HNMNBM Book One

Cahali crouched in the darkness, small cleft of clay on the canal bank. She was OK, she had eaten some berries and wasn't in the mood for another fight wih a rivert or forest rat. She had survived being attacked by spinning with her sharp stick and ramming it right into the mouth of the rodent trying to bite her haunch. The stick pierced his throat. He struggled to remove that damaging object, ran off when it was finally free. She had picked it up, very pleased with herself. She could see she was smarter that that animal, different than the attacker. How would I know? What makes me different? It was the stick, a tool, that she had fashioned carefully gnawing the one edge. There is at least one thing that makes me different that the quarrelsome rat. I have a tool that I built, I AM different. That rat didn't have a tool, because he doesn't know how to build tools, same as any other rat, he is NOT different. She wasn't sure why it was important, but she knew it was. U...

Why do computer scientists always confuse Halloween with Christmas? Because 31 OCT = 25 DEC Back to the police:   How did the hacker escape the police? He NOP?d right out of there Knock Knock. Who?s There? TCP. I am FINished with you, please stop Pee-ing on my porch by RESetting your self. Did you hear the one about the criminal who escaped the mountaintop Canadian penitentiary in the provice of British Columbia? He used a NO-OP Sled. How did the hackers escape the police? They ransomware. Your momma's so FAT she can't save files over 4GB. A SQL Injection walks into a bar, starts to quote something but stops, drops a table, then dashes out.

ALWAYS plan you exit, yeah right, but at this scale. Blue Circle, HNMBies on the move in San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Operator was born for such a time as this. FenceLink: Drones are following us out of the lake, what to do? You've got people with 12 gauges right? Yeah, pause, yeah Blow them out of the sky, you're a scene commander, command. But do it at the same time so they don't respond by evasive flight tactics. Had to laugh a bit. HNMNBies were allergic to assault rifles, but a surprising number of households had an Remington 870 or two around. The big problem was satellite. The command and control is based on physical protection, there isn't enough room or power in space for advanced encryption. But the links to the radios would be highly protected. TrapDoor, is there any way to beat the crypto for satellites? You have to sign the command and control messages, that is how they authenticate. So what do I need? You need the private key. How ...

Internet traffic whips past at the speed of light. It is only possible to detect a tiny subset of anomalous events in real time. The data is recorded, as much as possible and analyzed endlessly. Deep mining AIs flagging events for human analysts. Petty Officer 3rd Class Harold Snyder was almost ready to clock out for lunch when one of these events filtered up from SOC 23. NAVTRAFCAN023 16 reports UDP traffic DST 8888 1 byte data 0xC1 but differing checksums User Datagram Protocol, (UDP) is mildly interesting anytime it is used for something other than DNS. 8888 has no real definitive use, it ranges from DSL Speedtest to Heroes of Might and Magic 5 and anything else inconclusive. 1 byte of data is a bit odd, but UDP is an odds and ends protocol. However, the checksum should not change. Since the beginning of time, modulating the checksum has been used to send messages, a so-called covert channel, but this one so well known it was anything by covert. Snyder attached his analysis ...

Carbon is plentiful, too much so, at least in the atmosphere. So the rich question is can we do something useful with it? Carbon has many characteristics, but our processes focus on five of them: tensile strength, flexibility, stiffness, semi-conductor and conductor. You know the story of the fence, let me recap in three sentences. A low cost efficient method to convert scrub and timber waste into carbon fiber gave us high tensile strength and flexibility. We needed stiffness especially for the fence posts so now we create carbon nanotubes, one of the stiffest materials in nature. With fencing, supply outstrips demand. Next we ventured into tactical clothing. There are applications for weapons resistance, especially in law enforcement, but also safety in fields like fire fighting. Other manufacturers can create anything we can, the difference is scale.  We sequester a lot of carbon, the trick is doing something useful with it. With tactical clothes demand significantly exceeds ...

After she got the network up, she was starving and Vito's made the best prosciutto pasta with peas she had ever tasted, so she stopped in. A gentleman from across the room sent her a drink via the water, Chianti. Chara was in an Italian wine phase, perfect. The waiter signaled the location of the young man and Chara blew him a kiss. He came over to her table with his bottle. Other men crowded around. A drink and then another. Chara didn't realize the red wine was causing her to emote much more than usual. After the men processed her pheromones, she got theirs back. The whole room was getting high and the wine was pouring. Suddenly Chara heard one of her favorite songs Rita Pavone's Cuore and sprang up on the table. The song builds in intensity, at first her moves were very subtle, the more pronounced bordering on the uninhibited, the bar went wild.

Glyph, son of HQ17E, a Neorat, was a hornbuck like his forefathers. He was not satisfied with the does of the Neorats, too docile, picky, clean and often sterile. He left burrow and mischief on his wild adventure, gutter rats, city rats, it did not matter to him. He probably impregnated over 1,000 does. He made history, father of the Neanderats. His mongrel offspring were similar to Rattus Norvegicus, the brown rat, but far superior. Rattus Neander were smaller, shorter lifespans, crawlers all, less of the organoids when compared to dying populations of Neorats, but true to the distant generations they were spawned from, they lived and died fast. Fighters, Neorats, if you could find one, thought of them as barbarians. Within a few years the brown rat was gone from Madagascar, no place for them in city or forest. Braggl, son of Argah, son of Glyph, a great buck chief made the fatal mistake of trying to take over the habitats of the Lemrats. His reason seemed sound to burrow war coun...

Tomorrow at first light we leave. I shall miss the Baobobs and the sand. We set a course to find the continent of Africa in search of freedom. Wayfarers have done it before, made the crossing and returned. They tell of a land with water, a place we can be free. The good news about the endeavor is that you just sail West, you can't miss it. The bad news is everything else. But before the colonization it was 1 or 2 fool hardy rats, sea scouts, to a boat, 3 - 5 boats to a mischief. Now the burrow has embarked on a course of putting the whole kit and kaboodle to sea. The war is not going well on the island. Grafgh had been such a fool to pick a fight with the neorats. Now burrow by burrow we are being systematically destroyed, genocide, soon only the true blood neos will remain. As Southern rats we had a bit more time. Water is very scarce here, their infantry cannot cross long distances without supply trains. We had a bit more time to prepare for the crossing. Good thing that. ...

When Wonk and Yolanda spoke, be mentioned Charles Vanderbilt's lemur dream. Yolanda smiled. Amphibious cars and buses would be nice. There was a transportation problem near Depository II getting crops, even mine products to market. And, if they could make development near the water more attractive, it might slow down the destruction of the rain forest inland. That alone should be enough to convince Traveler to part with $100M or so to fund the startup. She would be seeing Skip in a few days and resolved to chat about it. = = = Yolanda and Skip were chatting in his RV's queen size bed relishing that feeling of peace that follows satisfying the itch of wanting to make love. Lazily, in no particular order, she started to tell him about the idea, almost certain he would begin production the next day. Instead, Skip kindly and patiently burst her bubble. Nice dream Yolanda and what a fun toy, an amphibious car. I had heard they are getting a following in certain swampy areas t...

When Charles Vanderbilt the boat boy formerly known as Stephen Paddock was able to speak with Wonk on the Sat phone he said This is a bit wierd, but I had this dream, very vivid, and it concerns you. May I share? By all means. A father in a village lost his daughter, life was hard and there was not much love. As he was walking along the path or mud road, a ring tailed lemur climbing in the mountains high above with her conspiracy missed a jump from rock to rock, fell through the emergents, into the rain forest canopy and out of a tree to the ground, slightly injuring her front left paw. Filled with compassion he walked over the lemur that was having trouble walking. Perhaps you can walk on your two hind feet like I do, so the lemur did. He took the wounded animal home and put it his daughter's bed to rest. The lemur said, I can resist the natural forces of nature, but only for a few days. As the leopard slept, he put one of his daughter's dresses on it, and n...