In The Hutch

Fiona’s job title was Performance and Penetration. Before you get excited, I should tell you that what she actually did was to keep watch on the Company computer network looking for performance issues or penetration from either outside or internal miscreants. The company wanted Fiona’s various tools and techniques to be a mystery to everyone else which is why she worked in her narrow hutch separated by a brick wall from the rest of the IT Section.

Her isolation very much suited her temperament and she actually loved her little hutch which she thought of as her own private domain. That domain was long and narrow with a door at one end and a second door leading into the IT Dept. At the far end of the space, next to the small, square window sat Fiona with her array of keyboards and three independent screens. Most of the wall space was taken up by shelving containing box files of technical information and work logs. She also had a collection of air gapped laptops on which she could download malicious code without corrupting the network.

The Company had specialist software which trawled the system for potential irregularities and any “hits” were flashed to Fiona’s screen for her to perform detailed analysis. One hit was a video file and such files were not uncommon as the Company had a collection of training videos but the software had identified that this one had unique metadata so Fiona opened the file on one of her isolated laptops.

At first, she saw a blank screen and then she found herself watching a very graphic pornographic video. It was the usual grunting and groaning of pink bodies doing very athletic things but she found herself staring at it in shock because the female lead was very definitely herself! Her mind’s natural reaction was to freeze in incomprehension but she soon realized that the thing must have been generated using Artificial Intelligence. Someone had taken a picture of her face – possibly from the Company website and then instructed AI to put that face into a series of erotic situations. So there was someone in this company – almost certainly in AI just next door who was staring at his screen and watching Fiona perform in outrageous situations. He probably got hard whenever he saw her moving around the Department. But who was he?

Every device owned by the Company had a six figure identifier and Fiona read the number on the errant file. It would be a moment’s work to look up that number in the index. Using her left hand she typed the number into her main PC – ACCESS DENIED.

The whole point of Fiona’s job was that nobody was safe from her trawling through the system. Her index should be able to identify EVERY device code. So she now knew that her adversary was very good at being very bad. The pressure of work meant that Fiona simply had no time for the detailed work which it would take to unmask her rat but she would finish her working day, go home to eat and then return to the office to work long into the night if that is what it took. Her biometric door card could get her past the front door and into her hutch at any time of the day or night.

It was 9pm when Fiona entered her hutch.