Starcraft , which meant no other players stood a chance. Soon after, someone magicked up a subscription to Netflix for me. Proof that I was making the right kind of friends.
I had a lesson in bots and how to use them to launch a DDoS attack, which basically paralyses awebsite, and saw a way to make the impact of my plan even greater. If, just as a drone flew over, the ticketing site for the subway happened to go down, there’d be the maximum number of people panicking on the street. Good job.
Angel quickly became a popular member of the online community. Making friends you couldn’t actually eyeball was just as easy as making face-to-face friends – basic things like reflecting back their own opinions made people think I was like-minded. Being witty helped too.
As I roamed around, I was constantly on the lookout for the hacker who might have the capability to hijack a drone, and considering how best to coax him into helping when I eventually did.
I spent hours online, but still went to school, did my homework, talked to Mum and Dad, went out with Lucy (occasionally), ignored Hugo and Juliette and put in my UCAS application just before the October deadline for Oxbridge. If I was serious, which I was, I needed to blend in like everyone else – loners who withdrew from society got noticed.
Mum came with me to parents’ evening, wearing a spotty dress and nice make-up. Dad was at football training, desperate to keep a place in the reserves despite hitting forty.
‘As you know I’ve predicted you an A* – hard to come by in this subject,’ said the head of English. Everyone else said more or less the same.
The last appointment was with my maths teacher, Mrs Abrahms, who’d written me a brilliant reference for Cambridge.
‘The interview can be unpredictable, but I doubt Samiya will have a problem. Once she decides on a thing, I find there’s no stopping her.’
Mum was bursting with pride, imagining me in legal robes and a wig, but I felt nothing. My future was to be a game-changer … a political activist … a rebel with a cause …
17
The plan got better as time went on, but it was still just a plan. My web of contacts got wider, but it was still just a pool of potential. The armed drones continued to invade from the skies with no comeback. It was agonising to watch the numbers of dead and injured grow, like Scrabble scores but with only one possible winner. But I had to wait, and keep the faith.
Often, when I was walking to school and back, I’d imagine a drone appearing from nowhere – a dark silhouette, flying low. It was my way of trying to feel the fear of the Pakistani children in the video, my way of staying connected. They said that they didn’t go out in the sun any more because they were too frightened. Only when it was cloudy and the drones couldn’t see would they go to school. They were by my side, together with every other family who had lost someone because of a grainy image on a screen.
Christmas came and went. I got offers to study law from all the universities I’d applied to, including Cambridge – despite a surreal interview about thealleged theft of a cat. Mum and Dad were over the moon, but I had a premonition that I wouldn’t actually be going. January drizzled past, and suddenly it was my eighteenth birthday. Mum and Dad bought me twelve driving lessons. I pretended to be thrilled, but all I could think about was the fact that it was a whole year since I’d sat in that café in Milton Keynes, eavesdropping on the table next door. It felt as though the second anniversary of the deaths of Jaddah and Lamyah might slide by and I’d still be in limbo.
And then someone called KP – like the peanuts – came on the scene.
I met him playing EVE , and we got on immediately. So much so that a couple of battles later, he offered me free credit for my phone – he’d put together a neat bit of code and wanted to show me how cool it was. I sent him the number of my second phone
I had a lesson in bots and how to use them to launch a DDoS attack, which basically paralyses awebsite, and saw a way to make the impact of my plan even greater. If, just as a drone flew over, the ticketing site for the subway happened to go down, there’d be the maximum number of people panicking on the street. Good job.
Angel quickly became a popular member of the online community. Making friends you couldn’t actually eyeball was just as easy as making face-to-face friends – basic things like reflecting back their own opinions made people think I was like-minded. Being witty helped too.
As I roamed around, I was constantly on the lookout for the hacker who might have the capability to hijack a drone, and considering how best to coax him into helping when I eventually did.
I spent hours online, but still went to school, did my homework, talked to Mum and Dad, went out with Lucy (occasionally), ignored Hugo and Juliette and put in my UCAS application just before the October deadline for Oxbridge. If I was serious, which I was, I needed to blend in like everyone else – loners who withdrew from society got noticed.
Mum came with me to parents’ evening, wearing a spotty dress and nice make-up. Dad was at football training, desperate to keep a place in the reserves despite hitting forty.
‘As you know I’ve predicted you an A* – hard to come by in this subject,’ said the head of English. Everyone else said more or less the same.
The last appointment was with my maths teacher, Mrs Abrahms, who’d written me a brilliant reference for Cambridge.
‘The interview can be unpredictable, but I doubt Samiya will have a problem. Once she decides on a thing, I find there’s no stopping her.’
Mum was bursting with pride, imagining me in legal robes and a wig, but I felt nothing. My future was to be a game-changer … a political activist … a rebel with a cause …
17
The plan got better as time went on, but it was still just a plan. My web of contacts got wider, but it was still just a pool of potential. The armed drones continued to invade from the skies with no comeback. It was agonising to watch the numbers of dead and injured grow, like Scrabble scores but with only one possible winner. But I had to wait, and keep the faith.
Often, when I was walking to school and back, I’d imagine a drone appearing from nowhere – a dark silhouette, flying low. It was my way of trying to feel the fear of the Pakistani children in the video, my way of staying connected. They said that they didn’t go out in the sun any more because they were too frightened. Only when it was cloudy and the drones couldn’t see would they go to school. They were by my side, together with every other family who had lost someone because of a grainy image on a screen.
Christmas came and went. I got offers to study law from all the universities I’d applied to, including Cambridge – despite a surreal interview about thealleged theft of a cat. Mum and Dad were over the moon, but I had a premonition that I wouldn’t actually be going. January drizzled past, and suddenly it was my eighteenth birthday. Mum and Dad bought me twelve driving lessons. I pretended to be thrilled, but all I could think about was the fact that it was a whole year since I’d sat in that café in Milton Keynes, eavesdropping on the table next door. It felt as though the second anniversary of the deaths of Jaddah and Lamyah might slide by and I’d still be in limbo.
And then someone called KP – like the peanuts – came on the scene.
I met him playing EVE , and we got on immediately. So much so that a couple of battles later, he offered me free credit for my phone – he’d put together a neat bit of code and wanted to show me how cool it was. I sent him the number of my second phone
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