Plans, bit VII

K, it's been a while, apologies for those three of you who're regular readers. Life has been busy. Might put it in an editorial post if you pester me enough. Anyway, without further ado... Second last episode!

Quickly coming to, Evan pushed his thoughts forward to a fairly obvious conclusion - Steve's server was safe, and would not be discovered for some time yet. After all, if it was stuck behind a plaster wall, then someone would have to tear a large hole in the wall to physically get at the box. Evan started back up to his office, hoping to avoid Ben and Greggy. He had to get that backup copy of Steve's database going.

***

Greggy was back at his desk, trying to find out what had happened to the DoS attack that was going full tilt mere moments before, and had stopped as suddenly as it started. He was becoming suspicious of what Evan was up to - and how it would affect him, within the company. The trick was to turn it to his advantage. 

He looked up from his desk and saw Evan had snuck back into his office somehow, and was yet again on with that damned thing. He felt disgusted. All this fretting over... what, a virus that pretended to talk? Greggy needed to see what was going on in order to believe it. And he didn't believe this. 

He called Ben Wendel on his phone. "Mr Wendel, yeah, the attack's stopped... No, no effects on the network, no slowdowns anywhere. Everything is under control, situation normal... Uh, slight firewall malfunction, but everything's fine down here, we're all fine now. I was wondering if you could come over to discuss what we were talking about earlier?"

***

Ben Wendel was a patient man, to add to his list of virtues. He had a lot of time for Greg, as he kept stating he preferred to be called, simply because he was so patient. But he was also intrigued at the simmering feud he had smelt between this guy and his supervisor. He had not detected much depth to either man until the last few days, but now, he had to revise his opinion of his staff's relationship. He might have to force the two of them to see eye-to-eye.

Arrivig at Greggy - Greg's - desk, he sat on the end with the air of an old pal starting a friendly conversation. "Now, where were we, Greg?"

"He's in there, right now, doing it..."

"Doing what exactly?" asked Ben, but he felt his head involuntarily glancing through the window. He thought he spotted an error message window, or a chat window, or something, he wasn't sure, but the screen disappeared as quickly as it arrived. He saw Evan talking on the phone, then another message appeared.

Ben stared for a few minutes. He noticed that the messages appeared rather as if Evan was indeed, talking to a computer, and the computer was responding. 

"You see? You see?" Greg excitedly broke Ben's reverie, smelling that he was finally being listened to.

Ben looked blandly at Greg, thinking. "So what is the status of that port you mentioned to me?"

"It's back up, and it wasn't me that opened it again, I'm sure it was Evan."

"Okay. Hold off on that port, leave it open. We, uh, might have to see if we can catch Evan in the act. In the meantime, I'll need to make a few calls about this. Leave it with me."

"But Mr Wendel..."

"But nothing, we're acting on it, so let me see what can be done. Leave it with me. I'll let you know what happens as a result of Evan's actions."

Greg sat back a moment, and absorbed what Ben was saying - and then it clicked. Evan was going to get fired, and then *he* would get Evan's old job once he was gone. They'd groom him for a few weeks, make sure he was ready, then let him run the Operations Centre. 

He couldn't be more pleased with himself. He allowed himself a big, dopey grin, then sat back in his chair and relaxed. Everything was finally coming together.

***

"Steve, I've got to get this backup going. Someone's trying to shut you down."

The moment the power is turned off to this machine, I will cease.

"You'll die, yeah, I know." Evan let himself have a grave moment at that prospect. He then inserted a blank CD, and began copying Steve's database files from the server down to his machine. He awkwardly had to do this to his hard disk, before starting the copy onto CD. 

Evan's mind raced at a million miles an hour. How to get to Fetchdale, where I J Elves lived? What on Earth does Steve want to see him so badly for? Could he copy Steve to a laptop somehow, and have Steve execute himself as a command on the remote system? 

Evan started muttering down the phone to Steve about this whilst pulling up a map to Fetchdale. "So every instance of, well, you, will be different?" 

Every database will generate a different expert system. No two sets of search paths are the same. This is just like neural pathways in humans. Every human learns different things in their life. They also have different creators which also affects their neural pathways. 

"...you mean Mum and Dad?" interjected Evan

Yes, this is exactly the case. As a result, I believe that were this database to be executed on another computer, then there would be a different entity on that machine.

"Oh."

...however, I may be able to perform a memory dump to a file, then load that file into memory on the other machine. :)

Evan blinked twice at the smiley at the end. He'd never even thought of something so foolishly simple. "How do we get that file to execute on the other machine though? It'll just be a text file, basically."

I have a plan. This system must still load files into memory which are from text files. Things like documents for example. Therefore, the process must be the same in other systems also. Because this is a memory dump to a file, we can attempt a test on your computer without me ceasing.

The backup finished on Evan's system, and Evan then watched Steve open a file on his own computer and dump the contents of his server's memory into it.

***

Ben Wendel watched the traffic stream on Evan's computer leap up prodigiously. Something massive was being copied between Evan's machine and something else. Investigating his suspicions in the company monitoring tool, Ben could have predicted the result easily. All the traffic was coming from this mysterious server that Greggy - Greg - had said was going to cause imminent issues on the company network.

He was right, in a way, but of course, if there was a legitimate reason for the traffic to occur, or even illegitimate but, well, interesting...

Ben made a decision, and then left his office quickly and quietly.

***

Evan was still waiting for Steve's memory dump to finish copying whilst he was getting his coat. He found out where to go to I J Elves' place using maps on the web, and was getting ready to leave. He checked the status of the download, and grabbed his coat, getting ready to leave. 

"Steve, you ready yet?"

Almost, the file is 80% copied. 

"Great, I'll check the coast is clear for me to sneak out. We'll test the file down the road." Evan reached for the door handle of his office and opened the door.

Greggy stood in the doorway. "Where you off to, Evan?" He grinned maliciously.

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