Page 16 of Zen's Crash

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I crash out at home and don’t wake up until the evening. I decide that I’m gonna do my best to romance the Crone.

I find her in a chat room dedicated to the ethics of hacking and the irony doesn’t escape me. Sitting in my living room surrounded by the soft glow of computer screens, I message her.

Me: Good evening, beautiful.

ChaosCrone: WTF Architect. Are you here to debate or act like a jackass?

Me: Ouch, you don’t take compliments very well.

ChaosCrone: Calling someone you’ve never met IRL beautiful is weird, since you can’t possibly know if they’re beautiful or not.

Me: Maybe I think you have a beautiful personality or a beautiful soul?

ChaosCrone: That’s beside the point. The topic of discussion tonight is the ethics of hacking. Do you have an opinion on that?

Leaning back in my chair, I decide to regroup and give it my best shot.

Me: You’re asking me about ethics when I know we’ve both strayed into morally gray areas before.

ChaosCrone: That’s a fair point. But do you believe that hacking has to be for personal gain in order to be unethical?

I think it over for a minute before answering.

Me: I think that hacking is more than just breaching another person’s security for personal gain. It can break through firewalls to wreak havoc and damage another person’s system. That behavior is definitely unethical.

ChaosCrone: So, in your mind, breaching firewalls just to play around and appease our curiosity is harmless and therefore ethical because we’re not doing damage.

I tell her:

Me: I think the way you slip in through back doors and breach systems is kind of sexy. It’s like you rule your world and no one can keep you out.

ChaosCrone: What about you? You like to flirt and charm your way into places you shouldn’t be. Like just now, you were trying to flirt with me. What did you want from me? Are you even honest enough to ask?

Me: Maybe, I don’t want anything. Why is it so hard to believe that I just like you and I’m in the mood for some light flirting?

ChaosCrone: Since it’s never happened before in the time I’ve known you, I think something has changed. I want to know what.

Me: I thought we were talking about the ethics of hacking.

ChaosCrone: The bottom line for me is I have an intact moral compass. It lets me know when I’m about to cross the line. Maybe it’s nothing more than women’s intuition.

Me: Or there is no such thing as women’s intuition and instead, it’s all human intuition.

ChaosCrone: That’s possible.

A brief silence stretches out in our text chat and she starts typing, then stops. I’ve rattled her. I decide to shoot my shot.

Me: Have you ever made a strong connection with someone online and just wanted to have coffee withthem to see how a real-life conversation measured up to the online chatting?

ChaosCrone: Meeting up with strangers can be dangerous.

Me: Yeah, but we’ve known each other for years online. Aren’t you the least bit curious about me—what I look like, how my voice sounds?

ChaosCrone: I’m just really curious as to where all this is coming from. Like you said, we’ve known each other for years and you never approached me this way before. Why now? What changed?

Damn it. She’s onto me. My sister’s future is riding on my ability to find out more information about this person and I’m clearly not up to the challenge of fake flirting. It feels wrong to manipulate someone like this. But she’s just a thief who steals other people’s hard-earned money. I shouldn’t feel guilty about this, but I do. I recalibrate and try again.

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