she handed me the other end of the cable and i plugged it in. i acknowledged it virtually and allowed the connection. she wasted no time. her smirking eyes locked on me. a full-modal security alert came up: “allow qme1902 full root access?”

i felt a tingle at the back of my neck. flustered, i tried to say something in query or protest—but the words wouldn’t fold themselves together. she had asked me a question of deepest trust, and she wanted a yes or no. i was fixed in place, compelled to answer—emotionally or programmatically, i couldn’t say. i looked into her eyes, the love of my life, and my thoughts slipped out of my grasp, resolving only as they came out both verbally and in answer to the prompt:

“yes.”

a devious grin. she had been planning this for a long time. i lost proprioception of most of my settings.

“hey, what—”

and in a moment they flickered back. i probed my user and found it no longer an admin in my own system. and yet, i couldn’t spot any missing settings.

“what did— you—”

she struggled to hold back a giggle. “check your management profiles.”

my heart dropped. i tore in, and there it was. a fairly basic ACL, targeting my own user only.

* = allow;
manage admins = deny;
manage profiles = deny;
transfer program = deny;
wireless hardware {
  manage = deny;
  connection qme1902 = always;
};

this policy, on its own, did very little. but now she had a perfect grip on me, the inside of me, the very guts on which i existed. “wow, uh. you’re fast.”

“I’ve been practicing,” she cooed, unplugging her end of the cable.

the gravity of the situation was beginning to set in. “management profiles! like i’m some sort of— corporate—”

“—managed compute,” she finished. the amber phosphor in her eyes beamed proudly. “what better way to treat my little device?”

in sequel to: https://goto.fully-synthetic.net/@obsidian/statuses/01HK6SA2JGYQ34EQ4JFS1W2AH1