"Doesn't matter." She'd been trying to poke at him again, for whipping out his arm when she'd merely been joking about his face before.
"To answer the question you didn't ask earlier, you already gave me an out, and I didn't take it. I'll suggest that you don't try to give me another one in this conversation, or I'll think you're trying to talk me out of it entirely. I'm used to playing with fire. And walking on toes, for that matter. You can ask my mother."
A breath, and her hand slid down to his fingers. "What would need to happen with you, James, is something that it would take an entire team to do. I'll be upfront with you on that. What you need is someone to hide or scramble your most recent and future digital footprint. That means figuring out where you've appeared and what you've touched. For records, simply erasing the trail of your access and then the record of my interference. Similar for anything audio, though you wouldn't be able to tell me that they wouldn't have anything involving voice recognition in play. Photographs will be harder, involving coding to either turn face-recognition scans aside or to alter the source image so that it doesn't lead back to you. Video or live feed . . . much harder. I can turn spiders and robots aside, but were anyone to be actively watching it, there's little I can do without direct interference. All of this, and it involves constant maintenance and upgrading of the code, as you can be sure that they'll be doing the same. I'm good, but I'm not an entire organization with the same kind of time and resources."
Her fingers curled gently against his palm. "The short of it is that I can give you breathing room. More time in one place. Less sense that someone is always looking over your shoulder. Maybe even some of what I did before -- some pieces of yourself, here and there. But I can't cure the disease. I can't get ahead of those kinds of odds."
"If you want such an imperfect net, I'm not sure I can disregard the challenge. But if you want to walk away now . . . I give you the same out."
no subject
"To answer the question you didn't ask earlier, you already gave me an out, and I didn't take it. I'll suggest that you don't try to give me another one in this conversation, or I'll think you're trying to talk me out of it entirely. I'm used to playing with fire. And walking on toes, for that matter. You can ask my mother."
A breath, and her hand slid down to his fingers. "What would need to happen with you, James, is something that it would take an entire team to do. I'll be upfront with you on that. What you need is someone to hide or scramble your most recent and future digital footprint. That means figuring out where you've appeared and what you've touched. For records, simply erasing the trail of your access and then the record of my interference. Similar for anything audio, though you wouldn't be able to tell me that they wouldn't have anything involving voice recognition in play. Photographs will be harder, involving coding to either turn face-recognition scans aside or to alter the source image so that it doesn't lead back to you. Video or live feed . . . much harder. I can turn spiders and robots aside, but were anyone to be actively watching it, there's little I can do without direct interference. All of this, and it involves constant maintenance and upgrading of the code, as you can be sure that they'll be doing the same. I'm good, but I'm not an entire organization with the same kind of time and resources."
Her fingers curled gently against his palm. "The short of it is that I can give you breathing room. More time in one place. Less sense that someone is always looking over your shoulder. Maybe even some of what I did before -- some pieces of yourself, here and there. But I can't cure the disease. I can't get ahead of those kinds of odds."
"If you want such an imperfect net, I'm not sure I can disregard the challenge. But if you want to walk away now . . . I give you the same out."