Hacktivism (Short Story/One Shot)

Hacktivism

H3RO99 has joined chatroom.

PERL34 has joined chatroom.

PERL34: So?

H3RO99: So?

PERL34: Don't be a dumbass

PERL34: Do you have my lines of knitting?

H3RO99: Yes

H3RO99: I'm not a dumbass...

PERL34: Could have fooled me

PERL34: I'm going on vacation soon

H3RO99: Where?

PERL34: Hiawatha National Forest

PERL34: It's pretty there in spring

PERL34: Dollar Settlement nearby

PERL34: I like going for Picnics in the Big Pines

H3RO99: In Michigan?

H3RO99: When are you going?

The technician sitting behind the computer board at GTV's headquarters was out of his depths when it started.  At first, it had been any regular evening, watching the prerecorded shows go by in an orderly fashion. Ad breaks would run their course, and the plastic smiles of the announcers seemed permanently glued to their faces as if they didn't know how to be anything more than mildly concerned for the goings on of the world. Leaning lazily back in his spinning chair, the technician wasn't thinking much past what chips he planned to by from the vending machine on his next coffee break when a screen to his left went blank. Instead of the reel of commercials that would start up in the next commercial break, the screen had gone completely dim. 

"What..." The technician turned towards the screen as he checked the monitor was still plugged in then tapped commands into his keyboard. The other systems were responding fine, but the monitor that was supposed to be loading the ad files had shut down. He tried loading the ads on a different monitor, but they refused to load. He tried putting a different function on the monitor and it blinked to life again. As he tried frantically to get the ads loaded again, it became apparent, the ad files had become corrupted and no amount of reloading was going to change that. Going over the phone, he dialed down to advertising. "Yeah, hey." He began. "The ad files just corrupted up here, do you have another copy of them you could send me? What?... What do you mean, they're corrupted down there too? Do you have the original file or--"

The technician froze mid-sentence as all four of the screens on the desk in front of him, began to malfunction until they all flickered out leaving him in almost total darkness. One the desk, he had a couple lamps whose brightness had been turned down due to the late hour. Now he turned them back up again.

"Hey, I'm going to have to call you back," He tapped the switch hook to hang up then dialed the IT department. He was surprised at how long it took them to answer as usually they were pretty prompt "Yeah, hi. The electronics up here are going haywire. Could you send a guy up? What? Across the whole building? Listen, the ads go up in three minutes, we're running out of time up here! . . . Yeah. . . Okay, thank you."

He hung up again and called back down to advertising, "Any progress on the ad files? . . .Gone? Completely gone? There's no way-- well I suppose. . . A malfunction that wipes the drives isn't something I've not heard of. . . Have you called IT? You too, huh? Apparently the whole building is experiencing issues. . . I know right? And here I thought tonight was going to be uneventful."

It was at this moment all four monitors, as if by dramatic timing, turned back on, and nearly blinded the technician. He dropped the phone and almost fell out of his chair as he was startled to his feet. The monitors were blank white, except for a cursor up in the top left corner rapidly blinking. Just as the technician was reaching for the phone he dropped, the screens went black again. All except for one. The screen that played what was being broadcast live, came to life with a message the technician didn't recognize. It was a stripy purple background, like how sunsets where drawn in old animations, just in purple. From the purple horizon a red animated bird flew onto the screen and winked at the camera.