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The Pi who loved me: Licensed to SSL

Wherein Verity is troubled by a curious spam

Stob "Hi, I am James Bond (Business Development Manager). We specialize in re-designing and re-developing websites if you are considering any of the following projects. Please let us know in case you are interested." – Spam email received by the author

Bond stepped out of the lift on the ninth floor and strode rapidly down the corridor, frowning as he went. He snatched open the green baize door to the suite of rooms that housed M. and his entourage, and almost collided with the Chief of Staff, who was going the other way.

"Sorry, Bill," said Bond. "In a world of my own. Any idea what the old man wants?"

The Chief of Staff rolled his eyes. "You'll have to ask him yourself. I've got my work cut out finding security-cleared cover for Moneypenny. See you down the firing range later on?"

Bond grunted assent, and was about to back it up with some suitable small talk when a gruff voice called out: "Get in here, 007, and shut the door. We haven't got all day."

Bond walked through into the inner office. M. sat behind his large red leather-topped desk, fiddling with his pipe and surrounded by a thickish fug.

M.'s room is one of only five government offices where smoking is still permitted. The Secret Service achieved this privilege by, in a shrewd reversal of usual expectations, designating that area of the building to be considered for legal purposes a virtual annex to the British embassy in Madagascar. A serendipitous side effect was that M. was excused from participation in fire practice.

"Sit down, 007, and wait while I put this into the thingumajig. Aitch, tee, tee, pee, ess, colon, oblique – where's oblique, dammit? Oblique again..." Bond squirmed with embarrassment-by-proxy as his boss typed one-fingeredly into his laptop with all the felicity and assuredness of a Great Yarmouth great-grandmother taking her first faltering steps as a silver surfer. Surely, thought Bond, M. had people to do this for him?

"By the way, sir, where is Moneypenny?"

M.'s lips pursed. "Been given a spot of sick leave."

He cleared his throat and said: "Be sure to put me down for 10 guineas towards the Get Well present, sir."

M. puffed furiously at his pipe several times, producing a great cloud of smoke that concealed his expression. "Yes, yes. Never mind about that now. Tell me what you make of this site." M. pushed the computer across the desk.

Bond clicked around for a few seconds. "Pretty old-fashioned for the most part, and such a ramshackle mess. Part static, part JSP, part Vue.js with Bootstrap. And to top it all off, the damn thing is ugly."

"We believe that this site is a front for a new international organisation: S.P.L.O.S.H."

"S.P.L.O.S.H. sir?"

"Sinister People Like Obnoxious Spying in Homes. We think they have outrageous plans to put electronic recording bugs into every household in the world."

"But... but... but..." Bond thought.

Instead he said: "So where do I fit in, sir?"

"Excellent question, 007. As you said, they seem to need help with their website."

* * *

The Q Branch is housed in the basement of the Secret Service building. Air-conditioned to eyeball-rasping levels and white and gleaming in the strip lighting, its large tables are strewn with a fantastic array of electronic equipment. There are almost more Raspberry Pis on display than in the average middle-aged programmer's attic.

Laid out in the reception area, where Bond was standing, were half-a-dozen mixed Windows 10 laptops and desktops. Bond watched Major Boothroyd, the department's head, wander from one machine to the next, starting up copies of Excel, Word and Skype Business on each.

Impatiently, Bond said: "So what have you got for me, Boothroyd?"

Boothroyd held up a small device, which looked suspiciously like an Arduino project box with a button mounted on its side. He pressed it. Instantly, all six Windows machines abandoned their half-edited spreadsheets and in-progress video calls, and switched to identical fullscreen displays, with the universally dreaded caption:

Configuring Windows Updates
0% Complete.
Do not turn off your computer.

Despite himself, Bond was impressed. "That's quite brilliant, Boothroyd. I can imagine causing real havoc in S.P.L.O.S.H. headquarters with this gadget. What's its range?"

At that moment, they were interrupted by the approach of one of Boothroyd's young assistants.

"Excuse me, major," he said, "but I thought you'd want to know I've finished the repair. Should be all systems go. If you want to show Commander Bond the demo, I can go and turn on the Windows Update Initiation Ray now..."

He tailed off. Boothroyd seemed to be having difficulty meeting Bond's eye.

* * *

On his bedside table in his Chelsea flat, Bond's phone emitted a subdued "ping" into the quiet of the night and lit up. Instantly awake, he reached over and grabbed it off the wireless induction charger and stared, blurrily. It was M. What the hell did the old man want at this time of the morning?

He swung out of bed and, moving softly so as not to disturb the still-sleeping girl, padded into the bathroom and closed the door. He splashed his face with water and took a swig of mouthwash before sitting down on the toilet to read.

M PERSONAL FOR 007 STOP CANNED MEAT EMAIL STRATEGY SUCCESSFUL STOP INTERVIEW FIXED TEN THIRTY FRIDAY SPLOSH OFFICES SHOREDITCH BRACKET SILICON ROUNDABOUT CLOSE BRACKET STOP GET THERE PROMPTLY SHRIEKSTOP ENDIT MAILEDFIST

Bond spat a mouthful of Listerine Original and a four-letter expletive into the sink. "Mailedfist" indeed. It really was time his chief broke the habits ingrained by years of using Secret Service cipher machines and learned how to use WhatsApp.

* * *

Two days later, Bond was once again on the supplicant side of a desk, interviewing for a Sass-rattling position at the Silicon Roundabout offices of S.P.L.O.S.H.

The pretty young woman sitting opposite had been introduced to Bond as "Dr. Busty McChutzpah, the scourge and fantasy of her DevOps team". Her tight-fitting shirt, in Bond's opinion, over-fulfilled the promise of her moniker. However, on her whiteboard a single, stark message was written in 1024pt lipstick – Manhattan Rose by Tom Ford. It said, simply, #MeToo.

Bond was receiving mixed signals. He decided to play things carefully.

McChutzpah perused Bond's CV. "So you've got a bit of PHP, a bit of HTML, a bit of JQuery, and you once wrote FizzBuzz in Python. Do you know anything about Git?"

Bond had spent six weeks being personally trained by Minjung Hyeung, the world-famous Korean Git-Meisterin. Part of her teaching regime required pupils to run naked through the snow while calling out the digits of an SHA-1 hash they had calculated in their heads from the briefly glimpsed text of an entry in the Obfuscated C competition. However, admitting this experience was incompatible with Bond's cover story.

"Git? That's a bit like a magic file system that lets you go backwards in time, isn't it?" He gave a weedy, Jeremy Hunt-style smile.

Busty sighed. "All right. Frankly you sound a bit wet behind the ears, but we'll give you a two-week tryout. Come on. I'll show you around." She got up and walked out of her office, Bond trailing in her wake.

"This is the router room" – she rhymed it with "grouter", like an American – "and this is the leezure area. They serve free shakes all day and... What's the matter? Are you lactose intolerant or something?"

Bond uncurled his lip. "It's not that. I just don't like the way that it's made."

Busty said, crossly: "Sheesh! So go tell the guy how you like it. And get me a strawberry-and-banana while you're about it. I just need to powder my nose a moment."

Bond walked past the table football, the darts board and the inevitable Space Invaders pinball machines up to the counter. "Two strawberry-and-banana flavour, please. Oh, and milk barista?"

The youth reluctantly raised his slovenly gaze from his phone to Bond's face. "Yeah?"

"I'd like my drink stirred, not shaken," said James Bond. ®

Verity Stob is the pseudonym of a software developer based in London. Since 1988, she has written her "Verity Stob" column for .EXE magazine, Dr. Dobb's Journal and, since 2002, The Register.

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