Just then, Robbert came home and regaled Matthew with tales of office gossip and humorous descriptions of the people in the office. To hear him tell it, they were like a real life sitcom cast. Half way between the third round of who was crushing on whom and what was the likely outcome of what odd pairing, Matthew started reading through the images of his work documents and absorbing the information about his new job. There were a mind boggling number of regulations about employee interactions. He was glad that he had no intentions of dating anyone from work.

            Synthia popped up a prompt at the edge of his vision and began highlighting the important passages in the documents. Once this was done, she whispered into his ear, “The add request for that strange social network has been accepted, but there are no messages at this time.”

            “Do a search for any information about this social network you can find anywhere on the internet please.” he replied under his breath to the artificial intelligence.

            “I am unable to trace the address. It seems like the connection only traces to the internal CPU on the 6X chip. Next time you hear from ID10T, I suggest you ask for more information about the platform he invited you to.”

            “Sounds like a plan Synthia. Can you give me some of the tech diagrams for the network at work?”

            “I can give you a real-time map of the work network with live and predictive data modeling. I think you will like what I can show you.” she replied and a large 3D image of the building’s network popped into his vision in the middle of the living room. He could see the pulsing lights that denoted the data flow. Already, Matthew could see multiple choke points in the network flow. Thinking ahead, he drew a rectangle on the table in front of him to create his virtual keyboard and began a report for his boss describing the problem areas and outlining a plan to overcome the issues. He finished just as Robbert began to wind down in his stories of the joys of office life.

“...and that is why I set you up on a date with Nancy for Saturday night. Don’t worry, I built you up to her. It will be great!”

“Why are you setting me up this time?”

“Matt, you have not dated in the last year. I know you’re broke, but you need a relationship. Lonely Matt is a boring person to live with. This girl is a classic cheap date. She has tastes that match yours and loves the free concerts in the park.

“She expects you at the address I just texted you with at 7:30 PM. Walk with her to the park and see if a concert leads to romance. If not, there are others out there. If it works out, we can finally double date!”

“OK. What is wrong with her?”

“Wrong?” replied Robert with an innocent look that was not going to convince Matthew.

“What are you leaving out?”

“Well... She does have a few quirks about food... She can be very pushy about not eating meat...Her name is Genevive. Pronounce it John-Viev though.”

“Not ANOTHER ONE!”

A new prompt came up in the border of Matthew’s vision. “Would you like to access some interesting vegan dishes that are inexpensive to make? Alternatively, would you like to schedule an ‘emergency call’ to help terminate the date if it goes badly, Y/N?”

Under his breath, Matthew said “Yes.”

---===+++===---

The next day, at work, Matthew worked with a group of auditors in the finance department. They had some account and systems access issues he had to work on directly with each of the users. There also were malware issues on the stations. Whoever had been administering the network before him had cut some corners and skipped some precautions that had left the workstations vulnerable.

As he worked to clean up the user issues, the 6X was running calculations to head off the malware attacks and patch the systems before more damage and exposure could happen. Synthia was not very talkative during all of this, other than to ask for approvals and instructions.

Sally observed all of this from within the implanted PDA. She had thought that Matthew was some sort of criminal at first. How did he get the device? She did not recognize the man, although he had just started working in her father’s company. He seemed to be just a regular guy trying to get by. In her current state, it was frustrating to not have a real body, because she could not cry when she read about the hardships he had been through in his blog. Sally could only catch his memories when he actively was thinking about something.

She had soon developed a plan. She was going to use his access to dig into the network. Her own catalog of access codes allowed her to get into many other systems. She was shocked to find several records of employees who were stealing from the company. Slipping into the accounts of the criminals, she transferred the money to untraceable, numbered, accounts. She did feel a bit bad for letting the employees that took the money take the blame for their actions since she took the money. She had made sure they would get caught by leaving plenty of evidence that would set the auditors on them.

Sally was also planting back doors into the systems so that she could monitor them. Something was fishy with the exploits on the machines. It was almost like the installs of the malware were initiated by a user who logged in and initiated them. The account was obscured, but tracing where the stolen data went would reveal everything.

It became clear that someone was syphoning off money from certain low level transactions and had stolen a substantial amount of money. Since it was her father’s company, she felt like she was justified in redirecting the money once she was done tracing the culprits...

After several hours and a long lecture to the users about what not to click on or agree to, Matthew packed up his work gear and headed home.

Since it was Thursday, Matthew made dinner and had a movie queued up by the time Robbert came in.