The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3036 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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253 dozen for dodecaphiles

Sunday was the day before the girls went back to school and I was determined to do something family orientated if at all possible. Everyone seemed to be up for it and I was making plans for a family picnic when Henry called and Si and Sammi rushed off to London, muttering something about rucking fussians if I heard him correctly. Apparently, the bank was under cyber attack once again and I just hoped that Sammi was up to the challenge she was under. Si doesn’t say much but every now and again, he thanks me for taking her in because she is very very clever. I know she’s earning more than I am because she’s saving to buy her own place, more as an investment than a desire to live on her own, though I’m sure at times the younger girls must get on her nerves, except possibly Trish who seems to understand some of what Sammi is doing on computers better than the rest of us. To me it’s an alien world, even though I use one every day, it’s only for relatively basic stuff.

Si had told me to go ahead with the picnic and I asked the others where they’d like to go. They couldn’t decide so I told them we’d go to Hayling Island. It was a mistake because it seemed lots of other people had the same idea and we sat and suffered in the traffic, going nowhere fast.

When Jacquie suggested we’d be better off at home, I turned around and did exactly that. An hour of sitting in traffic had shown us what we were missing in our own backyard. Tom was bemused to see us back so soon but once we’d explained he nodded. I invited him to join our repast and he accepted.

Okay so no one got to swim but neither did they get sand in their crack or other embarrassing places and we sat on travel rugs on the grass in the orchard in shorts and in the case of Julie, Phoebe and Danielle—bikini tops. We consumed sandwiches, quiches and various salad items, some of it home grown, plus cold drinks and even some ice creams—okay I had to go to the house for those but I made some teas while I was there and that went down rather well, too.

“Is there nae way tae stop these people attackin’ yer bank?” asked Daddy.

“I don’t know. Henry threatened all sorts of things once before but I doubt it would work twice.”

“We could always attack them back,” offered Trish but despite her reputation nobody took her too seriously, I mean she’s eleven. What do eleven year olds know about cyber warfare? A bit more than ecology professors, or so it would seem.

The wifi we have at home is good. It’s fast, powerful and well protected because Sammi sometimes works from home. Trish went in and emerged with her laptop and sat down tickling the keys while the rest of us enjoyed the sunshine and idle conversation.

“Invaded Poland yet, Trish?” called Julie and everyone sniggered.

“Poland?” snorted the brain, “I’m just into the crumbling.”

“Crumbling?” asked Livvie.

“Yeah, oh no it’s called the Krem something.”

“Crème de la crème,” said Julie doing a worse impression of Maggie Smith’s, Jean Brodie than even I do.

“No! The Kremlin, that’s it, it’s written in Russian and hard to understand and Google translate doesn’t make much sense at times.”

At this point the conversation went strangely quiet. It appeared my daughter had hacked her way into the Kremlin, if I understood her correctly and quite quickly. I stood up and wandered over to where she was seated. It seemed that Sammi had shown her what to do. Sammi apparently could get into almost anything from her days as a student hacker.

“Don’t go playing with missile silos,” I cautioned her—actually I asked her to stop before they caught her.

“Yess,” she said and jerk her clenched fist downwards, “I’m into their bank—oops, that was careless of me, I just transferred all their shares into a safe account in London.”

“You did what?”

“I just shifted all those to here,” she pointed to a figure on the screen.

“That says twenty billion pounds.”

“So it does. If they stop annoying Sam, I’ll tell them where i put their shares, except the ones in High Street Banks, I transferred those to Henry’s account.”

“How much was that?”

“Um, twenty per cent, I think.”

“Trish you just robbed the Russian government of twenty billion pounds, they are going to go bananas as soon as they find out who it is.” I also had images of them shooting her.

“They won’t find me, they’re not that good, besides I went through one of Ronald Trump’s servers, in New York.”

“Who?”

“The bloke standing for president, you know the one who is so rich he can’t afford a decent hair brush.”

I was gobsmacked to say the least.

“Oh that’s interesting...” she piped.

“What is?” I asked uncertain that I wanted to hear the answer.

“This guy has deposit accounts in some very strange places—where’s the Cayman Islands, Mummy?”

“Who does?” I wondered if she meant the American or someone in Russia.

“This Russian bloke, Vladimir something or other, his computer security is pants. Anyway, I’ve left a little message telling him to back off from annoying British banks just before the virus takes down his computer.”

“You’ve just put a virus on his computer?”

“Yeah, I’ll bet he has another set of accounts, one he doesn’t show the tax man either. The object is to show them contempt because of what they’re doing to us.”

“And you just did all that?”

“Yeah, why?”

I believed her simply because she doesn’t tell lies.

“It sounds incredibly dangerous, Trish,” I said fearful of reprisals.

“Nah, it just takes a bit of know-how.”

“What if they trace you?”

“What can they do, I’m a child?”

“Prosecute me or your dad or even Sammi.”

“I told them to go play with themselves.”

I was still nervous for her.

“Don’t worry, Mummy, it’s impossible to find me unless they’re using the same sort of anti-virals. There, I’ve deleted all my steps and the fat guy trying to be president won’t be able to trace me either.”

I wasn’t convinced and sat there worrying. Suddenly someone was tugging on my arm. “Mummy, wakey wakey.”

“What?” I gasped feeling like death warmed up. “What happened?”

“You fell asleep,” said Julie’s voice, “Trish was showing you something on her computer and you just zonked.”

“Yes, how she was hacking into the Kremlin, through Donald Trump’s server.”

“No, I was showing you about my system for calculating prime numbers,” said an aggrieved Trish. “What’s a Kremlin, anyway?”

“You must have dreamt it,” suggested Stella.

“It was so real,” I felt completely disorientated but also relieved.

“Dreams are, Mummy,” said Livvie, “besides she couldn’t hack into the Kremlin, she doesn’t even know how to spell it.”

“I suppose you do?” accused Trish and the ensuing argument brought me back to earth with a slight bump.