Andy- 'Birth of a hacker' Pt 2

Who: Andy, Kara
Where: Next to the hole
When: 6:30 AM
"Well...?" Kara probed impatiently. His silence seemed to drag on for
hours.
"Something went wrong... I can't quite remember. One second I was
walking the next I was on the floor and smoking. Glados was screeching
wildly while Wintermute and Leela accused each other. Even with all
this noise I couldn't hear them. I was... somewhere else."
"Andy...?"
'Hal' clutched his arms to his knees and pulled them in. The cleaner's
face was white as a sheet. "I think... I think it was hell... I was on
a space station. Only everyone was dead. They'd been murdered, all of
them. An AI did it. She'd killed them all... her face... her voice. I
could never forget what I saw... ...Shodan..."
Andy gave a loud sniff and pulled his face up, cheeks red and swollen.
"When I finally 'woke up', only Glados was with me. Wintermute was
yelling and screaming at an ICE layer that refused to be cracked. A
sudden idea sprung into my head. At the time I wasn't rational. The
vision I had before was as real to me as Glados' shocked voice."
"I shoved Wintermute aside and cracked the ICE within 10 keystrokes.
Everything suddenly made sense to me. The team could only stop and
stare as I tore apart the security like it was paper." Andy's face
didn't show a hint of pride at his actions.
"After a minute of pure silence I made my way into Tri-Optimum's
stocks. Tri-op was a budding mega-corporation. The first of it's kind.
At least it would have been if I didn't interfere. They had stocks all
over the world, controlling, moving, absorbing. 20 years of utter
domination, and 50 billion to show for it."
Andy stared numbly ahead.
"Leela began to laugh wildly and began to prattle on about how she
would spend her share. Wintermute slapped me on the shoulder and told
me that all my alcoholic beverages where on him- for life. Then Glados
hugged me from behind, and professed her eternal love for me."
"Their encouragements and praises fell on deaf ears. Although I was
awake, I was still in the space station. I had to stop Shodan. So I
threw Tri-Optimum, and all its stock options, into the sea."
"You...what?"
"...By the end of the day, everyone that had ever walked into a
Tri-Optimum building was a poorer man. It took the Hackers a full
forty seconds to realise what I did; that they would get nothing."
"As I sat numbly in the chair, like I had run a mile, I felt a pistol
barrel to my forehead." Andy pressed his index finger up to his temple.
"Glados; she'd finally dropped the façade. Her eyes were as dead as
space. Wintermute and Leela returned to flinging blame while they
slowly backed off. My 'girlfriend' told me that this had been her plan
all along, to leave me as the fall boy. I begged with her, trying to
justify my actions but she wouldn't listen. They only had 10 minutes
before police swarmed the place."
Andy became silent and stared into the floor.
Kara numbly stared at him, her mouth slightly agape. "...What happened
next?"
The Janitor jumped as Kara spoke. "Oh... yeah... she scribbled 'Hal'
into one of the monitors with an electro-tool. Then she locked me in
the control room."
Andy gave a sardonic smirk.
"For all her planning and skilfulness she always forgot the small
details. In two minutes I managed to escape through an air-duct,
laptop under my armpit. Their fall boy had escaped. But the name
remained. 'Hal' was the electronic boogie man for the next two
years... and the past fifty years if I'm told correctly. A man so
skilful, he was able to destroy one of the biggest corporations in the
time it takes you to start up a road-side car wash."
"Hold on, why didn't Glados- sarah... whoever- just tell them who ya
were?" The hologram asked.
"Are you kidding? If anyone so much as *breathed* a word of knowing
Hal they would have been sued out of oblivion then flung into space
and forced into re-entry. Besides, while they didn't get the big score
they certainly didn't get out empty handed. I've no doubt that they're
pretty rich about now... or lying dead in a gutter."
"Wait, that laptop... That was the one ya dug up, right?"
"Yeah... I had to do something with it. I sure as hell didn't want it
near me. Snapped it back into the plexi-container and buried it here.
Turned out this was a pretty popular site for dumping crap anyway.
After that... I went back to ACSII. She was the only one who could
understand what was happening to me. At least I hoped she was. From
then on I kept my head down even more. Hacking only when, well... only
when it was hack or starve..."
Yet another question caught her interest. "Wait, if they only had yore
name then how did they know it was you; y'know...without hunting ya
down or anything?"
"Heh... that would be Chapman's fault... He was just a cop on the
beat. Saw me burying the laptop. For some reason, he believed me and
what I said. It was the weirdest thing. I personally think he wanted
to see Tri-op die. He made me swear, on the spot never to hack again;
ever. I did so and we went our separate ways. Heh... I never did
anything bigger than a few hundred credits before we met up again.
Hey, don't look at me like that. Like I said, hack or starve. Only he
and I knew where the laptop was, since it was never touched before
today I'd say that he never used the crime for a promotion either."
"Whoa...that's...you actually did all that?" The hologram couldn't
help but feel humbled by the Janitor's works. Or at least she tried to.
Andy snored and looked at Kara out the corner of his eye. "No. I made
it all up. Now let's get out of here and find this 'contact' of ours."
<Tagging Emerald!- Let go find the contact... or draw more attention
to Kara!>