Page 87 of Tangled

Colleen noted, “At least this Friday is the week that options expire. That’ll make a lot of traders a whole lot more nervous, and they might dump stocks faster than they normally would.”

Tristan glanced at his watch, the Patek Philippe timepiece that, hopefully, Blaze was not going to inherit anytime soon. “It’s eight o’clock at night in New York. Colleen and I have a bit of code to write, and then Jian, you’re up next.”

48

Phase One

Tristan

Writing a small, malicious program took Tristan and Colleen maybe an hour of chuckling over a computer and debugging. Because the malware didn’t have to infiltrate any security software, they didn’t have to hide what it was, which was half the battle.

A lot of coders are hackers at heart, and letting their repressed inner hackers play was too damn much fun.

Inserting the malware into GameShack’s servers was even easier.

Colleen logged onto her help desk account, established her administrator access, and then uploaded their little program.

The countdown began, and at ten o’clock Eastern Daylight Time that night, GameShack’s servers went dark.

Anyone watching the streaming service and everyone playing games on the service got a 404 message that the page or the site was not available.

But for the creators who were using the site to produce and stream video to their followers, a message with that coming Friday’s date appeared on their screen:

The GameShack streaming service has ceased operation.

Due to mounting operational costs and recent financial losses, GameShack is discontinuing the streaming service as of today at this time.

No data downloads will be available.

Thank you for being a valuable contributor to the GameShack streaming service.

Even though they were on a private jet somewhere over the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, which meant they were over international waters, Tristan could practically hear the anguished screams of thousands of creators who’d lostyears’worth of work creating videos and their data, plus their access to the platforms they’d built and all the people who’d followed them.

Not to mention the furious roars of gamers who’d invested thousands of hours in their videogames and had just lost all their progress.

Colleen was repressing giggles. “So this is what real hackers feel like.”

Tristan was watching the chat channels on the Division social media site aimed at gamers, and the chatsblew upwith people freaking out about GameShack and screenshots of the message that the creators were seeing.

He chuckled with Colleen. “Drinking the tears of our victims, yes.”

“Should we stay online and make sure the program turns itself off?”

“Yeah, probably, but I’m going to get some turkey and crackers from that charcuterie board.”

After exactly ten minutes, their malware curled up and died as if it had never existed, and GameShack’s streaming platform sprang to life, unharmed.

The following day, after sleeping on the airplane seats that folded down into flat beds but provided no damn privacy, Tristan looked over the message Jian had posted in his private group for the personal assistants to the billionaires of the world.

It was just a quick note, practically something that could have been a direct message, but instead, Jiansupposedly,accidentallyposted on the off-topic chat area of the board.

Jian’s post read:

Hey Hisham!

I know you stream your videogame side hustle through GameShack. I heard there were some problems with their streaming?

Did they really go off-line with a notice that GS was ending the streaming service at the end of the week?