From: jlellis@igate.com (Joshua Lellis)
Subject: HoloDeck Staples
Date: 20 May 1994 02:22:57 GMT

Holodeck Staples
Chapter One
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
joshua.lellis@yob.com

"And leave you like they left me here, to wither in denial." -- Disarm,
Smashing Pumpkins

   Shit.
   He enjoyed it, no doubt. He had never been caught, traced, or even bugged,
But for some reason the feeling of trouble that lasted in his abdomen didn't
die down. It stood there as he turned on the IBM, looked through the
directories, and made sure, one more time, ONCE AGAIN, that if a copper fucked
around with his computer, taking photographs, files, and machinery out the door,
nothing would sink him, nothing. NOTHING.
   But why then did his stomach ache? He made up a theory as he dressed, shortlyafter he blanketed the computer files. Maybe he had been traced the night
before. Nahhhhh, he thought, not to me. Not Ace Ulderson, King of Hacking,
Phreaking, and Cheating.
   The story you're reading is true. It lives, breeds and lights up the
nightmare of every hacker.... getting caught.... So read on, and remember,
what you can't see, hurts ya the most.


   The classroom of the High School was full. The biology teacher presided
over the class in his normal pansy-assed manner. The teacher was gay, and
male (or as the joke went, gay and female). Teach' had earned the
incredibly rude nickname "Chilli Dogger", which was being used to describe
every homosexual by gangsters.
   Teach' worked his way around the class, stopping on each student,
(longer stares on each male student) and asked questions. A whisper
crossed the room between Ace and his pal Rebel. "No, does a frog
really jump with its legs, or does it bounce off its arse?" Rebel
was British, and used the normal British insults: git, bugger, etc....
   Ace chuckled at the thought. All those froggies, jumping from ass to
air. The thought had merit. Ace had never thought of Rebel as a hacker,
especially not a phreaker. But when Rebel produced from his pocket a
Box of somekind, Ace shivered. "What is it?" Ace asked.
   "Fooking bloody box." answered Rebel, holding the thing in the air
proudly. "Hand made by meself, dammit. Watch." Rebel slapped the side
of the box, and it made a slight jump before coming to life. Ace
realized the MF was using batteries. What the box did, he had not the
slightest idea. There came, apparently from the intercom, a crackle.
Then a message.
   The principal's voice bellowed: "Chili dogger, get your damn hands off
that." Teach' removed his hands from his pockets. The class suppressed
laughter. "That's the seventh time this *WEEK* I've had to tell you."
His voice changed, seducedly saying, "Come to my office. You're gonna
get a spanking." As laughter crossed the class, principal began  to go
into detail about the spanking. Teach was out the door quick.
   The class was less tense now, and people relaxed. The Wave ran through
the class. Back. Forth. Back. Forth. Ace relazed, taking his desk, and sitting
back in it, lifting the front part of the chair off the ground. "Where
the hell did you find that?"  Rebel rattled off a number, which Ace quickly
memorized. Then, bam, out to find chicks. Senior prom was coming up and
Ace had no intention of missing it. He sat down next to Allice, and started
talking. Small talk. Or maybe he should use one of his patented pick up lines.
No, small talk would work better.
   Allice was, plainly speaking, beautiful. Not a thing wrong with her, for
a seventeen year old. She did drugs, something *Ace* didn't even do. Right
now she seemed stoned, far from the realm of reality. She was mumbling to
herself, "No, Dammit, I won't and you can't make me either." She turned
to her right. "Fuck you too bitch." She slumped over, punched by one of her
friends in her head. There were eighteen stickers on her desk, all of them,
Ace thought, hinted with hallucinagin or LSD. Some kind of acid. She was
stoned beyond belief. The used stickers, approxmently five of them, were on
the floor, gathering dust. She came back to reality, lifted up her head,
took a sticker, and prepared to leave the world again. She saw him, bobbed
her head, and spoke to him, "Want one?" He took a sticker, placed it on his
forefinger, and was ready to leave reality when she told him, "Bad shit man."
She was right, the sticker had no effect. Beautiful Allice was insane. Ace
liked her even more.
   She leaned close to Ace, "Hold me Ace." Ace hugged her, and she began
to weep on his arm. God only knew why. He cuddled her warm flesh, and
comforted her, holding her tightly against his chest. She whimpered
something, and he mumbled back a reply. She dug into his back with her
nails, leaving an impression of red in his back. He put his head on her
shoulder, keeping his eyes wide open, looking down. "Don't think I don't
know why you just did that," she said, fidgeting. "and I know what you
want." She walked out of the class, he followed, followed into a restroom.
When he entered the restroom, she was lying on the ground. "Why are you
nude?" he asked.
   She grinned and winked at him. "I love the feel of urine on my back."
He peed on the floor, and she did some sort of dance there, on her back,
rubbing against the urine, like a drunk rubs his last bottle of whiskey,
and takes it down the hatch once the bottle doesn't do anything. Drunks
need an escape.



   That's why Ace took up hacking.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Chapter Two to come soon.....

Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis


Article: 2763 of alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo
From: jlellis@dmccorp.com (John Lellis)
Subject: HoloDeck Staples (chapter two)
Date: 27 May 1994 01:51:51 GMT
Organization: NeoSoft Internet Services   +1 713 684 5969
Lines: 70
Message-ID: <2s3jno$qn3@uuneo.neosoft.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: igate.dmccorp.com
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]


If you missed last chapter, here's a recap:
Ace is a hacker extradinaire. He phreaks, hacks, does the normal
stuff. We're entering his nightmare. He comes to class one day,
and learns his friend, Rebel, is a hacker too. He then asks
this girl, Allice, out on a date for the prom.  She takes
him to the bathroom and he finds out she's lost it.

HoloDeck Staples
Chapter Two
By Joshua Lellis (joshua.lellis@yob.com)
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis

The First Run


1
   Ace remembers his first run a long time ago. Seems so long ago. He
started when he was eight (like most hackers do), and he worked his
way up on the scale of hacking, phreaking, pyrotechnics, and every
hacker's favorite, spying.
   Ace can remember it all just by thinking, and he has nightmares.
The setting cannot be told from this POV, so we will enter his mind
for this one.

   I can see the street, and I can see the haze. It's all dark around
me, I can't see the sky. I can see the bar, and the place where
all the men go above it. I can see my mother serving drinks. I want
to cry. Need to cry. I see a man, but the dream twists, at first he
looks like an old Englishman, some guy in a carriage, but then...
   He approaches me with a high tech smile on his face, really wierd
looking. He looks like a molester, I try to avoid him. I turn towards
the bar, only place to go
now.
   The bar ain't there.
   Fact nothing's there, entire world's gone tipsy on me. The only
things left here is this strange man, and me.

   Ace found the man a  little later. Named him Al. Al's the guy
that watches over hackers (guardian angel, so to speak). Ace was
eight when he met Al, and has known him through high school, all
the way to this very day!
   Let me tell you about Al.

2

   Al's white. He's got a beard, some gray in it, some black left in it.
His hair's short, balding some towards the back. He's not too short,
but not tall. He's about average size. He's in his fifties or so, maybe
older. He's wise. God, is he wise. He's got more sense in him
than the nation's treasury.
   That's Al.
   That's why Ace trusts him.

3

   Ace's first run was something he found to be dangerous. Not extremely,
but dangerous just the same. The adrenaline went through his veins,
and his head got hot, feverish. He hacked a bulletin board, small time,
really. But what he found he never believed.
   George's BBS doesn't have much in the way of games or hacker
"philes". George's has something Ace never believed he'd find. Message
areas.
   Ace became a regular at George's for three years, using an
alias, a fake phone number, and a lot of good lies. He remembers
everything he's seen or heard. Ace has a photographic memory.
   George's was his favorite place, untill one day George got wise.

-----------------
end chapter two