Free Revolution World by Katy Stauber Page A

wandered away from the scene to the blue jeans that hugged Clio's curves. Clio caught his gaze.
    She batted her eyelashes at him and struck a sultry pose. "Why, honey. I don't play games, I win them." Then she laughed at his expression. "No, I'm just kidding. It just sounded like a bad pick-up line the way you said it."
    "I'll be sure to think of better pick-up lines," he replied awkwardly.
    She watched him blush in confusion and hurried to answer, "I spend way too much time playing Revolution World actually. It's the re-enactment of the Texas Revolution, you know? There are other versions for a bunch of other revolutions or rebellions too. I hear the American Revolution and the Taiping Rebellion worlds are very popular. It's kind of dorky, but I'm hooked on it and all my friends here play too."
    "Oh yes, I know that one. I actually designed some in-game security elements for the Texas Revolution World," Seth replied, clearly more comfortable with virtual reality games than with flirting.
    They spotted Max and a tall, pale woman talking to Kalliope. They were sitting at one of the long picnic tables set up next to large fans to cut the heat. Seth and Clio were both starving so they grabbed plates and hit the food tent.
    "You worked on Revolution World? Really? Wow," Clio said as she loaded up on potato salad, coleslaw, smoked chicken and peach cobbler. She set down two large bowls of guacamole and salsa she brought as her offering for the party.
    "Yeah, just the security elements. It was an application of our privacy networks. The original programmers wanted a way to have secret meetings that couldn't be infiltrated. Personally, I would think spies and secret agents would be part of that kind of game, but that's what they wanted. It was fun to design," Seth replied. He had piled his plate so high with sausage that there was no room for peach cobbler. He looked at it mournfully until Clio passed him another plate with a wink. They walked to meet the others while dodging a group of kids racing through the crowd.
    "I use that security system for my gaming team," said Clio. "So it really keeps people from impersonating someone with access to the secret meetings? I always wondered about that." She spotted Eric and Joanna Guerrero sitting next to Kalliope and gestured that she wanted to join them. The group began rearranging itself to make room for them.
    Seth dropped a link of sausage as he sat down. A dog snatched it up almost before it hit the dirt. "With so many people working remotely, there are companies that hire people they've never seen," he answered. "So it's much harder these days to make sure the person logging into the network is who they say they are. That's what Omerta originally designed it for. I just adapted that software to the game. In the case of the game, it makes it impossible for someone to log in and play another person's in-game avatar. I actually used Revolution World to test out a network system that keeps people who are supposed to have access from sharing any of the secure information. So your Revolution doesn't have to worry about turncoats who sell secrets to the other side."
    "Really? I'm friends with the designers of Revolution World and that's what they said, but I just don't understand how you could do that." Clio replied.
    Seth shrugged. "Actually, that feature is only in the Texas part of Revolution World. I made it a while ago, but it's still in test phase. I used a combination of cloud computing to distribute the information and encryption algorithms to make it secure. Basically, it involves a lot of ring theory and other abstract algebras. But the idea is that the only way to share the information in these encrypted meeting rooms is to be in the room. You can't take it out with you. To get in the room, you have to agree to a downloaded program on your handheld that won't let you even describe what you heard in the room. It wipes any mention to that information out of spoken or written