Hacked Off
by: Prudence Walker
Sitting before his computer, the hacker stared intently at the screen and at the page title,
Crystal’s Story Site. ‘Now,’ he giggled, to the empty room, ‘this will teach you to reject my stories for being too violent!’ His fingers moved over the keyboard, but, as he launched the intended virus bomb at the site, something peculiar started to happen. Everything in the room - his room, too - started to grow very bright ...
In her new secret computer lab, Crystal saw her latest anti-hacker system’s "activate" lights flashing through their rainbow pattern. She sighed. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘not another one.’ She stood up, a sad smile on her face. ‘Better get across to the receiver port, I suppose.’
Meanwhile, the hapless would-be hacker had already been converted into a data stream, sucked down a net pipe and through a maze of Internet connections. As his essence hurtled half way around the world, he felt the mental buffeting and, although he was no longer a physical entity, he could feel the fabric of reality rending, as he went through a gender change in mid-stream. Then, with a barely audible ‘plop!’ he landed in an Inbox and everything about him became very still and quiet.
Crystal studied the screen on the receiving terminal, her finger poised over the Delete key as she studied the contents of the file. At last, with another, longer sigh, she decided to be merciful, selected Save, typed "Diane Carruthers" and clicked on "Accept". Reality readjusted as the would-be hacker’s attitudes changed and some more suitable memories were added to help her cope with her new form. More lights flashed and there was a frantic clickety-clicking as multi-gigabytes of hard drive spun into action.
Swiveling her seat, Crystal rose, smiled again and walked over to open the door of the receiving chamber and welcome the newest addition to Womanhood.
© 2000
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