“But if the error is fatal?” Antony asked in perplexity.
“The very education is for you to help to calculate and minimize the risk.” Victor clarified.
Antony pulled out his smartphone, intending to take a selfie against the ocean landscape with intention to send it to his new mistress:
“You’ve convinced me, now I'll make an action.”
But he didn't have time – in the blink of an eye, Victor snatched the smartphone from him and threw it overboard:
“Sorry, I forgot to warn you – no electronic communications during the voyage!”
“What you’ve done, I could just turn it off!” Antony exclaimed in fury.
“You couldn’t! They don’t actually turn off completely.”
“One more such trick and you’ll go flying after him!”
Victor patted Antony on the shoulder in a conciliatory manner:
“Well, don’t get upset! I’ll buy you much better one. You’ll understand soon enough.”
Puzzled, Antony silently turned away and moved to the opposite board. The weather gradually deteriorated. The breeze was rising. Antony noticed a huge albatross hovering in the air. The giant majestically glided over and disappeared over the horizon. Antony watched him to the end. It seemed to him that it was the same bird that he had seen in the park. There was something special about this creature…
The second day of the voyage was getting stormy. Viktor invited Antony onto the deck. They perched on the stern. Some splatters reached them there. Victor uncorked a bottle of expensive brandy and handed it to Antony. After making a few sips directly from bottles throat, Antony felt a warm and pleasant intoxication spreading through his body. That divine inebriation happens only when you take alcohol either for the first time or after a very long abstinence. Antony had not drunk for years. Then Victor took a sip himself and brought his face close to his friend’s:
“I have a little business to offer you.”
“I thought you invited me not just for a kindly ride on your yacht out of friendship? I am readily listening,” Antony replied.
“Yes, of course, out of friendship! But one thing does not interfere with the other. We’ll kill two hares with single shot!”
“That’s your style. You used to get three in one evening. Girls, not hares, but that still counts,” Antony joked.
“Tell me, you still work as a programmer, right?” Victor pretended not to understand the humor.
“Yes. At the moment, I have a contract with the Sydney branch of Deutsche Bank. But I'm going to give up programming.”
“Why so?”
“Age. Employers start discriminating. The average age of programmers at Google, for example, is thirty years. And the proportion of those over forty is less than three percent. And in Facebook, developers are even younger. I’m forty-five. So the time has come for me to change the way I earn my livelihoods. One option is to convert to IT managers.
“Well, I didn’t know that programmers have careers as short as boxers. But you still have postpone you plans for a few years if not forever. I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse. And you will got younger straight away!”
“It is widely said that business kills friendships…”
“A-a-a… there are so many sayings, proverbs, superstitions, omens in this world, that you can find hundreds for and hundreds against anything you decided to do. They are all not about us and not for us. I made some inquiries; your fee is a hundred bucks an hour, isn't it? Impressive. But I’m willing to pay you five times as much.”
“Five hundred an hour?” Antony could not believe his ears, “can we go down to the cabin as the noise of the storm drowns out the words?”
“No, no, I’m not sure there aren’t any eavesdropping devices. I called the specialists, they checked everything, but let’s to reinsure. All business conversations will be conducted only on deck, quietly, with the sound of the breaking waves and the howling of the wind.”
“What kind of work is it?”
“After Snowden’s revelations about the CIA’s wiretapping of all the inhabitants of the planet, among the big people around the world, there was a demand for absolutely non-eavesdropping means of communication. Customers are not only individual businessmen, mafiosi and politicians, but also entire governments of a number of countries. A lot of people don’t like being hooked by the CIA. They are willing to pay billions.” Victor finished and looked straight to Antony’s eyes.
“I agree with what you’ve said. But you just can’t imagine the gigantic volume and complexity of this work! I admire you as an entrepreneur, but your small firm can’t handle that, sorry to be blunt. The tender will be won by some international telecommunications giant.” Antony smiled some with guilt.
“Well, exactly here you’re wrong, my friend! The very giants have no chance here! They won’t even be invited to the table. It is clear to a fool that the global scale of wiretapping could not have been organized without the cooperation of leading manufacturers of equipment with the US special services. Judge yourself – after the fact of wiretapping of German Chancellor Merkel was revealed, against at least one employee of at least one telecommunications company has been opened a criminal case? Not. No one even was kicked out of work! And the corporations and the CIA don’t even consider themselves guilty of anything! The larger the firm, the more likely it is that it has already been recruited by the secret services. Therefore, our customers are searching among not so large, but certainly independent companies, such as mine.” Victor paused for a long moment and then looked at his friend for his honest opinion and stand on the matter.
“Have you received an offer already?” Antony asked seriously.
“Not yet, but at the moment we have been invited to participate in the secret tender. We must submit our project and, preferably, a prototype device.”
“Not only a project, but already a prototype..?”
– I understand your skepticism, but, in terms of prototype, other contenders are not in the better position than we are; plus Dan has a brilliant idea how to do it.”
“Why do you guys need me then?”
“Dan can’t write program himself, at least perfectly. Nobody can be talented in everything. He’s a theorist. We need a super-programmer, with both huge theoretical and practical background, who could write programming code at the state of the art. Plus, I need trust such person as I trust myself. Only you meet all such criteria.”
“Such a confession after twenty years of separation?”
“Well, yes. In fact, I’ve been keeping an eye on you all this time.”
“What is the essence of the project in more details?”
“This matter you better discuss with Dan; as technocrats with technocrats. I am a mere manager.”
Victor called loudly for the motorman. Daniel came out of the control room and sat down at the table. Victor continued:
“He is not only a good motorist, but also a brilliant mathematician; Princeton University; Doctor of Philosophy in Cybernetics. You both have gotten a lot to discuss. I’ll leave you for now.”
Victor handed Daniel a bottle of brandy and went into the control room. Daniel took a symbolic sip and set the bottle aside:
“You probably know better than me that the first problem is that computers and smartphones use microchips with undocumented schemes, so-called undocumented "inserts", designed specifically for stealing information by the special services. And the second problem is that operating systems also have vulnerabilities. Some of their ’holes’ in security were made unintentionally, by oversight, but others, the most dangerous ones – by collusion of manufacturers with special services.”