Hotrod: M4n... th1z pl4c3 zUckz.
Coolone: G0 t0 h3ll H0tR0d. Y0U c0Uldn't g3t Y0Ur w4Y 0Ut 0f 4 b0x w1th 4n 0p3n l1d.
LOCAL DISCONNECT: YOU HAVE BEEN BOOTED FROM #HACKERS.
Steve looked at the screen and frowned. He was kicked off that dame lamers server again. He closed MIRC and settled back to look at his poster. Hotrod. That name would mean something to those losers someday and it will be soon. He grinned and pulled out his new CD. He looked at the title. Real hackers use this crud. He scratched at his face at all of the zips. His sixteeth birthday had done nothing for them. Dame them all though. He would show them. He stuffed the Linux CD into his computer and decended into madness.
Steve chuckles, and scratched harder at one of the zips. It kind of hurt, but he felt that tonight, it would all be over, one way or the other. It was all the otehr kids' fault, it was his parents' fault. Everyone's fault but his.
With a final snarl, he turned his head to the screen, and watched the easy-to-understand graphics being eaten up by... ugly, confusing text. Strange characters stood out, a huge jumble. He couldn't believe it! No one had told him....what the hale was this?
Steve slammed his fist into the keyboard, knocking over his glass of juice. The substance flew over, splashing onto his shirt, and onto the keyboard...oh, shoot.... He could only type in capitol letters...
Steve curses his luck as the red sticky juice makes all his letters stick of course, he realizes that his keyboard wont do him much good any more.. all the jumbled stuff on his screen, quickly scrolling by wont be stopped by any few keystroke..
He wonders if he should just turn off the computer and back on. As he leans towards the power button, something new flashes on the screen, the screen clears and a bliniking cursor appears, with the letters he has to squint to read......
Kernal 2.0.31. Localhost login:
Steve looked the screen. He didn't know what to do... it was just like that Uni computer that he was cracking the other night... with all that silly command line shit.
For the very first time in his life steve reached down to pick up the users manual and opened it up and started to read. Within the book was the passage...
To log into the system you should use root. As you are just starting up the system there is no password.
Steve typed root.
The screen blinked and settleed down to a blinking currser...
Steve looked at the book again.. What to do now. Dame revenge is hard. "I hope I don't have to do this shit all night."
Steve frowned, and got up, pacing the room. It suggested he create a seperate account. He had to choose a user name, though. What should it be? hellraiser? deathfist? Dame them all- it would be better if they all knew who it was. That was what revenge was all about, wasn't it?
He typed in hotrod. He was invincible. Sheer invincible. But what next?? Oh, what next??? He looked in the book, and grumbled, that was hard work...there weren't any pictures. In any rate, he got up, and stretched...it was better settled in the morning, when he was rested and at his best. This stuff would just take a little while, is all. It wasn't that hard...he'd mastered Macintosh, he could use THIS, certainly! How much more different could it be? He stared at his cup, feeling his eyes begin to cross.
Steve paces around his room, stretching the muscles that had been atrophying from sitting in that chair so long.. He sighed as he looked as his sticky keyboard, full of that damn juice. He KNEW better than to eat around the keyboar!
He stared at his clock, it blinked, somewhat angerly, back at him 1:14 AM. "Shit!" he thought.. "I have class tomorrow! I have to get to sleep! he decided to keep him computer on, still not sure what all those extra characters meant. He shut off the monitor and sighed, stretching one more time before climbing into bed and setting his alarm for school tomorrow, though he knows he will be thinking about his computer more than his work he shuts hies eyes and quickly falls asleep, when a strange dream starts....
. . . . Steve woke with a start. The normal hum of his computer fans changed pitch. What time was it? 4 am? He set the clock back onto the night stand. The pitch changed again and he was outa bed in a flash. The monitor flashed green and purple as it came to life. He winced. What the hell was going on? JEEZ! Had that jkuice somehow gotten inside his maching and contaminated the mother board?. The keyboard was sluggish and sticky, yet the figures on the screen changed and swirled about with strange coding.
"Jeez! I don't rmember any of this crap in the manual. . . . Steve struck the keyboard with his fist, frustrated. Whatever had been on that LINUX disk was doing crap he didn't remotely understand and now fear crept in. What if his computer was being eaten by something on that disk. What if it wasz reorganizing anf formatting his whole machine. All his files would be erased.
Steve watched in amazement. The screen suddenly turned black. "DAMN! I ruined it! DAMN!"
An uneartly growl filled the air from all directions at once. Steve froze. Two clasped hands, brown and scaled reached out of the screen, followed by the most horrorific face he had ever seen. It laughed and showed its snaggly yellow fangs. Steve was paralyzed. He screamed, eyes wide, and it had him, jerked him off the ground and retreated into the screen.
The room returned to quiet. The clock's tick sounded hollow in the room.
Where Steve once stood, only a puddle of foul liquid remained. The room was empty. . . .
Steve twisted and turned in the grasp of the strong brown, scaly hands. He fought to get free but nothing seemed to help and everything was so black. He couldn't see this monster that had dragged him out of his room and into this... this hell hole. He began screaming "Help! Somebody help me please... get me outta here."
There was a deep rumble nearby... Steve listened and it errupted into a series of malevolent chuckles.
He kicked out at the sound and struggled to get free "Lemme go... I didn't do anything to you."
Steve felt the hands tighten their grasp. His arms hurt where the claws or fingernails were digging into his flesh and felt fear wrap its icy tenacles around his soul.
Again the rumbling started and turned into a thunderous growl. The darkness began to fade to shades of gray as the thing pulled him along with it. He began to see other shapes around him and quit struggling quite so much. "Where is this?" He looked around nervously and tried not to stumble as he was dragged forcefully into a new world.
Steve landed in a small room wiht some other people and looked around... There were a lot of people there. Some of them had as many zits or more then he did! None of them looked like they knew what was happening though so he ignored them and looked at the room. There was nothing in the room but a set of chairs facing one wall. On the wall was a giant Microsoft Windows Logo and a little man in a zoot suit was standing there.
The man talked. "Hello All." The rasp in the voice was almost to much for Steve. "I work for Microsoft and would like to welcome you to MicroHell. This is a program that is put onto PCs so that if you try to install lesser OSes on the computesr it brings you here. We will not discuss why."
Steve frowned. Damn this shit. He started to look for a way out of the room. Only to find that every door he tried the doorhandle fell off in his hand.
There was not a movie playing at the front of the room. No one in the room but the little man looked happy. He had some strange gleam in his eyes. Must me his stock prices though Steve.
The little man rubbed his hands together, and Steve could see he was a hiring consultant for a big, important company... whatever that company was, he wanted t obe a part of. He would then take it over and rule the world. There was power. His and the little man's eyes met in a kind of understanding, and the "teacher" turned back to the blackboard. His hand was like a claw, and he slowly drew it across the blackboard, letting small bits crumble here and there, with a squealing that began to ring in Steve's ears. And the longer the teacher wrote, the wilder, broader, whiter, insaner Steve's smile got.
The chalk squealed, ringing off his ears again, and he grinned as the Teacher began to ask for volunteers. He looked around. It was a tough question that no one knew the answer to. Slowly, he raised his hand. He did... Then he got up, and showed them all how quantum mechanics worked. They were all dazed and amazed, and he did not notice how his fingers actually scraped the board, how the chalk dust fell on his clothes and coated him. He was king. He knew all the answers.
/Steve leaned back, and squinted at the screen. Text filled the screen--text?? No one had told him about this.../ He rembered thinking that earlier, only...now he had his graphics again. Maybe he could control things... If he could control it... He began to draw on the board, like in art class, like he had in photoshop, bright, clashing colors...what he'd been laughed at for...
3d, swirling, clashing, bright, ugly colors. They played off one another--they more than clashed...they hurt his eyes. They'd said everything he did was worth crud. Well, now that "crud" was his world, that he created and controlled. The students looked on, and he grinned at them, continuing to recreate the world. The colors were bright and schizophrenic....
------------------
Steve's mother frowned, adding another piece of bacon to the skittet, and glanced up toward her son's room. He was going to be late for class again and miss his bus.
"Steve!" she called, but she had so much to do. She sighed, turned the stove off, and walked over to pick up her peurse. She left.
The house went silent except for the great clock in the living room whose pendulum slowly ticked off intervals of time with a lout TICK . . . TOCK.
-------------------------------------------------------
Steve's room remained dark and still. The whir of computer fans masked the rapid tick of the alarm clock just before it went off. The bell sounded loudly, continuously and wond down as it waited to be shut off but no one came. The room was empty. . . .
Steve played the colors and reshaped existence according to his own warped dictates. The little man stepped forward. "Very good . . . that's enough. You can step back and let someone else come up."
But steve would not be stopped. He scowled and glared at the little man, something in his eyes, wild and feral. The little man's insignificance compared to what he built was more than apparant. He tossed back his head and laughed maniacally, then turned to the magnum opus that grew before him on the screen.
"Enough!" The evil little man with ugly brown claws quavered. His voice shrilled. "GEt back!"
Steve stopped and slowly turned from his masterpiece. His face darkened and his eyes blazed with fire. "You know . . . we don't need you anymore!" His hands shot out and siezed the little man's throat. His new claws dug in and drew blood.
The little man struggled. Fear blazed on his face; he who had terrorized others tasted bitter bile and horror.
Steve turned and threw the little man to the floor amongst the others who now grinned, their eyes ablaze. They reached with terrible claws. . . .
Steve continued and ignored the garbled cries of terror behind him and all became quiet save for the crunch of bones and slupr of tongues.
---------------------------------------------------------
Steve's room darkened with late evening. Down below, his mother unlocked the front door and came in. She dropped off her coat in the foyer and left her purse on the dining table. The great clock in the living room chimed and struck thirteen. . . .
Steve's mother walked into the kitchen to put on the teakettle. She saw the bacon still in the skillet from the morning and tipped her head to one side in thought... **I can't believe that Steve didn't eat this... it's his favorite food.**
Alarm filled her eyes as the feeling that something must be wrong gripped her. She scanned the rest of the kitchen and saw the plate on the the table with the egg and toast on it, just as she had left it for her son. She turned and raised her voice to call out, "Steve... Steve!!"
There was no answer and she ran to the living room and then up the stairs. She rushed down the short hallway and pounded on Steve's closed door. "Steve!! Open up... can you hear me?"
Still no answer and her fingers began to shake as she reached down to turn the doorknob. Quietly, she pushed open the door and stepped inside. There on the bed, lay Steve sleeping fitfully. Relief washed over her and then anger, **Why he never even got up this morning... slept the whole day away...** she thought. Steve's mother crossed the room and began to shake him "Steve! Steve wake up! Wake up now! "
Steve didn't even stir... he was very soundly asleep and still dreaming. His mother went from being angre back to being afraid again. She worked on trying to wake him up for the next few minutes... and then ran to the phone to call for help. After she left the room the computer screen started to flash again.
"The earth turned grey.. "The sea turned black... "The river turned red... "The sun turned cold...
The screen when black once more and Steve groned where he was sleeping.
--------------------------
Steve laughed... his work was almost done. The colors were right. It took more clicks of the mouse to get something to work then any sane person would be able to do. Click four times to turn the icon on. Then three time on the start button before six and six and six to start the main microsoft program.
Steve grinned... very happy wiht his work. Then he felt it... something that had been there for a long time and he just didn't know it was there tell now. It was breathing down the back of his neck... slowly he turned around. Facing him was the creature that had pulled him into the computer screen. Only now its beast face was gone to be replaced by the likeness of Bill Gates.
"You have sined!" The beast said...
The beast rolled his eyes, scraping its claws into Steves back its breath hissing into his ear. This wasn't right....Steve frowned, moving the mouse, clicking eighteen times on the uninstall icon... somehow, something had gotten into the system that He blinked. HE was god, he controlled it. This was his world. He turned back, and hisssssed back at the creature, who responded in a kind of quivering terror, like an old, fat blob...something that was getting to old, and he founf himself staring into the thing's eyes with a kind of understanding. They eyes were dull, very unlike his own creations...in fact, they canceled them out... made them...look like a.l.l. t.h.e. o.t.h.e.r. k.i.d.s. 's creations. Like all the other kids worlds. The thing seemed to grin madly at him, and the world became something like normal, something like...and then it changed again, according to the creatures' ideals. It was boring. That word kept cropping up. His shoulders drooped, his head drooped, and his eyes met the eyes of Bill Gates in a silent understanding of....
Steve's mom was yelling shrilly. That was the first thing he noticed. He shook his head, and stood up, noticing she stood back in shock, relief, and rushed to embrace him...
But he stepped back, ignoring that, as well as the doctors in the room. In fact, it was very, very quiet. He went down stairs and sat down at the breakfast table.
Steve's mother came down stairs into the kitchen. The doctors and police followed. Steve sat at the table and ate the dried out breakfast from that morning. He felt the others behind him and ignored their presence as he ate in silence.
"Steven! How could you sleep all day? This is ridiculous of you. This behavior has to stop!"
Steve didn't answer. None of this was real. He kndw where that was. This is fantasy . . . all of this around him. He had met the beast and won. He was a god . . . pure and simple.
Steven't mother grabbed his plate to get his attention. Steve frowned and leaped from his chair. His mother shrieked, dropped the plate and ran.
The police on the stairs grabbed Steve and took him down. He growled and threw them aside. "Back, all of you! You can't touch me! I'm in charge here, not you. I decide what I will do or not! NOT YOU!" The police moved slowly toward him.
"I'm warning you!" shouted Steve arrogantly. He rose up on his toes defiantly. "You stay away from me, or you'll be sorry!"
"And, how's that gonna be, son," said one of the police. "Give it up and let's just sit downm calmly at the table. . . ."
The policeman rushed him. Steve pushed back and the police man staggered back and deresolved into a cloud of slashing bits of enrgy that soon vanished.
Steve blinked and touched the other police officer. He staggered back, face etched with horror and deresolved. . . .
Steaves alarm rang next to him and he hit it with his hand. He looked at the display. Time to get to school. He still had to install Linux and all of that. "What a dream. My head hurts!"
Steve staggered his way down into the kitchen... only to find the walls splattered with blood and little bits of blue cloth. It was then then he could see that it wasn't just a dream!
Steve frowned, wandering over to the splattered walls. The said walls dissolved before his gentle touch, and he could feel the creature with in him. He winced, and looked back, only this time it was Tarka, whose Linux-worshiping eyes watched him closely...the eyes were rather sleepy... "Twohart, Walksfar... do you two mind wrapping it up? I know you're having all sorts of fun blasting people and all, but this is a little much..." With a sigh, Steve looked over, "Repeat the breakfast scene, then?"
Tarka nodded, and Stevie sat down at the table...