A startled laugh escaped his agent. “Arthur Dufault, pleasure to meet you.”
“Emily Larson, AI robotics specialist. Former roommate and research partner to this spectacular human dumpster fire. You don’t look like one of ours.”
“Told you,” Syler chimed in, unable to help himself. “And I’m not a dumpster fire!”
“Second year. Room 204. Two a.m.” She grinned shamelessly. Arthur looked deeply invested.
“We agreed to never speak of that again.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Did we? It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other. I must’ve forgot.”
“Fine, lord, drinks sometime this month, you absolute harpy.” She beamed and he couldn’t help but grin back. As another wave of familiar and entirely unwanted former classmates made their way towards them like sharks scenting blood in the water, Syler decided he was ready to get back to work. “Shall we walk and talk? You’re quite actually the only person here I like.”
“Oh,” she teased, linking arms with him and pulling them off towards the early exhibits, guiding both of them into the small crowd and away from further annoying encounters. “Don’t let Arm Candy hear you say that.”
Arthur chuckled, holding position on his right, eyes casually scouting over the displays and booths already set up along the periphery of the mammoth room and down the center in back-to-back rows, narrow aisles between each all that separated the first round of demos being held tonight. Full house, then. “Just pretend I’m not here.”
“No chance buddy! I want to know everything this one has gotten up to since we’ve been apart and that apparently includes you. Did Marcus shit bricks when he saw you come in with him? I bet he did, the absolute asshole.” She cackled merrily. “So what have you been doing, S?”
“Took a government job.”
“You?”
“The benefits were inescapable.” And, oh, if she only knew.
Emily shot a look over at Arthur. “Oh, I’ll just bet they were. You two work together then?”
“Unfortunately,” he replied, tone born of long suffering. “And you?”
“Fucking analytics senior lab technician. I only came out tonight to network.”
Syler hummed, considering. Beside them, Arthur remained silent. “Send me your resume later. I might know of an opening.”
Emily looked up at him brightly, green eyes twinkling mirthfully. “See? Mission accomplished. Especially if your place comes with more of Arm Candy.”
The younger man chuckled. They made their way through the booths slowly, dodging around the other conference attendees doing the same, Syler and Arthur with an eye towards finding the station Pyrona had left for the younger man to find. He and Emily kept up a string of banter, casually eviscerating the less promising projects in the way only seasoned professionals could. It wasn’t until they reached the back of the last row that they spotted what they’d come for.
A computer was set up in a booth at the end, semi-enclosed by a three-sided partition wall. The desk contained a single large monitor, keyboard, and mouse, along with a sign in log and series of instructions. The small placard on the exhibit wall declared it P.I.M., Pyrona Incorporated Machine, and designated it as a modified Turing test.
“‘The future of cyber security,’” Emily read. “Now there’s a lofty claim. Ladies first!”
She sat in the chair with a flourish well before Syler could move to stop her. It was probably safe enough, he conceded. A quick glance at the sign in sheet confirmed she wasn’t the first to try the system out. Emily flicked deftly through the instructions, selecting defensive instead of penetrative hacker when prompted to choose her role in the test. The rules were simple—defend or attack as you had chosen and, at the end, submit your grade: AI or human on the other end of the line?
Syler hummed as Emily waited for the prompts to load and signify that she could start. The timer was over a minute long, designed to give any potential human on the other end time to prepare or throw off anyone who might use that as justification for assuming a human opponent. It was an interesting demonstration in light of what he’d experienced while defending against their attacks. Syler himself knew it was both—a human using limited AI to amplify their own skills and improve response time. So why this?
The simulated attack on Emily’s firewalls was an instantaneous but pointed first volley far smaller in scale than what he knew the other hacker was capable of. She laughed as she countered, already patching the hole to block the hacker out. “AI then,” she called, “and not particularly advanced!”
Of course, those were famous last words. The attacker returned, hitting again, but this time with an understanding of her chosen defense codes, easily circumventing the first. There was that reverse engineering live time again. Syler’s eyes narrowed, watching as she volleyed each with increasing difficulty, until the program was hitting on multiple fronts in tandem, knocking her neatly offline in under ten minutes. Emily sat back with a startled huff. “Well son of a bitch.”
Syler nodded. It hadn’t approached the full breadth of skill used in the attacks on the CIA and other agencies before breaching her defense, although, to her credit, Emily was only one person and not an entire inter-agency division. This was very much just a sampler that adapted to the capabilities of the defender. The hacker was only directing the program as needed, almost seamlessly increasing the pressure until the defense fell away.
“Human, but augmented with directed AI,” she concluded, sending in her final notes. It was reassuring to know that someone else in the field who’s opinion he so respected agreed with his initial conclusions. Still, there was something in the way this was set up. A test, an invitation… “It’s too advanced to be fully machine learning. The opponent answers too quickly. Machines don’t have that level of adaptive thinking ability yet. Frigging trick questions.” She stood, gesturing for him to take the chair. “Your turn S. Let’s show your boy toy why you’re the best we have
