Hacked (2 page)

‘Can you put some credit on Mia’s phone?’ she said, between mouthfuls of popcorn. I was studying the ad for a nice-looking convertible that was either speeding down the wiggly mountain road on rails or entirely Photoshopped. It was our second cinema visit and, like last time, I was hoping not to see too much of the film.

‘No.’

‘What do you mean “no”?’

Arguing with Soraya was like arguing with Dad. No logic. No reasoning. No gradual raising of voices. Nought to sixty via nowhere.

‘Soraya, it’s illegal. I magicked fifty quid onto your phone. I don’t want everyone knowing that.’

‘It’s not like you took five tenners out of someone’s pocket.’

‘It’s
exactly
like that.’

‘No it’s not. It’s like they dropped the money on the floor and you picked it up. You’re just being mean, Dan. How am I going to tell her that you can’t be bothered to shove in the code or whatever it is?’

Great! Throw it back in my face.

‘Who else have you told?’

‘Only Jasmine.’

Note the ‘only’.

Soraya did the whole sob story thing – Mia had a decrepit wind-up phone, an evil mum and no hair straighteners. Whatever! I gave in, not because I’m soft, but because I didn’t want a row. I wanted to put my arm round her and taste the popcorn she’d just eaten.

I got what I wanted, and so did Mia. But I made it clear it was a one-off. She was over-the-top grateful.

One-off. Ha!

Girls like to talk. Girls change their BFF every week. Girls are constantly taking selfies and posting them. Girls chew through data. A phone to a girl is not for talking or even texting, it’s a body part. When word got round Soraya’s millions of friends that I could get free credit, Old Dan – nice eyelashes (long, dark), good at maths, witty (just telling it how it is), not bothered about almost everything – morphed into New Dan – exactly the same. Except everyone wanted to know New Dan, invite him to the party, ‘hang out’ with him.

This is tricky to explain. I know right from wrong, but I seem to have my own definition of ‘wrong’. Kicking someone’s head in is wrong. Fleecing a few hundred quid off a mobile phone operator – not so bad. Fleecing a few hundred quid, or in fact much more, and not making any money yourself – stupid. So I introduced a fee. Twenty per cent – strictly cash.
An entirely random figure based on not wanting to think of myself as greedy. Translated for customers that found percentages a challenge, that meant I’d obtain ten pounds of credit on any phone number I was given for the paltry payment of two quid. Everybody wins. The King of Pay As You Go was born.

Even though I was careful about where I hacked from – spoofing IP addresses – it was no surprise (and a bit of a relief) when the top-up site identified the loophole and closed it down after seven weeks. It would make me sound good if I said the guilt was getting to me but it was more that it took up too much time, and I didn’t like being hassled to get credit for people’s Twitter followers, cats, dead aunts and daemons. You meet crazies, you really do.

So, all in all, the upside was that I made enough money to buy an Alienware laptop. The downside was that there were lots of downsides.

One, Soraya got bored with me always being on my phone or laptop and replaced me with a different model – boy-band haircut, nice teeth, alcohol problem, judging by his photos. I hacked his email, cancelled his memberships of everything from Netflix to the Monterey Aquarium and popped my favourite pics of his (the most embarrassing) up on Facebook. Quite satisfying.

Two, Ty disapproved big time. He stopped waiting for me after school – said he didn’t want to be friends with the ‘criminal underclass’. It didn’t matter to start with, because I had Soraya and all the groupies who
wanted favours, and I thought he’d cave, but when it was all over I had to crawl my way back into his good books. (Joe, on the other hand, was a good customer but told me not to tell Ty.)

Three, the world – or at least the bit of it that lived in Bristol and was between twelve and
twenty-something
– got to know me, and knew I was a law-breaker. That’s not great – people still cross the road to avoid me.

Four, the virtual world got to know me too, although not as Dan. The odd comment and, I may as well admit it, the occasional late-night boast, caught the attention of a few other like-minded individuals with strange user names – DarkStar, Immortal Jackal, Expendable, Angel, Viper, Anaconda, Hackingturtle, Plumber, Stoker, Joker, Airdreamer. I was King Penguin, thanks to El. But I quickly shortened it to KP – like the peanuts. It was good to swap a few new exploits, some lines of code, ridicule other people’s security and spot the script kiddies trying, but failing, to keep up. There was a community feel to it all, like being in a football team but without the football. One weirdo, too young to be mixing with the likes of us, even tried to preorder from me!

for my birthday which is in May please can I have some birthday credit I will be 11 I like your name

Technically I’d done the equivalent of robbing a bank, but there are black hats out there doing much worse –
destroying stuff for the hell of it. I wasn’t worried. But I should have been. Because the one called Angel liked the look of me. If I could time travel, I’d nip back and warn myself –
stay away from Angel
.

Before I go any further, I should explain that I’m not a scary kid with a dysfunctional family living in a squat, everyone on benefits and crack. I’ve got a mum and dad that I got all my genes from (or so they say), and a sister, one car and a house with three bedrooms. No police records, alcoholics, gambling problems between us. There was nothing that the press could find, when it got to that point, to explain away what I did. Because there was no ‘reason’. It was like a row of dominoes, all standing in line until one was pushed over by the wind, and that made the rest tumble. Like that, except slower.

The next domino to fall was Ty.

I found out about the accident through a retweeted tweet and then via every other sort of social media. According to his brothers, Ty was cycling home, stopped at a red light and the bloke behind (need I add, in a white van) jumped the lights, knocking him off and not even stopping to see if he was alive. Unreal. He was in hospital with ‘head injuries’ – how severe depended on who, of the ten million people from school that texted,
messaged and tweeted, you believed. I was furious, actually wanted to punch something, which is not like me. I left my bedroom and searched out a parent, that’s how mad I was.

Dad was eating a packet of Bourbons, watching a box set of some crime drama. We could torrent it for free but he’s old-fashioned like that. It was Wednesday so Mum had gone to choir.

‘Hi.’

‘Dan, nice to see you out of your den. What’s wrong? Internet down?’

What is it about parents? They say teenagers can’t communicate but when you try, they wind you up.

‘I do leave my room, Dad. But there’s this thing called homework.’ I used a sarcastic tone, always goes down well.

‘Stea-dy.’

I hate it when he says that, like he’s a horse whisperer and I’m about to bolt.

‘Can’t I have a joke?’ he said, eating another biscuit to maintain his XL waist measurement.

‘A joke would be fine, Dad. But by definition they have to be funny.’

I changed my mind about telling him and went into the kitchen instead, where El was playing Club Penguin on Mum’s computer.

‘Can you buy me a new igloo with a pink bed?’ she said.

‘Depends.’

‘On what?’ she said.

‘On whether you want to make
me
a hot chocolate?’

‘Deal,’ she said. I went back to my room and topped up her Icelandic bank account.

But she didn’t honour her side, because Dad did.

‘Ty’s dad just rang,’ he said, putting down the mug. ‘He’s been in an accident.’

I didn’t say anything, suddenly afraid that he might be dead and I might blub. Not something I’d done since Grandad died.

The last time I saw Grandad he told Gran he wanted ‘An oak coffin with brass handles’. And when she went to get a cup of tea he said, ‘Pop my tobacco in, Dan, just in case I fancy a smoke.’ I laughed, which was what he wanted me to do. And when they buried him I made sure there was some Old Holborn in his jacket pocket.

Dad pushed aside some dirty clothes, loads of chocolate wrappers and a magazine, so he could sit down on the edge of my bed, feet between a pile of plates covered with toast crumbs and a Star Wars poster that fell down when I was about ten. Credit where it’s due, he managed not to rant about the mess.

‘Ty hasn’t come round yet,’ he said. ‘But that’s common, they say. Your brain shuts down to get on with mending itself.’

In biology, Mrs Dean said the brain is like soft tofu. To get that image out of my head, I decided to risk speaking.

‘I can’t believe it. He was on his way home from
helping at Scouts, you know … it’s part of his Duke of Edinburgh.’

‘They should put cameras in their vans,’ said Dad, ‘to record the bloody awful driving. That would sort them out.’

We carried on talking about how unfair it was, until the million-dollar question found its way out of my mouth.

‘Do you think he’s going to be all right?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Dad.

I’d have been better asking El – she’s the one who watches
Casualty
and checks everyone’s symptoms in the
Family Medical Encyclopedia.

‘I’ll call round theirs tomorrow, after work,’ he said, ruffling my hair, which is about as affectionate as it gets. ‘Positive thinking, eh?’

I nodded. Dad disappeared, fatherly duty done.

It’s clear to me what goes on in his head, even though he has no clue what goes on in my mine. He feels guilty because he lets me spend so much time in my ‘den’ but he can’t be bothered to do anything about it. He
thinks
we should be up on the Downs kicking a ball, or watching classic films from the 80s or fishing on a river bank like Mole and Ratty, but we’d both rather be on our own than together. Every so often he has a go about me lazing about in the pit that’s my room, as well as my general lack of application. I look as though I’m listening, and we carry on like nothing’s been said. Works for us.

I went online, keen to think about anything but Ty. And there was Angel, somewhere in the cloud.

We were already friends by then. It’s strange the way you can work out who you get on with without eye contact, body language, piercings or a voice to help. It’s better in a way – no prejudice about being fat, old, ugly, Vietnamese, blue-tinged, speaking like Sean Connery or Stephen Hawking, or mute. I had no idea whether Angel was fifty, or sixteen like me, whether he had a faith, or if he played polo for England, but I liked him. He was smart, cocky, and the only person, apart from Soraya and Mia, that I didn’t charge for credit when I was running the phone scam. It wasn’t generosity – I didn’t want a money trail over the internet. And I suppose I was showing off. He was stoked:

sweet – good job KP

I actually sent him the lines of code for him to help himself. Kind of me, and it made a sort of bond. After all, I was on the wrong side of the law, and I trusted him not to tell.

Angel was gutted when I told him about Ty’s accident:

bad job

I told him I was already dreading going to school and hearing all the girls going over the top, weeping and wailing –  
omg! omg!

dont go
   – he said.

I got dressed in uniform and went downstairs at the normal time, Mum took El to breakfast club on her way to work, Dad took himself, and I went back to my room. Peasy.

I met Angel online and we spent ages baiting other ships in
EVE
with small cruisers, hacked so they could deal out insane damage – it was hilarious. We moved onto
Starcraft ll
, and with a little mod of the code to give us unlimited resources, built hundreds of siege tanks and annihilated everyone. That was a good day. In between we chatted about random stuff … and less random:

hack the council security cameras – get the reg of the van

You’d have thought I could have come up with that idea myself.

might just do that
   – I typed.

Knowing I could have a crack at finding the idiot who hit and ran made me feel entirely different. Who doesn’t like the idea of revenge?

I went out well before the time El comes back from school, and got back home as usual, about four o’clock.

‘How was your day, Dan?’ asked Mum. She smiled. As mums go, she’s up there – cooks nice food, sorts out my clothes and leaves them in a pile outside my room, leaves the inside of my room well alone, leaves me alone.

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘I made banana muffins at school,’ said El, pointing at the plate.

‘They look great.’ I took one and made this-
is-delicious
noises to please her.

‘I’m working tonight,’ said Mum. ‘So are you all right to take El in the morning?’

She’s ten, but hasn’t worked out roads
at all
.

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘Thanks, Dan.’ Mum put her hand on my shoulder. ‘Have you heard anything more about Ty?’

I shook my head. No point sharing the crap everyone was posting.

‘Dad’s going to pop round there later.’

I nodded, drank a glass of blackcurrant and went up to my room.

I prepared for the task by tidying a rectangle of my desk, loading a random episode of
QI
on my fixed computer, and positioning the laptop bang in the middle. Good to go!

I wasn’t expecting the local council’s traffic department to be much of an obstacle. And I was right. Two episodes, one loo stop and a Diet Coke later, I’d got inside the system,
and
found the right camera – by
the traffic lights on Westbury Road. But there was a problem I hadn’t predicted. I could see the live feed, but not the history. For a while I watched the traffic – it’s more interesting than you’d imagine. Drivers on the phone, swerving, arguing, last-minute braking, eating – if what I saw was typical, there should be more accidents.

A bad mood was descending. I don’t like not being able to figure things out. And this was important. There was a man sitting at home somewhere enjoying a can of beer, while Ty was in a hospital bed attached to pipes and tubes. The CCTV had to be archived somewhere … I trawled through, getting nowhere, confounded by two common problems – people aren’t logical, and systems get added to. (Ironically the same problems that baffle you, sometimes let you in.)

Here’s an example of source code:

They’re a set of orders, like a flow chart, that you can
manipulate, or add your own commands to. It’s like telling a story … no, more like telling lots of stories at once. I showed Joe back in the Club Penguin days but he couldn’t grasp what I was on about. It’s funny because he’s clever enough, but there are different types of clever. There’s the man in the veg shop who can add the prices of the carrots and sweet potatoes Mum buys in his head, and there’s Derren Brown who totally gets how people think, and Joe who can scale a wall like a gecko, and then there’s geeks like me – code just makes sense.

Except the archive of the council CCTV didn’t make sense. I got the feeling no one ever needed access to footage from the past and it was dumped somewhere offline, never to be seen again. Maybe they erased it …

Dad came home at about seven-thirty and called me down. El came too, presumably for medical research purposes. Dad had chatted to Ty’s mum and then stayed to look after Ty’s twin brothers while his mum and dad swapped roles. They were taking it in turns to keep a bedside vigil because Ty hadn’t woken up. He was conscious immediately after the collision but then his brain had shut down because of a bleed.

‘Haematoma,’ said El.

‘It’s a matter of time,’ said Dad.

Not what I wanted to hear.

‘How long?’

‘Piece of string, I’m afraid,’ said Dad.

‘Better shut down than dead,’ said El, cheerily. Please
let her not qualify as a doctor.

‘I said you’d visit,’ said Dad.

Instant panic. I wanted him to get better
obviously
, but the idea of talking to an unconscious Ty freaked me out. You must have seen it on telly – playing their favourite songs, holding hands, chatting as though there was someone listening. No way could I do that.

‘OK,’ I heard myself say.

‘Tomorrow all right with you … after tea?’

I nodded, hoping I’d get a contagious disease overnight …

Back in my room, I decided to check through the council’s system once more and, like in all good stories, just when I was about to give up and make some toast, I stumbled upon the right server and found the video records. All I had to do was specify the exact co-ordinates, date and time of the accident. Piece of cake. I braced myself, knowing I was about to watch my friend be flattened by a lunatic driver … but the camera was pointing the wrong way. I could see Westbury Road, the lights and the bus stop, but all the action was past the place where Ty was knocked off.

Total waste of time. The adrenalin that had built up – seeing myself presenting the identity of the criminal to the police and being thanked by Ty’s family (ignoring the illegality of hacking for now) – disappeared, and left me feeling pretty flat. To forget about it all I went in search of my elite friends in the virtual playground and
offloaded. It was great being able to admit to hacking something without anyone judging:

got the camera but not the crash

was it a long job?
   – Angel asked.

took 2 episodes
QI
   – Pretty cool response, though I say so myself.

maybe try the spy satellite network

I thought Angel was joking. Reconnaissance satellites are controlled by governments. We’re talking the Pentagon!

Funny how an idea takes hold …