Cytronica

Eighteen

The mood in the server room was bleak, the tension palpable, the animosity between the students fierce.

With the exception of Mr Miller; his face was beaming, a huge smile plastered across it.

"Incredible!" he exclaimed. "Absolutely incredible! The peak users yesterday afternoon was close to one thousand." He swivelled around in his chair and faced the clan. "I don't know how you did it, but thank you. These numbers have greatly exceeded the board's target."

Hunter waved a hand. "It was nothing. All we had to do was remind students of the benefits of logging into the realm."

Jiaying opened her mouth to speak. She wanted to tell Miller the truth. She wanted to add onto Hunter's remark and explain that all they had to do was alter the coding of the school's private realm—which was intended for learning and social interaction—and transform it into a place where students can log in and take part in the complete degradation of society without consequences, and without any regard for laws, morals, and ethics.

But she didn't say that. Instead, she closed her mouth and feigned a smile.

"I just hope the numbers stay this way," Miller said, rising from his chair and grabbing his coat. "Remember to think long-term though. A once-off spike in numbers won't do us any good. We need to average 500 users a day. That's the plan."

Hunter saluted the man. "You got it."

Miller offered the group a friendly wink and said his farewells.

As soon as the door was locked, everyone turned and stared at Hunter.

They fell silent.

Minutes passed.

Hunter smirked. He was the first to speak. "Why are you staring at me like that? Are you going to try and stop me?"

"Don't do this," Priya pleaded. "Surely someone as smart as you can see it's taking things too far."

He shook his head. "No, not really. Remember, it's a virtual world. I thought about what you said at lunchtime, and to answer your question: I'd never do anything like this in real life. I'm not some sick monster. In the real world, I want peace and fairness and equality." He glanced towards Miller's desk. "In Cytro, however, I'm curious to see how far we can take it."

"And just how far do you plan to go?" Jiaying demanded.

He laughed softly. "Pretty far. I've got something fun planned for this weekend. Zack and I are working on it."

Diego looked in the shorter boy's direction. "You've been quiet lately. What do you think about all this? Do you agree with it?"

"I do," he nodded. "Don't worry though; I know where you're coming from. What we're doing is a little questionable, I agree, but like Hunter said, none of it is real." He walked over to the engineer's computer and made himself comfortable. "And we'll never have this opportunity again."

"Aren't you curious?" Hunter asked, stealing their attention. "Are you even just that little bit curious to see what happens to Cytro?"

"No," Jiaying lied.

Hunter raised an eyebrow. "The thing about Cytro is, it doesn't come with a list of presets. It's up to its administrators to customise it. And the coolest part is that even changing one parameter can have such a huge effect. Change multiple parameters, and things get really interesting."

The trio stared at him, their faces indicating they weren't convinced.

"Coding is about problem-solving, right?" he continued. "I know all three of you have coding experience, so surely you can appreciate how fun it is to have to think ten moves ahead. Let me give you an example: today we're making a few changes to the bots, but we're also deactivating the line that makes them universal with parameter changes, and we'll activate a freeflow algorithm so they can change and adapt on their own. That way Maggie won't be directly affected. It took us an hour to figure out how to write that code block."