The Denizens By: 0tt3r Her music went foul, which is why everyone in Denizen’s Arcade saw it happen. Her music--that beautiful pattern of joystick slams, button taps, bleeps, blings, and audible verbal tics of concentration that accompanied Shannon working her magic on her favorite machine--became dissonant and broken. It drew their attention and so they all saw her frozen, shaking, hands jiggling on the controls. They all saw her cursory ponytail wriggling like a mortally wounded snake, briefly, before she bent at the waist and drove her face through the thick glass of the screen. A week later the console had been removed by efficient men in utility jumpsuits, the cops had completed their interviews, and all the denizens of the arcade were in the back corner, slumped in hard metal chairs around a plastic table piled with greasy pizza boxes and open, warm soda cans. They heard a familiar electronic scream and warble through the thin office door on the back wall and were reminded that they weren’t all at the table. Chuck was on the computer. “Why?” asked Brandon. Tom and Dave leaned back in their chairs, blowing out long sighs. “Stop asking that,” said Dave. “But.. Shannon? Through the glass?” “She was epileptic, the cops said.” “She wasn’t epileptic. C’mon. Half the summer? This?” Brandon flapped his hands in a loose circle and they all looked around the dark arcade. Strobes of color flashed out of every screen, flickering against the walls and the sides of the other consoles in a visual frenzy. The synthesized music and effects of nine machines running unattended in demo mode blended into a constant familiar mashup. But all of them could hear the hole in the music where Shannon’s console should be. “And have you ever actually seen a seizure?” asked Brandon. “They freeze, and fall. Maybe they bounce their head off a table and it hurts. But not.. that..” The door opened and a tourist walked in. He had on jeans, a tucked in t-shirt, and thin-lensed glasses. Then the door closed and his details were lost in the flickering visuals. He put a coin into a platform gamer. Ten seconds later, he lost his first life. They turned back to each other. Before they finished sipping their flat sodas the tourist died again. “It doesn’t matter why. It happened. She’s gone,” said Dave. “She’s not gone,” said Tom, “she’s in a coma.” Dave said nothing. The tourist died again, fished a coin from his pocket and moved to another machine. It was an alien shoot ‘em up, right next to the hole where Shannon’s game was supposed to be. He didn’t survive the first wave. Chuck came out of the office, watched the tourist play for a second, and threw himself into the last empty chair with an eye roll. “Well, we got scooped.” he said, “But it was a different version, so I got some download creds anyway.” “How could it be a different version?” Dave asked. “We were one of the first to get it and we only had it for a month.” Chuck shrugged. “Dunno. But hashes didn’t match so they gave me some creds.” “Who beat us?” asked Brandon. “Who do you think?” “Gino’s. Again,” said Tom. Chuck nodded. “Don’t they have jobs in New York?” Chuck shrugged. “I would have beat them. But I lost a week. You know..” All four denizens of the arcade drank. The tourist died again and seemed to be content watching the demo mode. Dave said, “Why did it take so long anyway? Didn’t you pull it the first night?” Chuck nodded, “Of course. But it wouldn’t load into the play box right, and I didn’t want to deliver dead code. Took me a bit to figure it out.” “Copy protected?” “Something. The game bytes were ciphered somehow and get cleaned up with some sort of bootstrap code. The bootstrap needs a key and it took me awhile to find it in the ROM.” Tom leaned forward. “Oh! That sounds fun. Why didn’t you ask us to help?” Chuck said, “I did have help. Shannon did it.” The others considered that a moment, then nodded and took sips. Brandon looked around. The tourist was still staring at the demo mode. “Hey man, you want some help on that game? There’s just a couple basic moves to get you past that tricky first wave.” The man turned and awkwardly pantomimed a “who me?” kind of look. “No. Thanks.” He walked out, change jangling in his pocket. Tom looked at Brandon. “Jerk,” he said. The others barked a tight laugh. Dave asked, “Didn’t you teach that guy at Gino’s how to pull the code off the consoles?” Chuck nodded. “Didn’t you say he was kind of hopeless at it at first?” Chuck shrugged and nodded. “So how did they beat that protection if it took you three weeks?” Chuck shrugged and returned to the office. Shortly after that they heard the shriek and warble of the modem again. Tom got up and went to the shoot ‘em up the tourist had been playing. He pulled some pieces of stiff wire out of his pocket, crouched on his haunches, and began fiddling with the lock on the change box. Brandon watched for a moment then said, “You know we actually have the keys for that lock. Or Chuck does at least.” Tom didn’t look up. “You say that every time.” “Didn’t Chuck empty the boxes this morning?” Tom said nothing but a muttered swear word as his hand slipped and banged off the front of the console. Chuck came out of the office. “Hey I downloaded the code Gino’s uploaded. You guys want to see if it’s a different game?” Dave asked, “You wasted a download on Gino’s version of a game we already have?” “I said it was for research, maybe they’ll give me a freebie,” Chuck said. “Tom, seriously, stop doing that. I swear the keys are starting to jam.” Tom didn’t look up. “You’ll thank me someday.” Chuck shook his head and headed back to the office. Dave and Brandon followed, squinting a bit in the bright light of the office and carefully stepping past a fat electric plug jammed into the socket by the door and warded by a wrap of stolen police tape. It was a small space, cluttered, but big enough for a desk on one side to hold a computer workstation. The case was off of the CPU, exposing its innards for all to see. The CRT glowed with a spinning, checkerboard-patterned ball that bounced off the edges of the screen. A new, top-end, in-line modem blinked furiously next to the computer. On the opposite wall was a workbench, also cluttered. A couple of fishing tackle boxes were stacked in the corner of the workbench, topped by a clean, well-loved soldering iron. Next to these tackle boxes was a pile of cables, cords, and circuit boards sitting on the workbench in a way that implied they were all working together to achieve a singular goal. A single, wide, flat cable went from this ordered electronics entropy into an old console pushed against the wall. There was no change box, just a piece of cardboard, hinged and latched with duct tape where the change box should be. The control panel for the console was also missing so you could see straight into the machine under the CRT. “Stick and one,” said Dave. Chuck nodded and bent under the workbench. There were banging and sliding sounds and Chuck surfaced with a plywood board that had a joystick and a button mounted on it. A bunch of plugs and wires dangled from underneath. He held it next to the console while Dave pulled the wires into the hole where the control board should be. “All right,” said Dave, leaning back. Chuck lowered the board over the four mounting screws and tightened it down with some wing nuts. “I already loaded it,” he said as he flicked a switch sticking out oddly from the side of the console. The screen lit up, the hardware ran through some POST cycles, and the splash screen appeared. Brandon stepped up before the others could and hit the 1-Player button. They watched while he played a bit. He was competent, and quick, but not as good as Shannon was. Or had been. “Uh. It seems the same to me. I guess. I mean nothing is making me feel like it is different.” “Me neither,” Dave said, “Maybe we should load our version up?” Brandon stepped away from the machine and Chuck shut it off. After some rapid mouse movement, bursts of staccato typing, and a couple of connector jiggles, a light on the workbench gear began blinking. It blinked for a long minute before turning a solid green. Chuck turned the console back on. Brandon stepped back up the machine. “Here we go.” “YES!” shouted Tom as a very satisfying click tremored up his fingers and the change box fell open before him. He removed the single quarter the tourist had left behind and held it aloft. He spun on his heel. “YES!” he shouted again to the empty arcade. “Oh c’mon” He heard familiar game music coming from the office. He flung the door open, held his trophy up, and shouted, “YES!” “Hey man,” Brandon said over his shoulder, eyeing the screen and working the controls. Dave and Chuck just kept watching Brandon play. “That’s Shannon’s game, isn’t it?” asked Tom. “Yeah.. CRAP!” said Brandon, jerking the stick sideways, “we loaded the one from Gino’s and then ours to see if there was any playable difference, but I haven’t seen any… CRAP! ...thing.” “‘Hey man, you want some help on that game? There’s just a couple basic moves to get you past that tricky first wave.’” said Tom in his version of Brandon’s voice. “Shut uh… nonononoNONONONO!! CRAP!!” Brandon smacked the keys and stepped back. “I HATE that part!” He turned around. “Well, did it look different?” Tom looked at Dave and Chuck, “Guys?” Dave blinked and shook his head, “Sorry I must have zoned out a bit.” He looked at Chuck. “Chuck?” Chuck didn’t respond. He was staring through Brandon’s chest at the console screen behind him. But he wasn’t staring, exactly. His eyes spasmodically jerked in a low-res circle. Brandon screamed, “CHUCK!” and smacked his hands together. Chuck jerked slightly but kept staring through Brandon’s chest. Tom looked down and kicked the yellow-wrapped plug near the door. He saw a little spark, heard an audible snap, and then the whole room went black. “Crap!” shouted Brandon. There was a grunt. Then a confusion of thumping noises. Someone stepped on Tom’s foot. Brandon felt an odd sensation like a windmill spinning past his face followed by some Newtonian feeling of a large mass falling away from him. A cacophony of bangs and splintering split the air of the dark room. Something collapsed in the distinct sound of stacked, cascaded failure. There was a final, deep, watermelon thud. “OUCH!” said Chuck. “Chuck!” said Brandon. Dave pushed open the office door and light from the compliant-but-not-sufficient emergency lighting in the arcade leaked into the office. “I’ll get the breaker,” he said. Brandon crouched next to what he could see of Chuck, careful not to touch anything. Tom held still. The lights came back on. Chuck lay in the middle of the office, one hand rubbing his head. He was covered in precious gear. The workbench had tilted and dumped tackle boxes, soldering iron, and the console load box on top of Chuck. It was still a connected grouping of electronics, but there was a sense they had somehow lost their singular purpose, perhaps lost their soul. The recycled plywood desk was split down the middle with jagged, thin daggers of wood on both sides of the break. The computer’s guts were spilled across Chuck’s abdomen. The CRT had slid forward. It was the undeniable source of both the final thud and Chuck’s head pain. He had been lucky though. The thick power cord to the back of the monitor had been trapped by the edge of the desk and kept it from dropping fully onto Chuck’s head. Tom stepped across the rubble and pushed the CRT back, wedging it into the corner. “Jesus..” “Here,” said Brandon as he began picking gear off of Chuck. “Are you okay?” “What the hell happened?” asked Chuck. Brandon and Tom looked at the console. It had booted up again and the splash screen was beckoning them. Dave stepped through the door, glanced at the screen, and flicked the switch on the console. The screen blipped white and then faded slowly to black. “Oh,” said Chuck. It wasn’t “oh” as in, “now I get it”, it was “oh” as in, “hey, I just discovered I’m hurt.” It was the kind of “oh” to get your Id all fired up. “Crap!” said Brandon. Tom reached down to pull Chuck up. “Stop!” said Dave, “Move out of the way Tom.” Dave crouched next to Chuck and examined his arm. There was blood dribbling from cuts on Chuck’s left forearm. Blood was starting to pool in the crook of his elbow. “They don’t look deep but I do see some splinters. We need to get you cleaned up.” They started pushing the the gear off of Chuck with a little less care. Tom scooped the console loader remnants up. They still had power, if not purpose. The wrong loose wire slid across the right bare metal. There was a pop and a thin stream of smoke drifted up from the boards in Tom’s hands. “Great. I’ve told you before not to let the smoke out,” said Chuck. Tom shrugged, pulled the power cable out, dumped the boards in an unrecognizable heap where the workbench was supposed to be, and helped Chuck to his feet. They led him out the back door. At first it was easier to just take refuge in soap, water, Bactine, tweezers, and bandages. They were tangible, physical things; they had known uses and effects. They were unlikely to simply start causing strange things to happen. But once they were all seated around Chuck’s parents’ kitchen table, in Chuck’s parents’ clinically-clean kitchen, sipping on iced soda from heavy glasses, it was time to face the things that they had seen. There was too much empirical information in their heads, and too much curiosity to ignore it. “What the hell,” said Tom. “It just blanked me,” said Chuck. “The last thing I remember was watching Brandon get past the boss at level 10. Then I was on the floor in the dark.” Brandon took a forced gulp and set his glass down like it was made of porcelain. Brandon’s skin was January pale, as opposed to his normal mid-July pale. “Your eyes. You were freaking out.” He didn’t look up. Dave went ahead and said it, “It’s the game. It has to be the game.” “But Brandon was playing the game, not Chuck,” said Tom. Dave said nothing. They all heard a gasp from upstairs. Chuck’s mom hurtled down the stairs and slid to a stop in the kitchen, a dirty white towel streaked with blood in her hand. Her wide eyes took in the boys, sipping on their perspiring soda glasses. She saw the bandages on Chuck’s arm. “What happened?” she asked as she jerked his arm up for inspection. “Ow! I fell at the arcade. It’s okay. Dave cleaned me up.” She glanced at Dave, her eyebrow precisely arched. “Scouts,” said Dave. Chuck knew his mom always harbored an un-earned belief in the skills of the Scouts, mainly because they met at her church and were always cleaning or improving it in some way or another. She completed her superficial examination of Dave’s handiwork and released Chuck. “Well,” she said, “you could have at least cleaned up after yourself. I thought someone had died.” She brandished the soiled towel at Chuck. “Sorry mom,” he said. The doorbell rang. She gave one last shake of the towel and turned on her heel, “Clean it up!” The boys heard the front door open, then murmurs of cordial greeting, then concerned murmurs, then surprised murmurs with an edge of determined helpfulness. Chuck’s mom returned to the kitchen, with Shannon’s mom in tow. The boys stood up as one. “Mrs. Bennett! Is everything okay? Is Shannon ok?” asked Chuck, “Is she…” Mrs. Bennett was slouched, her limbs seeming to dangle from their ligaments, unwilling to give up but also unwilling to do more than absolutely necessary. She did spare a weak smile for Chuck. “No. Nothing has changed. Thank you for sending flowers. I put them right next to her.” Brandon and Dave looked at Chuck. Chuck’s mom’s eyes widened just a little bit. Chuck examined the top of the table and mumbled something indistinct. Chuck’s mom cleared her throat, “Nicole, you mentioned you had something for Chuck.” “Yes. Chuck, this was on Shannon’s desk. It was addressed to both you and Shannon.” Mrs. Bennett held out an opened envelope. “It’s some sort of acceptance letter to go talk in Las Vegas?” Chuck paused a moment and then reached out, “Oh. All right.” “I think Shannon would like it very much for you to go give that talk for her,” Mrs. Bennett said. The boys cleaned the bathroom to their standards, which were very unlikely to meet household standards, and returned to their now watery drinks in the kitchen. Shannon’s letter was sitting in the middle of the table, open and unfolded. Brandon said, “Flowers, huh?” Chuck’s head snapped up and he looked right into Brandon’s eyes, “Yes. Flowers.” At that moment, they could hear the decrease in brownian motion as water molecules condensed on their glasses. Brandon looked at his glass and said, “That’s nice. She deserves them.” They all took a sip of soda and listened to the birds singing outside. Dave asked, “Did you know she had applied to DEF CON?” Chuck shook his head. “What is DEF CON?” asked Brandon. “It’s a hacker meetup,” said Dave. “I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never been.” Tom spun the letter around. “Well, let’s go find out.” “What?” asked Chuck. “Look this letter says Shannon’s talk was titled ‘Playing the Game You Want in the Arcade You’ve Got.’ That sounds pretty familiar to me,” Tom said. “Can you give that talk?” Chuck nodded. “So let’s go do it!” Dave took the letter. “It says she was going to give a demo.” “That might be hard,” said Chuck. “Tom fried it and my CPU is trashed too.” “You can fix them!” said Tom. “DEF CON is in two days,” said Dave. “In Vegas.” “Road trip!” said Tom. “My van is ready! Brandon?” Brandon smiled and displayed the inside of his wallet. There was a flash of plasticized gold. “Brandon Watkins, Senior, will be happy to fund this adventure.” “What about my dad’s arcade?” asked Chuck. “Pfft!” said Tom. Chuck said nothing. Dave said, “It is possible we can fix the gear in the back of Tom’s van.” “Or maybe the hackers there can help,” said Brandon. Chuck said nothing. “Come on Chuck. What would Shannon do?” Chuck’s eyes and head snapped up again. They heard a footstep and turned to see Chuck’s mom standing in the kitchen entrance, one rubber-gloved hand holding a bag full of red-tinged paper towels, the other rubber-gloved hand holding a spray bottle of bleach. She looked at Chuck and said, “She would go.” Tom’s van was a well-cared-for, vintage conversion van from the 80s. It had a solid motor, a big windshield, two front windows, and two nearly useless porthole-looking windows set high in the back corners of van. It had seating and room to spare for the denizens of the arcade. What it didn’t have was a workshop. Those portholes didn’t shed enough light to work by and there was no way to power Chuck’s Weller iron. Dave hastily conceived an experiment with chopsticks and pennies to prove that even though Denzel Washington can make a Navy technician fix a communications system in a submarine under attack, there was no way Chuck was going to fix anything in the back of Tom’s van. Instead they packed every tool and piece of gear they could conceive of needing, along with the experimental console, the hopeless console loader, and the all-but-destroyed CPU, in the back of the van. They opted to make the 1281-mile trip to Vegas in one day. This would give them a day and a half to fix everything, make sure it worked, and practice getting Chuck to talk for 45 minutes straight. It should be plenty of time, especially since they would get two whole hours back by the time they finally crossed into Pacific Time. Tom was at the wheel 18 hours after they left home when he got his first glimpse of the Luxor’s beacon across the dark desert night. He waited for nearly another hour before he reached across and smacked Brandon in the arm. Then he banged the headliner with his fist. “Hey! Wake up! We made it!” As they peeled themselves off windows, wiped up drool, stretched frozen limbs, and groaned like the summoned dead, Tom drove under a big, lit sign. “Welcome to Vegas! City-Wide Progressive Video Poker Jackpot! Be Our Next Big Winner!” Brandon directed them to the hotel, guiding them away from the crowded main strip to darker roads until they pulled into a resort. Tom parked in a lane marked, “Check In” and simply stopped moving. The others crowded up from the back of the van and stared out the windshield. Milling about in the lights at the front of the hotel was a mass of people they knew without ever having met, people they understood without talking to, people they recognized by an unstated code of clothing, hair, hygiene, grouping, posture, gesture, gear, and distracted focus on problems only they could see. It wasn’t that they all looked the same, or acted the same, or smelled the same. It was subtly encrypted in each person’s distinct combination of some, or all, or maybe even none of these aspects. It was a biological digital signature of the finest pedigree, a signature the boys in the van knew and trusted. Outside the hotel milled people they knew were not tourists; these people were denizens of the arcade, just like them. RAP. A sweating valet knocked on their window, “You guys checking in?” Tom nodded and they all piled out. The valet poked his head in the side door and saw the heaping pile of equipment at the back of the van. He shook his head and raised his hands in defeat, “No, I’m not getting stiffed again. You’re on your own. You’ve got 30 minutes.” “Do we even have a room?” asked Tom. “No,” said Brandon. The others stared at him. Chuck shrugged. Tom opened the back doors to reveal the full extent of the amount of gear they brought. They all sort of looked around aimlessly. It was much easier to load the van when it was parked two feet from the back door of the arcade than it was going to be to unload it now. Especially since there was nowhere to unload it to. “Nice van,” said a big, bearded guy in a red shirt that said “Goon”. He was nearly as tall as Tom, and a little more heavy-set. He had a slightly tattered, patch-covered backpack on. There was a radio stuck to his shoulder strap with velcro. “Whoa.. That’s a lot of gear. Where are you taking it?” Brandon scratched his head, “Our room?” The big guy shook his head, “Doubt it. No way they let you up the elevator with this stuff. What’s it for?” Chuck said, “I’m doing a demo.” “You’re a speaker? What talk?” “Playing the Game You Want in the Arcade You’ve Got.” A big smile split the guy’s face. “Aww right! Zeed’s been waiting for this talk! My name is Thug.” “Chuck” Thug shook his hand. “Nice to meet you Chuck. Give me a second.” Thug pulled the radio off his harness and stepped away, barking into the microphone. Before long a whole crew of hackers had gathered at the back of the van and began carrying the gear away. “Take it to the Haxor green room,” said Thug. “Here.” He handed 4 badges on lanyards to Chuck. Three of them were laminated pictures of a white pile of pills, with a bright red pill that said “DEF CON” on it. The fourth was blue, with a tan pill. “That blue one is yours, Chuck.” Dave followed the first group of hacker-porters through the crowd and into the hotel. As he walked across the lobby he caught odd snippets of conversation. “...did you check the pin out…” “...-ing hate the boss on level 4…” “...the Goon kept me out but I told…” “...yeah, of course I know who Dark Tan…” “...up, down down, left right…” At the van, Chuck watched the hackers carefully pulling items from the pile in the back. Thug walked back up and said, “Chuck, it looks like your gear needs some work.” Chuck nodded. Thug waited a beat. “So what do you need to fix it?” “Time, mostly.” “You look a little rough,” said Thug, looking at Chuck’s arm. “Could you use some extra hands?” Chuck shrugged. Thug waited a beat, then looked at Tom for help. “He needs a guy who can solder and a guy who can breadboard,” said Tom. “And I need someone to put my CPU back together. And a network connection,” finished Chuck. Thug laughed and split his face with his big smile, “Brother, you’ve come to the right place.” Thirty-two hours and 36 minutes later Chuck stood behind a podium in front of a couple hundred silent hackers. He reached down to the presentation table and flicked a bright metal toggle switch mounted on a plywood board that was titled towards the audience. A green light also mounted on the board started to blink. The audience let their eyes flow down from the light, across the mounted and colorfully wired load console electronics boards (version 2.0), onto a shiny ribbon cable, and into the target console, willing the electrons to avoid the demo demons and travel without fail. The target console itself was a fully functional Dig Dug machine. It had mysteriously appeared in the green room in the wee hours of the previous morning. There had been a label on the back of the machine that would identify the owners of the machine, but it had been irreparably defaced. Everyone who was helping Chuck prepare for his talk had agreed the presentation would be even more amazing if Chuck actually pulled and replaced the code from a working console, live on stage. So, before he had disappeared into the swirl of the CON at night, Tom had popped the oddly empty change box with little difficulty and Chuck had prepared it for this moment. The green light blinked a final time and held a solid green. “And now, instead of Dig Dug, I can play what I want.” Chuck flicked the switch on the side of the console and Galaga splashed to life. The hackers let out a raucous cheer, startling Chuck a little. He smiled. “I guess that’s it then. Who wants to play Galaga?” As hackers applauded and surged toward the stage Chuck gave a little nod to the smiling folks in the first two rows. They were the team of hackers who not only carried his gear and fixed it, they had improved it. He didn’t know what their parents called them, but definitely knew their real names. They nodded back, or smiled, or had already indicated their approval by simply continuing to pay attention during Chuck’s talk. At the end of the first row slumped Tom, bleary red eyes and a deflated listlessness betraying how he had spent most of his last 32 hours. Chuck wasn’t sure Tom knew where he was. Dave and Brandon sat next to him, but as far to one side of their chairs as possible. Whiskey sweat was no one’s best friend. Next to them sat a hacker Chuck had not seen before. He seemed intense and met Chuck’s gaze with a little smile on his lips. Thug showed up next to Tom, took one look, and laughed. He smacked Tom on the arm, making Tom’s head bob rhythmically for a few cycles. The unknown hacker said something and Thug waved Chuck over. When Chuck got close he could see Thug’s eyes were rather red-rimmed and glassy too, but he seemed functional. “Chuck, meet Zeed. Zeed, Chuck,” said Thug. “Zeed has something he wants to talk to you about.” Zeed stood. He was shorter than Chuck, and wiry. His arms had rows of what looked like zeros tattooed down the narrow, corded muscles of his forearms. Other than that, and the intense edge to his gaze, he just looked like a guy with a hat on. He gestured, “I want to show you something.” Chuck glanced over his shoulder at the hackers still gathered around his gear. Thug said, “Don’t worry about that stuff. We’ll put it back in the green room for you.” Then Chuck glanced down at Tom. Thug said, “Don’t worry about him either. I took care of him last night and I’ll take care of him now. This is normal for DEF CON.” Chuck nodded. Zeed said, “Okay. Let’s go.” He led them through the casino and up to a bar on a raised balcony where he took a table against the railing. He ordered four beers and waited until the waitress left. “You know, Chuck, I’ve been waiting to see your talk since it was announced this past spring. It was good.” “Thanks. But I can’t take credit for even being here. Shannon made this happen.” “I saw that name on the announcement. Where is he?” “She. She... She’s in the hospital.” “I’m sorry to hear that,” Zeed took a sip of his beer. “Is there anything I can do?” Chuck met Zeed’s eyes. There was no break in Zeed’s intensity, or his candor. It was a sincere question from a fellow denizen. Zeed was clearly well connected here at DEF CON. He seemed to command other hackers' respect. He was probably an immensely resourceful and clever person and he was honestly placing these skills, no matter what they may be, in Chuck’s hands. As Chuck realized this he felt true gratitude fill his chest and apply an uncomfortable pressure behind his eyes. For the first time, he really understood what the words “thank you” meant. Chuck also felt a subtext behind the question. Zeed was willing to do whatever Chuck needed of him if it would help Shannon. But, if Shannon’s problems were beyond Zeed’s ability to help then he would rather spend his time on another problem. Chuck understood this and was not offended. It had been rare in Chuck’s life to meet another pragmatic soul like this and he found it refreshing. He shook his head. Zeed said, “I spend my time hunting flaws in software, Chuck. Flaws that give an attacker an unfair advantage over a user. I don’t like things that aren’t fair. And I want to know if what is happening down there is fair.” Zeed nodded over the railing to the casino floor below. Directly below them were rows and rows of video poker machines. Gamblers sat with buckets of coins on one side of them and half-finished watery drinks on the other as they smacked lit buttons on the console in front of them. “Those are $5 coins they are using down there. Every time one of them smacks that big green button, the casino earns $5.” Chuck stared for a moment and watched $100 get transferred to the casino’s bottom line. He went back to his beer. “I know. I know. Of course it isn’t fair. If the house didn’t win more than the gamblers then there wouldn’t be a house,” said Zeed. “But, I would argue that the gamblers are paying for a fair risk. They know they aren’t likely to win, but they hope they have a fair chance. They are paying for the improbable, but still possible, chance that they win a life-changing payoff. “But those machines are run by hidden software written by companies that only stay in business if they keep their clients happy. What’s the problem with that?” Dave said, “The clients aren’t the gamblers.” “Yes! What if there really wasn’t a chance to win that big jackpot? What if the software actively prevents that big jackpot? What if it maliciously alters the odds? What if it knowingly breaks this risk versus reward contract the gamblers are paying for?” Zeed stopped to sip. “It wouldn’t be fair,” said Brandon. Zeed pointed at Brandon, “It wouldn’t be fair!” He leaned back in his chair, “That’s where you come in Chuck.” Dave said, “You want us to pull the code off one of those machines so you can examine it for flaws.” Zeed smiled, pointed at Dave and said, “This guy.” Chuck looked at Zeed, looked at the video poker machines, and looked back at Zeed. Zeed raised an eyebrow and tilted his head just a little to the right. Chuck nodded, “Ok.” Zeed banged the table with his beer. Brandon smirked. Dave turned to look at the machines. “We can’t just go down there and open a console,” said Dave. “No no. Of course not. Those machines are both making money and protecting money. The casino keeps a very effective circle of love around the things that do those things. If you go down there and have drunk Tom attempt to pop a console open, your time in this town will be over. We have to get it out of their circle of love.” Zeed looked at each of them pointedly. Brandon shrugged. Chuck nodded. Dave looked down at the machines again. “What?” asked Brandon. “The casino protects things that make money and protect money,” said Dave. “We just have to make a machine stop making or protecting money.” Brandon waited. “We have to break one, Brandon,” said Chuck. “Ohhh,” said Brandon. Zeed said, “The casino won’t waste precious floor space on a dead machine. It makes them look bad. Once a broken machine is found, it is excised like a tumor, emptied like a bladder, and dumped under shockingly poor security in the hot Vegas sun to be picked up by the repair contractor.” “How do we break one?” asked Brandon. Zeed picked up his beer, smiled around the mouth, and tilted his head to the floor. A stunning blonde in a short white dress was strutting up the video poker aisle, carrying a bucket which glittered with metal. She stopped, cocked her hip to one side, and put an index finger to the corner of her mouth as she seemed to consider each machine individually. Zeed suppressed a laugh with a snort. Finally she tossed her hair and perched on a stool in front of a machine, crossing one long leg over the other. The first coin went in. A cocktail waitress stopped to take her order. The denizens looked at Zeed. He merely nodded back down at the gaming floor. The cocktail waitress returned with a large glass tumbler. The woman reached for the drink at the same time the waitress tried to put it in the drink holder next to the console. The blonde smacked into the glass, hard, and it spilled over the control keys. Almost immediately the big green button went dark, followed by a couple of the other control keys. The woman sprung off the stool and shrieked, pointing at her white dress. It was now stained by the drink. The woman began gesticulating and shouting. Within a minute, a serious man in a dark suit, white shirt, red tie, and an earpiece showed up and calmed the woman down. She told her story with big, abrupt hand motions. He kept his hands clasped respectfully in front of him. Eventually he reached into his jacket, pulled an envelope out, and handed the woman a plastic card. Zeed snorted again, “Nice. She even got comped.” She took the card, grabbed her bucket of coins, and strutted back down the aisle and was soon lost in the gaming floor. Zeed’s pocket began to chirp. He pulled out a small cell phone. “It was beautiful! What did you get? 200-hundred bucks! Classic! Yeah, I’ll see you later.” He shut the phone off and said, “And now we wait for phase two.” Phase two arrived within five minutes. Two guys in work clothes and belts full of tools showed up with a heavy-duty hand truck. They made quick work of disconnecting the video poker machine and carted it away. Zeed stayed seated and ordered another round of beers. “Sit. Enjoy. We’ll pick it up later.” Dave asked, “They are just going to hand us the machine?” “No, they will only hand it over to the repair contractors,” said Zeed. “That’s why we are going to need Tom’s van.” Four hours later, as the CON swirled around the casino, the denizens were back inside of Tom’s van waiting on a side street near the hotel. They all had on plain jumpsuits. Tom was lucid, and angry. “I can’t believe you spray painted my van!” he shouted. “Oh for god’s sake, stop saying that,” said Brandon. “My VAN!” “Tom, look at your hands. You helped,” said Dave. “I didn’t know what I was doing!” he said, “I was still drunk! How the hell did Zeed talk all of us into this? I mean, c’mon, we look like we are going to pull a heist.” “It’s not a heist if we return it when we are done,” said Brandon. Tom glared at him, “I’m not sure you are a good source of moral guidance here Brandon Watkins, ‘Senior’.” Chuck spoke up, “I trust Zeed.” Tom snorted, “Well Thug introduced us to Zeed and Thug nearly killed me last night.” Dave asked, “What does that even mean? Is that supposed to be the start of some kind of syllogism?” “My VAN!” There was a sharp knock on the outside of the van. Brandon opened the door to reveal an attractive brunette woman in dark pants and crisp white shirt, wearing a strict ponytail, and carrying a clipboard and a cell phone. “Hello boys,” she said. There was a moment of silence and then Zeed popped around the edge of the door. “Gents, this is Slick. You saw her handiwork earlier. Now she’s going to help us collect.” “Wait a second,” said Brandon, “you were the blonde?” She winked, “There’s way more than one kind of hacking, boys.” “Slick this is Chuck, Brandon, Tom and Dave.” Thug stepped up and loaded a heavy-duty hand cart into the back of the van. “Good luck!” “Alright, follow Slick’s lead and let her talk. Try not to talk at all really,” said Zeed. “That means you too Chuck.” Chuck shrugged. “We’ll see you in a just a few minutes. Tom, don’t worry, we’re going to make this right,” Zeed slammed the side door and gave it two hard smacks. With Dave at the wheel, they pulled away from the curb and followed Slick’s directions through streets that immediately lost all trace of the Vegas facade to become utilitarian and industrial. The bricks and concrete looked like they had all been blasted by the sun and scoured by blowing sand for thousands of years. After just a couple of turns they ended up outside a locked chain link fence. They could see the video poker machine just sitting there on the other side of the fence. Slick got out of the van and pushed a little buzzer cable tied onto the fence post. She smoothed her hair, looked for the camera that had to be watching her, and smiled directly into it with a wave. A heavy steel door banged open and a serious man in a dark suit, white shirt, red tie, and an earpiece came to the fence and opened it. “Hi!” said Slick. “I’m from Game Management. We’re here to pick up,” she consulted her clipboard, “a video poker machine, possible water damage.” She indicated the machine sitting against the wall with her pen, then she brought the pen to her mouth and nibbled on it a little bit. “Yeah, all right.” said the guard, with barely a second’s hesitation. Slick nodded over her shoulder to Dave. By the time they were all out of the van with the hand cart, Slick had moved right next to the guard and was directing his attention to the clipboard. “Ok I just need your help to fill in some these items.” Brandon pushed the hand cart through the gate with the rest in tow. Chuck was examining the ground as he walked, which was normal for him. Dave held himself very still as he moved, which wasn’t. Tom was squinting in the sun and sweating. “I don’t feel good,” he said. “Then just supervise,” Brandon said. The job of loading the console and securing it to the dolly was actually fairly easy. It was the same basic size and shape as a video game console and they had plenty of experience moving those around. Brandon and Dave did most of the work. Chuck held on to the hand cart to make sure it wouldn’t roll away across the ice-rink-flat concrete lot. Tom stood off to the side, nodding his head and exuding sweat patches in strategic places on the jumpsuit. They carted it back out to the van. “Man, you feeling alright?” asked the guard, looking at Tom. Slick giggled and tossed her pony tail. “His first night out in Vegas last night,” she said. The guard smiled, “Hang in there man, it’ll get better. Unless it gets worse!” He looked at Slick, who duly giggled and gave the guy a playful smack on the arm. “Please sign here, and here, and here,” Slick said, directing the guard’s attention back to the clipboard. Wrestling the console into the back of the van was a bit harder and Tom had to help. “Oh god,” he said as he helped lift it up. “Oh god.” “Shut up,” hissed Brandon. Then it was done. The hand cart and console were secure in the back of the van. Tom made it to the passenger seat and slumped down. Then he immediately sat back up and rapidly rolled the window down. “Oh god. I need air.” Dave got back in the driver’s seat and smacked the door a couple of times. Slick smiled and pulled the top paper off the clipboard. “Okay, that’s your copy. And here’s my number if you have any questions.” She hand wrote her number on the sheet and gave it to the guard. He smiled. Dave watched the guard watch Slick walk away. She came around the front of the van, rolled her eyes at Tom melting in the passenger seat, got in the back and slammed the door. “Ugh, men,” she murmured. Dave pulled away. “Make a right,” Slick said. “Oh no,” groaned Tom as they turned the corner. He sat bolt upright, jammed his head out the window, and vomited. “Ugh! Men!” Slick repeated. Slick led them to even smaller and more industrial streets until they turned down a narrow back alley and parked next to a steel door set in a pale cinder block wall. “Honk,” she said. Dave honked the horn. The door opened and Zeed came out of a rectangle of darkness with a cool blast of air and a smile. Dave heard some very familiar electronic music mixed with a particular rhythm of sound effects. Slick got out to meet him. “So?” Zeed asked. “Perfect. Everything except air stream over there,” she said. Zeed peered past Dave to examine Tom, who didn’t look quite finished yet. “Will it be a problem?” he asked. Slick shook her head, “No. I gave the guard my number.” There was a warbling sound and Slick’s phone lit up. She checked the number, feigned confusion, and answered with a “Hello?” that somehow actually said, “I know exactly who you are and I’m so happy you called.” She walked off to take the call. Dave said, “She’s amazing.” “Yes. Yes she is,” said Zeed. “C’mon, let’s do this.” They hauled the video poker machine into the arcade. There was a small back office, just like Chuck’s. It was cluttered with electronics detritus, just like Chuck’s. It also had a console load board and a CPU, which actually were Chuck’s. “You’re up,” said Zeed, smacking Tom on the arm. He handed Tom a rolled set of lock picking tools. Tom still didn’t look the right color but he was delighted to see the organized, clean set of thin metal hooks and tension bars. He crouched in front of the video poker machine and set to work on the lock. In a few moments it opened. Tom rocked back and examined the magical pieces of steel. He looked up at Zeed. “Nice work. They’re yours,” Zeed said. Tom smiled. Then he swallowed and the color drained from his face. “Oh god.” He rushed out of the office and crashed out the back door. Zeed said, “Chuck, all yours. Dave, can you and Brandon fix the control buttons?” “Probably,” said Dave. “Fix it?” asked Brandon. “If we don’t want anyone to remember today, we need to return a working video poker machine,” said Zeed. Inside, the poker machine was much the same as any other video game console. The hardware, firmware, and most of the software was very similar to what Chuck knew. He applied a few of the tricks he had learned from the crew at the CON, made a few inspired on-the-fly adjustments, and pulled the byte stream off the console. By the time he finished, Dave and Brandon had cleaned and tested the control panel. Tom had also cleaned himself up and successfully tested his ability to keep food down. He was happily experimenting with his new lockpicks on the security deadbolt on the back door. “All right, I’ve got it,” Chuck told Zeed. “Let me see,” Zeed said. He took over Chuck’s CPU, opened a terminal, and unleashed a symphony, an opus, a performance of command-line mastery and text-based information absorption unlike anything Chuck had ever seen. It was nearly impossible to follow. Whenever a terminal seemed to be working on a response to Zeed’s multi-line, compound, piped, redirected, and conditional commands, Zeed would open another shell window and start a different line of query. Chuck’s focus on this spectacular--opening like a rare night flower before his very eyes--was nearly complete. Then a slight audio signal leaked past his amazement and wonder. As his brain began to interpret it, he realized he had been hearing it the whole time he had been in the arcade. Apparently his brain had finally reached a sufficient state of idle to allow the interrupt to be noticed. It was the music and effects overlay of Shannon’s game. He wandered out into the arcade proper and found the console. It was actively being played by a couple of kids. Chuck found he couldn’t look at the screen. In fact, he didn’t really want to get close to it at all. His response to the machine disturbed him. He stood back from the machine, eyes on the floor, lost in thought. “Chuck!” shouted Zeed, right next to him. Chuck looked up. “You all right?” Chuck nodded. “I’ve been talking to you for like a minute,” Zeed said with a laugh. Chuck shrugged. “Anyway, you did great. We’ve got it. It’s going to be awesome!” Chuck smiled with his mouth, but his eyes didn’t join in. Zeed turned to face him square on, “What’s up?” Chuck met his gaze, “There is something you can do to help Shannon after all. But first, I need to show you something.” Zeed nodded. Returning the video poker machine was easy. Slick called her new friend and the gate was open and waiting for them before they even got there. Tom, recovered and back at the wheel, backed the van in for a very convenient delivery right to the back door. In moments the poker machine was out of their hands and they pulled away, leaving the smitten security guard waving happily in their rearview mirror. Slick rolled her eyes. Back at the CON, Thug let them all back into the Haxor green room where the Dig Dug console was still showing the Galaga splash screen. Chuck shut it down and set to work. He quickly loaded Shannon’s game on the console with the version from their arcade and turned it on. “Zeed, do you know how to play this game?” he asked. Zeed looked, “I’ve played it.” “The version I have loaded into this machine has made three of us freak out,” Chuck said. “Dave zoned out, I had a standing blackout that only ended when Tom killed the power to the whole arcade, and Shannon… got hurt. She is still in a coma in the hospital. “Brandon has also played the game and showed no effects. I have a theory about this. I think the better a hacker you are, the more this game effects you. Shannon was… is the best among our group. She actually came up with the original methods we used to rip and load the game code. She is the one who submitted the talk to DEF CON. I’m next on the natural talent list. Dave is extremely competent, but isn’t as curious as me. And Brandon..” “Got it,” said Zeed. “To test my theory I would like you to play this game. I saw you at work in the arcade. I think you will react quickly to this game.” “I told you I’ve played this game before,” said Zeed. “The version I have loaded is verifiably different than the one you have played. I’ve played the other version too and been just fine. When I played this version, it ended with my workshop destroyed and my arm cut open by splintered plywood.” “You’re freaking me out, Chuck. If what you say is true, then this is a terrible idea.” “I need you to see this Zeed. You will think any other method I can come up with to show you is bullshit. In less than an hour you convinced us four to rob a casino, however temporary that robbery may have been, and you know people like Slick, and you got Tom to literally spray paint his own van. You will not be swayed by possible bullshit. You have to do this,” said Chuck. “Why?” Zeed asked. “Because there’s no other way you will delay your… other project.” Zeed couldn’t stop the smile sliding onto his lips. “All right. Let’s do it.” Chuck nodded, “Brandon, you stand here, hand on the power switch. You saw my eyes before. You see any sign of that in Zeed, you flip that switch. Tom, you’re by the power cord. If Brandon messes up, you yank the cord. Zeed.” Chuck motioned to the console. Zeed looked at Chuck with fists bunched and the corded muscles of his forearms standing out under a slight sheen of sweat on his skin. He stepped to the console and hit the 1-player button. Brandon took his position as sentry for Zeed’s sanity. Chuck moved to the other side and kept his gaze fixed on Zeed’s eyes. The music for the first level streamed out of the console. Zeed beat it handily. Tom crouched by the power cord, hand resting on the plug. Zeed nailed the tricky jump, sprint, jump pattern to beat the second level. His finger drummed lightly on the jump button. Dave stood behind Zeed, but just watched the back of his head, refusing to look at the screen. Zeed jiggled the joystick to get past the chompers on level 3. He jiggled the joystick. He jiggled the joystick. He jiggled the joystick. “Crap!” “Oh god!” “KILL IT!” “TOM!” Brandon yanked the switch down and broke the toggle off. Tom ripped the plug out of the wall. Dave grabbed Zeed from behind and crushed him to the ground. “WHAT THE HELL! WHAT THE HELL! WHAT THE HELL!” Zeed shrieked. He thrashed and swung and punched and kicked until he broke free from Dave. He leapt to his feet and grabbed a chair. He slammed it into the console, breaking a metal leg off. He flung the chair to the side. Tom threw himself out of the way to avoid it. Zeed grabbed the metal leg off the floor and began beating the console, growling. Spit flung from his lips as he swung at the screen. “NO!” shouted Chuck and tackled him just as the leg crashed into the glass. The CRT imploded with a deafening bang and flung glass everywhere in the green room. At that moment the next speaker was led in by a goon. He stopped and surveyed the destruction. Dave was sitting on the floor, nursing a bleeding nose. Tom was trying to extricate himself from the broken chair; he seemed to have forgotten he could let go of the power cord in his hand. Brandon was cupping one hand in the other, a trickle of blood dripping onto the carpet. At the foot of the smoking video game console, Chuck and Zeed were gingerly attempting to get out of each other’s embrace without cutting themselves on the blanket of glass shards that covered and surrounded them. “You know what,” said the goon, “let’s go wait in Uber Haxor.” He turned and led the speaker out. They heard a radio crackle, “Clean up in Haxor green.” Chuck and Zeed managed to stand up, carefully dusting the bits from their clothes and hair. “What the hell is in that code, Sphinx?” Zeed asked. Chuck shrugged. They all sat around a wedding-sized round table in a darkened room lit mainly by laptop screens and computer monitors. Other round tables mushroomed all around them, each overgrown with cable lichen, lit by blinking fairy lights, and tended by hacker fauna. Shouts of joy, or exclamations of rage, or displays of sheer bafflement rung out randomly and sporadically. Every now and then a particularly loud “YES!” would be followed by a general increase in the baseline level of activity and noise. A steady stream of hackers sprinted for the bathrooms, having waited as long as possible before giving in to their mortal shell. They ran back to their terminals just as fast. Zeed had two laptops cranking at top speed, fingers flying as he mumbled subsonically. Slick sat next to him, occasionally pointing at a screen. Chuck sat on his other side and just watched. To Brandon, Chuck’s eyes seemed to be jerking back and forth in a manner not too different from what the cursed game seemed to cause. But the intensity in those eyes did not match the haunting blankness he had seen in Zeed’s eyes as he kept jiggling, jiggling, jiggling that joystick. Zeed’s hands stopped. Chuck leaned forward. Slick looked horrified. “What?” asked Dave. Zeed shook his head and spun the laptop to show the screen. Tom glanced up from the padlock he was trying to pick and didn’t bother. Brandon leaned in and then looked at Dave. Dave pulled the laptop towards him and saw: (gdb) info functions ^decoded 0x0804676f decoded_initsync 0x08046f67 decoded_sync 0x08046c5a decoded_diverge 0x08044132 decoded_softhook 0x08046d4d decoded_hardhook 0x08043800 decoded_hammer “I assume these are routines that affect the game output in some manner?” Dave asked. “There’s hooks into graphics, sound, and game behavior” said Chuck. “Init is called at the end of level 2. ‘’Hammer’ is called right past the chompers.” “What does that mean?” asked Brandon. “It’s on purpose,” said Dave. “What?” “The effect. The seizures,” Dave said. “Shannon,” hissed Chuck. “Shannon,” said Dave. “Someone wrote this code on purpose to mess with people’s brains. Someone wrote this code on purpose and hurt Shannon.”. Tom growled, “That’s horrible. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Who?” Zeed pulled his laptop back, “I don’t know but I am going to find them and end them.” “How?” asked Brandon. “The function names didn’t read like that at first. That’s what has been taking me so long. It’s all obfuscated and packed,” said Zeed. “But that kind of work leaves hints and traces. There’s all kinds of unique code and weird data in here. It will lead to someone or something. Just need some assistance.” His fingers started flying again and he nudged Slick. She looked, nodded, and grabbed the other laptop. Chuck watched over Zeed’s shoulder. Dave watched a smile slowly spread across Chuck’s face. “Genius,” said Chuck. Zeed tapped the “return” key with a particularly dramatic flourish. A wave of frenetic energy and noise swept out into the room. Hackers clustered together and burst apart in unpredictable patterns that surely would resemble flocking behavior in hungry raptors, if raptors would only flock. Cell phones seemed to play some part in this new action; every table had at least one hacker’s face half-lit by a green glow. A phalanx of three red-shirted goons showed up and prowled the tables, looking for something. They made their way through the mushroom forest and stopped at Zeed’s table. “Oh. You?” said one. Zeed nodded. The goon shrugged, “Alright.” They left the way they had come. Slick nudged Zeed and began tapping at her laptop. Chuck leaned in and grabbed Zeed’s laptop. He started typing, stopped and looked at Zeed. Zeed gave a little shrug and leaned back. Chuck went back to work. Dave suddenly said, “Oh.” Brandon said, “Seriously? ‘Oh?’ What the hell is going on?” Dave turned in his seat and swept his hand in an arc to encompass the endless sea of hacker tables. “Zeed has hijacked the capture the flag competition. He has declared the author of the code as a high-value flag and these hunters are trying to capture it for us.” “Not trying. Done,” said Chuck. Anger seethed around Chuck’s eyes and pressed lips. Zeed stood up so fast his chair fell over, “Son of a bitch.” Slick slammed her laptop lid down and stomped off. Tom looked up, startled. “No,” said Dave. Chuck nodded. Brandon sighed. “What?” he asked. “Dr. Marcus Mathis, cognitive neuroscientist at RPI, speaker for the talk: ‘How are Hacker’s Brains Different?’ Haxor track. Tomorrow. 11 AM,” said Chuck. Tom said, “He’s a goddamned speaker?! Here!? He comes here to talk about hackers and...” “He’s experimenting on us,” finished Zeed. Zeed’s eyes faded into haunting blankness, but the eyes remained fixed in one place. Last time Brandon had seen those eyes he reacted with panic and action. This time he sought invisibility in stillness. He did not want to attract those eyes to him. Being seen by those eyes meant death. Zeed reached out with feline grace and slowly closed the lid on his laptop. He unplugged his power cord and carefully wrapped it up, securing the loops with velcro straps. He unplugged Slick’s laptop and stacked it gently on top of his. He repeated his precise preparation of her power cord. “Gentlemen,” he said, “it has been a real pleasure. But I can’t let you join me now.” He looked down at Chuck. Chuck nodded. Zeed picked up his gear and silently strode off through the tumult of the capture-the-flag floor. Just before he disappeared from view, a slim shadow with the hint of a swinging ponytail joined him. There was a click as the lock in Tom’s hands sprung open. He dropped it with a thunk. Then he hastily cleaned up his pick set and jammed it into his pocket. “I’m going to find Thug.” They watched him go. Brandon said, “Food?” “Yes,” said Dave. “Chuck?” Chuck said nothing, he just stared at the table. Dave motioned for Brandon and they stood. Before leaving the room, Brandon looked back. Chuck remained where he was. A small group of hackers had encroached on their mushroom, but Chuck did not seem to notice. At 10:45 AM the next morning, Dave and Brandon showed up in the Haxor track and went to the front of the room. It was crowded but Chuck was already waiting there. First row. First seat. Three seats open next to him. They sat. Three minutes later Tom came in from a staff entrance, led by Thug. The smell of alcohol and dry sweat was palpable. This time Tom had the same red-rimmed, but functional, eyes that Thug had. Four days without shaving had given him a little beard. Somewhere Tom had acquired a ratty backpack that was covered in a variety of stickers. Thug handshake hugged Tom. “Good luck, brother. See you next year.” Tom sat. At 10:53 AM a goon led a man in. Brandon hissed. “It’s the damn tourist,” he said. Once he said it, the others also recognized the crappy video game player they had seen in their arcade so very long ago. They watched him setting up a laptop on the podium, and connecting it to the AV system, and fiddling about with his notes, and smiling at the goon who was helping him. At 10:58 AM Dr. Marcus Mathis looked up and saw the denizens all watching him. He didn’t recognize them but he could feel their hostility pushing against his face. His throat went dry but he was an accomplished speaker. He fished a little bottle of water out of his bag and took a sip. At 11:00 AM the goon gave Dr. Mathis the go signal and he started to talk. “Wow! What a great crowd! This is the most I’ve-” “DENIZENS OF DEF CON,” boomed an electronically-scrambled voice over the AV system, “THIS MAN STANDS ACCUSED.” Since they were sitting in the front row, they could hear Dr. Mathis say, “What the hell?” His words were not repeated over the loudspeaker. Dr. Mathis looked at the AV table. They shrugged and made some tepid pokes at their gear. Dr. Mathis’s first slide disappeared and a picture of him shaking hands with an Army general dressed in a fancy uniform took its place. Dr. Mathis looked down at his laptop and began smacking at the keys. The voice continued, “Marcus Mathis, PhD, esteemed scientist, respected faculty at a school long known for producing outstanding computer science, has been working with the feds to learn about the hacker mind.” Pictures of Dr. Mathis lecturing, pictures of him at conferences, and a picture of him at a party with his arm comfortably around an embarrassed co-ed flicked across the screen. “At first this investigation was about understanding the hacker mind in order to improve it. He sought out ways to encourage and grow the kind of intellectual curiosity that is the hallmark of a hacker. We’ve always respected his work. We hoped he would help make more of us, or even help legitimize us. Today is his 3rd time here at DEF CON, and his second time speaking. We’ve always welcomed him.” A picture of a passed-out Dr. Mathis lying on a couch covered in red plastic cups flashed on the screen. “What’s up Doc?” was written on his forehead. “But Dr. Mathis has lost his way. He became less interested in understanding our minds, and more interested in affecting them.” The screen began displaying titles of papers: “Roots of Cognitive Dissonance”, “Visual Stimuli and the Optic Nerve”, “Third Order Effects of Visual Overload”, “Combinatorial Sensory Input Therapy: A Study”, “Targeted, Induced, Cognitive Dissonance” The voice continued to lay its case out against Dr. Mathis, “These studies attracted attention from another community.” A picture of Dr. Mathis in a crowd of somber, suited, white men. “A community that does not approve of un-sanctioned curiosity.” A picture of Dr. Mathis standing next to a green CIA road sign. “A community that uses all resources at its disposal to stop us.” A picture of Dr. Mathis in front of the J. Edgar Hoover building. The crowd in Haxor started to rumble. Goons appeared out of thin air all around the perimeter of Haxor. Dr. Mathis seemed frozen in front of his laptop. The screen went black. “Then, Dr. Mathis started applying his techniques. We don’t know if he was paid. We don’t know if he was pressured. We don’t know who is helping him. But we do know he did it.” A window of complicated source code opened on the screen and started to scroll. Everyone saw the highlighted comments that identified the author as “Dr. M. Mathis”. Chuck saw the names of the killer functions they had found in the game binary. The voice went on, “And we do know what happened.” A picture of Shannon in her hospital bed appeared on the screen, a simple arrangement of purple daisies visible on her bedside table. Her face was swathed in bandages. Chuck, Dave, Brandon, and Tom shot out of their seats with a chorus of shouts and growls. The crowd behind them rose in a high-velocity wave that crashed against the standing-room-only hackers in the back of the room. A screen of goons slid across the front of the stage, facing the rage of the crowd. Big goons with beards and heavy, crossed forearms. Thug stood directly in front of Chuck, stricken but resolute. “NAY!” boomed the voice over the grinding din, “Nay! We do not resort to violence. Violence will only hurt DEF CON. Our noble goons will sacrifice themselves to keep Dr. Mathis from physical harm. I would not have them waste their honor on this man. Would you?” Chuck took a step. Not towards Thug, whose eyes popped open with alarm, but towards the aisle up the middle of the seating. He turned and faced the crowd. Quiet. Still. A steady silence radiated out from him, up the aisle, across the rows, until the standing hackers in the back fell quiet. He returned to his seat and sat. Dave sat. Brandon sat. Tom sat. Slowly the audience left their feet and tempered their rage. Only the goons remained standing, faces bathed in sweat and radiating relief. The goons and Dr. Mathis, who hadn’t moved, and who stood quivering in front of his laptop. The voice continued, softly, “Marcus may have studied us, but he could not be us. He could never understand how to move his work laterally. How to make it flexible. How to bend it to accomplish tasks it was not originally designed for. That is the house of the hacker. And not an aspect of a simple asshole.” “But now he knows. Now he is feeling it. Now he, too, can taste the buzz of his neurons, and sense his thoughts fragmenting and moving too fast to be caught and considered. Now he is at your mercy. “I have shown you the evidence and stated the case. But I will not be judge too. You decide what happens.” The screen went black and the room fell silent. Dr. Mathis vibrated in front of his laptop, a little string of drool escaping his lips. From where they sat the denizens could see his eyes twitching behind his thin lenses. Brandon saw the movement and did not feel pity. Dave remembered his lost moments in the office of the arcade. Chuck squeezed his still-bandaged arm and remembered the spray of blood and glass as Shannon’s face hit the console CRT. “Burn him down,” Chuck said. “Burn him down.” Brandon, Dave and Tom repeated it. “Burn him down.” The words spread across the room as a mantra, then a chant, then a shout, then a battle cry: “BURN HIM DOWN! BURN HIM DOWN!” The presentation screen echoed the words and the rhythm of the crowd in giant, bold, white letters. “BURN. HIM. DOWN. BURN. HIM. DOWN.” Then the message changed and the crowd lost sync as they tried to read it. It said, “Spilt blood can be healed. Spilt data lasts forever.” The screen mirrored the doctor’s desktop. A file explorer window appeared and split in two. On the left side was the doctor’s folders. The right side looked as though it was connected to some random IP address. A mouse cursor dragged the first folder from the left to the right. It was a very dramatic copy operation. The program had been set up to show quick peeks into the files it was copying. This folder seemed to be mostly pictures. At first they seemed like normal photos, but then the color palette seemed to veer definitively towards “naked caucasian”. The hackers began to hoot and point. Even the goons turned around to watch. The cursor dragged the next folder over and the crowd was treated to a stream of code snippets. The next folder looked like normal documents, except every now and then a page would flash up with clear, red markings on the top and bottom. Folder after folder moved from left to right and uploaded themselves somewhere in the world. Laptop after laptop was flipped open around the room as hackers went to the IP address visible on the right and began downloading the contents. The room dissolved into audio chaos as the crowd lost cohesion and dove into the data. Only the denizens remained calmly in their seats, watching the doctor. He suddenly gasped and fell to his knees. He pulled himself back up and weakly pawed at his keyboard. “No, no, no, no, no,” he said. On the screen, a row of white zeros set on a black background started in the upper left of the desktop and grew to the right. Then another row started below the first and repeated the action, faster. The zeros flew down the screen until they reached the bottom and then whole screen went black. The doctor, and his whole line of clandestine research, had been burnt to the ground. Tom got in the driver's seat of his ridiculous white van and slammed the door. They had spent the day saying goodbye to new friends and attempting to find and pack all of their gear. They were pretty sure stuff was missing, but they considered it fair trade for the amount they had learned. “Well, I guess that’s it.” “How do we return to the arcade after all of that?” asked Brandon. Dave shook his head, “The hunt isn’t over. Mattis didn’t run this whole thing on his own. Who helped? Who funded it? Who helped write the code? We’ve got plenty of work to do. We’re not going back to an arcade. It’s our base of operations.” RAP. A valet knocked on Tom’s window. He rolled the window down, “I know, I know. We’re leaving.” The valet dropped a fat yellow envelope onto Tom’s lap. Then she winked and walked away. “What was that?” asked Brandon. “It was Slick,” said Dave. Tom dumped the envelope onto the van’s floor. Thick, banded, bundles of cash fell out and a note fluttered to the ground. Dave picked the note up and read it aloud, “Fix the van. Finish the hunt. See you next year.” It was signed with a big zero. “Holy crap, he did it” said Chuck. As they left Vegas on that Sunday afternoon, they drove under a freshly pasted billboard. It said: “Our latest Video Poker jackpot winners!” Tom and Dave stared up through the windshield at a giant Zeed and Slick, with giant smiles, dressed in fine evening wear, and holding a giant check for an absurd amount of money.