Hacker Horror 2:

"Its the end of the world as we know it."

The two guys were giddy about today, they had just recieved word that thier new T1 had been installed in the fone room in their company. They were thrilled! Bob had a T1 before at his school, and rememberd with fondness how fast things would fly to his terminal, how when he would telnet, the chars would pop up as soon as he typed them, instead of waiting for a little while to show up. George on the other hand had never seen a T1 before in his life, but he knew that 1.544 megabits per second would be somethign to see. When they finally hooked it up, they couldn't wait to get out on the internet. Both of them rushed downtairs to their computers in the basement and fired up good ole lynx.

Of course nothing happened at first, when Bob and George first got their systems they were the only ones in the entire building running Linux, so they had assigned themselves some IPs from the reserved IP space. No big deal, just change a few numbers and restart. But change the numbers from what? No one had told them what thier assigned IP addreses were supposed to be, but they knew that admin had gone ahead and registered a class C block of addresses. They called around to higher ups in the computer services chain and found out the first 24 bits of the IP, but they didn't know the last 8 bits.

Pinging around on thier local network however revealed a server, a server up on 542.613.531.1 (NOTE: The author of this story realizes that IP space is only 0-255. The reason he is using numbers > 255 is because this is fiction. Get over it). They were completely blown away. They had no idea that someone had a server up and running. They supposed though that this would be thier gateway. They already had a DNS in mind, so they just put themselves on 10 and 11, and fired everything up!

"We're IN!" They yelled in unison. "This is so cool!" Bob went to sunsite.unc.edu and downloaded the sources for kernel 2.0.20 in 3 minutes flat. He still had version 2.0.0, and wanted to try this latest kernel. He was fumbling around on sunsite when all of the sudden he came across the sources for ircii. "Whoa... that looks neat. Let's see what it does."

Bob downloaded, compiled and installed ircii in no time flat. Even though he hadn't had a direct connection to the internet for years, he still knew how to read documents, a lost art in todays world. Bob sat there wondering where he could go with this irc client. George, being not nearly as cool as Bob, had instantly loaded up lynx on his system, and was searching yahoo for "naked girls". "Cut that out George!" yelled Bob, "Search for IRC on there will you?" Somehow, George came up with the name of a Dalnet server.

Bob typed in the command slowly, as he was still remembering the documentation. He had read somewhere about the IRC, and knew enough about it to know he needed a nickname to use. He couldn't think of anything. So he put in "BOB". He typed: irc bob irc.dal.net

And waited. And waited some more. Finally he got tired of waiting, but just before he hit Control-Z the server came back and said "Nickname in use, choose another" Drat, Bob thought. Okay, I'll choose Bob1. "Nickname in use, choose another" Okay, Bob2. "Nickname in use, choose another". How many Bobs could there be?? After several attempts, he finally got to "Welcome to the Dalnet Network, Bob52!"

Whoa!!! Cool. Now he was reading through the dalnet help files... he thought, okay, I'll type /list. **disconnected from server, attempting to reconnect.

Hmm.... perhaps there was some trick to it... aha! He found the command for limiting the number of people per channel. George glanced at his screen as bob tried to /list -min 3. George's eyes grew wide as he saw all the sex channels. "Hey bob! Can I use the IRC too??" .

"Sure, just telnet to my machine and use it." Bob was unaware of George's raging hormones. Bob saw a nifty channel go by, #hacker@ ... cool, he thought, other hackers. That might be fun.

/join #hacker@

***Bob52 joins #hacker@
<Makaveli> So how do I hack?
***Makaveli was kicked by Silver_Wolf (Go read a book you moron)
<dalek> hehe... I hate when that happens.
<Bob52> hello, I am a hacker. Worship the ground I walk on, I have a T1, if you try anything I will destroy you! HAHAH!
<InfoLock> So, I have a T3.
<Bob52> So that's only 3 times faster.
<Silver_Wolf> Try about 30 times faster.
<dalek> Yeah.. T1 = 1.544 megabits per second, T3 = 45 megabits per second. So neah!!!

Whoa, Bob thought, these guys really know what they are talking about.

<Bob52> Haha, I was only joking.
*** quits: Bob52 (excess flood)

What the heck happened there?? "George, are you still connected to the Dalnet?"

"Yeah... hehe".

***studlyguy joins #sex
<studlyguy> Hi, I'm 21m!

"What are you doing George??"

"Oh nothing... "

***Bob52 joins #hacker@
<dalek> Back for more?
<Bob52> Did you guys do that?
* dalek didn't do a thing.
<InfoLock> don't look at me.
<PhEOniX> hehe
<Bob52> What did you do?
<PhEOniX> Absolutely nothing
* PhOEniX had clones do it for him...
<Bob52> What? How did you do that with the thing..
<Silver_Wolf> Do what with what thing?
<Bob52> that *PhEOniX had clones do it for him...
* dalek doesn't know how he did that either.
<Bob52> what?
* Silver_Wolf tells Bob52 to try the /describe command, and to stop being a lamer

Now they're bringing in some big terminology. What do I have to fear from them, I'm on a T1. They probably have crappy modem lines! I could ping flood them easily!

<Bob52> describe #hacker@ figured it out.
<dalek> you might try a / before it.
<Bob52> describe /#hacker@ figured it out.
<dalek> never mind.

Ooh That idiot dalek guy! He tricked me. Now I'm going to kill him.

<Bob52> hey dalek, what is your IP.
<dalek> guess.
<Silver_Wolf> try a /whois bob.
<dalek> Shut UP silver!
<dalek> hehe

Aha! /whois dalek gave me his IP. Now to ping flood him... hehe.

<Bob52> I'm not doing anything!!
<dalek> Not doing anything what?
<Bob52> why are you still here
<Silver_Wolf> Why is who still here?
<Bob52> dalek, I cranked my Ping Flood up on him!!! I'm on a T1.
<dalek> Oh that. I have pings disabled. You lamer.
<Bob52> you can't disable pings!
<dalek> I can and did. Its not hard.
<Bob52> alright, you are all dead now!
*** quits: dalek (voyager.ca.us.dal.net skypoint.mn.us.dal.net)
*** quits: Silver_Wolf (voyager.ca.us.dal.net skypoint.mn.us.dal.net)
*** quits: InfoLock (voyager.ca.us.dal.net skypoint.mn.us.dal.net)
*** quits: delphian (voyager.ca.us.dal.net skypoint.mn.us.dal.net)
*** quits: Fedallah (voyager.ca.us.dal.net skypoint.mn.us.dal.net)
<Bob52> Hello?
<Bob52> Is anyone there?

Haha! I killed them all! HHAHAHA!! I don't know what I did but it worked!

"Hey Bob? Everyone just quit the irc.. what happened?" George asked.

"I uhh.... killed them."

"You what??"

Yeah...

*** joins: dalek
You were kicked from #hacker@ by dalek (You're nuked!!!)

Bob stared at the screen and didn't say a thing... what had dalek done to him? Just then the power flickered on and off real quick... since both PCs were on UPSs nothing bad happened to the computers, but Bob was scared.

ping ftp.microsoft.com
no response from ftp.microsoft.com

"Bob what's going on??" George asked.

"Not sure? But... " Bob didn't want to tell George what had happened.

ping ftp.netscape.com
no response from ftp.microsoft.com

"Uh... George... why don't you go upstairs and tell me what you find?"

"Why? What's upstairs?"

"Just do it." (Copyright 1994 Nike)

George went upstairs... when he got upstairs he went outside. It was a nice night outside, and he thought, "Gee, Bob is acting real wierd, I think I'll just go home".

When George didn't come back, Bob thought the worst. George must have died of Radiation Poisining before he got back. He had sent him to his death!!!

ping localhost
localhost is alive

ping www.aol.com
no response from www.aol.com

ping www.whitehouse.gov
no response from www.whitehouse.gov

Bob stepped back from his computer. He couldn't believe it, that dalek guy must have been from russia! He had pissed off a Russian Missile commander and had destroyed the world!

"I'm the LAST MAN ALIVE!!! " Bob screamed. He couldn't take it. He found a razor and slit his wrist, down- not across. He was bleeding all over the place. As the blood ran over the keyboard, Bob breathed his last breath, and was silent.

Somewhere esle in the building, a janitor finished vaccuuming and plugged the hub back in.