Page 5 of Wolfish Desire
It turns out we both love cheeseburger pizza – ground beef, cheddar, and mozzarella with caramelized onions – and extra lemon in our iced tea.
As always, the other customers all nod hello to me, while maintaining a polite distance. Luckily, Sierra doesn’t seem to notice.
“This is probably the obligatorygetting to know youportion of the evening,” she laughs. “Why don’t you tell me about your work?”
I’ve never had any trouble talking about my work in a boardroom or to clients, but it’s a bit awkward to discuss with Sierra. It’s like I have a mental block. How do you tell someoneyou’ve just met that you’re in charge of the safety of so much data? It’s weird.
But she’s staring at me, so I guess I’ll have to get over myself.
“How much do you know about encrypted security systems?” I ask.
She grins. “Oh, is that what you do? Just what I’ve picked up from movies. But try me anyway.”
“Okay.” I lean back. “If a password is 1-2-3-4, someone could figure it out in seconds. But if it’s a super long chain of numbers, they would have to go through months’ worth of possibilities to try to crack it.”
Sierra nods. “In the movies, that’s when they all crouch around the laptop as it successfully calculates one number at a time while the clock is ticking down.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, well it actually would take days – or weeks, in most cases – if we’re talking any decent kind of security. At our company, the encryption sequences are extremely long chains of totally randomized numbers.”
“And you have some master computer in the basement that spits them out?”
“Nope.” My eyebrow quirks up and I grin. “That’s the fun part. We use nature for some of the input.”
She cocks her head to the side, causing her hair to spill gently over her shoulder. It’s very distracting.
“We have a few stations across the mountain where we measure things,” I continue. “The splash patterns of a nearby river. The decibel levels of bird calls. The intensity of the wind when it comes around a certain corner of the mountain. All these can be digitized in increments from one to ten.”
Sierra breaks into beautifully sparkling laughter. “And this is a big company?”
“Yes.” I hesitate. “Global, actually.”
“So some company’s data in Ireland is being protected by the birds here on the mountain?”
“Exactly.” A thrill zips through me when I reach out to take her hand and she squeezes my fingers back.
“You hear so many scary things about technology, but that’s just…” She shakes her head, smiling softly. “Crazy and beautiful and wholesome.”
“Well, that’s what we were going for.”
“It sounds like it would be a popular business model. Is the company still expanding?”
I stare down at our hands. “Yes. Quickly. More than we ever anticipated, honestly.”
Her thumb lightly drags along the wristband of my watch. “That explains a few things. Your company must be worth millions.” My discomfort must show in my eyes, because she squeezes my hand again. “I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”
“No. It’s just…wow, it’s super awkward to say it out loud…millions? Until recently, yes. Now change that M to a B. Our business has somehow turned from a snowball to an avalanche in a blizzard. It’s almost out of control.”
Sierra reaches out to lift my chin with her finger. “Believe it or not, I understand about wealth that you don’t feel you deserve.”
I smile, lost in her beautiful eyes. “So… That explains why you’re renting that big house all on your own?”
She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again, shaking her head. “Can we put that conversation on the back burner for now?”
Our hands release, but our knees are still touching under the table. “Of course. How about you? Tell me: why were you by a forest trail outside of Pinesley?”
She sighs. “One of my older sisters fancies herself an interior designer. It gives her, as she puts it,great internal satisfactionwhen she redecorates her friends’ houses. Part of hergenius insights…again, her words…are to put natural things in dead corners.” She rolls her eyes. “Dried floral and branch arrangements. How perfectlygroundbreaking.”
Her giggle is adorable. “Anyway, I make most of the arrangements with pinecones and branches, plus little stones and other things I find in various forests. And I always drop a pin and take a screenshot on my phone, so that people know where theirforest treasurescome from.”
