Chapter 7: Love always Protects.

  “Hi Micah”, said George, “How are you?”. “Hey George, I’m great thanks – you’re looking good as always…” “You’re such a shameless flirt Micah, but thank you, I appreciate your compliments.” said George. “You’re welcome, How can I help you today George?” “I need you to check something for me” asked George, lifting his laptop onto the top of Micah’s desk. “Sure, what happened?”. George explained, “last week I sent an email with a document attached that seemed to work fine on my laptop, but when my colleague received it, the document opened but the data text seemed corrupted. It was all these weird symbols”. “Have you been visiting sites that you shouldn’t be visiting with the work’s laptop Georgie??” Micah teased with a coy smile, George chuckled, “No… I keep those things at home Mic”. Micah laughed, “Leave the laptop with me, let me see what I can find. Can you show me which file was corrupted and which email?” asked Micah. “It was this one” said George as he opened the file and the email. “Give me a couple of days to look into it and I will get back to you.” said Micah.

  George left and returned to his desk. Before sitting, he went to Cynthia’s office. Peering into the doorway he said, “Just to let you know, I went to Micah and gave him my laptop to check out. I’m nervous that there might be an issue, the antivirus didn’t pick up anything, so I just want to make sure. I can’t have some of my files being corrupted, especially if I send to clients or the big bosses”, “That’s a great idea” said Cynthia, “I had IT check my systems last week already, but they didn’t find anything thankfully.” George gave Cynthia a thumbs up and then turned to leave the office. “Hey George” greeted Jude, “Hey Jude” said George and continued to walk to his desk.

  Cynthia had not greeted Jude at all that day, it was already 15:00 and nothing, not even a look.

  IT’s feedback.

  BZZZZ. George looked down and saw his phone was ringing. “Hello George Speaking”, “Hi George, it’s Micah… I’m calling from the secure line in the office. Can you come upstairs please.” It had been a couple of days since Micah had received the laptop and he needed to get more information about what happened. George walked into the IT lab. Micah got up and stood next to him, locking his arm in with Georges. Micah pulled his arm in close pulling George closer to him as they walked together to a different room in the IT lab. “What is this place Micah?” asked George, looking around curiously, “It’s the cybersecurity vault”, said Micah. “This is the secure IT system where we can test potential hacks or security threats. The system is both isolated and has a very advanced firewall that protects the rest of the companies ITC from being vulnerable” explained Micah. “Why are we here Micah, what did you find?” asked George with dread. “Your laptop has been hacked.”, said Micah starkly. “I don’t know how though or by who? There doesn’t seem to be any entry or trace code, but the way the system is behaving is classic hacking.” The blood drained from George’s face turning him snow white. “George, are you okay?” Micah said with concern, “I thought it… No, I’m not Micah… Cynthia and I discussed it though?” George reasoned out loud, “We were suspicious but didn’t think he had that level of skill?” said George, his voice trembling, before turning to Micah, “You’re the best IT specialist I know, Mic. You’ve got a PhD in programming and AI, how could he be able to stump you?” “What do you mean George, who are you talking about?” asked Micah. “Jude. Cynthia’s replacement.” said George. “Here, lets talk outside. Here’s a chair”, said Micah while directing George to sit down on the nearby chair.

  Micah pulled up a chair next to him and George explained what had happened. “Okay, don’t say anything to anybody. Not even Cynthia. We need to investigate the breach more thoroughly and see if any of our other systems have been infiltrated.”, “George.” Micah said sternly, “I am serious about not saying anything. We cannot let Jude know anything is wrong. A hacker with this level of sophistication is dangerous and can erase their steps.” George replied, “my lips are sealed. Not a word.” “Thank you… you keep your sexy lips sealed otherwise I might seal them with mine…” flirted Micah shamelessly. Both men laughed and George left to go downstairs back to his desk.

  Infiltration.

  “Father, I don’t know what has happened… It’s been nearly 3 months now and it seems like Cynthia has just completed turned against me” Jude prayed while driving home from work. “Today was difficult for me. I went to her for help with a project and she refused to help me. She just ignored me. I eventually left her office because she would not even acknowledge that I was there… Every morning she will make it a point to greet everybody except me. If I am standing in a group of people, she will make it a point to shake the hands of everybody in the group but will not shake mine. It’s like she’s rejected me completely. I don’t know what happened or what I did…”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The next day as Jude arrived at work, he saw that the elevator door in the parking lot was closing. He ran towards the door yelling, “Hold the lift please!” He couldn’t see who was in the lift but he saw the doors open again. The shadow from the roof of the elevator made it difficult to see the person’s face from far but as Jude got closer, he realised he did not recognise the face of the person. “Thank you so much” he said panting, “I don’t think we’ve met? I’m Jude”. “Hey Jude, I’m Micah.” Micah’s heart began racing. He immediately recognised the name from George. He’d been sleuthing for three months to try and figure out how Jude got into their systems but had gotten nowhere. “What do you do here Micah?” asked Jude, “Actually, I’m with the IT department” Micah replied, wondering how this would impact Jude. To Micah’s surprise, Jude didn’t blink an eye and continued chatting, “that’s so cool, I used to work in risk analysis in cybersecurity before starting here.” said Jude. Micah was flawed. As he listened to Jude waft on about his previous work, he thought “this guy has gall. He comes into the company, hacks our systems, meets the people in IT and pretends like nothing has happened. He’s even so brazen that he’s clearly and opening sharing his knowledge and expertise in cybersecurity and cyber risk… admittedly, I have not been able to crack his hack… Maybe he’s so confident because he knows nobody can?”.

  BING. The elevator door opened, “Anyways, it was nice meeting you Micah. Check you around” said Jude as he walked out, “Uhm, actually Jude…” Micah quickly replied, pushing his hand against the closing elevator door to keep it open, “could you come up to IT department on the 7th floor. We are upgrading our systems, and I need to upgrade your computer”. “Sure” said Jude, “If you want, I can come up now with you? I don’t have anything in the morning…”, “No-no, that’s not necessary. I just need you to drop off your laptop so I can upgrade it. I’ll do the rest” replied Micah. “Oh sure, well here is the laptop” said Jude, holding the laptop out for Micah to take, “I don’t really need it, I can use my desktop. Call my line if you need my password to unlock…” “Thanks Jude” said Micah, taking the laptop, “I’ll call you if I need anything and bring it down when its finished updating so I can then work on your desktop.” “Sounds great, see you later then.” Jude said before turning back to walk to his desk. Micah removed his hand, allowing the elevator door to close… As it was closing, he could see George showing him a thumbs up with a smile as though to say “Excellent! We’ve got him!”.

  Micah, however, felt uneasy. “That seemed too easy” he thought, as he walked to his desk. He dropped his personal things at his desk and immediately went into the security vault with the laptop. He still had not given George’s laptop back, instead issuing him a new one so it didn’t look suspicious. Micah placed Jude’s laptop down next to George’s and began looking for the connections to plug it in before he opened and started it.

  Firewall.

  The clock struck 17:00, and Jude packed up and prepared to leave. He waved goodbye to Cynthia through the window of her office. She gave a blank stare back. As he was walking to the elevator, he could see that Micah and George were having what looked like a deep discussion with the big boss in his office. “I’m glad today is over, it was good but busy and I feel ready to go home”, he thought to himself.

  He got into the car and began his usual routine plugging in his phone and selecting his worship playlist on shuffle. “There was another in the fire standing next to me, there was another in the water, holding back the sea…” kept playing in his head the whole day today so he thought he would find that song and play it first on his way Home. The music started but it wasn’t the correct song, “I must have hit the wrong song by mistake, this is Fire of the Holy Ghost” he thought, he couldn’t stop to change though because he was already driving. “Send the fire of the Holy Ghost, send the fire of the Holy Ghost, send down your fire”, the lyrics hit Jude hard. “Like a burning flame, start a wildfire that can’t be contained”, Jude was humming because he wasn’t very familiar was the lyrics, “I wanna burn for you, teach me to burn for you…”. “Oh the lyrics just repeat”, Jude began to sing along clumsily as he learnt the lyrics. By minute 9 of the song he had the lyrics down and was praising God loudly in his car.

  Micah was still at work though. “I need to recheck it” thought Micah, “I’m just not comfortable… it doesn’t make sense. There is nothing on this laptop that looks out of the ordinary. It’s passed all the firewall safety tests, it’s passed the antivirus rests, I’ve even run some more penetration testing and there is nothing.” Micah could not fathom how Jude was able to both hack their systems, but at the same time conceal all his activity on the same laptop. He couldn’t find hidden drives, he couldn’t find hidden cloud storage, the laptop was not encrypted. “Despite extensively testing this thing, there seems to be no trace of any advanced firewall protecting it? But there must be one! How else is he hiding the tools he used to hack our system?” Micah spoke softly to himself as he continued to recheck every part of the laptop.

  Jezebel was enraged. “AHAAAAAAAAAB!!!!!” she screamed. The scream echoed loudly in the Spirit and Ahab came in cautiously. “Did you see this??” she said pointing at Micah. “Oh no” said Ahab, “That’s not a good thing”. Jezebel smacked him across the side of the head, “Obviously it’s not good. Why are you never useful??” She turned to the corrupting spirit and began to viciously attack it. With ever pounding kick she yelled “why did you not make sure the corruption was glory-fire proof!” The corrupting spirit laid helplessly as it endured the beating but thinking to itself “It’s God’s Glory Fire, nothing can endure it…”

  - See if you are able to map the characters Tselem/demut's against the Tselem/demut's of the Spirit's they worship.