Seventy-four: Tightwad

Back amongst my plants in the Compound, I lay back and watched the stars, humming and smiling to myself. The plants had been a little neglected, but now that I was back, they were perking up again to become fine fat little bundles of greens that would be ready to be eaten soon. They would taste so nice.

Food was still relatively scarce in the Compound and the nurse that visited me regularly during the day to give me my medication also made me regularly drink a supplementary drink. I think all the prisoners and even some of the soldiers drank it. There wasn't enough in our diet to give us everything we needed. At least it tasted better than the horrible concoction Dr Eisor had made me drink. This at least had more salt and sugar in it with chocolate or raspberry flavouring. Sometimes there was even the rarely tasted peach flavour.

There was a new CO, known collectively by all as Tightwad. She told me to call her Susan and pretty much let me do whatever I wanted except for leave the Compound. I saw her pretty often. Mostly for scoldings for working too long and hard, but unlike others, she could never seem to maintain her stern glare with me.

Boots kicked my bare feet that were finally rebuilding their tough calluses again. It seems that shoes were scarce whichever side of the war you were on. Nobody had bothered to find or give me new ones yet.

"Jean," said Tighwad's voice. "I've been calling you for ages. Stop ignoring me."

I popped upright and swayed. She caught me by the elbow before I lost my balance. Something had gone wrong with my brain during those seizures among the Boskies, but it was slowly coming back to normal. As was my speech. It still wasn't great though and Tightwad was one of the few to whom I was willing to bother talking to.

"Tightwad," I smiled. "You talking to me?"

"If not you, then who else? Can you see anyone else out here called Jean?" she shook her head and wagged a finger at me. "And I told you to call me Susan."

"There's a woman over there called Jean," I pointed to one of the old grave sites. "She got raped and killed before she could report the soldiers. Not that Scumbag cared. He's the one who ordered her dead. Shot her himself. Bang. One shot between the eyes. Pointblank range."

Tightwad shivered and shook her head.

"You're always full of cheerful information, aren't you, Jean?' she said, leading me out of the vegetable patch by the arm. "What are you doing out here and not in bed, hmm? You're not a child that you should need reminding."

I shrugged.

"Don't remember. Veggies are nearly ready for eating."

"Yes, I know," she smiled. You've done an excellent job with them."

"Hungry," I rubbed my tummy. "I want the veggies to fill me up."

"Yes, me too," she rubbed her tummy, complaining. "There's never enough to go around anymore, is there?"

"No," I looked up at the stars. "Pity."

"Yeah," she said. "Listen, I need your help with the computers. Mr Raring said you're one of the best. Will you come help me fix them, sometime?"

"Now?"

"Now is good, if you're not tired."

"Okay," I smiled at her. "Cup of water?"

"Yes, I'll give you an extra cup of water in return," Susan patted my arms. "Come and wash your hands first. Otherwise you'll make the keyboards muddy."

"Mud isn't good for the keyboards," I said with a slight pout. I wasn't stupid and I still had reasonable respect for my favourite machines. "Why would I do that?"

"Nevermind," Susan rolled her eyes at me. "Come on."

She logged into the first computer for me and told me about her problems and the strange things that had been happening on her computers.

I played about and found spyware, trojan horses and other viruses at work in the computer network.

"Huh," I sat back, watching someone typing a command through the spyware to an unknown recipient. I traced the computer being used. "This computer," I wrote down the computer number as fast as possible using Tightwad's stationery that was at hand. "Run. There's someone on that computer right now."

Susan left at a run, barking orders.

I watched the information about the current situation of the Compound being sent out. There was mention of a crack in the south wall to be mended in three days after new supplies arrived in two days. While I watched, a reply came through. The Boskies were going to attack the Compound in two days while new POWs were being delivered and some of the current POWs were due to be sent to another centre.

Tightwad returned and I pointed the messages out to her. She nodded and gestured for another soldier to take over the computer.

"Let Tim take over and clean all that up. We have protocols you don't know about. At least we have warning," she said. "We'll need backup," she muttered to herself.

"Feed false information," I said, breaking her out of her thoughts and the soldier who had been about to clear the spyware breach paused, looking at me.

"She's right," Tim told his CO. "This is the perfect opportunity to feed them false information."

"Give me a moment," Tightwad pressed her lips together and pulled out her phone, walking out the door.

I peeked over the soldier's shoulder.

"Don't do that," I said. "This virus is a scorpion. It has a tail, see? You'll get stung if you're not careful."

"I like how you revealed all the spyware and viruses somebody managed to get into our network," Tim nodded, re-typing his code. "That's cool. Do you mind if I include it into our firewall?"

"If you include it into the firewall, you'll need to make adjustments to it," I said off hand, while watching him work. "It's too crude to work in your firewall. Code will clash. Different logic. Different language."

"Leave it to me," Tim said, continuing to work.

"Naughty," I said after a while from over his shoulder. "Very naughty."

"What?"

"Look at the source codes and similarities between them. They're all the same. Prototypes. If they're prototypes…" I trailed off.

"Oh boy," Tim realised what I was getting at. "Where's Tightwad?"

"On the phone."

"Do you know where she went?"

"Footsteps are coming from E-27," I told him helpfully.

"Uh, thanks," Tim said, half getting up, but Tightwad had already walked back in through the door. "Excuse me, ma'am," he took Tightwad aside and I sat down to mess with an idea for a side program based off the prototype viruses I was seeing and to make use of the loophole that the spyware was using.