The Power of Names

The hacker looked around her den, appraising the setup as a jeweler would appraise a fine gem – with an understated excitement and just the right dose of healthy skepticism.

The equipment disappointed her - it was far from the way she had envisioned it. The walls of the room, despite heavy postering, stayed obstinately white, as painting them black would violate the terms of her lease, and she had no wish to lose the low-rent apartment, as a move now would mean a move to the suburbs, and if there was one thing – other than motherhood – that she was unsuited for, it was a suburban life.

The CRT monitors were clunky, but she'd decided against the flatscreens – instead sinking all of the money into hardware - function over form. She had, however, made a solid pact with herself to replace the heavy monitors with their slimmer cousins once she'd made her name famous. There was no point in sinking more money into the Mark I of her hacker den, when it was unlikely that anyone would see its current iteration. There was no point in having every anarchic inch of it pitch perfect if there was no chance that the narcs would raid it.

Her name would be famous, at least, once she had one.

She slid into the new chair, the unused leather squeaking and with a dramatic flourish, turned on Sophia. Sophia stood proud, at a cost of multiple weeks rent and living expenses, she was fast, she was powerful, and she was sexy. It was the perfect computer for an aspiring hacker. Less than a minute passed before everything had loaded - she'd already spent hours downloading all of the programs and systems that she'd needed, creating playlists for different occasions, and setting up a scrolling wallpaper - set to change every seven hours. Seven was a good number.

An unashamedly violated browser window came to life, the amount of add-ons, plug-ins, skins and hacks making it nigh-indistinguishable from its original form. Things turning out differently from intended…

Her IM program loaded, and informed her that she had a new email, but gave no other information, her empty buddies list staring back at her, encouraging her to add people for fun and interesting discourse – though droll text-based intercourse was far more likely, if what she had read was true. Her email loaded quickly, proving that her internet bill was worth the cost. She sipped cold coffee, and deleted junk emails that proclaimed to want to give her thousands of dollars for only a nominal service charge.

Other than that, her email account sat empty – it was just one that she'd created when she'd become bored of her last one. As yet, she'd never been able to find an alias that she'd liked enough to let it stick. A plethora of discarded aliases littered her electronic paper trail, ones related to her fandoms, her interests, her god, her areas of study, combinations of words, letters, double-entendres and palindromes. Nothing had felt like her. Nothing had felt right. For the most part, it hadn't really mattered: she rarely went into chatrooms, and when she did, she preferred that people didn't remember her, most of the forums she frequented, she lurked, not bothering to sign up and join the conversations - either there was nothing she could add, or she felt as though her points wouldn't be listened to. The one exception she had was Maestro’s officially unofficial forum, but even then, she kept her comments to a minimum, to avoid saying something stupid in front of someone so amazing.

Her stomach rumbled as he hand reached for the mouse. She looked to the clock in the corner of her screen, and the time it displayed confused her.

'Three o'clock?' she said. 'But it was…' She clicked on to make sure that it wasn't set to the wrong timezone, and it only added to her confusion. 'Tuesday? But it was Monday when I woke up…' Her stomach growled again, and for a split-second she was terrified that she had swallowed a small dog and that it was going to chew its way out and- Stop it. Arising from the chair on unstable legs, she groped in the cupboard for new pants, as she couldn't remember the last time that she'd changed the pair that she was wearing, nor when she'd eaten the curry that had stained them.

A shower was out of the question – now that she was aware of how long she'd been awake, she was far too hungry to do anything other than obtain food - and on her schedule for Monday had been to shop for food, as she'd been out of everything except a day's worth of coffee and two cups of plain rice. She also changed her shirt, the dilapidated Star Trek shirt far more worse for the wear than she would have preferred. She exchanged it for a plain black shirt that was two sizes too large.

Her bag resided in its usual place, atop the small entryway table. Inside were her wallet, her keys and several colonies of dust bunnies. She removed the wallet and the keys, set the dust bunnies free, then replaced the items and placed the bag over her shoulder. She slammed the door shut by accident, though enjoyed the profound lack of response that the loud noise garnered - it was such a pleasant change from her room at high school, where it had not only been the girls she'd shared the dorm with, but also the teachers that had loudly, and frequently expressed their disappointment in her lack of lady-like mannerisms. The admonishment had only encouraged her to slam the door louder, more often and with much more enjoyment.

Once, it had nearly broken from its hinges, prompting a conference call with her grandfather – who had, in the presence of her principal and several of her teachers had proclaimed, in all honesty, that unless she began to act in a manner befitting the money she was born into, that he would cut her off entirely. Quite unsure as to how the real world even worked, she'd immediately apologised, assured all present that it would never happen again, and that she was just acting out, as – and she'd praised herself for her quick-thinking and deviousness - that she'd been jealous of her cousins' birthday presents. Two days later, by express mail, a Gucci bag had arrived with a stern note written in the steady hand of grandfather's valet. A weekend trip into town, and a quick sale later, she'd had money to her name and a new bank account, completely separate from the one her pocket money/living expenses went into. Insurance against a future in which she would inevitably be cut off from her family's money.

A future which had come to pass - she hadn't counted on the fifty thousand pounds that had been gifted to her as a parting present, one underwritten with the condition of no contact. It was only a portion of what she would have received if she'd stayed, or if she'd been what they'd wanted, but at least this way, alone, in another country and far from their expectations, she could do what she wanted, she was free to screw up her life however she wanted.

She walked down the stairs, and found the door to her landlord's ground-level apartment was ajar, as it usually was, the sounds of his television blasting through and into the tiled foyer. She paused by her mailbox, though didn't open it - there was no room for bills in her hungry, insomniac mindspace. More than likely it would result in, as it had done before, her pouring over them for hours, looking for any wrong charges, then calling the company's customer service department and abusing the voice on the other end of the line.

Pausing before the door to the outside world, she pressed her headphones into her ear and turned the music all the way up - glorious German death metal steadied her against a trip out into the real world, and with a deep breath, she pushed the door open, ready for the assault. It wasn't the outside world that she was afraid of per se, it was the people who inhabited it, the liars, the haters, the bigots.

Her apartment was on a quiet street, and she was grateful for that - it always allowed for at least a little bit of a segue way before she found herself in head-spinningly large crowds. She always got through it though, though a combination of loud music, hallucinating that the streets were empty, and listening to the orders given to her by the little, calm voice in her head that saw her through everything, no matter how terrible.

Every moment was just a moment, every second was just a second. Survive one second. Get through the next moment. It was the only way she'd gotten through high school. It was the only way she'd gotten through the hair-pulling, face-scratching attacks of the popular girls. It was the only way that she'd survived an international flight after consuming two litres of coffee and suffering a panic attack induced by losing her wallet in Heathrow.

Busier streets and more people greeted her as the song changed. She quickly crossed the street, always torn between walking past the pub and its patrons, and the adult store. There was no good choice. Often, when she wasn't busy, she would walk the extra block, and cut through the back of the shopping centre's car park and back through to Chinatown, but the small dog in her stomach wasn't standing for that today, so she fought the urge to walk a lot further than she needed to, and walked past the adult store, dutifully staring at the ground as she passed.

A hundred metres down the road, a train ran under the bridge, speeding off toward Central station. A break in the traffic allowed her to run across the street, something her feet hated her for. After another change of lights, she was in Chinatown, and near enough to her favourite restaurant for her to drool at the thought of Peking Duck. She tried not to visit the restaurant more than twice a week, lest the owners start to think of her as "creepy customer" rather than "loyal customer", but she always bought several meals, freezing and reheating the leftovers in the intervening days.

The word take-away nearly left her mouth, as it always did, until the gut-dwelling canine gave a warning growl. She changed it to a sit-down order, and got a couple of entrees as well - as they would take the edge of the nearly-sentient hunger. She took a booth in the corner, fidgeting with a serviette as she waited for her food. A plate of spring rolls appeared, and she inhaled two before the server made it back to the kitchen. The small offering sated the angry puppy somewhat, and it stopped growling. She left her bag in the booth, and retrieved a few more serviettes from the counter. She slid back into the booth and sat cross-legged as best as she could, her knees scraping the underside of the low table. She retrieved a pencil stub from her wallet and began to scribble onto the serviettes.

She didn't carry paper with her, there was no point in carrying paper. People never remembered the stories of people who had their brilliant ideas or had their breakthroughs and wrote them down in carefully prepared notebooks, the best stories were those were a the thinker was struck by lightning the idea was hastily scribbled onto a napkin, place mat or friend. Carefully prepared notebooks were not the stuff of story.

The other spring roll was hungrily wolfed down, and then she delicately took fingerfulls of the sauce she'd deliberately ignored, while she waited for the rest of the food to arrive. She drew a circle on the serviette, then shaded it, the dull and blank circle a mirror of her mind. She sighed - this was supposed to be her first day as a hacker, this was supposed to be something special. It wasn't supposed to be more of the same. It wasn't supposed to yet another day where she lost severe amounts of time, and had to venture out for food because she couldn't shop responsibly for groceries.

Her prawn toast arrived and she stared despondently at the squares - squares that had been cut into triangles, yet another thing that had turned out differently than intended. Browsers and toast turning out differently than planned, however, didn't seem to bother people, it was only when people did. She nipped the corners off one of the triangles of toast, trying to turn it back into a little square so that people wouldn't realise that it was different.

Several other customers filtered in, and her dish usually took a while, so she chewed the other pieces of toast into squares - now no-one would know that they had ever been any different. There were rough edges there for anyone to see, but if those were seen, then it was the voyeur's fault for looking so closely, a brief glimpse would only reveal square toast, as some god intended.

She pushed herself further back into her booth, trying to make herself as small as possible so that she didn't attract the attention of the new customers - it was pointless really, but it made her feel a little better. Her lunch arrived, and she did her best to remember to chew. The plate soon emptied, and still the piece of paper had no ideas for her new name. She lifted her bag and swung it over her shoulder. She smiled a Quasimodo smile at the staff as she left, and headed to the supermarket.

A hacker's name was their brand, and the world was nothing without brands. At first there was the word of god, then the word of kings, then the word of politicians, each time the words becoming fuzzier, each time, the words becoming more meaningless. There was nothing left but the dilution of meaning, and diluted meanings could not hope to represent the ideals of those they supposedly represented. The smaller the kingdom, the smaller the business, the more chance you had that the words were worth their face value.

A hacker's name was their brand. There was no customer service centre to hide behind, there was no council or parliament to interfere, there was one name, and the work associated with it. It needed to be something good, not something goofy. It needed to catch attention, and it needed to be awesome.

The supermarket doors slid open, and she walked past the meat department, visions of dead cows flooded her head, quickly replaced by delicious hamburgers. Death. Death was a classic figure, a classic train of thought, and a classic fear. A hacker alias involving death couldn't go wrong. It conjured up images of mighty reapers on horseback, their muscled steeds leaving a trail of blood…and other such heavy metal album cover images. And a...and a...

She quickly turned, and went back for a trolley – knowing that it would be more than a handful of groceries she needed.

There had to be something else to it, though, as all possible variations of just the single word would have long ago been snapped up. It couldn’t be just Death. It couldn’t even be just d34th.

She tossed a small packet of diced chicken into the trolley – just for an emergency. Chicken was easy enough to cook – everything tasted like chicken, and chicken tasted like everything, so it was therefore impossible to cook wrong. She stared at the vegetables, and they stared back, but she turned away from their disapproving stares and moved into the next aisle.

A list would have made things easier, but they always managed to get lost. Lost, never to be found again – which more than slightly bothered her. Somewhere around her apartment there had to be a secret lost colony of shopping lists, possibly forming an army, possibly-

She tossed two large bottles of coffee into the trolley, wincing as they clacked together, imagining a coffee spill, getting yelled at by the store manager, being banned for life, being-

She steadied herself and went into the next aisle, and the next. She found the noodles, a good old standby, and tossed a half dozen packets. She stared at the trolley, trying to remember what she needed, trying to remember what people ate. She plucked a bag of sugar from the shelf, and headed for the confectionery. Chocolate. Chocolate was definitely needed.

A pair of fluffy white wings on the wrapping of a new kind of chocolate caught her eye. She stared at it for a moment, threw three into the trolley, then stared at the packaging again. Wings. Angel wings.

Angels. Another classic figure in myth. Maybe not so much of a classic fear as Death, but they inspired all kind of imagery all the same.

Black. Blue. Cold. Hurting.

She stared at the chocolate.

Black. Blue. Cold. Hurting.

She stared at the wings.

Black. White. Warm. Comforting.

An angel. A dream. A dream she hadn’t thought about in a long time. She pushed it aside – dreams had no bearing on reality, no bearing on her future.

She pushed the trolley towards the register. Angels. Angels were good. Death Angel. Angel of Death. AngelD. D.Angel. d3ath_angel. D34thAngel. angelicDEATH. One of them had to fit. One of them had to stick.

Would you really hire someone with l33t in their name?

‘Dunno.’

Watch it, you’re externalising again.

I need a new name. I can’t be a random combination of numbers and letters forever.

Why is it so hard for you to pick a name?

Because nothing fits.

What about LivesinWardrobes? You could be LW again.

No, I got stick of all the support group invitations telling me to come out of the closet.

Runswithsticks?

No, no idea what I was even thinking back then?

Pirate17?

She began to load things onto the checkout counter, ignoring the greeting of the cashier.

No, I’m not seventeen anymore, it would be weird.

Unseen_Spyder?

Man, I’m not even in the Spidey fandom anymore.

That isn’t a no. You should still have the email address and stuff.

I dunno, try it out.

Hi, Unseen, how are you?

Nah...

She was vaguely aware of being told a total, and she fumbled into her wallet for money.

Gonna have to find something else. Or be d34th_ang3l.

I’m abandoning brain if you call yourself that.

Sheesh.

Sure you don’t want to go with a classic, Spyder?

She picked up her bags and walked away from the store.

Call me that again.

Why, you like it or something now, Spyder?

Dunno, it might work, I’ll try it for a week or something.