Devil's Playground

Christmas Eve, 23:59, somewhere on Earth.

All was quiet in the Johnson household. The imitation hearth crackled a tiny simulated spark from the cooling embers of holographic logs. The crumbs of a mince pie and glass of milk left out for Santa and subsequently eaten by little Quentin Johnson's father lay peacefully on the mock china plate. The bowl of hose water and ground leftover vegetables left out for Rudolph had been neatly scraped into the next door neighbour's bin, lest young Quentin decide to become investigative. And yet this serenity would not last, as the parents of Young Quentin were soon to find out. At exactly 00:00 (beryllium atomic clock time) on the electron orbit of midnight, Young Quentin's clock radio erupted into the chorus of "Crime Machine" by "Jezza Tool and the Rock Bastards". Quentin's father sat up and stared at the red LED characters of his own clock. "Not again," his weary voicebox trembled.

"Yay!! It's Christmaaaaaas!" Quentin's voice dopplered its way past their bedroom door on its route to the living room.

Quentin's mother rolled over angrily, "I swear the second they legalise cannibalism that boy is going in the roasting dish."

"Cannabis, dear, not cannibalism."

She sat up. "Well, I'll roll the bleeder up and smoke him then!"

Quentin arrived with a smile in the living room, ready to observe all his presents, each wrapped in a nicely co-ordinated colour - as he requested. Santa was always so happy to please.

"I'm telling you, the more presents we buy him, the greater the chance that in a few years they'll find one of them to have been dangerously carcinogenic."

Quentin's mother lit a cigarette, "Yeah, right. Everyone knows cancer was just a 20th century myth."

Quentin ripped the paper from the largest gift - which was invariably the best every year. Last year he'd had so much fun playing with his bike he never even unwrapped his puppy, which unfortunately had suffocated by Boxing Day.

Still in bed, Quentin's parents heard the 'oh WOW!' from downstairs.

"I still think you're making a big mistake, Charles."

Quentin's father turned to face his wife, "Trust me. I saw a programme about this. When kids get these new computer games they lock themselves in their rooms for days, they don't talk to anyone. It'll be blissfully peaceful. He'll just plug that thing into his head and be comatose to the world."

"I can think of cheaper ways to put him in a coma."

"This one, however, is legal. I always said that giving him a hardwire at birth would prove useful"

Quentin's mother blew a smoke ring. "But you said it would be useful for his schooling."

"Think of this as... giving him a playground where WE control the bullies."

Christmas Day, 00:02, secret lunar Headquarters of SToRMiX_BitWARz - Bob's garage

The door creaked open as Eric swaggered in shouting at the top of his voice "Merry Christmas one and all! Feeling festive, Robert?"

Bob looked up from the green screen of his computer at his mildly inebriated friend. "Would you please not use my real name like that?"

"Why not, FBI tapped your line?" Eric laughed and pulled a chair up beside Bob. "Seriously though, merry Christmas. I made you a little something." He placed a small neatly wrapped cube on the table.

Bob let his attention slip towards it momentarily, then looked back to the screen. "But it's not Christmas. The sun hasn't even set yet."

"Earth time bozo, it's three minutes past midnight, Christmas day. Open your present."

Bob sighed and opened the parcel, revealing something that looked like a cross between a ceiling bracket and a tiny windscreen wiper, with two screws in the bottom of the box. Blankly he said, "I'm deeply touched. What the hell is it?"

Eric grinned, "I'm glad you asked. I'll install it, shall I?" He pulled his chair across the room to the spot below the light bulb and climbed onto it. With a quick snip the room went into total blackness. Moments later it was re-lit with the device attached to the ceiling at where the wire of the light bulb hung. Eric let go of the bulb and the device slowly began to swing it.

Eric hopped down from the chair, "Quite a smart idea I had, if I do say so myself. Basically it runs off the bulb's power. When the light is switched on the swinger swings it. I figured if you were so set on giving yourself a headache by using a computer in a dangerously low lit room with a single swinging light bulb, you needn't endanger your best hacking hand at the same time. How is your hand?"

Bob kept his eyes angrily focused on the screen. "Bandages came off yesterday."

"Well, now you can type again, try not to accidentally hack into any government mainframes. I hear they get quite angry about that these days."

"Okay, that's it. Do you know where you currently are?"

Eric laughed. "On the moon, but in your presence I don't feel much superior to the people on Earth."

"Nice try. You're in my garage and you're pissing me off."

Eric tilted his head to the side mockingly, "Really? Because I could have sworn this was your father's garage."

Bob picked the chair up, "You like this chair, do you?"

Eric looked at his chair momentarily, "Well... it could do with being a little comfier."

"But you must like it. After all, you come all the way over here every other day to sit on it!"

"Well I-"

"Tell you what, if you like it so much, here! Have it! Merry Fucking Christmas!" Bob forced the Chair into Eric's hands, pushing him towards the door. "You like this chair so much why don't you take it to your own poxy little house and sit on it there!"

Bob slammed the garage door behind Eric and sat back down at the terminal. He typed in another random IP address.

Nothing.

With a sigh he looked upwards for divine inspiration. The swinging light bulb was beginning to give him a headache. It was the first time it had ever annoyed him and yet the first time he didn't have a clue of how to stop it.

Closing his eyes. he tried to focus his mind, then opening them, he tried to focus on the screen. He was having difficulty doing both at the same time. He really needed a drink.

Leaving forwards once more he tried another address.

201 WELCOME USER
202 PLEASE ENTER USERNAME AND PASSWORD

He was in.

Well, not IN, but further in than he had been for the month.

In many ways, hacking was like being a Jehovah's Witness. First you had to get the right address. Then you needed the right port to knock on. He'd found the door now and someone was approaching it. All he needed to do was say the right words and maybe they wouldn't slam it in his face.

With anticipation he leaned in to the keyboard.

>USER root
204 USERNAME ACCEPTED PLEASE ENTER PASSWORD FOR root
>PASS god
207 PASSWORD INVALID
>USER root
204 USERNAME ACCEPTED PLEASE ENTER PASSWORD FOR root
>PASS sex
207 PASSWORD INVALID
>USER root
204 USERNAME ACCEPTED PLEASE ENTER PASSWORD FOR root
>PASS love
207 PASSWORD ACCEPTED FOR root

Bob nearly fell off his chair. He was in, really in. Past the door and everything. It was scary on the inside. Now he just had to start handing out leaflets.

Actually, Bob reflected, hacking was nothing like being a door-to-door religion. Now was the time to steal the silverware!

He stared at the screen again when something occurred to him. He didn't know where he was. He didn't know what they had, what they were running or what he could do. With a shrug he typed:

>pl
ACTIVE PROCESSES
ID     NAME                PROCESS TIME
403    ViruSweep           2%
404    BSh                 1%
405    TtServ              1%
407    Devil's Playground  94%
425    pl                  2%

Bob stared blankly at the screen as he muttered to himself, "What on the Moon is Devil's Playground?"

Quickly he brought up a browser window and switched the monitor off its now unfeasibly annoying green screen mode, searching for this mystery piece of software. Upon realising what it was he had only one thing to type.

>CICI 407

And then the plug was in.

Christmas Day, 00:14, The Devil's Playground

SToRMiX_BitWARz looked over the surroundings. It looked, oddly enough, like a playground. So much for groundbreaking realistic graphics. Where were all the alien marauders, the intergalactic spacecraft, the strange green-skinned temptresses. Where were any of the things he had come to expect from the newest sensies.

Actually the review hadn't really mentioned any of those things. It just said it was very realistic. Well, it sure looked real. Just then it started to rain. Admittedly the rain was a nice touch of realism but, more annoyingly, it was also cold and wet. SToRMiX wondered if wearing a coat back in reality would have helped here.

He didn't think about it for long, however, as it was around that point he heard the explosion. Running around what appeared to be an abandoned schoolhouse he saw it, the smears of gore, the chunks of bone, the single grisly lying by his foot.

It looked like whoever these random parts belonged to had just exploded.

On the ground beside the eye was a severed, scorched hand with a gun in it. SToRMiX thought, despite the ickyness of having to force the hand open, that gun would probably prove very useful.

The rain was getting heavier and, back where he had come from, two more explosions resounded.

Holding the gun tight, SToRMiX grit his teeth and walked back around the corner. The scene was the same as before, with the slight modification that the climbing frame was now a mangled mass of hot twisted metal, and there were more dead people parts round the swings and roundabout.

The swings had a pair of lacerated hands which ended at the wrists gripping onto the chains, held on by nothing more than the burnt flesh. It didn't hit him at first but then he realised what was really wrong with the picture. The hand he'd stolen the gun from was a man's, but the dead parts here were all childen's.

SToRMiX watched the rain wash blood towards the gutter "What kid of sick mother fu-"

His profanity was cut short by more explosions. Quick as a flash he ran towards the source and saw a nine year old boy with a complicated metal gun slung over his shoulder, its sights trained on a smoking splatter against the wall. In a flurry of thought, SToRMiX raised his gun and emptied the remaining three bullets into the child.

The youngster lurched and turned to face SToRMiX, grinning evilly. "Who are you to mess with Quentin the destroyer??"

SToRMiX's mouth opened in shock as he observed the three mere scorch marks on the child's arm. The little bugger was cheating.

Quentin trained his gun on SToRMiX and laughed, "No one breaks into my game." And on that the infant launched a stream of hot plasma towards SToRMiX. SToRMiX closed his eyes.

Christmas Day, 00:29, The Moon

Eric knocked on the side door of Bob's garage. Upon hearing no shouts of "Go away!" or "Keep out of my secret headquarters", he slowly opened the door. "Hey Bob, no hard feelings, eh. I brought a few tins for us to share. After all, it is Chrismas..." Eric's voice trailed off when he saw Bob, lying on the ground twitching spasmodically with a thin trail of white foam oozing from his mouth. It was only upon spying the cable running from his head to the computer that he dropped the six pack of beer onto the floor, one of the cans exploding upon impact. Eric's eyes followed the cable to the machine and read the output on the screen.

407 SToRMiX_BitWARz eats hot plasma
407 Frag limit reached
407 Quentin The Destroyer: "Game over shitface!"
200 Disconnected.

Pete Smith, 14/12/01

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