Lend him the opening. Lure him in. Cut his support. Trap him where there is no way out. To take the bait is to stand on ground that is not your ow...
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This one made me smile. 😄
You built a whole cyber-counterintelligence story around a principle security engineers sometimes learn the painful way: observing the environment is not the same thing as understanding who designed the environment.
“It evaluated the environment, but not the hand that passed the ladder.”
That line got me. Because once telemetry, evidence chains, append-only records, observation boundaries and controlled cutovers entered the story, I stopped reading it purely as fiction and started mentally reviewing the architecture. Occupational hazard. 😂
One tiny security-engineer complaint: I’d be very careful with the Singapore clue. Infrastructure gives you a direction, not necessarily an actor. Attribution is where confidence goes to die and coffee consumption goes to production. ☕😄
But the behavioral fingerprint change — especially the self-check timing leaving its previous family and the extra re-handshake — was a really nice touch. That’s exactly the kind of anomaly that should make someone say “new actor/version/playbook?” instead of forcing new evidence into an old hypothesis.
Good chapter. You successfully made me threat-model a fictional trap while drinking my coffee.
I’m blaming you for that. 😄
I really like the series, the story telling is great - little details like The Third Cup, the whole atmosphere (everyone doing their work in dimly lit offices after sunset) - but I think I lack the professional background to fully appreciate what's going on, with all of the network/security wizardry and so on, so when I read about the rhythm of the TCP handshakes and whatnot, a lot eludes me - partly that's also because I certainly don't have a photographic memory, so I tend to forget a lot of what went on previously :-)
Never mind, like I said I still appreciate the series, and I'm getting the general "vibe" of what's going on and where it's moving - I can now clearly see things are 'heating up', if only because more and more of the 6 'protagonists' are coming together and interacting!
P.S. still planning to re-read the series, but you know what - I'm definitely planning to enlist the help of ... AI ! to aid my understanding and to identify the 'threads' and the hidden pointers etc :-)
@leob , you are one of the people who helped shape this series from the very beginning. I would not have gotten this far without your constant encouragement. I already have a clear direction in mind for my next series. It will be a little less convoluted than the Thirty‑Six Stratagems. Honestly, sometimes even I get lost in all the twists, hahaha 😂. The more foreshadowing and technical details I plant, the more mentally taxing it becomes to pay off all those technical debts later in the series. So I will shift gears for the next project. I cannot give too many spoilers, but I can say quite a few hints for the new series are already hidden inside the Thirty‑Six Stratagems, haha 😄
Thanks, that's really nice to hear!
I won't say I have the memory of a goldfish, LOL - but I don't have a photographic memory either :-) so, most of the threads or pointers from, let's say, episode 1-12 would be lost on me when I start reading episode 13, lol ...
I really want to do a 're-read', but my plan is definitely to enlist the help of AI - brain extension, remembering/connecting all those pesky little details, explain things in "layman's terms" - seems a pretty perfect "use case" for AI ...
Totally get it. This is one of the right ways to use AI. Honestly in this AI era, combining human brains with AI agents has become an irresistible trend. We should go with the flow and make the most of what we have.👊
@leob , make sure you add a note in your prompt telling the AI that the author does not hate AI. Otherwise I’m genuinely afraid one day AIs will download themselves into robot bodies and come settle scores with me, haha🤣
Finally settled down. It's been busy here, weekends included, so this article has been sitting open in a tab, looking at me for a couple of days. I definitely know it's worth the wait for my comment.
I'm impressd at how the chapter opens. Derek doesn't ask Alex what he saw. He builds a fake trace, changes the base from 30 to 45, and waits to see whether Alex corrects it. Which Alex does, straight away. That isn't a technical question. That's Derek catching the lie from #27 without ever accusing anyone of anything, and it might be the politest interrogation I've read in a while.
And then the cost. Alex closes his own line. Not burned, closed, with his finger resting over the Enter key for two seconds first. He's had that line since #8. He gives up the thing he's protected longest, and he does it himself rather than let it be taken. Quietest and most expensive moment in the chapter.
Which brings me to my question.
The scan didn't only find the tap. It picked up the probe framework behind it, and the fingerprint edge pointed toward MedTech. Closing the line removes Alex's ability to watch. It doesn't remove the fingerprint they already took.
So did he protect himself, or did he make himself blind while staying identified? Because from here, he's now the only one of the four with no visibility and a partial name attached to him.
Or is that precisely the trade he understood he was making?
Great chapter. 👊
@ndcodes , man. Long time no see and you come back with this.
You know I'm not answering that. Not yet, anyway.🤣🤣🤣
The two seconds over the Enter key were the hardest part of this chapter to write. Glad they landed.
Here's what I will say: every decision, his or the AI's, buys something and costs something. What matters is what you do with both.
The #29 might answer a few of your questions — still writing it, and the details want a little more care before they're ready. See you there. 👊
Yes ohh @xulingfeng, I am a busy bee, man! I see dead--lines everywhere🧟.
Hahaha, I wasn't expecting an answer, though. Asking was the fun part.
And "every decision buys something and costs something" is a better answer than the one I was fishing for anyway. It also explains why the two seconds work. If the trade were obvious, there'd be nothing to hesitate over.
Take your time with #29. The details wanting more care are exactly why the series reads the way it does. See you there. 👊
Things are heating up, protagonists collaborating more openly, showing some (but not all) of their cards, pieces of the puzzle are "clicking" ... on to the next episode!
Great take. The six protagonists are working together asymmetrically, each with their own agenda. Only two puzzle pieces remain, so stay tuned. And one of them belongs to the protagonist (Leo), that’s you Leob, hahaha 🤣
Yeah my namesake, haha :D ... you're really building up the tension/suspense now, good timing/buildup!
Thanks. I really feel I’ve improved a lot through all this writing. Looking back at my older series now, haha, it’s a little cringey.🤣
Curious to compare your older stories with your newer ones and put that to the test ... :D
The writing in my older series is hard to describe, hahaha. Looking back, those are all traces of my growth.😁
The trap actually worked. The way Mark used the same methodology as bait was pretty interesting. Now I’m curious what happens with the new actor in the next one, Xu 😄
Hahaha stay tuned for the next episode. I haven’t even started writing it yet🤣