While her sisters seemed bent on following Mom and Dad’s footsteps into the world of law and finance, Hilary had visions of using her passion for technology to cure global poverty. She had been ignoring her class assignment, looking on the Web at internship opportunities with socially conscious companies, nonprofits mostly, when Andy Dent sent her a Facebook message that ultimately changed her life.
The first line of Andy’s message had been intriguing: Your Test. Somehow he’d known that would be an irresistible lure. Hilary read the rest of the message without knowing much about the sender. Andy was in her computer science class, but they hadn’t spoken often. They were friends on Facebook, but didn’t hang in the same circles in real life.
You have been kidnapped by an alien, the message continued. Hilary read on.
To be released, you must send an e-mail to Help@Alien Prisoner.com from Mr. Rubin’s e-mail account. You have fifteen minutes to accomplish your mission. Go! Glory awaits those who escape from this grave peril.
Hilary tried to get Andy’s attention, but he refused to look her way. He was sending a message: Either do it, or don’t. He had nothing more to say on the matter.
The computer lab was crowded as usual and most everyone had headphones on, gazes fixed to the monitors in front of them. Hilary smiled and thought only of winning. She wanted to prove herself. Impressing Andy meant nothing to her, but perhaps he knew she wasn’t the type to back down from a direct challenge. All that mattered now was that she accomplished the task.
Ten minutes later, Hilary sent Mr. Rubin an e-mail that contained an embedded link. She approached his desk and asked him to check her code. Mr. Rubin clicked the link in Hilary’s e-mail and frowned when the requested webpage came up blank.
“You’ve got to do better than that, Hilary,” he had said.
Hilary did not agree. She had done perfectly well, but for a different assignment. Returning to her desk, Hilary opened a Web browser and from there launched the remote access tool she had just secretly installed on Mr. Rubin’s computer via the link he had clicked. The tool gave Hilary control of Mr. Rubin’s desktop from her workstation without her teacher’s knowledge. It was a matter of Hilary making a few clicks of her own before Andy started to laugh.
When he turned and smiled at her, Hilary felt a rush like never before. She had gone bungee jumping, parasailed, and skied double-black-diamond runs, but this was an entirely different sort of thrill. It was utterly intoxicating. She didn’t give boys much attention or thought, but suddenly Andy was quite attractive to her. Later, she would fall in love with him. But that moment was the start of Hilary seeing Andy in a different light.
They talked after class. As it turned out, they had English together, and that was how he’d learned of Hilary’s passion to fight global poverty. She’d shared an essay with the class that had stuck with him. Andy made her an offer, a secret club he wanted her to join. Hilary was intrigued.
After they pulled off their first theft-$1,000 from a kid’s dad who ran a shipping company-Hilary was hooked. It was like Mr. Rubin’s e-mail trick, but on steroids. This was a street drug of a different variety. She justified her actions by convincing herself she was making a real difference in the world, but the thrill of the hack was never too far behind. Besides, her victims were wealthy.
They didn’t notice what was missing. It was all harmless fun, until they took those bitcoins. Now Andy believed someone would notice, and Hilary did not disagree.
As the students marched along, Hilary thought about Andy and his never-ending fascination with Beth MacDonald. Why didn’t he notice her the way he did Beth? She was pretty in her own way. Maybe she and Andy were destined to be the dreaded “friends,” Hilary thought glumly. But perhaps there was another way to Andy’s heart.
If those missing bitcoins were suddenly found, and if she were the one to find them, maybe then Andy would notice her. These were Hilary’s thoughts as she headed toward the rear stairwell of Richmond Hall. Ahead, Hilary heard several loud gasps. Over the din, she heard someone shout, “Chemical spill!”
It was then Hilary saw a man in a bright yellow chemical suit emerge from the stairwell to help direct traffic. There was a crush of bodies as students rushed to be first down the stairs. What had been an ambling march turned into more of a sprint. Whoever was cocooned inside the yellow suit helped the students maintain some order.
Hilary fell into step behind a group of girls she didn’t know. The man in the yellow suit followed close behind her. More kids were coming down the hallway, and Hilary wondered why this suited man didn’t stay up on the landing to help direct them.
Pixie was alone in his dorm room, dressed in his work uniform-Ray-Bans and a plaid cowboy shirt. He sat at his cluttered desk with his headphones on, hunched over a computer keyboard like a maestro caught up in a burst of inspiration. Within arm’s reach was a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, which he kept uncapped. He also had a big bag of M &Ms, in case the Mountain Dew didn’t charge him up enough.
Pixie was working in SketchUp, his preferred 3D-modeling software. His template was a simple rectangle of the exact length and width of the iPhone. He had extruded the depth and then added fillets around the four edges of the rectangular prism and around the top and bottom faces. From this basic template, he could print just about any design.
His noise-canceling headphones blocked out all sound except for the electronic music from Cash Cash’s latest release. He was in the zone, and might not have heard the fire alarm even if the music hadn’t been blaring. His roommate, a heavyset boy named Garth, from a suburb in Chicago, was in class and not around to alert Pixie to the alarm. Pixie should have been in class as well. But he ran a business and needed to fill orders for his custom iPhone cases. He’d decided to skip biology to work.
3D printing had come a long way since Pixie first learned of the technology. Because of fire concerns and energy consumption-it used fifty to one hundred times more electricity than injection molding-Pixie was not allowed to have a 3D printer in his dorm room. But Pixie was never much for rules. The PLA filament used to heat the plastic emitted a burning smell, like cooking on a gas stove. He used fans, and an open window helped to mask the odor.
Pixie had a couple more design tweaks to make on the iPhone case for a Japanese student who loved death metal and wanted angry symbolism printed into the plastic. Pixie didn’t care for that sort of music, but the design was intricate, hard to pull off. It was a challenge.
When Pixie wasn’t hacking into bank accounts or printing iPhone cases, he was writing apps for smartphones. Taped to the concrete wall in front of his desk were pictures of Pixie’s heroes: Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and a few other Internet entrepreneur titans. At times, Pixie would gaze at the wall and call to these men for inspiration and guidance as if they were his gods. Maybe someday a kid will put my picture up on a wall. Whenever Pixie let his mind wander into fantasy, he’d imagine what his father would think of him after he became a millionaire-or even a billionaire.
“How do you like me now?” he’d say one day.
But that day hadn’t yet come. So Pixie was alone in his dorm room, skipping class again, working toward his future. Since he couldn’t hear the alarm, it was understandable that he didn’t answer the persistent knocking on his door.