The Minders

by John Marrs

The countries concerned stored their sensitive information in data centres and bunkers like ours, which have extreme physical security. But these are static, immovable locations and were identified by their enemies. The collective managed to break encryption keys, and infiltrate the centres’ biometrics, interlocks and CCTV through both sites’ online cooling systems which had a lower level of protection. And once they had access, they located all the sensitive information they needed.

Then they became stored electronically in datacentres hidden around the country, crammed with hard drives and processors. And that’s where they are again since the lorries were taken off the roads. But even though these locations are protected by military-standard physical security and Californian earthquake-resistance standards, these hackers will eventually find a way in. So, I’m suggesting a fresh approach into keeping our data offline.

‘He was my Match,’ Flick replied. ‘You could’ve been one of those couples whose results were tampered with. That happened to thousands, didn’t it?’

The screen was taken over by dozens and dozens of three-dimensional graphics, along with brightly coloured random floating letters, numbers and shapes, all of them moving in indiscriminate directions. Flick sat upright to gain a better view, then allowed the television’s sensor to pick up her line of vision so that she could control the screen with her eye movements.

‘Round three, question one,’ he began in a thick, east-coast accent. ‘Where was Diana, Princess of Wales, buried?’ Grace’s team bunched together and whispered. ‘On an island in the Althorp estate where she grew up,’ said one. ‘I went there with my mum when I was a kid.’ Flick shook her head. ‘No, it was actually …’ she began, picturing the church where Diana was entombed and not the shallow island in the centre of the lake the public had been told. She cut herself short. That was information others weren’t supposed to know. It was one of the many secrets she was keeping about the Royal Family, along with the much more explosive truth behind the night of Diana’s death.

She knew the whereabouts of undeclared works stolen from Jewish families by the Nazis in the Second World War and that were now under the secret charge of British aristocrats.

Even just a glimpse of his smile stirred the sleeping butterflies inside her stomach.

‘The rise of machine learning means we’ll be replaced within the next couple of years by robo-advisers and chatbots in the same way bookkeepers, estate agents, couriers and car salesmen were.’