Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller Read Free

short end. It looked like one bar
of a bar chart. Within the black rectangle , Becca wrote, 'REALSPACE.’
Moving from left to right, Becca etched a fatter, green rectangle. It was longer at both ends than the REALSPACE rectangle.
    Becca stamped this
green rectangle as, ‘G-Bridge,’ short for the Gamification
Bridge. Finally, to the right of G-Bridge, Becca sketched a
blue rectangle. It was the exact
same proportion as the black, REALSPACE
rectangle. Inside of the blue rectangle, Becca wrote,
‘GAMESPACE.’
    To Becca, the entire architectural
diagram looked like a standing stick with two stubby arms. Samantha
chided Becca to quit calling it a ‘stick,’ and always refer to it
as an ‘angel,’ during company presentations.
    Becca continued, “We call this whole
architecture, the Gamification Angel.” Samantha’s eyes gleamed with
approval.
    Becca moved back to the
original rectangle. “The black wing of the angel is REALSPACE. In
the demo, REALSPACE is the world of cybersecurity I just
described.”  She grabbed a purple marker and penned a
bunch of small squares within REALSPACE.  “The purple
squares within REALSPACE are all the network elements; the
firewalls, the routers, and the like.”
    Reaching for a red marker,
she drew a small circle in each purple square.  “These red circles
in the purple boxes are the G-Agents.  The G-Agents sit
on the network devices within REALSPACE and talk to G-Bridge. So
the red circles—the G-Agents—talk to the green G-Bridge. G-Bridge
is Gamification System’s secret sauce.  It’s the crown
jewels of the company. That’s why we always draw it using money
green.”
    “ The blue GAMESPACE wing
of the angel is the virtual gaming world.  In this demo, it’s
the virtual world of Castle Gecko.” Within GAMESPACE, Becca
traced an orange square she named, ‘Game Engine.’  
    “ I programmed the Castle
Gecko game.  I used the Unreal Engine.  A game
engine is a software framework that enables the more rapid creation of
video games.  With a game engine, you don't have to start from
scratch every time you write a game.  The Unreal Engine
works well with VR. It’s the game engine’s job to interact with
G-Bridge and adequately render what’s occurring in REALSPACE. In
other words, G-Bridge translates REALSPACE to GAMESPACE. That’s why
G-Bridge is the key intellectual property of our
company.”
    “ Do you support any other
gaming engines?” asked Shields.
    “ Not yet. We focused on
the Unreal Engine.  But your question highlights what’s
cool about our architecture.  Our entire architecture is
pluggable and extensible.  The key to our flexibility is
that we created G-Bridge to expose a very
robust API.” 
    API stood for Application
Programming Interface.  API’s were used to help one piece
of software communicate with another piece of software
code.  APIs were critical in the software world. They
allowed programmers to talk to a software component, like G-Bridge,
without knowing how G-Bridge worked internally. People used
APIs every day . Typing ‘http://www.cnn.com’ was an API call. The web browser sent the API call over the Internet to CNN’s webserver.
    “ Through this API,
G-Bridge can talk to any gaming engine that makes up
GAMESPACE.  My colleague—Saul Abrams—did amazing work
with the API.  And on the other end, in REALSPACE,
G-Bridge talks to our G-Agents.  We have G-Agents for
Linux, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and even embedded
systems.  Ali leads the team that codes the REALSPACE
software.”
    Ali Asir still wore a
disappointed expression.  His software code had broken
the demo.  While Becca wrote on the whiteboard, he was
frantically searching through his source code to find the
bug. 
    The General paused in
thought for a moment. “What I hear you saying is that REALSPACE can
be anything upon which I can deploy a G-Agent.  And
REALSPACE could be more than just cybersecurity ?”
    “ Yes!” replied