The story told here is purely the result of the author's fantasy and imagination.
The information, references and historical references contained herein are merely to provide a truthful historical framework to the storyline.
Any reference or analogy to facts, episodes, characters or places that really existed is purely random.
FIRST PUBLICATION (ITALIAN VERSION) – July 2019
[On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci]
Translation by Rosemary Dawn Allison – August 2020
Copyright © 2020 – DIONIGI CRISTIAN LENTINI
This work is protected by the Copyright Act.
Any unauthorized reproduction, even partial, is prohibited.
“Hi stallion :-) You were fantastic last night. Don't think too much about it: you can't always be John Holmes… :-) As soon as I get to the office I’ll send you something about that Don Juan friar I told you about. Have a good day.”
It was the private message Francesca had sent while he was heading towards the abbey in his dated methane gas convertible.
He hadn't even heard the ping of the notification. In fact, he was on speakerphone with Professor De Rango who, for the 33rd time, was recommending that he do a good job and to take care to say hello to father Enzo, the rector's abbot friend… and who knows how many other directors and managers.
“It's amazing how the cellular network is so widespread in this remote mountain area,” he thought.
After exactly twenty-seven seconds he decided to implement the emergency plan foreseen in such cases by the survival procedure against head breakers........: “simulation of the sudden loss of signal by activating the state of unreachability for the next 30 minutes”.
Claudio, a forty-year-old researcher without a permanent contract at the Institute of Informatics and Telematics at the CNR in Pisa, eight years of checks and “while actually employed” contracts on his curriculum vitae, had been sent urgently to address a problem the Anglo-Saxons call: “Damage assessment and disaster recovery”, in practice it was an intervention that would assess the damage and restore the data to the digital archive at an ancient Tuscan abbey that had, 48 hours earlier, suffered a cyber attack by an exalted Russian hacker.
Obviously, the thought of spending the whole week in a medieval library recovering digitized scrolls, reinstalling operating systems, analyzing Gregorian chants of prayers and songs (perhaps without even a porno movie), while the world outside was at that time concerned with blockchain and cryptocurrency, filled him with tremendous enthusiasm.
Over the past year he hadn’t produced a single scientific publication. This was not because he had not done enough research or hadn’t achieved concrete results… perhaps it was simply because he hadn’t yet found anything of true value that was worth sharing with the rest of the planet. For this reason, as soon as they could his colleagues mocked him, who, unlike him, were now publishing and patenting every single fart they emitted into the air after a meal of beans in Valleriana.
In short, that morning not even the Eagles' cd “Hotel California” could cheer him up.
He arrived at the summit where the abbey stood at 9:37, when the guitars of Don Felder and Joe Walsh were ending with one of the most beautiful solos in rock history.
“Oh, doctor, welcome to our home. The most reverend father has been waiting for you since yesterday… Come, come, I'll explain everything.”
A cordial and alarmed friar welcomed him; he was immediately shown the way to the violated archive.
The situation was less serious than imagined: the main server was out of action, a Trojan ransomware had encrypted half the world with a 2048-bit AES key and a ransom of 21 bitcoins had been demanded. Most of the friars didn't even know what ransomware or a bitcoin was, but fortunately the restriction (read/write only) to access permissions to the files of the backup archive had held… and besides – then they say that it isn’t true that monks are lucky – the last available copy that the automatic synchronization and backup procedure had produced was only 16 hours and 18 minutes before the attack. In short, if it hadn't been in a sacred place, our researcher would no doubt have exclaimed: “What the f…!”
Therefore the bulk was safe. It was only about eradicating the virus and restoring about 9 terabytes of scanned manuscripts and books, and returning them manually to the mainframe from the disc copies. What relieved Claudio the most was that this operation could also be handled in Pisa, thus he could avoid the problem of his already tried palate coming into contact with the succulent dishes of that infamous three Michelin star restaurant named “The Refectory”.
So, after only 4 hours, having given the friar, who seemed to be more alert, the necessary instructions for the restoration of the host, Claudio removed the bare essentials from the rack, loaded everything into his car and went home.
