Here’s how it works. I get an order of some kind. Maybe I need to find someone who’s been making threats against the president. Maybe I snoop into a Grand Cayman account. Maybe the U.S. economy needs a boost. Or a shove.

Each of the computers does something different. The TX-1042CE is hooked into every social network, entertainment, and porno site. She’s a people pleaser. My Pantheon 456 is sort of the accountant. She rifles through business rules, cracks, hacks, and demifies architecture. And I have a sweet Cray/IBM hybrid that handles the processing power. Sort of the big brother to the two sisters.

And I direct each of them like a movie. I tell the TX to find “Simon Kapsen”. She delivers all his vitals, and one of his last map searches was “495 Holton St.” Pantheon tells me that’s a bank’s address, and fetches account stats. I tell the Cray to compare the two data sets and it appears Simon has been writing checks under a different name. It was all very simple.

Until the day they started talking back.