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to hide it. Tom went to each room and said, “Save your work and come into the family room for a conference.”
Tom and Paul stood in the middle of the floor as each pro- grammer came in and sat down.
“We have a few more things to place into the program,” said Tom, “but I need to know if we are ready to test the software.”
The programmers conducted a quick mini-conference. “We’ll be ready by tomorrow,” the group said in unison. Paul and Tom looked at each other and smiled. “Sounds great to me,” said Tom.
“Me to,” Paul agreed.
Okay. Day after tomorrow then,” said Tom. “Let’s take the rest of the day off. Believe me, we’ve earned it and tomorrow will be blistering.”
Everyone woke to the sound of music on the next day. Paul was the first out of bed. By the time everyone was up and ready for work Tom had set up the computers in three remote locations depicting two remote sites and one host site.
“As soon as we finish, we test,” Tom said, when everyone was in the room. “Okay each computer is on a different phone line, so we are going to act as if I am the host and you two are the remotes. Let’s just start by you guys making up some figures and sending them to me.”
The room was filled with the sound of fingers hitting keys, as each of the secondary sites was busy making up figures. Immedi- ately, there was the familiar dialing and hissing noise common to modem operation. Tom was smiling as the figures came from one of the remote computers. He began to grin visibly as the file down- loaded automatically. Paul joined him looking over his shoulder.
“Check to see if this file is still on your computer!” Paul shouted to one of his men on a remote computer.
“No, the file is gone. “Just like it was never there.”
“Is there any way the remote site can recover it?” asked Tom. “Not with the code we put in this program. Any file that is
sent is automatically deleted forever as if it never existed.”
The Reaction Factor 89