Hearthstone Entertainment
4 Hacked
BY THE TIME we were finished for the day, we were exhausted. I felt bad for Brenda, Sora, and Rose. I stood back and tried to do their second workout with them. I couldn’t do the first one because I’d get all sweaty just before they turned the cameras around to the kitchen set and started Young Cooking. I was ready to drop when they finished their twenty-seven-minute aerobic workout. They were awesome!
We filmed Elaine’s first show, swung around to Sora’s first workout show, and took a break so all the showers in the house could run. By that time, I was ready to start the cooking show and Mary had all my ingredients prepped and ready. She was working with Susan and Pam in the kitchen and for today. Since it was the first episode to be filmed in our studio, Lexi and Judy were my girlfriends of the day and Rhiannon, Nancy, and Robyn were our guest audience. Then we started the cycle over again. Elaine started her afternoon show with a monologue about drama queens and how they weren’t doing it right. It consisted of multiple flips of the hair, exasperated sighs and looks of disbelief, and a hand thrown back against her forehead. Her guest was her former theater director from UIndy. She’d chosen guests with whom she was familiar and could banter for her first day of filming. And both were good shows. We all knew these wouldn’t be the first ones released, but they served to relax her and the second session of the day went smoother than the first. The second exercise session had eight women in it with Rose, Sora, and Brenda. I couldn’t keep up. They were combining the whole thing with dance moves and all the girls seemed to just fall right into them. Several of us guys tried to keep up and swore that we were going to treat our women especially nicely that night.
Then they taped an interview with Rhiannon in Stall One, so we still couldn’t make any noise. I went out and played cowboy for a while. I just jumped up on Jingo out in the pasture and rode around with the other horses. Queenie and Lady acted like they were attached to Jingo’s rear and just followed him wherever we rode. For all his name made him sound evil, Larry’s horse, Diablo, was a sweetie, although a little standoffish. I was surprised that the mule pretty much ruled the rest of the herd. It wasn’t that he was dominating anyone. When you watched him move to a different part of the pasture to graze, pretty soon all the other horses were in that part of the pasture, too. They say mules are smarter than horses.
Mr. Jacobs from next door had mowed the pasture after Larry told me I should do it. Pasture grass should be kept six to eight inches long, not like the knee-length grasses we had last year.
“Are you planning to get more horses, Brian?” Mr. Jacobs asked.
“I don’t think we have room for any more.”
“Well, we could open that northeast quarter of my fields. I’m getting too old and tired to plant a hundred acres of hay and then try to get rid of it all,” he said.
“That would be great, even if we didn’t expand the herd any further. We should talk about what it would cost to rent that pasture as you shut down this year’s hay crop.”
“First cutting’s in,” he continued to jaw. “We need to figure the balance between what you need for your horses and how much to put in pasture. I see you’ve got the remainder of last year’s crop under a tarp. Don’t like to see that, myself. Holds in too much moisture. We’ll just keep your hay in my barn and you or your boys or your girls can come get a load when you need it.”
I reviewed what Mr. Jacobs had said in light of the sheriff’s suggestions and decided that I should carve out time to go talk to him soon.
About ten minutes after I got back in the house, I heard a cowbell being clanged outside. It was faint until the front door opened and Hannah came in, closely followed by Whitney, Adam, Tim, and Judy.
“The ranch is secure and cleared of guests!” Hannah announced. “Repeat, there are no longer non-clan-members on the grounds.” She set the bell on the kitchen counter and started stripping off her clothes. Before the last piece of clothing hit the floor, you could see her shoulders sagging. “I am so tired!” I started to protest getting naked with the younger clan members present and not just our casa, but Judy, Lexi, TK, Monte, and Ross were already naked.
“Do we have food?” Whitney whined.
“It’s ready,” Mary said. “We’ve got a Mexican casserole of some kind. Let me get the trays out of the oven.”
“Some kind?” I asked as I helped get the casseroles out of the oven.
“I just followed the recipe Sarah gave me,” Mary laughed. “She can explain.”
“It’s a tortilla layer casserole,” Sarah said. “The two in square dishes are vegetarian. The big ones are ground beef.”
“Mmm. I love you, honey,” I said. I kissed Sarah soundly. “Thanks for taking up the responsibility of planning dinners for us.”
“Well, as long as I’m going to be here for the summer, I figured this was a job I could do,” Sarah said. She kissed me again. “Yum. We could do this a lot more, you know. Anyway, I’m planning to spend the day cooking on Saturday so the entire next week’s meals are ready to put in the oven as soon as your show is over. Sunday, I belong to Heaven.”
“She’s really going to be here, isn’t she,” I said. Sarah looked around.
“Get a plate of food and let’s find a place to eat outside.” I did as directed and grabbed a can of pop. When we were parked at one of our picnic tables, Sarah started to talk.
“I’m worried about her, Brian. We’re fulfilling all the terms she set for coming here, but she’s getting paranoid. Adam is going to pick her up in Chicago. She said it had to be him and no one else. He is functioning as her ranch security and will be present any time she is not in her motorhome. She rented a huge thing for her and her chaperone. I understand her chaperone is security, too. She wants me to stay in the motorhome with her, and Adam nearby.”
“Damn. I hope everything will work out okay. How long is she staying?”
“She’s agreed to film two segments for Elaine and one with you. Elaine doesn’t want to start on Monday because she wants some time to get to know Jessica again before they start talking on camera. Hannah plans to have her film Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We’re being very selective in terms of our audiences for her segments. A few of our moms are coming down and the rest will all be members of the clan. She has specifically stated that the only men that are to be present during the sessions are the crew plus you and Adam.”
“It’s like she’s going completely off the deep end. I mean, when I saw her in September, she was really cautious. She searched the bedroom and bathroom for hidden cameras and to be sure no one could see through any of the blinds.” It hardly even sounded like the Jessica I knew.
“It’s getting worse. Not only have the tabloids put out a bounty for nude photos of her, but now Housepet has joined the hunt, too. The problem is that the designers she represents have it stipulated that nude photos are cause for termination of their contracts. Otherwise, I think she’d just do a nude photoshoot and be done with it,” Sarah said.
I was worried about what next week would bring.
“This is stupid!” Courtney ranted at the kitchen counter. “I got an A in that class!” Sarah and I had just walked back in and people were cleaning up dishes. Courtney had a letter in her hands. I kissed Sarah and sat down next to Court and opposite Jennifer.
“What is it, my courtesan?” I asked softly.
“A letter from the office of the registrar stating that my registration in level two programming was declined by the professor because I failed to fulfill the required prerequisite. The prereq was the course I just finished. I got an A in it. This is stupid!” she continued. She was building up a head of steam.
“Can you get an appointment to go talk to him?” I asked.
“Not tonight!”
“I meant as soon as possible. Does he have open office hours during summer term?”
“I’ll send him an email. If he’s being this way about it, he probably blocked me.”
“Call and leave a phone message.”
“I have to cool down a little first or I’d scream at him. They are all a bunch of misogynistic pigs who can’t imagine a ‘girl’ programming,” Courtney pouted. “Computer Science, where the odds are good but the goods are odd,” she quipped putting both hands under her breasts and thrusting them forward. “Hold me?”
“Let’s go up to the big chair.” We’d moved the throne chair and, indeed, our other living room furniture upstairs. The fireplace area was now a set and it had Elaine’s two big leather chairs and a table in front of it. We’d decided not to film in front of a fire because it was just too hot in July, especially with all the studio lighting we had. The move made it a little more crowded upstairs, but it was a big room that we scarcely used all of.
Courtney got me undressed and settled in my lap.
“Will you go with me to see him?” she asked in a very small voice.
“It will depend on when you can get an appointment. As long as it doesn’t conflict with when I am supposed to be filming, I’ll be happy to,” I said. “Why do you want me along? I’m sure Jen would go with you.”
“It’s stupid,” she said. That was becoming a favorite phrase. “You know how much trouble Hannah had last summer with the delivery guys? It’s like that in computer science. Unless there is a man present, it’s like you don’t exist. You could cut off my head, my legs, and my arms and they’d still let me in most classes because I have tits and a pussy. But I’m just decoration.”
“Your professor is like that?”
“I didn’t think so. It seemed like he liked me okay. I just want a witness.”
“Is there anything else you want?” I asked. Court had been squirming in my lap and had my cock in her hand. I was petting her breasts with one hand and her butt with the other. She nodded against my chest and spread her legs open.
“I’m not quite ready down there yet, but if you kiss me and tell me you love me, I think that might do the trick.”
It was Thursday before she could get an appointment when I could be there. I was glad to be out of the studio. Maggie was still on edge about doing our first garden scene shoot on Friday. Actually, everyone was on edge. It was going to make the shooting schedule tighter for all the shows since we’d essentially be on two different sets and would have to set up between. We finally decided to shoot the garden scene between Elaine’s first show and Sora’s first show. That way we could prep the kitchen and the things we brought in from the garden while the girls were doing their aerobic dancing. Regardless, I was glad to leave with Courtney. Promptly at three o’clock, she knocked on the professor’s door. He looked up.
“Courtney! How is my favorite student today?” he beamed. Huh?
“Professor Hanratty, if I’m your favorite student, why did you deny me admission to your advanced course?” Courtney responded. She was wasting no time getting to the point. She pulled out the letter and put it on his desk.
“What?” He looked down at the letter and scanned through it. “This must be an administrative error. Let’s take a look at your records. Uh… Who is this with you?”
“My friend, Brian Frost. He’s merely here as a witness.”
“I hope you don’t need a witness for anything,” Professor Hanratty said. “Oh. I forgot. You need to log into your academic record so I can see it. Come around and I’ll give you room.” Professor Hanratty moved to the side of his desk and turned to me. “It’s great that we have access to all the records on the network now. I’m betting some student typist in the registrar’s office pulled up the wrong record.”
“Fuck!” Courtney said. “This can’t be!” The professor and I both rounded the desk from opposite sides to look over Court’s shoulder. “Not only do I have an F for your class, I have Cs for the classes I took at IUSB! Someone’s changed my records.”
“I assume you had As in those classes, too,” the prof said. “Let me pull up my class records and resubmit them. I’m sorry, this time you will have to go to the opposite side so I can log in.” Court and I went to the other side of his desk as he logged in and started navigating through his records. His hands flew on the keyboard. “I’ll be damned. According to this you failed every assignment since ‘hello world’. This can’t be. There has to be a bug.”
“You can re-enter her proper grades from your gradebook, can’t you?” I asked naively. He looked at me with one eyebrow raised. Long hair and a big beard. He had a pretty good stomach going, too—like a Santa in training.
“My dear boy, we have entered the age of the paperless office. I don’t keep paper records. They are all on the computer. We would scarcely be able to get the luddites teaching here to use the system if I didn’t use it myself. We were the first to adopt the new system,” he said. His fingers continued to fly and he mumbled while he was working. Something about backups and troubleshooting. This kept up for several minutes and he pulled a floppy disk out of his desk drawer and inserted it in the computer. “I’ll just restore everything from my backup,” he said.
“Wait, professor,” Courtney said. “Has anyone else’s grades been changed?” He looked at her with the same expression he’d given me.
“I don’t see how anyone could have changed the records. I’m sure it was just a bug. But, I’ll run a quick compare with the backup.” He inserted the disk and his fingers flew on the keyboard again. “Hmm. Oh my. Before we go any further, I need to call security and administration. Please have a seat.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening sitting in his office. It turned out that all the grades in his class had been altered—some up and some down. None quite as much as Courtney’s. We were questioned by security. Three people from the registrar’s office came in to discuss the problem with Professor Hanratty. They questioned us. Mostly they questioned Courtney. It went on until after seven.
“I didn’t think it was possible,” the prof sighed. “We’ve been hacked. Now every grade in the system is suspect. We have to launch an investigation through the whole university. It might not even have originated here. I’m of the opinion that it was an attack specifically on this class because of the apparent randomness of the grade adjustments.”
“Is it possible that there was a formula applied to the grades?” Courtney asked. “If so, they might have applied the same one across the board to the whole school. Is anyone else suddenly being blocked from registering? For anything?”
“There have been a couple complaints a day from people, but that’s not so unusual,” the registrar said. “You wouldn’t believe the number of people who try to make us think there was a mistake. Of course, there never is.”
“Until today.”
“Yes. Until today.” He scowled at Professor Hanratty and left.
“We’ve spent enough time here today,” the prof said. “Courtney, when you get home, cross-check the records for all your other classes. That should let you know whether there has been a uniform attack across the university. If you know other students—like you, Brian—get everyone to check their grades. You were still mailed a paper transcript at the end of the term, weren’t you?”
We nodded and left.
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