Creepy characters

“Okay,” George announced, as she, Bess and I settled in front of my computer the next morning. “I guess it’s official; UrNewReality definitely wasn’t Agnes. And he’s definitely still out there, causing trouble.”

Bess and I nodded grimly. It was true; I’d hoped the threatening messages I’d been getting for a while now — the same kind of messages Shannon had received — had been coming from her crazy Aunt Agnes. But now Agnes was behind bars with no computer access, and the cyberharassment continued.

“Let’s get to the bottom of this,” Bess announced with a determined expression.

I’d invited them both over so we could get back on BetterLife. This time, though, we weren’t playing with our existing character, Dancin4Evah (my total opposite, Dancin4Evah had been created to let me investigate Virtual River Heights without obviously looking like myself); this time we were investigating. I realized after we finished at Shannon’s last night (the conversation with the girls and their parents took over an hour, and resulted in lots of tears and grounding) that, although I’d gotten several messages from UrNewReality, I’d never actually come across the avatar in the game. I didn’t even know if UrNewReality was male or female.

“How do we do this?” Bess asked, sipping from an iced latte she’d brought along.

George turned to her and rolled her eyes. “First,” she said, grabbing the coffee from Bess’s hand, “we put the beverage far away from the computer equipment. Remember?”

Bess sighed. “You’re such a stickler. ”

George shook her head. “I am a person who respects electronics.” She placed Bess’s latte on a bookshelf sufficiently far away from the computer, then settled back in front of the keyboard. “I think we have to hack into UrNewReality’s account. If we use VirtualNancy, we can only look him up if he’s had some interaction with you.” She glanced at me.

“Not that I know of,” I said with a shrug. “Unless I passed her or him in a crowd somewhere.”

“That wouldn’t matter,” George reminded me. “You’d have to actually exchange words with the avatar to look them up.”

“Right.” I sighed. I’d spent weeks on this game, and it still confused the heck out of me. “So we hack into his account. How do we do that?”

George paused, glancing at Bess and me with a slightly guilty look. “Look, I know how to do it but you have to promise you won’t try it yourself,” she insisted.

“I promise,” I replied quickly.

Bess’s lips curled up. “Me too.”

George turned back to the computer. “Ok then,’” she replied, going quickly to a search engine where she typed in something that looked like total nonsense to me.

“What are you —?” I asked, but before I could get the question out, the engine returned one result and George clicked on it.

George clicked on a button marked DOWNLOAD ME FREE! and a window came up showing that the program was quickly downloading to my machine.

“What are you putting on my computer?” I asked.

George looked slightly ashamed. “Don’t worry, I’ll delete it when I’m done,” she replied.

I frowned. “George?”

George sighed. “ I only use it for good,” she claimed. “You know that, Nance.”

I shook my head. An icon for the program appeared on my desktop, and George clicked it and soon had the application up and running. “I’m going to pretend I never saw any of this,” I said. “Your knowledge of computers is so wide and vast, there’s no way I could ever understand how you do what you do.”

Bess glanced over at me and winked. “Me either.”

George just sighed and shook her head. “Whatever.” She entered the URL for BetterLife, then typed UrNewReality into the Username box. When she clicked in the Password box, she executed some complicated keyboard command that I didn’t fully pick up on.

“How are you getting around BetterLife’s security features?” Bess asked. “Shouldn’t it time you out or something?”

George shrugged. “Well, their security isn’t great to begin with,” she said, “so it’s not too difficult to override.”

I watched the screen. It was almost mesmerizing: the home page kept loading and reloading faster than I could keep track.

Suddenly it stopped. That is, the reloading stopped. I glanced at George, who beamed. Sure enough, when I’d turned back to the screen, the home page was replaced by the bright blue sky and perfectly manicured lawns of Virtual River Heights!

“We’re in!” shrieked Bess. “Wow, this is so exciting!”

Slowly the picture shown on my monitor scaled back, and we could see the frame of a window looking out onto a Virtual River Heights street. As the picture pulled back farther, we could see that the window was dirty and cracked, and a few cobwebs showed at the top.

“Yuck,” I muttered. “Someone needs to use a little Windex.”

George frowned, leaning forward and entering a series of keyboard commands.

“It’s in View mode,” she murmured. “So we’re seeing what UrNewReality is seeing, instead of seeing the avatar itself.”

“George, look,” Bess piped up with a frown of her own. She gestured toward UrNewReality’s “stats” that displayed at the bottom of the screen: HUNGER LEVEL. FRIENDS. JOB. STYLE LEVEL. HAPPINESS. Oddly enough, most were set at zero — except the cash meter, which was set at $500, the amount new players were given when they created a new BetterLife character.

“That’s weird,” I said, leaning forward to get a better look. “It’s like they’re just starting the game. But it’s been over a week since I got my first message from UrNewReality!”

The screen reloaded and we all gasped.

In a dingy, neglected room, covered with cobwebs and dust, a thin, elderly man laid in a small twin bed. The avatar was awake — his eyes stared creepily at a point on the wall — but it was clear that he hadn’t moved in years, if ever. Cobwebs covered his body, but you could still see that the man was painfully thin, almost skeletal. Gray hair cascaded down his chin and off of his head like he was Rip van Winkle.

“Creepy,” Bess breathed. “Ohhh, this is very, very creepy. Log out!”

I shook my head. “Wait,” I said. A window popped up in the middle of the screen.

URNEWREALITY, WOULD YOU LIKE TO CHECK THE PAPER FOR JOBS?

“That’s the first thing they ask you when you create an avatar,” I explained. “I remember from when we created VirtualNancy. The first thing you do, the minute the game starts, is try to find a job.”

“I remember,” Bess breathed. “Oh, remember when VirtualNancy wore that awful sweater and lived in that dingy apartment? You really have to rough it the first few days in this game.”

The sweater Bess was referring to had been modeled on an actual sweater I wore quite often in real life, but I decided not to press the issue. “So that means…” I began.

“…he’s never been played,” George finished, turning to me with a puzzled look.

Bess furrowed her brows. “Someone set up this avatar and then never played him?” she asked. “Why?”

George shrugged. “Maybe they just wanted to use him to send messages,” she replied. “The game wasn’t as important as having an easy, anonymous way to threaten people. But…”

“Doesn’t that break a lot of the rules of the game?” I asked. “First of all, you’re not allowed to contact characters you haven’t met. Second —”

“— the avatar should be dead,” George finished, turning back to the computer with a confused expression. “You have to take care of your avatar; that’s the whole point of the game. If you stopped taking care of VirtualNancy, she’d eventually run out of food and the character would die.”

I nodded. The old man avatar was still lying stock-still on the bed, staring blindly at a spot on the wall. Something about this really gave me the creeps. I shivered.

“Look,” said Bess, pointing to a corner of the screen just under UrNewReality’s stats. “Isn’t there usually a Contact Me button there?”

George frowned. “I think so,” she replied. “You click on it and it shows you their e-mail address.”

“That’s right,” I agreed. “I think I’ve used that to contact people in the game privately, when I didn’t have their e-mail handy.”

Bess turned to George, looking perplexed. “So how are they doing this?” she asked. “I mean, they’re breaking some pretty basic rules of the game, right?”

“Right,” George agreed, staring at the screen with a sigh. “I mean, the only answer is that UrNewReality is a hacker. But not even a normal hacker. You would have to know a lot about how BetterLife was programmed to figure out how to get around all those rules.”

There was a beep as another window popped up, and all three of us jumped. But it was just the same window asking UrNewReality if he wanted to look for a job.

“I think it’s too late for that,” Bess murmured, glancing at the motionless avatar with a shudder.

I leaned forward, grabbing the mouse from George. “Let’s let this guy rest,” I suggested, clicking the Logout button. “And I’ll log on and make sure Dancin4Evah never met this guy. Because isn’t that also one of the rules? How is UrNewReality getting in touch with all these people if he doesn’t play the game?”

George nodded slowly as the Login screen came up, and I typed in Dancin4Evah’s username and password. “You’re only supposed to be able to contact people you’ve met,” she agreed. “It’s one of their very few security features.”

“And actually,” Bess added, twisting her mouth into a suspicious smirk, “how is UrNewReality even finding these people? How did he know Shannon was back online? How did he know Blondie86 was her?”

I nodded. “He’s getting personal information on other players that he shouldn’t have access to,” I agreed. Just then, Dancin4Evah came onscreen, talking to friends at a virtual club called Lime. He seemed to be perfectly healthy, and with no messages.

George leaned in and did a search for UrNewReality, but all we got back was a negative message: DANCIN4EVAH HAS NOT INTERACTED WITH AN AVATAR NAMED URNEWREALITY.

“It looks like no one’s caught on that this trendy club kid is really you, Nance,” George observed.

“Yeah,” I agreed with a sigh. “Well, except Guitarlvr15. He certainly found me easily enough.”

George nodded and leaned in, logging Dancin4Evah out and going back to the login screen. “Nancy, Bess and I have a surprise for you,” she announced.

I gave her a confused look — what could it possibly be? But she was looking at Bess, who was beaming.

“We stayed up late last night,” Bess explained, “to reunite you with an old friend.” She typed VirtualNancy into the Username box, then typed in the password Backfromthedead.

Soon my old avatar appeared onscreen, shelving books in her old job as a bookstore manager at the Virtual River Heights Mall. I quickly checked her stats: All looked to be in order. No new messages, which was a relief. She seemed happy, too — humming to herself as she put the books away. That made me smile.

“Oh my gosh!” I cried, leaning in to get a better look. “She looks just like she did before the — you know…”

“Her untimely demise?” George asked.

During the worst of my cyberharassment days, VirtualNancy had been virtually murdered.

“Yeah.” I looked at my old avatar wonderingly. “Wow, I missed her. How did you get her back just like she was?”

George smiled. “It took a few hours and a little cheating,” she replied, “but new VirtualNancy is just as good as the old one.”

I grinned at my friends. “Wow, guys. Thank you. It feels good to know you even have VirtualNancy’s back.”

I pulled back my chair to let George take over as she clicked a few buttons and checked up on VirtualNancy and UrNewReality’s history.

“Nothing,” she confirmed, as the screen told us VIRTUALNANCY HAS NOT INTERACTED WITH AN AVATAR NAMED URNEWREALITY.

“Great,” I said with a sigh. We were no closer to figuring out who UrNewReality really was. “Now what?”

Bess leaned in. “Well, she has to finish her shift. Then they’re showing The Princess Bride in the virtual food court….”

George rolled her eyes. “I think Nancy meant, what should we investigate now?”

Just then, a beep, and a window popped up announcing YOU HAVE 1 NEW MESSAGE.

“Well,” I said, “maybe this will give us a clue.” George quickly clicked on Messages, and we all exchanged concerned glances when we saw the sender and subject line: Guitarlvr15, and MYOB.

George opened the message.

SINCE YOU CAN’T MYOB, YOU MIGHT WANT TO CHECK OUT WHAT’S GOING ON AT THE FOOD COURT.

I groaned.

“It could be anything,” Bess suggested, trying to sound encouraging. “Maybe they’re giving away free burritos!”

“Maybe they’re giving away my father’s confidential secrets,” I countered. George gave me a sympathetic look as she guided VirtualNancy out of the bookstore and toward the food court. “I guess Guitarlvr15 isn’t totally down for the count. Maybe UrNewReality wants to ruin my life, but Guitarlvr15 just wants to ruin my father’s?”

The virtual food court was crowded with avatars. In the middle of the various levels of seating, a movie screen had been set up.

“The movie starts in a couple minutes,” Bess explained.

I had a sinking feeling I knew what was really going to start.

In a few seconds, a bright light shone from the rear of the food court, and the movie screen suddenly came to life. It took the crowd a few seconds to realize that they weren’t staring at the credits to The Princess Bride, however. They were staring at huge projections of my father’s confidential files.

“I can’t believe they really did this,” I muttered.

“Me neither,” agreed George, shaking her head. “I realize this means nothing to you, but whoever’s behind this is a major hacker. To overwrite the code for the movie screen like that…”

The crowd of avatars murmured to each other and moved closer to get a better look. Soon the noise got louder, as everyone turned to his or her friends to talk about what the strange papers might be.

Even the avatar standing next to VirtualNancy seemed fascinated. She nudged VirtualNancy in the arm and then spoke.

KARMAGIRL %!: THEY’RE LEGAL FILES.

VIRTUALNANCY: WHAT?

KARMAGIRL %!: SEE, THEY SAY LEVITT, SOLARI & DREW ON THE TOP. THAT’S A LAW FIRM IN TOWN! YOU KNOW, IN REAL RIVER HEIGHTS.

VIRTUALNANCY: DO YOU KNOW IT?

KARMAGIRL %!: NO, BUT I THINK A GIRL IN MY CLASS, HER FATHER WORKED FOR THEM. I DUNNO WHY THEY WOULD LET THEIR FILES OUT LIKE THIS. I DON’T THINK WE’RE SUPPOSED TO SEE —

Not wanting to hear or see any more, I clicked the button to log VirtualNancy out. “Well, that’s it,” I said with a sigh. “My father’s legal files have gone public. Thank goodness they don’t pertain to his case, but…”

George and Bess shot me sympathetic looks as my cell phone began to ring.

I picked it up. “It’s Ned,” I told my friends, glancing at the caller ID. “He was probably playing BetterLife and saw what just happened.”

But when I opened the phone and clicked Talk, I wasn’t prepared for what I heard.

“Hello? Ned?”

“Nancy?” Ned’s voice sounded rattled — totally unlike the calm, cool, collected guy I know. “I’m sorry to bug you when Bess and George are there. But I just got the strangest e-mail….”

Дата добавления: 2017-01-14