A Cursor Story

Chapter 13: Where's the Code

Ryan received an email from the chief of Cyber Security Agency (CSA) a premier government agency that was called in to investigate the outage at the GRIID.

Within two hours Ryan was being escorted into the office of Cyber Security Agency (CSA) by Mr. Smith a senior officer wearing a black coat. The office of the CSA was located beside the building of the District Electricity supply. It was almost nondescript building from outside with no signboards. Inside it was like a fortress with a bio-marker based entry system at every entrance. Mr. Smith showed the way to Ryan to lift. Ryan followed Mr. Smith into the lift. The lift went up with the speed of the jet and stopped at the 7th floor without making noise. The lift doors opened into a big corridor with brown carpet. The carpet of the corridor was smelling like whiskey. Mr. Smith took Ryan into a room along the corridor on the left. This was a boardroom with a big square table in the middle of the room. The table had six seats on each side and a communication system in front of each seat. A wall-sized monitor was adoring in front. Ryan came inside the room after Mr. Smith opened the door. Ryan sat on the seat nearest to the door. A team of experts was sitting on the other side of the table. Ryan noticed that Mr. Mitt was also sitting next right to a tall middle-aged man with white short hair wearing white suit who could be easily guessed to be the chair of the meeting.

'Welcome Mr. Ryan. Nice to meet you,' I am Mr. John Baker and I am heading the Department of cyber-threats in CSA. The tall middle-aged man with white short hair pointed to his left and right and said,

'This is Mr. Boris, an expert in extraterrestrial objects, and this is Mr. Agassi an expert in political issues from the office the President... This is Ryan the newfound prodigy. And this is Mr. Mitt whom we already know.'

Ryan was sitting in a more formal way while greeting all who are present. His discomfort was very much visible on his face. By this time Mr. Smith had also taken a seat behind Ryan on an isolated empty chair.

Baker turned to Ryan.

'Mr. Ryan first let me apologize to you for bringing you here. You understand... sometimes the issues we deal with in the CSA compel us to do that. I hope you must have had a wonderful vacation with your fiancee in Malaysia. Mr. Mitt told that you had not taken any off for long.. and this vacation you had to abruptly curtail and come back.'

Ryan's eyebrows raised automatically as Mr. Baker gave details of his abrupt return from Malaysia. A waiter served a cup of coffee everyone. Ryan picked up his cup immediately to hide his surprise. Mr. Baker has been briefed in detail.

Mitt and others nodded in affirmation. Baker had set the tone for the conversation.

'Mr. Ryan let me start, the reason why we need to call you here is of immense importance. I am sure that Mr. Mitt would have told you about this,'

Listening to this Mr. Mitt nodded in negation as if he is ignorant of all this development.

'I know you are a young talented man. I know you are working in a very important position in the GRIID. I know you are a valuable asset to your team. Recently you saved the lives of 100s of passengers of a flight by using your skills in computers.'

'No... Sir, it was not me but it was .....,' Ryan's first sip of coffee refused to go in. He coughed heavily.

'Easy boy,' Mr. Smith who was sitting behind Ryan offered his hanky to wipe out extra coffee he coughed out at his mouth.

'Thanks .,' Ryan said.

'Ryan.. well ... just to help you recall and for information of others in this room let me play a short clip of that day,' Baker signaled Smith to turn on the wall monitor. Smith hovered his fingers over the monitor to start it. The big monitor in front of the square table illuminated and the video recording of the flight started playing.

It began with everybody shaking when the plane experienced turbulence then Ryan was seen connecting his iPad into the flight's control system, fight between Chris the Cursor and the green cloud. In the end the passengers and the crew were thanking Mr. Ryan. Ryan was seen much happier in the video than in the meeting.

'It is all right, I was there but I did not do anything-' Ryan moved his hands in a gestured to explain things.

'Mr. Ryan let me put it in plain and simple words. We are in search of such a technology, would you like to collaborate with us in the interest of this great country,' Agassi stopped Ryan in the middle of his explanation.

'Well I am always in for the country but still I don't know everything, how it happened,' said Ryan.

'You are very unassuming, usually, engineers are like that. But what we want is to just get into the computer system of our adversaries or the aliens just like you got into the computer system of the flight,' Boris disguised his plans into shallow praises for Ryan. Shallow praises and deep waters must always be avoided.

'But where is the alien spaceship and the alien computer systems,' Ryan was trying to avoid getting entangled himself into ambitious plans of CSA.

'That's not important Ryan, the important thing is the technology you are possessing could be classified as harmful and notified as malware.. so next you will not be able to use it anywhere,' Boris said.

'Ryan, please gather all the information about the computer program you used that day and try to make it into a useful and presentable format for us. An extremely important thing is the discussions here are to be kept secret, always. You have the time of one month. Our representatives will drop you wherever you want,' Baker left into the next room after a handshake with Ryan and Mitt. Ryan was baffled but did not forget to say thanks to Baker.

Ryan quickly came out of the building, before boarding into the vehicle sent by Mr. Baker, he thought he could connect a call to Megan, but quickly dropped the idea at the sight of Mr. Smith who came to drop him.

Ryan reached his home in no time... got dropped a few yards before. Before Ryan entered his home his iPad rang loudly, it was Megan.

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