Her codename was ARROGANT TARSIER. I softly chuckled to myself. You knew the boffins in the codename department were bored when you got codenames like that. I imagine, after all the hullabaloo about BRIGHT WINTER leaking our crown jewels for all to see, at least that lot were pleased their creativity were on display. I looked outside for a moment; the Maryland sun was gleaming outside, a beautiful 75 degree day outside. 

Inside, it was ten degrees colder.

XKEYSCORE gave me the usual pastiche of a life, email addresses, social network accounts -- hm. No Facebook account. I smiled to myself, inside my cubicle. Clever girl. An old Hotmail account -- long forgotten? Darn. Emails from her mother: chain mail, cat pictures, useless tat. Not on close speaking terms, I take it? Poor thing. A very old highschool yearbook picture, sent to her mom's friends. Bet she hated that.

I looked at the picture, grainy, scanned in grayscale on an ancient scanner. Looked into her eyes. Warm, sweet eyes. But a target's a target; a list's a list. Where's the real email? Everyone uses email. Come on. Business records ought to do the trick. Find a credit card, find an ISP, dial upan IP address, grep through FAIRVIEW -- bingo, a domain, an MX record. 

A FreeBSD gateway. My heart melted. Did FOXACID even *have* FreeBSD exploits? Huh, I suppose there were a few trivial 0days there. QUANTUM will do the trick over a quick coffee break. She's on the East coast. Connecticut. Online right now, probably; FAIRVIEW found some active XMPP traffic a few minutes ago. Ask the fellas in CES if they can work their magic.

I locked my screen and walked to the kitchen for a cup of joe. Couldn't stop thinking about those eyes. Wonder what color her hair was? Jesus, get it together. Target's a target, right? 

Wonder what kind of lipstick she wore? Damn. Get it together. 

Email reply from CES, they got a live decrypt on that XMPP stream. Chat transcripts. TARSIER's chatting with a man on the other end? I instantly got a rush of heat to my face. No, it's her dad. Talking about a Muse concert? I smiled sheepishly to myself. Yeah, I like them too. Knights of Cydonia, right?

In an instant, I felt completely isolated. From everyone in the office. From everyone in the country. The solitude was soul-crushing. This was like being on a date, except behind a one-way mirror. I felt terrible.

Target's a target, right?

A spurt of HTTP traffic. Snarfed, in the nick of time. A tarball, uploaded to a VPS ...in California? Extracting it -- a bunch of HTML docs? What is this? A PowerPoint presentation, in HTML? Very old school. I'm beginning to fall in love.

Something for DefCon, on elliptic curve cryptography. I flicked through it, of course. Clever, for a lowbie. Non-NIST curves...some very nice implementation optimizations while keeping side-channel attacks down. Not approaching Suite A level hardening, but ... yes, not bad either. With some training and induction...

I put in a request with ENTERPRISE for a trip out to Vegas. I could meet her, finally. See her in person. I'm sure ENTERPRISE would approve her working here. I bet she loves the weather out here. She'd find me irresistible, of course. I deserve something for this job, after all, right? All these thankful hours spent protecting our nation, a girlfriend can't be out of the question. Right? 

*

No one picked me for the enemy out here. I put a hand to my Ray-Bans, gave the bridge up my nose a slight push. TARSIER had just gave her talk. Enthusiastic applause. Stupid questions from the audience. I glared at them from behind the sunglasses. Don't insult her intelligence. 

I stayed back as the audience milled out. She was coming towards me. 

Her hair was strawberry blonde after all.

No lipstick, just -- was that lip gloss?

I took off my sunglasses. "Hi, I'm very pleased to meet you." I extended a hand. She gave it a perfunctory shake. 

I maintained my composure -- our hands touched! "We've been watching your work for some time now. We'd like to offer --" 

She recoiled. "Watching my work? Who are you? Who do you work for?"

"I -- We're a little security firm from Maryland and --"

"You're the fucking Feds, aren't you?" she spat "What, Fort Meade?"

"It's a vital job protecting national --"

A projectile of hot, wet liquid hit my face. S-she spat at me! Vile thing! I raised my hand impulsively, out of anger, ready to strike her.

But I hesitated. I didn't. In that instance, she sprinted away, and all that was left was me, in this lecture hall, with a few people milling about ready for the next talk. Isolated. Again. We're all here because we've got the same passion for computing and security, but it's them and me. 

Them and me.

And I realized how fucking stupid this all was. How obscene it was for me to sit in my cubicle, like those shitheads who put cameras in womens' bathrooms. Stalking people. It's them and me for a reason. BRIGHT WINTER was right. He was right all along. I suddenly saw the whole, ghastly thing in my mind from a regular person's point of view, horrified with myself. 

So maybe I screwed things up with TARSIER. And I don't think I could ever fix it, nor could I ever want to. I hadn't violated her body, but I had violated her soul. But it wasn't too late for me. It's never too late.

I took off my name badge, and let it fall to the ground.