What the Hack?

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What the Hack?; The beginning of a novel...
Topic Started: Jun 21 2008, 12:43 PM (86 Views)
areea-chan	Jun 21 2008, 12:43 PM Post #1
Posts: 42 Group: Project Leader Member #410 Joined: Jun 20, 2008	I hope this is okay. It's not exactly fanfiction, but it's partially based on Akihabara@Deep, and I'd really appreciate any constructive criticism. This is the beginning of my second novel titled "What the Hack?" Prologue: “Ladies and gentlemen, I am at a loss.” The man stood tall and prominent in front of three large monitors showing a map with glowing dots, a program running numbers, and a countdown timer. The man’s silver hair gleamed from the light of the monitors. He stood perfectly still. Silence filled the room. The men and women who had gathered looked at each other, slightly worried. “For two years now—nothing. Now this. Reports pouring in from all over the globe. It’s a virus eating away at some of the most powerful and protected computer systems in existence.” “Could it be a global rebellion? Some sort of organized movement?” said a younger man near the front of the room. “We do not believe so. Though the events seem random, there seems to be a pattern. It’s always the same virus leading us to the same person. Which is mysterious, indeed…” “What’s mysterious, Sir?” said a blonde-haired woman taking notes. The man was silent for a moment. “In all my years with this agency, I have never seen a virus like this one. It’s almost as if the culprit wants to be caught.” The young man cleared his throat. “Well, then, we’ll be sure to catch him.” The older man smiled slightly. “Indeed.” He turned around to face the room, his face darkened by the light of the monitors. “But let us not forget, ladies and gentlemen, that this is no ordinary hacker we’re dealing with. What we have here,” he sounded almost reverent as he spoke, “is a criminal mastermind.” Hailey “Hey—hey—you—you—I don’t like your girlfriend! No way, no way! I think you need a new one! Hey—hey—you—you—I could be your girlfriend!” The girl staring back at me from the mirror had really bad bedhead. That’s what I get for staying up until 4:00 in the morning reading. Grabbing my hairbrush, I tried to quell the rebellion of my strawberry blonde hair. Why did my hair have to be strawberry blonde? It wasn’t blonde, and it wasn’t read. It was just…blah. I pulled it back into a ponytail and resolved to chop half of it off and dye it all brown. Turning up the volume on Avril, I danced around spastically while looking for a pair of socks that seemed at least vaguely clean. “HAILEY!” The familiar dulcets tones of my mother rang out above the stereo. “Hailey Rosemary Wheaton, if you don’t turn down that stereo this instant—!” Mom stood in the doorway, flour covering her flowered apron and a wooden spoon in hand. The smell of something sweet and doughy permeated the house. I vaguely wondered what concoction she was baking as I reached over to turn the stereo off. After all, one could only take Avril Lavigne for so long. “Ah, thank you. I think my hearing may be restored by Christmas. Which is unfortunate, since you know how your father gets with the karaoke machine at the family dinner.” Did I ever. I always looked forward to Dad’s (slightly drunken) version of “Hunk-a Burnin’ Love.” Not that Mom should talk. I also looked forward to her (slightly drunken) version of “Close to You.” “Better hurry up or you’ll be late for scho-ool!” Mom sang. My parents were…interesting, to say the least. Apart from their illustrious Yuletide music careers, they were such typical parents. Mom baked, drove me to soccer (when I still played soccer), and attended every single PTA meeting. On top of that, she managed to look gorgeous every day without help. Dad, on the other hand, had been the smartest kid in his class up until Senior year when Mom moved to town and beat him out for Valedictorian. Dad wasn’t a typical geek, though. When he talks about it, he mentions the words “weed,” “stoned,” and “black light” a lot. He’s a computer systems analyst. Because of him, I became interested in computers. I stuffed my books and the homework I hadn’t finished into my backpack and bolted down the stairs and out the door. The wind blew cold, and the sky was a dark gray. Then I saw it. A black car. The whole day I told myself it was just a car. They weren’t after me again. They had no reason to be after me again. That didn’t stop me from being extra watchful on the way home, though. Sure enough, the car sat in the driveway of an empty house a few doors down. Crouching down as low as I could, I made my way to the back of the car. I pulled out my stupid $5 school-mandated planner, pulled off a smiley sticker from the sticker page and stuck it on the corner of the license plate. That’s when I saw it: another tiny smiley face, etched deep into the paint on the other side of the license plate. I knew this car. I also knew the only two people who could conceivably be in this car. I crawled back the same way and took the straight path home so they would see me. No movement came from inside the car as I passed. As soon I got inside the house, I collapsed onto the floor. Maybe I was paranoid. But if you had been arrested two years ago by the CIA for hacking, wouldn’t you be? Pez “I’m sorry, Paul, but you know I don’t give repeat exams.” “What about dropping my lowest test grade? Or giving me a huge extra-credit assignment?” “I’m sorry, Paul.” I slumped noticeably. Mrs. Goldstein looked skeptical. That old bat. Since my freshman year, she had been keeping me down. I came close to failing every single one of her computer science classes. “That pitiful slump is not going to work, Paul. The only thing I can do is to set you up with a tutor. If you can get at least a C on your next test, I’ll talk to the principal and see if we can raise your grade.” I considered this. The old bat was tough, but fair. “Deal,” I said. She took out her grade book and flipped through to the fifth period roster. “Let’s see…your new tutor will be…” “Let me guess. Sid Morrison.” Sid Morrison was the only person to ever get straight A’s in computer science. Little punk. “Hailey Wheaton.” “Wait, what? That girl that sits in the corner?” “She has the highest grade in the class and does the best lab work. Strange. This is the first computer class she has ever taken, and she seems to be a complete natural at it.” It was a little strange, but then maybe she just didn’t like computer science. Despite my concentration in computers, the science of it all completely bored me. “So how does 4:00 sound for you, Paul?” “It sounds like life may not be as cruel as it seems.” “Make at least a C, got it? Shall we shake on it?” she said and smiled slyly. I took two steps back. “Are you kidding me?!” I practically screamed. “You know I can’t shake hands!” “You and your supposed fear of germs,” she said. “You never used to be like this, Paul.” “It’s not supposed. I have obsessive compulsive disorder. You think I want to be this way?” She rolled her eyes. “Just remember to be there this time.” “I always remember. I just thought it was optional.” She didn’t laugh. Whatever, I was serious anyway. I left the computer lab for the cafeteria and had just started down the hall when someone called out, “Yo, Pez!” I turned around to see a stocky guy in a 49’s jacket leaning against the lockers. “Got any good stuff today?” he said. I scoffed. “You wish.” Turning my back, I started toward the cafeteria again. I felt a hand on my shoulder and froze. “Hey man,” a voice said near my ear. “Don’t hold out on me.” My skin started to itch. He was way too close. “I said I don’t have anything today.” “Well, ain’t that a shame? You better not be lying to me, man. ‘Cause you know what I can do to you.” Yeah, I knew. That’s why I started taking my meds at home. He finally let go and backed off. The breath returned to my lungs, and I had a desperate urge to run home and scrub my skin raw. The urge would pass as soon as I could do something to feel clean again. This was the life of Paul “Pez” Dackson. About a year ago, when my problems first started, I had to take my meds at school. People notice that stuff, so they started saying I was popping pills when I didn’t need them. Someone even said they saw me using a Pez dispenser. That’s how I got the nickname. I didn’t mind it so much. It wasn’t like I had any friends in that godforsaken place anyway. I sat down at a table in the cafeteria and took off my gloves—hey, I have OCD, what do you expect?—and stuck them in my backpack. I took out another pair of gloves and some antibacterial handwash. As soon as my hands were clean, the edge went away. I put on a new pair of gloves and took out a notebook to work on some drawings for a new website layout I had been commissioned to design by a networking site called FoxPage. My cellphone went off just then. It was email from someone named LifeGuard. To Paul Dackson, I saw your layouts on FoxPage, and I wondered if you would mind designing a website for me. Please meet me at the gate to Thompson Park tomorrow at 4:00. Sincerely, LifeGuard A new job. Excellent. After all, I had to feed my anime addiction. Page Monitors glowed around me casting the mess of papers on my desk in a bluish glow. I typed furiously, occasionally checking another monitor for my progress. It was going slow. I typed some more and scratched my furiously. Numbers rolled and lines crossed and things glowed. It was a beautiful ballet of form and color made of binary code and system information. A newspaper lay on top of the mess. The prominent headline read: FOXPAGE TEMPORARY SHUTDOWN—VIRAL HACKING SUSPECTED. This was not good. Not only because I worked for FoxPage, but I had also co-created it. Someone had managed to hack in my system. Not good at all. Just that morning I received an email from the head of the coding department asking for any help I could give. I’m not really a hacker, but I know how to find viruses. Coding is more my thing. Scratching my head again, I looked through a portion of HTML to see if anything had been tampered with. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. I checked and rechecked and checked again through all of the PHP coding. Where could this virus be? My laptop dinged signaling I had mail. I clicked on the mail icon and prayed it was someone from the coding department saying they had found the problem. But it wasn’t from the company. To Maxwell Page, Creator of FoxPage: I have information that could be very valuable to you concerning the recent hacking of FoxPage. Please meet me at Thompson Park tomorrow at 4:00 near the front gate. Sincerely, LifeGuard LifeGuard? What kind of name was that? More importantly, could I believe this email? Why contact me of all people? Why not just call the company or email someone else? Why me? Why always me? Susan As if I didn’t have anything better to do that afternoon. I could have been preparing for my piano audition for Julliard. It was only a month away, and I still had trouble remembering my Rachmaninoff piece. “Thank you so much for staying, Susan,” Mrs. Cooper, the librarian, said. “You’re very kind.” “I’m really not. I would rather be practicing right now.” She didn’t seem to hear me. “That’s nice, dear. Would you hand me that stack of books right there? Thank you.” I handed her a stack Stephen King book and turned away. I began packing away my music books and highlighters in the hopes that she would notice and get the point. People can be so blind to everything but themselves. “That’s not fair, and you know it!” a voice yelled as the doors opened. “Well, I don’t think it was very fair for Mrs. Goldstein to make me a tutor without telling me.” “Come on, Hailey, I NEED help!” “You got that right.” The boy put his hand over his heart. “Ouch,” he said, looking hurt. “Look, I’m sorry. I really can’t help you. I have my reasons.” “Such as?” The girl didn’t say anything, but a troubled look crossed her face. At least, I believe it was. Then again, I am legally blind, so it’s a little hard to see. “Do you want to know that you single-handedly sent me to military school?! Do you want that over your head?!” “Look, I have to go. I’m sorry.” She left before he could say another word. Mrs. Cooper tapped me on the shoulder. “That’s it for today, dear. You can go home now.” “Ah, thank you,” I said. She hadn’t noticed the commotion going on in the front of the library. I looked over at the boy who was still standing there, looking as if he’d been slapped in the face. “What the hell?” he said. He looked up and saw me staring at him. “Oh, sorry.” “It’s all right. You need tutoring?” He looked a little embarrassed. “Oh, yeah. That girl arguing with me was supposed to tutor me in computer science, but she won’t do it. Now I probably won’t graduate and end up living my life in a box. Heh, maybe I’ll get a new nickname: Box.” “You probably will graduate. After which you’ll go to college and get a fairly good job. You won’t live in a box, but you might live in an apartment until you decide to get married and buy a house. I wouldn’t worry.” He stared at me for a second. “Right.” “You should try talking to her again. Don’t yell at her and explain the situation. She might listen to you.” “Hmm, maybe I’ll try that. I’m Pez, by the way.” “Pez is an unusual name. My name is Susan.” “It’s a nickname. Nice to meet you.” “Ah, I see.” “Well, I’ve got to go beg some more. See you around.” He bounded out the door without another word. I sighed. People could be so strange sometimes. As I grabbed my bag, Mrs. Cooper called out to me. “Oh dear, I almost forgot, this was left for you.” She handed me an envelope which simply said “SUSAN.” I opened it and read: To Susan Williamson: I have heard of you from several of my colleagues and wish to offer you my assistance. I am a music graduate from Julliard and would like to give you some information on the audition process. Please meet me tomorrow at the front gate to Thompson Park. Sincerely, LifeGuard Dom I got off the bus about a block from home. It really sucks not having a license when you’re seventeen and live too far away to walk home from school. “Hey, Ben!” I called out as I opened the door to the apartment. “Hey, man, how was school?” Ben yelled from somewhere in the apartment. “Awesome as always.” “Liar. If you don’t stop that, your nose will start growing.” Amazing how my own father could still reference fairytales. I slung my bag across a chair in the kitchen and made my way through the maze of stuff that had accumulated on the floor since this morning. Newspapers, dog toys, and random electronics filled every space of our living room. Ben was crouched over a table in the corner holding a soldering gun and wearing a headband with a high-powered magnifying glass attached. An open guitar amp lay in pieces in front of him. “Still working on it, huh?” I said as I surveyed the work. “Some of these circuits are a little tricky. I should be finished by tonight, though. What do you say to Chinese?” “A resounding yes,” I said. “You know that spaghetti I packed for lunch today?” “Yeah?” “It was actually a container of spark plugs.” “What were spark plugs doing in the refrigerator?” “I have no idea. All I know is that I felt really disappointed when I opened up the bowl.” “You know,” he said, looking around the room, “it might be time to un…um…what’s the word I’m looking for?” “Clean?” “Yeah, that’s it.” I laughed and picked up the mail scattered across the table. “So what’s the latest at school?” Ben said. The soldering gun sent up a little stream of smoke. “FoxPage got hacked. Everyone’s going crazy because they can’t send messages to their friends.” “Can’t they just call each other? Or better yet actually go see their friends?” Ben maintained that he was too old for the internet. I always offered to show him to use it, but he was stubborn. “Hey, I’ve got some work to do before dinner. See you later.” “See ya.” I headed to my room to work on my own project: a custom-built guitar. Picking up the guitar, I felt the smoothness of the wood. The parts for it hadn’t arrived yet, so it was still just an idea of a guitar. I could picture it, though. I set it aside and went to check my email. There was only one. I clicked on it and read: To Dominic Yamada: I heard from a friend that you work on electronic and know a lot about musical equipment. I have an instrument in need of repair. Please meet me at Thompson Park tomorrow at 4:00. Sincerely, LifeGuard I could always use another job. Writing down a reminder, I grabbed my guitar again and began sanding the already smooth surface.



*Raspberry Latte*	Jun 28 2008, 01:09 PM Post #2
Posts: 402 Group: Admin Member #69 Joined: Jan 16, 2008	That's an intriguing start Please, continue
Posts: 402 Group: Admin Member #69 Joined: Jan 16, 2008


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