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The Expert Expert

"I've got it, Joseph. This time I've got it."

"Got what?"

"Fishtown Mews was a good idea, sure, in theory. But in practice it was just too complicated – between the financing, the zoning, haggling with contractors – there were too many moving parts."

"Okay." Joseph looked away from Garret, but knew his friend had only just begun.

"I have a much simpler plan now and it's fool proof. I can't lose!" Garret let this hang.

"Well?"

"Let me ask you this, J, what are the characteristics of an ideal business model?"

"I don't know … good product, friendly service?"

"No! Wrong! That stuff means nothing."

Joseph rolled his eyes. "Alright, then you tell me."

"Low overhead, high margins."

"And I suppose you have the perfect low overhead, high margin idea."

"Don't patronize me! But yes, I do."

"And?"

"I read about it in a book. It's the new thing: become an expert."

"An expert?"

"Yes."

"How are you going to become an expert?"

"Well, that's the beauty of it. You don't actually have to be an expert, people just have to think you're an expert. It's all about perception."

"Sounds sleazy."

"The thing is," Garret ignored Joseph's 'sleazy' comment, "when people think you're an expert, then they'll pay for your advice. No business has lower overhead, higher margins than the advice business."

"There's no business like know business."

"Very funny."

"And in what field, may I ask, will you purport to be an expert?"

"Well, that's where the true stroke of genius comes into play, my mortal friend," Garret paused for effect. "With the expert business taking off the way it is, I'm going to become an expert on becoming an expert."

"Ah, yes! Brilliant," Joseph chided, "they'll call you 'The Expert Expert.'"

Garret took Joseph literally. "Yes, they shall. I'll be invited onto all the business networks: CNBC, MSNBC, BlahBlahBlahNBC."

The doorbell rang.

"Nice, food's here. Hey Expert Expert, you got ten bucks?"

"Business is a little slow right now, can you spot me?"

"Tell you what, Garret, you should sell people on how to borrow money from friends without ever paying it back. That's low overhead and high margin, and you're already an expert at it."

"Asshole."

"Perhaps, but I'm the asshole who's buying you dinner."

"Fair enough."

Exact Copy Data Set (by Simon Kearns)

Once past the first set of proxy servers, Carlton knew the real challenge was just beginning. The initial circuit of detours was a filter, a qualification round to weed out amateurs and cyber cops. The next level kicked off with a rather pretty anonymizer based in Calcutta. This was daisy-chained via the Sunray Network, flipped by the Indonesian Hub and doubled back three times. It took seventeen hours to navigate.

He worked, as ever, wired on speed and speed metal, and as he worked, Carlton became aware of a rising thrill that had nothing to do with the long-ago-plateaued amphetamine. He was starting to suspect the identity of the author. The procedure was familiar: exquisitely arranged symmetries, complexity of repetitions, subtly signposted pitfalls. Another week of work and no doubt remained; he was on the trail of his nemesis.

The onion routing continued: Sao Paulo, Singapore, Wisconsin, Minsk, Shenzhen. On and on, back and forth, as piece by piece the orb-like encryption was delicately peeled. He had never come this far, this close to his quarry, it seemed he could simply foresee the path to take, all traps and decoys fell away on his approach. The relativity of time became pronounced, moments melted into hours, weeks flew by, no night, no day, he lived a perpetual dawn of revelatory hyperlinks and ever-evolving message targets.

Near the end, following a particularly deviant decoy cipher, one he realised, almost too late, to be authentic, Carlton found himself at the gates of the final destination. Incredulous, fingers trembling, he tapped out the concluding code.

Upon return, he entered the hall of mirrors.

(Simon Kearns grew up in the North of Ireland and currently lives in the South of France. His debut novel, Virtual Assassin, was published by Revenge Ink in 2010. His next book, The Hyper-Reality Show, will be coming out in 2013. He enjoys experimenting with prose in the form of flash fiction, examples of which can be found on his site: simonkearns.com.)