This is a side-story to the famous "Toxic Attraction" set of chapters written so well by Don Silver, whose stories can be found here on Literotica and other sites.
This story does not reveal any details of Don's story that can't already be read in Literotica. It
does not foretell any future events in the series.
Read that last sentence again!
This is purely my personal take on possible consequences to Dan and Sarah from a completely unexpected meeting with someone who can expose their lives.
It is my take on the character's possible personalities, which
may or may not be different
than how they appear in the "Toxic Attraction" series.
For a reader to understand the references in this story I'd first recommend reading as many of the "Toxic Attraction" chapters as you can. Believe me, once you'll start you'll become so absorbed you'll read all of Don Silver's chapters!
I'm sure when the Toxic Attraction series is complete there will be plenty of spinoffs, much like the February Sucks story inspired so many more versions and sequels. One characteristic of a great story is the readers' furor over the characters, their actions and reactions, and the reader's preferences of what they think should or shouldn't happen.
Again, this is simply one viewpoint of potential consequences. Many reader factions wish for different results.
And to further avoid the scathing critiques sure to come, just know that Don Silver gave me his blessing to publish this.
As I stood to greet the beautiful couple just walking in the door, my face betrayed absolute shock at recognizing the model husband and wife with two small girls. Fortunately they were all involved in greeting their parents and my fiancee with smiles and hugs and didn't notice my face, allowing time for me to recover my poise.
This beautiful full-bodied green-eyed blonde woman came up to me and introduced herself, "Hello, I'm Sarah Williams and this is my husband Dan."
"Nice to meet you as well. I'm Max Kane."
Yeah, I'm Max Kane, formerly known as a piece of white trash since I grew up in a trailer park outside of DC. There's a difference between trailer park and mobile home park. I'm talking, old single-wides on cinder blocks.
We're the type of people that those born in better neighborhoods and economic situations will blame for being lazy, non-goal oriented, or living off the government. We're the ones that those who've never had to struggle for a meal will resent for using food stamps at the grocery store and vote to cut our benefits. Why? Because we supposedly don't work hard enough. And we're not part of the beautiful people, so I guess I grew up with a little resentment and wariness toward those born with natural advantages.
Many times the trauma one suffers in childhood creates the opposite effect, a set of strengths developed to deal with the trauma, strengths that have superb benefits later in life. For me, it was learning to read people and interpret their intentions. It's necessary when raised in an uncertain and violent environment where everyone only looks out for themselves for survival.
My other strength is my ability to see patterns. As I grew I began to see patterns in behaviors, words, languages, mathematics, and of all things, coding.
I'm convinced everyone gets a break in life, even those in the most desperate of situations. The key is recognizing the break and having the fearlessness and willpower to take advantage of it.
Mine was in middle school when we had a computer lab. Now most of the better-off kids were just learning the basics but immediately I saw patterns and hung around after school talking with the instructor.
Good teachers appreciate good students who are interested, and he took me under his wing and began to give me much more advanced exposure to programming. Over time at the public library I picked up plenty of books on coding, documentation, integration, layout, structural relationships and data elements.
These technical books seemed simple to me. Most people would find them complicated.
In high school I spent as much time in the computer lab as I could. When it came to patterns it turns out I found math to simply be a series of patterns as well. By then I started to realize I had a certain skill-set.
Reading as much as I did meant I'd come to cover plenty of different genres. I found Machiavelli and Sun Tzu to be thought provoking, reminding me of what my first computer teacher had told me.
"Max, you have talents that can be used productively or destructively. As good as you are you'll eventually find areas that are tempting to explore but can get you into a lot of trouble. Just remember, there is always someone better than you. You are the biggest danger to yourself, being overconfident, getting sloppy. Even the slightest error or oversight can come back on you hugely."
Those words made sense. I also realized they applied to everyone, not just me. And I also realized that with my resentment of privilege combined with my skills, I could be very dangerous.
So Sun Tzu and good old Niccolo were interesting guys, seeing patterns of behavior just like I did but with a masterful strategy, a strategy that reminded me of coding architecture and layout.
Now it's a long, long story of how I got to George Washington University where I majored in Computer Science and Cybersecurity with a minor in mathematics. This is where I met Anna.
With Anna I was clearly punching above my pay grade, certainly moving up from my trailer park status, and I realized I wasn't in Kansas anymore. Choose your idiom.
A beautiful petite 5'3" blonde with a slim figure and gorgeous firm C-cups that hung just right on that 110 pound frame. She was smart and focused with her studies, and we matched up well, enjoying study time together. While incredibly beautiful, I appreciated how she was cordial but firm in dismissing the frequent male interest so she could focus on her studies.
She did have some daddy and mommy issues, however. Those terms oversimplify the situation, but evidently she was the youngest of two girls, her sister eight years older and the favorite of the parents. Her sister was the popular girl in school, the prom queen, the daughter who was so beautiful she could do no wrong in their eyes, the full-bodied green-eyed blonde that met the handsome college jock, married and had two equally gorgeous little girls.
Anna Lisa Cooper was treated more like an afterthought by her parents, who felt this extra child got in the way of her older sister's attention. Anna was more of a bookworm than one who actively supported her older sister's success. In a moment of emotional weakness, Anna confided in me that for a long time she had feelings of worthlessness and failure as she entered adulthood.
Then she got into college, and a big one at that, and majored in Mathematics and minored in Finance. It was in the math classes where we met and hit it off.
By this time I had become quite skilled with computer coding, and even got into areas of the internet I shouldn't have, like, other people's lives and other company's business. I quickly learned how important it was to cover my tracks when one day I was approached by a few serious looking men who said those impactful words, "we've got to talk."
Turns out they observed my hacking, did a deep dive on my background and education, and wanted to hire me in their white-hat security firm to use my skills to find and fix security vulnerabilities in systems, networks, and applications. My training would also include how to clean up my tracks so that people like them, or worse, would not find me.
Anna and I had been living together our last year of University and both got hired locally in D.C., Anna as an economist for a think tank. We had a nice apartment, fully wired up for my ethical hacking, though I admit I did play around - securely I might add - in other people's playgrounds.
Ransomware was becoming a big issue. China and the US account for the majority of the origin of cyber attacks, with smaller percentages primarily from Asia and Russia. I had been put on a case for a small community hospital outside of Chicago and made a lot of headway over a short period of time when suddenly the BadRabbit virus began disappearing from the hospital system.
Curious, very curious. Myself and those I reported to thought this could be an inside job. Then within a few weeks we were taken off the case when the hospital administration suddenly changed. So our company was no longer getting paid, but privately? I couldn't let it go.
The trouble with organized crime is that it isn't that organized. Similarly, the trouble with hackers is that there is always someone better than them and they get overconfident.
I was guessing that whoever planted the virus probably was the one eliminating it. Then with the change in administration and no one looking in on this it just might have been possible that some tracks were left behind due to sloppiness or overconfidence or neglect.
And with some tedious effort within the code, I found them. And after some time I was able to track them back, all the way to a location in Chicago, and when I got in the back door of that hacker's security - all very quietly - I found a treasure trove of information.
I was a little surprised I wasn't caught, the security was very good, but one has to keep up on every innovation to continue warding off attacks and securing networks and that's a full-time job. Distractions for even a week or two may leave a system vulnerable to new methods of intrusion. Fortunately I work for an organization that is on top of these things like white on rice. Weekly we get updates and must sit for additional training.
Shortly I was to come to learn a possible reason why that hacker might have been distracted.
