“So about last night–”
“Your interview request, yes.” The young man’s apartment was an eclectic nightmare of mismatched furniture, in accordance with the man himself, with the appearance of an explosive having gone off somewhat recently in the vicinity. Electrical components, technical manuals, and what appeared to be a soldering iron, hopefully powered off, were strung about the entire studio, which was in and of itself dotted with half finished projects. Not even the kitchen counters had been spared—one half-open cupboard contained spare keyboards where a normal individual might keep cereal. A modern day mad scientist’s lair indeed.
“Interview request might be a stretch, actually–”
She turned to face him, expression stern. One of her agents shut the door with a resounding thud. “What would you prefer I call your breach of a federal agency, then?”
He winced, cowed by a woman twice his age and nearly a foot shorter. God, it was like being dressed down by his mother, only in a sharp navy suit, all crisp lines and sensibly severe up-swept hair tinged with silver. “Just a, uh, list of friendly suggestions from a concerned citizen?” He pushed his mop of dark hair back nervously, though it flopped weakly back into his eyes just as quickly, landing with as much conviction as his words.
Her face remained unimpressed.
“Look,” he slouched, defeated. “How much trouble am I in?”
“This is an interview,” she reiterated, “not a trip to the principal's office.” She cleared a seat for herself on the futon, stalwart enough not to test its stability before sitting. “Now, assuming that coffee maker is in working order, brew up a pot so we can get down to business. I’ll take mine black.”
“Right.” He shuffled backwards into the kitchen, somehow avoiding the tangle of wires peeking from beneath a truly hideous dot-printed rug. “Is it too late to withdraw my application? Because I’m sure you’ve got a great benefits package with a pension and all that, but you’re also wholly terrifying and I’m entirely hung over.”
None of the other three occupants in the room so much as cracked a grin, the two agents positioned by the front door remaining intimidatingly silent. He set about making the coffee, determining that, in this case, obedience was the better part of valor, particularly when his exit was blocked so thoroughly.
“Mr. Perrin, you graduated at the bottom of your doctoral program specializing in cyber security eleven months ago, yet your test scores and public projects list indicate an intrinsic lack of academic interest rather than incompetence. Your private projects and reputation within the hacker community, as well as your work on code bounty jobs, are actually quite remarkable.”
“Erm, thank you?”
“Double major in mechanical engineering and computer science. Doctorate in cyber security. Strong interest in AI adaptive learning and robotics. Proficient in all notable programming languages. Prolific white hat hacking profile with links to several gray hat hacks of questionable repute upon deeper review. Your advisers note that you are ‘brilliant, but easily bored.’”
“Do I even need to be here for this?” The siren smell of caffeine brewing was possibly making Syler irreverent again. That, or his not unreasonable hope that this was all a very strange nightmare. Toss up, that.
“Further,” she continued, “while you have applied for a number of positions and been accepted to many, you have quit or been fired from three successive jobs. You are, presently, unemployed, though you have been accepting a number of freelance jobs far below your skill level.”
Tell him something he didn’t know already. He poured out two cups, figuring the agents didn’t deserve any on account of blocking his way out, and, also, a lack of clean mugs. He settled hers on the table atop a tower of fairly stable looking technical manuals, unwilling to get closer for a direct hand off, then leaned back against a bookshelf, resigned to whatever happened next.
“And then last night at 0137 hours, you set your sights on the CIA firewalls.”
“A little after midnight, actually. I was in there for a while undetected. You should really work on that,” he coughed, headache pulsing brilliantly. “Erm, as a concerned citizen, that is. Really just a suggestion.”
“Your notes referred to our encryption protocols as ‘ludicrously exploitable,’ and asked if we were currently employing child interns who’d yet to master the code for Hello World.”
“Well–”
“Then stated that you dearly hoped we applied more finesse to the organization of covert operations than we did to penetrative attack defense, while also suggesting, sarcastically I hope, that we utilize a less obvious file naming scheme, citing, and I quote, ‘Sneaky Sneak on Sir Putin’ as an example.”
“...blame the tequila for that inside thought escaping.”
“I shall.” The Director remained as impassive as she had been throughout, sipping primly on her coffee. He wondered if hangovers were beneath her.
“So,” Syler reached awkwardly for any segue out of this situation, “besides listening to an in person play-by-play of my most mortifying hackathon, how can I help you?”
‘Step one, identify the problem,’ Director Boothman thought, narrowing her eyes at him, considering. ‘And reshape it into an opportunity.’ Syler fidgeted from his place against the bookshelf. “Your notes also included proposed patches, which my operations department head found riveting.”
“Ah, well, they’re all yours, enjoy!”
Boothman pursed her lips. “I would much prefer to have the expertise of the man who created the solutions on my staff.”
“This is feeling less like an interview and more like a dictation, just so you know.”
The Director let out what, for her, must pass as a resigned sigh. “Mr. Perrin, you have two choices.”
“Do they happen to be jail time at Guantanamo or working for the CIA forever under pain of death?”
“Something like that.” She smiled, shark like. “Now, let’s go over all of those wonderful benefits you mentioned earlier.”
---
Eighteen months on, Syler had to admit that he’d hit the lifetime jackpot of drunken disasters. Granted, he was
