Read Insider X for Free Online

signed on the dotted line and handed the pen back quickly.  She figured she could always leave, once she saw how the operation worked.  She was more interested in what type of business this was than the money, anyway.  What made writing English a useful, valuable skill?
    Little did she know.
    “Training,” he said.
    Sans pen ( thank goodness! )—she wiped her hand on her frock and followed him.  He escorted her down a dark hallway into a poorly-lit room with fifty-two computers.  It was full of people already working.  They were hunched over keyboards typing away.  Only one workstation was empty, and it was near the middle.  Bossman squeezed behind those typing and told her to follow.  He sat down in the open chair and told her to watch him.
    “I show one time,” he said.  “Then you do.”
    He turned on the computer.  Showed her how to log in and set her password.  Then for the next few minutes he did a couple of examples for her.  The main thing she needed to know, according to him, was how to move her chits out of the queue.  To do that, she had to take a screen shot of what she wrote.  Once that was done she was to drop it in a folder.  Then submit the post.
    “Don’t forget.  One warning.  Happen second time, you face me,” bossman said.
    Na had nodded.  Seemed simple enough.  While he’d been showing her what to do, she’d taken a furtive look at the others in the room.  She noticed that some of them took furtive glances at her, as well.
     “Now, you try,” bossman said.
    He got up.  It was tight quarters, but it seemed to Na that he made no attempt to avoid brushing up against her.  She was repulsed ( oh gross, ick, disgusting! ), and thankful when she could sit down.  She tried to ignore the fact he was now behind her breathing on her neck.
    She repeated the log in procedure, using just her index fingers to type.  She sensed, rather than saw, the expression on bossman’s face.  He wasn’t happy she couldn’t type with all her fingers.  But because she did it relatively fast, he only grunted.  She used the same password that he had used.  She didn’t need to ask him what it was.  It was almost as if she could sense his approval.  Fast learner, he was probably thinking.   She navigated the screen to get the chits.  She didn’t ask him anything, but did exactly what he had done.
    “Good,” bossman said.  “Now write something.”
    She did.  Once she completed her first one, she followed the same steps he had.  Took a screen shot, put it in a folder, and submitted the post.
    After that, he walked away.  “Now work,” he said.
    One of his comments he’d said as he did his first example was really all there was to it.  Make people buy product and not buy other product.
    That was the business model.  Summed up in one not so pretty sentence.  She’d done the math.  Not right then, but over the next several weeks.  The overhead for this operation consisted of these computers, renting a small room with enough power to run the computers, and then paying almost nothing to the employees for them to type and post comments on various websites.  No other investment needed.
    She’d done more digging.  Found out things about this business that surprised her.  The list of clients.  Some of the fees charged.  She’d peeked into some accounting folders that she wasn’t supposed to access.  Or, to be more precise, didn’t have the ability to access.  But she was a little more savvy than the typical employee here, and had figured a way into the system.  She’d tricked the interface into believing she was an online administrator, and it gave her access to every drive and file on the system.  It was more complicated than that, but not by much.
    She was shocked at the lack of security on the network.  It was pitiful.  No one in here, aside from her, seemed to have a clue about computers.  Bossman, she quickly figured out, was completely illiterate in regards