The porch on 0999 had a bigger junk-food machine than back at Customer Support. Dixie Mae didn’t think that made up for no cafeteria, but Ellen Garcia didn’t seem to mind. "We’re only going to be here this one day. I’m not coming back on Saturday."
Dixie Mae bought herself a sandwich and soda and they all sat down on some beat-up lawn furniture.
"So what do you want to know?" said Ellen.
"See, Mouse, we’re following up on the weirdest–"
Ellen waved Victor silent, her expression pretty much the same as all Victor’s female acquaintances. She looked expectantly at Dixie Mae.
"Well, my name is Dixie Mae Leigh. This morning we got this email at our customer support address.
It looks like a fake. And there are things about it that–" she handed over the hard copy.
Ellen’s gaze scanned down. "Kind of fishy dates," she said to herself. Then she stopped, seeing the "To:" header. She glanced up at Dixie Mae. "Yeah, this is abuse. I used to see this kind of thing when I was a Teaching Assistant. Some guy would start hitting on a girl in my class." She eyed Victor speculatively.
"Why does everybody suspect me?" he said.
"You should be proud, Victor. You have such a reliable reputation." She shrugged. "But actually, this isn’t quite your style." She read on. "The rest is smirky lascivious, but otherwise it doesn’t mean anything to me."
"It means a lot to me," said Dixie Mae. "This guy is talking about things that nobody should know."
"Oh?" She went back to the beginning and stared at the printout some more. "I don’t know about secrets in the message body, but one of my hobbies is rfc9822 headers. You’re right that this is all scammed up. The message number and ident strings are too long; I think they may carry added content."
She handed back the email. "There’s not much more I can tell you. If you want to give me a copy, I could crunch on those header strings over the weekend."
"Oh... . Okay, thanks." It was more solid help than anyone had offered so far, but–"Look Ellen, the main thing I was hoping for was some clues here in Building 0999. The letter pointed me here.
I run into ... abusers sometimes, myself. I don’t let them get away with it! I’d bet money that whoever this is, he’s one of those graders." And he’s probably laughing at us right now.
Ellen thought a second and then shook her head. "I’m sorry, Dixie Mae. I know these people pretty well. Some of them are a little strange, but they’re not bent like this. Besides, we didn’t know we’d be here till yesterday afternoon. And today we haven’t had time for mischief."
"Okay," Dixie Mae forced a smile. "I appreciate your help." She would give Ellen a copy of the letter and go back to Customer Support, just slightly better off than if she had behaved sensibly in the first place.
Dixie Mae started to get up, but Victor leaned forward and set his notepad on the table between them. "That email had to come from somewhere. Has anyone here been acting strange, Mousy?"
Ellen glared at him, and after a second he said, "I mean ‘Ellen.’ You know I’m just trying to help out Dixie Mae here. Oh yeah, and maybe get a good story for the Bruin."
Ellen shrugged. "Graham told you; we’re grading on the side for Gerry Reich."
"Huh." Victor leaned back. "Ever since I’ve been at UCLA, Reich has had a reputation for being an operator. He’s got big government contracts and all this consulting at LotsaTech. He tries to come across as a one-man supergenius, but actually it’s just money, um, buying lots and lots of peons.
So what do you think he’s up to?"
Ellen shrugged. "Technically, I bet Gerry is misusing his contacts with LotsaTech. But I doubt if they care; they really like him." She brightened. "And I approve of what Prof. Reich is doing with this grading project. When I was a TA, I wished there was some way that I could make a day-long project out of reading each student’s exam. That was an impossible wish; there was just never enough time. But with his contacts here at LotsaTech, Gerry Reich has come close to doing it. He’s paying some pretty sharp grad students very good money to grade and comment on every single essay question. Time is no object, he’s telling us. The students in these classes are going to get really great feedback."
"This guy Reich keeps popping up," said Dixie Mae. "He was behind the testing program that selected Victor and me and the others for customer support."
"Well, Victor’s right about him. Reich is a manipulator. I know he’s been running tests all this week. He grabbed all of Olson Hall for the operation. We didn’t know what it was for until afterwards. He nailed Graham and the rest of our gang for this one-day grading job. It looks like he has all sorts of projects."
"Yeah, we took our tests at Olson Hall, too." There had been a small up-front payment, and hints of job prospects... . And Dixie Mae had ended up with maybe the best job offer she’d ever had.
"But we did that last week."
"It can’t be the same place. Olson Hall is a gym."
"Yes, that’s what it looked like to me."
"It was used for the NCAA eliminations last week."
Victor reached for his notepad. "Whatever. We gotta be going, Mouse."
"Don’t ‘Mouse’ me, Victor! The NCAA elims were the week of 4 June. I did Gerry’s questionnaire yesterday, which was Thursday, 14 June."
"I’m sorry, Ellen," said Dixie Mae. "Yesterday was Thursday, but it was the 21st of June."
Victor made a calming gesture. "It’s not a big deal."
Ellen frowned, but suddenly she wasn’t arguing. She glanced at her watch. "Let’s see your notepad, Victor. What date does it say?"
"It says, June ... huh. It says June 15."
Dixie Mae looked at her own watch. The digits were so precise, and a week wrong: Fri Jun 15
12:31:18 PDT 2012. "Ellen, I looked at my watch before we walked over here. It said June 22nd."
Ellen leaned on the table and took a close look at Victor’s notepad. "I’ll bet it did. But both your watch and the notepad get their time off the building utilities. Here you’re getting set by our local clock–and you’re getting the truth."
Now Dixie Mae was getting mad. "Look, Ellen. Whatever the time service says, I would not have made up a whole extra week of my life." All those product-familiarization classes.
"No, you wouldn’t." Ellen brought her heels back on the edge of her chair. For a long moment, she didn’t say anything, just stared through the haze at the city below.
Finally she said: "You know, Victor, you should be pleased."
"Why is that?" suspiciously.
"You may have stumbled into a real, world-class news story. Tell me. During this extra week of life you’ve enjoyed, how often have you used your phone?"
Dixie Mae said, "Not at all. Mr. Johnson–he’s our instructor–said that we’re deadzoned till we get through the first week."
Ellen nodded. "So I guess they didn’t expect the scam to last more than a week. See, we are not deadzoned here. LotsaTech has a pretty broad embargo on web access, but I made a couple of phone calls this morning."
Victor gave her a sharp look. "So where do you think the extra week came from?"
Ellen hesitated. "I think Gerry Reich has gone beyond where the UCLA human subjects committee would ever let him go. You guys probably spent one night in drugged sleep, being pumped chock full of LotsaTech product trivia."
"Oh! You mean ... Just-in-Time Training?" Victor tapped away at his notepad. "I thought that was years away."