Disk 5 · c. 1999 · age 15
Because I Could
Why did I put Command & Conquer on every computer in the IT suite? Because I could. Twenty-seven years on, I still haven't got a better answer.
Lunchtime, 1999, and everyone else was out on the field. I was in the IT suite, with a plan. I was fifteen, so the plan had steps.
Step one was the kit. The install discs came into school under the shorts in my PE bag, because nobody ever searches a PE bag. Nobody wants to.
Step two was the recce. The technician's office was in the far corner, with a window onto the room and blinds that stopped a foot short. Through the gap: tea, biscuits and a games magazine he was reading very carefully. So: bench to bench, keep low, into the other corner.
Step three went wrong straight away. He got up, mid-biscuit, and came across the room right at me, and asked what I was doing in there at dinner. I told him. "Because I could." "Fair enough," he said, and went off to the staffroom without looking twice.
Step four was the password. I had six guesses written on my hand in biro. The corner PC didn't ask for one. Nothing in that building ever asked for one. After that it was one CD drive, three hubs, twelve machines and a lot of blue cable, and it was done before the end of dinner.
Then the bell went, the class came in, and every screen in the room came up on the same title. Nobody asked where it came from. One lad asked why, and got the same answer as everyone else. "Sound," he said.
It was the 90s. Everyone was clueless.
One machine in the corner was showing something else: my first website, made that same year in PHP and hosted on Angelfire. Angelfire has gone now, so the one in the game is rebuilt from memory, but its hit counter is real and it counts you.
