'What the hell is all the fuss about?' I thought to myself as I walked into my workplace. Everyone was standing by Trisha's desk.
"What's going on?" I asked as I put my things down at my desk.
We worked for a cyber company. Mainly we monitored social websites and chat sites for suspicious people that would be preying on those that frequented those sites.
Our workspace was open, so we could freely walk about and visit and help monitor each other's spaces.
"You haven't seen?" Kelly asked.
I knew Trisha had been out of work for over two months due to personal problems, but I knew she would be back soon.
"Hey," Trisha said as the crowd parted.
'Woah,' I thought as I looked at Trisha.
"See," Trisha shook her head. "He would hardly notice."
"Of course, I notice," I said.
Who wouldn't notice the significant change to Trisha's chest, she used to be nearly flat-chested, and now she was sporting beach ball-sized tits on her chest.
"Someone has to be blind not to notice," Ivan said.
"Well, I always liked to go for it all, so why not?" Trisha said as she sat down at her desk.
I got down to my monitors and started scrolling through the chat. It was the usual bullshit, someone always flirting with others, the regular crew ignoring most of the others, nothing out of the ordinary.
I carried on through other pages and found a few that looked a bit suspicious and pinged them. The usual things showed up, bouncing their whereabouts all over the place.
"What you got?" Trisha asked as she came over to my desk.
She leaned over my shoulder, and I felt their massive size pressed against my shoulder and back. "So, you didn't text me," I whispered.
"Thought it would be a good surprise," Trisha whispered back.
Trisha and I had been the most prolonged workers here. We had joined simultaneously and were the only ones to stick with it. Many people thought this was a good job, but it takes a particular personality to see the horrible side of the internet.
We had contracts with many internet companies and a direct line to many national authorities. Our company was hidden quite well, from the outside we looked like a regular computer company, even when an ordinary person walked inside they were four floors of people that sat behind desks just like ours and did data entry. Then on our floor was where the real things happened.
We monitored it all, from social sites to online video games. The things I had seen and heard over the net would make a lot of people crawl under their desks and never log online again.
"Well, it was a very good surprise," I whispered back to her.
"Then it was worth it," Trisha said as she started typing on my other keyboard.
"Launching a trojan?" I asked.
"Yup," Trisha said. "I will monitor that one from my desk, think you are onto something."
Our company had been told about a local nest of child traffickers that could be targeting young people on a popular video game. I had placed a bot into one of the games, and it was acting like a young child. It took me months to program its responses, which was paying off.
My fingers danced across the keyboard as I thought I finally hooked one.
"Come on take the bait you son of a bitch," I said as I took over.
"What you got?" Kevin asked as he saw me put on my glasses, telling the others that I was onto something.
All of us had a tell. We didn't verbally say anything in case anyone else in the room was on the mic with someone.
I pointed it out, and he pulled up a chair. Kevin was our lead and had been doing this for as long as me. I had turned down his position twice as I liked being in this chair and not dancing around the room.
The target and I played the bait and switch game for a few moments. He tried every trick in the book to find out if I was baiting him, and I responded in kind. I had been doing this long enough to know I was dealing with someone that was a professional and not just some random person.
'I will send it up the line,' Kevin wrote on a notepad.
I shook my head. It was too early for that. He hadn't given me anything concrete. Trisha was online with me, and we nearly had him cornered.
In a few minutes, we would have pinned him into a corner and find out exactly where he was, and hopefully, we would get more than just him.
The moment passed, and we had narrowed it down to a city block. I gave Kevin the go-ahead, and instantly a mobile force was on the way.
'Got you!' I said as I pinned his location to the warehouse district.
All I had to was keep him online, and playing the lost kid online that hated their parents and wanted to run away was like crack to these people. I even threw in the feeling depressed and alone at school, and he was putty in my hand.
'Pull the plug,' Kevin wrote.
With a few keystrokes, I gave the power company the go-ahead to cut power to the whole block.
It was an inconvenience to some, but we had to sell it. If they looked out and saw a neon sign at the pizza place down the road, they would scatter like roaches, destroying everything and anything.
I hated this part, the sit and wait. Somewhere in Virginia, there was a raid going on, and we wouldn't know the results of it until it was over.
I got up and stretched. It was always silent as the tension built. We all loved our jobs, but these moments put us on edge.
Joyce ran out and gave us the thumbs up. "Good job, we got four of them, another one was taken out," she said as she gave us a huge smile.
That moment made everything worth it, all the seedy talks, the pretence, everything was worth it to get scum like that offline.
"On to the next," I said as I sat down at my desk.
Victories like that came once in a blue moon, if we had mobilized too soon, they would tear everything out and destroy all evidence, and all we would get was a room full of people with no evidence or anything to convict them.
"So," Trisha said as she came back to my desk.
"So," I nodded as I stared at her.
"Where are we going for lunch?" Trisha asked.
"Gyros?" I asked.
"Sounds good," Trisha said.
Trisha and I had been going to lunch together for just over a year. We often paid for each other's meals, and it was usually something we both enjoyed.
We were both single and enjoying life, so when Trisha surprised us all with her breast augmentation, it was an even bigger surprise to me, as she had never mentioned anything to me.
"So, what's the real reason?" I asked as we ate.
"Now, that's the real question, isn't it?" Trisha said.
"And the answer," I said.
"Let's just say there is someone I want, and I heard he likes big ones," Trisha said.
"Really?" I answered.
