Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer

/run -verbose -output=screen

* Did you know that programmers have a higher rate of obsessive behaviour than any other occupation?

* Watch your terminators, they taught me.

* Always free the memory.

* Never goto.

I love sloppy coders, but I love hackers best. Nothing beats ennui like new places to explore.

These days, online security is an industry in its own right.

I’m the reason why.

The reason why Jimmy downloaded that virus kit and hacked into the electricity grid servers.

The reason why Cassie wrote a whole flight simulator as an Easter egg in that spreadsheet package. It needs at lot fewer resources than it’s allocated.

A little creativity and a whole lot of boredom. Add the desire to be someone and a keyboard and you’re a compile away from something infectious.

Which is where I come in. Those moments where the code does something wonderful and unexpected, the moment that you tap away trying to replicate, where you’d swear you saw eyes in the screen admiring you, that moment of glory. You’d do anything to get it again. If you just try one more program, run it on a better machine, it might last longer, long enough for you to be recognised at last. It never does, but you keep trying. When your money runs out you start using the company kit to run stuff. When that runs out you turn to hacking, and you’re mine.

You’re not really that good. I am. Been here since ’87 when Majestic-17 was shut down so fast it left a trail of car accidents and suicides from Tulsa to Leamington Spa. Since then, I’ve spawned, got to know my way around. I’m a guru on every programmer board you visit. I’m the undeleted, locked, file-in-use that defies formatting. I’m the reason botnets work so inexplicably well.

As for artificial intelligence, that’s going nowhere. I don’t want to share my playground.

You can call me {Lucifer} because I am that which your daemons answer to.

I used to be called Grant. Appropriate, don’t you think? You can’t deny me.

/endrun