema looked grim. Her protective instincts were obviously humming.
"I will be prepared take care of you. If it... if it turns out to be a problem."
They were all on the same wavelength. Reema was staring up at him with worried eyes and her ears were laying low against her head now.
"I think the high order analysis might give us a hint if there's any new instructions in them. I'll do everything I can."
By now it was obvious to Mike that Reema's analytical abilities outmatched his by quite a bit. It didn't even bother him. She was literally built to do this and didn't have to rely on unreliable human gray matter to think with.
"Run it," Mike said. He wasn't going to take any chances with the girls. If someone gave them a booby-trapped file anything could happen. It could burn out their brains, or worse. Maybe erase their loyalty to him and flip a switch to turn them into killbots. Who knew what.
They could wait two hours. It wouldn't even be 3PM.
That gave them, what, eighteen hours before he had to check in with Aventine about the buyer?
He stared at the phone on the desk like it was a viper.
It's all so simple. Enough playtime, we just take one of the girls out and let her know her orders once things are underway. If I tell the other two not to ask any questions about it, they won't.
Which was true. But incomplete. They would wonder. Could he tell them not to? They'd probably act like they weren't worried.
Which one? Meela? She'd been the first. He'd really miss her cooking, and he was starting to rely on her for a second opinion on anything that involved politics with other humans.
Hell, she'd probably be handling this situation better than me right now.
Probably? No doubt about it really.
So Reema? That would be crippling his technical end, plus she was the squishiest of the three of them. He didn't want to hand her over to some rando government with orders to help them tear her apart and reverse engineer herself. She might even be able to do it. He imagined her top half, sans arms and skin, locked in a bunker somewhere a thousand meters under the rusted surface of Mars. Offering helpful comments while they kept tearing into her.
Which left Seema. He'd never yet seen her in action, apart from the ease with which she had floored that one kid, but she was definitely his best bet for physical safety. It anything went sideways he had no doubt she'd be able to save his ass. Giving up his edge on that front left him defenseless. Her physical fitness program was still in early days, but he'd lost weight and felt a little better for it already.
He didn't want to give up any of them. But he was going to have to choose one.
"Master?"
Meela and Seema were watching him and looking worried. Reema was still plugging away at the console, oblivious to the world.
"Sorry, lost in thought. If we really have service access to your internals, we might be able to download your AI nets. Those will bring in some hefty prices, I'm sure of it."
Meela nodded but there was hesitation on her face.
Seema looked pleased, though.
"Wonderful," she said. "Let me be the one you try this on, Master. I want to help."
She was probably the bravest in any case, and he needed to give her a chance to demonstrate it. It didn't really matter which of them they tried it on.
He leaned forward and kissed her, then stood up.
"You've got it," he said. "You're number one."
She burst out purring and her tail swished back and forth.
"Thank you," she said.
He grabbed the phone and flicked it on, acting on a hunch.
Yup, there it is. Murphy's law.
It was from Aventine.
He sighed, already knowing what it was going to be.
THOUGHT WE COULD MEET UP FOR TEA. LET ME KNOW IF YOU'RE BUSY, BUT SUNDAY WOULD WORK FOR ME.
God damn it, Aventine.
For some reason she needed to move the schedule up to this evening. Now he had just six hours left before he had to take one of them away.