I Told You, Eli Oxley

Chapter Fourteen

"What kind of pizza do you like?" JT asked. "We're going to be here a while, so you're gonna need some fuel."

"Cheese is fine," I said. The thought of pizza just added to the ambience of my situation. I was about to settle into this place filled with literal and figurative electricity, an energy palpable enough to excite and unnerve me.

One hand or two? That was the determining factor a few years prior when I tried out as a drummer for a garage band. I know, right? Me, join a band when I didn't even have any friends? Maybe it was a subconscious effort to find friends and gain popularity by being in a band. But all I knew was that I had the basics of drumming and wanted to be a part of something more, or because it at least sounded fun.

When I went to the try-out, they told me to pick up my drumsticks and show them what I had. I grabbed the sticks with both my hands and, as soon as I did so, they told me that I wouldn't work well with them. When I asked them why, they explained to me that someone who was a natural drummer always picked up the drumsticks with one hand, while those who weren't as comfortable with drumming, who didn't have a natural talent, used both hands.

I hoped the order of pizza was a sign that my test wouldn't be over as quickly as my drumming career, that they would at least give me the time it took to have a pizza delivered and me eat it. But that fact still couldn't keep my nerves from nearly paralyzing my body. I suppose the feeling of inadequacy, too, from when I got beamed in the face by the football players, oozed through me.

"Ok, we've got a workstation set up for you over here," Brett said, leading me to one of the three-computer stations.

Two of the computers were actually just one with a double monitor set-up. The other computer looked ancient: it was cream-colored and boxy and most likely weighed enough to give someone lifting it a hernia.

"That's our UNIX," Brett said. "Bare-bones computing. None of the bells and whistles, just straight to business, wham-bam-thank-you-mamm."

"If you've finished giving Eli a lesson in the linguistics of 7th graders who have yet to have sexual intercourse but misguidedly think they sound like they have, then can you show him what he will be doing?" David said.

"And if you're done with your diatribe that is just a mask for your own inexperience in bed, with another person, that is, can you leave me alone long enough for me to show him?" Brett said. "And don't be naive enough to believe that 7th graders aren't doing the wild monkey dance. Well, maybe not in the traditional sense. But they are going all cyber-nympho with apps like Snapchat and the less oblique 3Way4Play. And some kids go straight for Skype sex."

"FaceTime has better picture quality," JT chimed in. "Just saying."

While they were casually talking about 21st century sex habits, I sat down and began fooling around on the computers. It wasn't long before David noticed me and elbowed his way over to scold me for touching without asking.

"Woah," I said, "my bad, dude."

"Chill, David. I got this," Brett said. "So David developed a program, already loaded on your computers, that sort of tests your hacking abilities. We use it to train on when we're prep––"

"When we're bored," David said, rolling his chair back to his workstation. "It's designed to simulate any type of hacking situation you might encounter in the real world. Breaking through firewalls or proxy servers used by major corporations, hacking websites that go out of their way to protect their users' identity like Reddit, or infiltrating government databases even."

My suspicions raised with the hairs on my neck. "But isn't all of that stuff illegal?" I said.

"Of course it is," David said. "But we don't actually do any of that stuff. I mean, we could if we wanted to, but we like to use our hacking skills for good and hope that we get noticed by the right people."