{"id":463,"date":"2020-04-30T09:17:39","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T08:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/51.75.254.207\/Club-Freelance\/?p=463"},"modified":"2021-08-31T10:25:46","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T09:25:46","slug":"nadia-chapter-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/?p=463","title":{"rendered":"Nadia – Chapter I"},"content":{"rendered":"

Follow the story of Nadia, a quantum security expert in 2050 London<\/em><\/h2>\n

Nadia, a story by Miquel Morales<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

—<\/p>\n

Discover our last story: Edna\u2019s Garden<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

London — October 23rd, 2050.<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n
<\/div>\n

Nadia\u2019s eyes were red after hours with
\nthe holovisor on. The newer models came with ocular moisturizing tech, but not
\nall companies were eager to take on the extra cost just for the visual
\nwell-being of their employees. At least not yet. Her friend Sudi had one of
\nthose fancy rigs at the office. Apparently, you didn\u2019t even need to use your
\nhands to manipulate data sets and subroutines. A simple mental order would get
\nthe job done. Nadia thought for a second of how lazy humans had become. It was
\nhard to imagine how, just thirty years ago, people like her had to rely on
\nmechanical input devices and raw code to do their jobs. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A pulsating glow on the bottom right
\ncorner of her field of vision brought her back from the history tour. The alert
\nwas accompanied by a low-pitched beeping sound. She veered right with a gesture
\nof the hand and pulled the message window closer to her. <\/p>\n

“Unusual log entry detected,”
\nsaid the virtual operator in a quirky and piercing male voice. <\/p>\n

Nadia had recently configured her AI to
\nsound like Saneer Ziza, her and her sister’s favourite comedy actor. She had to
\ngive it to her sister — for the first time in years, she had come up with a
\npretty thoughtful birthday gift. Perhaps age was starting to weigh on her and
\nshe was finally letting some barriers down. In any case, Nadia had been
\nenjoying the company of Ziza’s humour while scouting the network for potential
\nbreaches. It made everything sound quite funny, actually. Even that alert. \u00a0<\/p>\n

“Give me a full report,”
\nrequested Nadia. Like anyone who deserved to call themselves a data integrity
\nexpert, she knew better than to ignore odd entries in the system’s registry of
\nactivity. It was one of the thousands of parameters she had trained Ziza to
\nmonitor. <\/p>\n

“Sorry, Nadia. The event log no
\nlonger shows any abnormalities.” <\/p>\n

Weird. <\/em>“What do you mean by ‘no longer’? ” she asked, bothered. <\/p>\n

“I have reviewed the records 43,901
\ntimes, and there doesn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary here.” <\/p>\n

“Why would you alert me of an
\nunusual entry, then? <\/p>\n

“Sorry, Nadia. I cannot answer that question
\nwithout an irregularity to make reference to.” <\/p>\n

“But you just said ‘no longer’,
\nwhich means you have memory of the irregularity being there in the first
\nplace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was merely referencing my previous
\nstatement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nadia sighed and rolled her eyes — not a
\ngreat idea, dry as they were. These annoying bugs had become more common since
\nthe last system update. She couldn\u2019t wait for the next patch. <\/p>\n

\u201cFlag this over to maintenance, would
\nyou?\u201d<\/p>\n

She took the headset off and threw
\nherself on the sofa. The four walls of her studio felt somewhat oppressing after
\nthe vastness of the digital world. Stretching arms and legs, she told Ziza to
\nput on some music and got herself lost in thought. Tomorrow was an office day.
\nPlus, she had that new business meeting first thing in the morning. It would be
\na big deal if they signed this client. Sunset filtered through the blinds,
\nprojecting red and orange stripes on the opposing wall. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Nadia took a long sip of coffee and let
\nher gaze go from one person to the other around the conference table. A strange
\nbunch. Even in their formal business attires, she could tell how different they
\nwere from one another. Two men and two women, their ages ranging from the early
\nthirties to the mid-fifties. She tried to come up with a background story for
\neach one of them as Tom from sales walked them through the proposal. Raindrops
\nkept hitting the glass wall behind them. It was an unusually foggy autumn day. Nadia
\ncould barely see the building across the street. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that, ladies and gentlemen, is how
\nwe\u2019ll solve your problem. That\u2019s if you decide to move forward with the plan,
\nof course,\u201d said Tom with a polite smile that Nadia knew too well. \u201cQuantum cryptography
\nhas come a long way, and we\u2019ve been there since the beginning. Others will promise
\nthey can do it too, but our unique encryption system is the only way to fully
\nguarantee that your customer\u2019s data stays secure throughout all transactions.\u201d<\/p>\n

RayStar was one of those brand names all
\nprofessionals know. They were in — well — everything. Financial services,
\ninsurance, enterprise software. Anything your average business would need. But
\nrecently they had started focusing on the consumer market, using their machine
\nlearning expertise and their access to most of the world\u2019s data to develop a
\nnew kind of personal AI assistant: Duplo. <\/p>\n

The premise was pretty straightforward.
\nWho better to help you manage your everyday tasks than an exact copy of
\nyourself? Somehow, RayStar had managed to aggregate all your data and create an
\nAI that thought and acted just like you do. Of course, your Duplo wasn\u2019t
\nperfect. But it was way more effective than any other AI assistant out there. Media
\nhype was strong.<\/p>\n

With the product\u2019s official release
\nscheduled for next month, RayStar was looking to find a security partner that
\ncould ensure the protection of user data. AI chips had improved a lot in terms
\nof security, and most AIs were able to run locally on the user\u2019s device or
\nnetwork. But Duplo was simply too complex. A central quantum computer was
\nrequired to process all the assistant\u2019s responses, and that was a major
\nliability considering how sensitive personal data was. The chances for someone
\nto intercept the information along the way were simply too high. That\u2019s where
\nNadia\u2019s firm came in.<\/p>\n

\u201cForgive me, but I fail to understand how
\nthis, hmm, binding <\/em>is the only way to protect the data 100%,\u201d said one
\nof the RayStar executives. Clearly more of a businessman than a technical type.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cRay Goldstein, VP of Compliance,\u201d
\nwhispered Ziza\u2019s voice through the earpiece Nadia had on. The exec was talking
\nabout the process by which Nadia\u2019s company would ensure the encryption keys
\nremained confidential. RayStar\u2019s CIO, a middle-aged woman with piercing eyes, looked
\nat her colleague with impatience, probably hoping to wrap that up quickly so
\nthat she could move onto the next endless meeting of the day. Tom was looking
\nat Nadia, silently begging her to step in.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s entanglement<\/em>, actually,
\nsir,\u201d said Nadia. \u201cAlthough binding works as a concept as well,\u201d she added with
\na smile. \u201cIn very basic terms, we encrypt the data by generating two identical sets
\nof random numbers — or \u2018keys\u2019 — that we then send to your central system.
\nYour supercomputer can only read and process the data by first using that key
\nto decrypt it, so that…\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSee. That\u2019s exactly what I am saying,\u201d
\nsaid the VP. \u201cWe are trying to prevent someone from accessing the data during
\ntransactions by sending a key, the password. But what\u2019s to prevent them from
\nintercepting that key as well?\u201d Nadia could now clearly hear the CIO\u2019s fingers
\ntapping nervously on the table.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s precisely why our real-time entanglement
\nsystem is the only way the secure your transactions, Mr Goldstein,\u201d explained
\nNadia. \u201cIt all comes down to quantum theory. Sub-atomic particles. Quantum mechanics
\ntells us that, when we generate a password, the value of that password will be
\naltered once we look at it. Meanwhile, the property of entanglement dictates
\nthat two entangled keys will be tied across time and space, so that whatever
\nhappens to one affects the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI see,\u201d said the VP, clearly not seeing
\nit at all. <\/p>\n

\u201cThink of it as a pair of twins, if you
\nwill,\u201d said Nadia. \u201cIt is said that twins can feel it whenever something
\nhappens to their other half, even if they are thousands of miles apart. Well,
\nhere this is actually true. If someone was eavesdropping and intercepted one of
\nthe keys, we would be able to detect it. Something would feel off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, I see. Interesting. I actually have
\na twin, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

To be continued…<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read the next chapter: Nadia \u2013 Chapter II<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\"Join<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Need tips on how to find a job in IT? Check out our\u00a0IT job hunting guide.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story of Nadia, a quantum security expert in 2050 London. Follow the chapter I of the story of Nadia on Mission Control Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[47,187,189,112,188],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horizon-2050","tag-cybersecurity","tag-horizon-2050","tag-nadia","tag-quantum-computing","tag-tech-future"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3952,"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions\/3952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}