Kurt bemoans the limitations of Earth technology, as he struggles to set up the San Francisco event with Mind Candy. He also finds time to work out how to hack into the AQSYS network. She's been busy too, acquiring a handful of isotope tags so they can track the equipment currently sitting in the Crypto stores.
There aren't many things more frustrating than working with old technology. Imagine having to get data from some 30 year old tapes that were mouldering in a basement. Not only would you have to identify the tapes and find hardware to read them (or build it, if it didn't exist any more) - you'd also have to devise some interface from between your state of the art PC and the tape drive, which probably used some form of rudimentary smoke signalling. And once you'd gotten the data out - partially corrupted, of course - you'd have to reverse-engineer its arcane, biblical formatting conventions. You'd be pretty annoyed, right?
Well, that's what I have to do every time I work with Earth technology. I've been tasked with working out an interface with some sensors Mind Candy procured for the San Francisco event, and let's just say that they're pretty balky. We have plenty of plans for far more advanced devices which would interface fine, but of course, the council prohibits such things.
I was in the middle of testing a replica sensor in my room when Karen called and thankfully gave me an excuse to take a break. I fell onto my couch and left it stuck to the ceiling.
"So, I managed to sort out the isotope tags," she said.
"Huh. Where did you get them from?" I asked.
"Hilbert. They do a lot of nuclear work for medical tracers and military stuff."
"What, and you just called them up and asked for some isotope tags, exactly to your specifications?"
"Exactly," she said, smugly aware that she'd just won the conversation.
"Let me guess, you know someone who works there," I said.
"Yeah, I used to go out with this guy called Leo, he started there last year."
"Leo? From the Security Centre?" I said. "Actually, I don't want to know. What about getting access to the parts?"
"Still working on that. I think I might be able to get Juanita to help, she normally lets people in to try out new tech that's arrived. Have you been able to get into AQSYS?"
"Just about. Got the details of the system from a Natural Sciences database. And it turns out that the aerostats are networked, but it's hard-coded - I can't overlay my own system, so we're going to have to override that and use manual controls. Luckily, I have a lot of friends," I said.
"So you say," said Karen doubtfully.
"Actually, they're more like acquaintances. But don't worry, it'll be fine." Something chimed on my key, and I added, "Look, I have to get back to work on this RFID stuff, I've got a meeting with Sente in an hour, but I'll talk to you later. Bye!"
We're almost ready to go now - I imagine that we'll both need a few more days to sort everything out, but it's been surprisingly easy so far. I'll let you know on Monday what the plan is.
