MapleSAP Special: Hackers
Part 1: Hackerville

Most of the hackers in Victoria live in the Azn owned 7ung Hwang City, a high density city 35 miles north of Kerning,
just behind Mount Kankoku on its northern side. 7ung Hwang City is among 45 other large cities built by the SEA Landers
since the 1960’s. 50 years ago, all this used to be forest, until logging companies came in, chopped down the trees, and the land was purchased by Zhongese busniessman HanktheFei1, for a total of 27 million mesos (about 7.3 bil in today’s money). The land was named Yazhou County, and as the refugees from the SEA Lands and Zhonguo Territories began arriving to get away from the conflicts up there, the cities grew fast. The construction created a boom, and soon almost everyone in Kerning was coming up here to help build everything.
By 1975, almost all of the land within Yazhou County was developed, and larger, higher buildings were being built.
80,000 hackers were among the 7.1 million Azns (or Yazhouren-men as they’re called in Chinese) who came to live and work here. Because hacker awareness among the publec was low, and hackers were hardly heard of at this time, they were shunned even by their fellow Azns. They lived and worked in 7ung Hwang City’s Linxia, Ginkgo, Hafei, Jayapura, and Kangrow districts on the edge of town. Over the decades, as the hacker population increased, the cluster of districts along the Toa-Payoh River earned the infamous name ‘Hackerville.’
Over the next thirty years, 7ung Hwang, Xiang Gong and other major cities grew, each of them separated by
farms or industrial areas flourished and the local economy thrived.
Other cities were built, filling in the land between here and Kerning City. The border town that is seen as a buffer between the Victorian side and the Northern side is the cities in Coquitlam County. While people in these industrial/market cities work and co-exist, the white people in the south isolated the SEA Landers.
Exceptions include workers who are shipped out to Kerning’s industrial areas and back each day, Permanoobs who are always coming and going between Permanoob burbs in Kerning and Yazhou.

My name is Budweiser and I grew up all the way over in Ludi. My mom died of hack induced cancer when I was six.
Even though my dad and I tested negative for hackium, the Ludi city government evicted us from our apartment and threatened to report us to the GM if we didn’t leave, and so we flew from Ludi to ORbis to Ellinia and took the long bus ride from Ellinia to Kerning. I grew up in a rural district called Appleton, about 6 miles north of Kerning. Appleton was founded in 1958 and was supposed to be a high class neighborhood. Property values were expected to be high because of the damn sweet view of the mountains around here. When the SEA Landers came, sour attitudes made people leave and property value dropped. While the Azn cities are still 20 miles north of Appleton, the majority of people living here are Victorian, Espanol or Dutch trade workers, all working the average job and raising families.
during the 25 years I lived here, there were only six hacker incidents around here. One was a serial killer, but the GMs nabbed him pretty quick. The other five were doing really dangerous things, such as flying around, or using the vack power to save a kid on a bike from a speeding car. And the media never fails to make these people look like monsters.

What made me really think was the overblown media coverage on the kill hack massacre of ’06. Don’t get me wrong, there were kill hackers killing people, but with the federal stats agency saying over 100,000 people died, and the amount of hackers arrested, media agencies such as KLON, Maple News Network, LeafTV, and MBC all made it look way worse than it actually was. 157 of the 183 hackers killed or arrested weren’t even hurting anybody. The guys who did killed alot, and the GMs finally did kill them…after they took a 24 hour break, knowing that there were hackers about, killing people.
But all the pictures, videos and other coverage poured in, and the media made it look bloodier than the series of summon bag attacks that plagued Ellinia back in 1988.
And more people watch the news than any other program on TV. It seems the news is more exciting than
horror movies, or Winamp TV.
And not once have I seen a dangerous hacker with my own eyes. But purebloods aren’t so pure themselves.
At least 200 crimes happen each day in the city; most of them minor. And they are committed by purebloods.
Since purebloods go causing the same about of trouble as hackers do, I figured those that don’t can’t be that bad.

After leaving the MapleSAP office with my team of scared purebloods; Jake, Malon, Cletus, and Saria, we set out on the long journey to 7ung Hwang City.
The bus from downtown Kerning City took at least an hour to get to Coquitlam Center, and we boarded workers’ bus.
The bus did not return to the freeway because at this point, Victoria Freeway breaks away from the city, crosses the
North Fraser River, passes more farms and meets Victoria Road, which goes to Perion.
The bus, and old 1980’s ghetto model, roars loudly as it drives along the cracked roads and streets going through Coqton, and my hometown Appleton. Jake, Malon, Cletus, and Saria are all tense and so am I. We are the only white people on this bus, and the only English speaking people on the bus. A few young people are speaking Singlish, but everyone else was talking in Thai, Malay or Chinese.
After another hour of passing through industrial areas, such as factories, processing plants, warehouses, we cross the Toa Payoh River and enter Yazhou County.

It’s like crossing the border into a completely foreign world. Unlike in Kerning where people are cold snobs to one another and walk by with nothing more than an icy glare, people on the streets here greet eachother.
Buildings rise up and seem like they’re touching the sky. We are in downtown 7ung-Hwang, the busniness capital of the county. Most of the companies established here were started by locals, or are branches of bigger companies in the North. The bus pulls into a crowded exchange station and we get off. People line the streets, selling verious home made goods from sugar coated baked candy fruit to woven clothes.
Inside the video arcades, hundreds of people play online games that connect them to players in Zhonguo, the SEA Lands, and even the Korean Lands. It seems the popular belief that there is no communication between the iron curtain that saperated north from south is just a rumor.
As we walk, we end up getting stares from quite a few people. Not hostile stares, but looks of curiosity from the locals as to why we are here.
“Duibuqi! Neng buneng bangmang?” Cletus calls to a passing man and his two kids.
The man stops. “Ni hao?”
“Womun milu le,” Cletus said, pointing to us. “Ni hui shuo Yingyu ma?”
“Dui le,” the man said, and then in English,”What brings you here?” he asked.
“We’re looking for a town called Hackerville. Have you heard of it?” I asked. “I was told it’s around here, but we can’t find it on the map.”
“Hacker-ville? There’s no such name. If you want to talk to hackiimun, go left at ChanWai, its about 10 blocks down and turn right. Go to place called Toa Payoh Hackiimun Dasha. They speak Singlish, but some shoiuld speak English. Okay?”
“Thank you very much,” I said.
“Xie xie!” Cletus said to the man as he started walking again, his two little girls following him.
“Not a proble. You have nice day!”

And so we continued walking down the busy street, going deeper and deeper into what many of us call a strange and ‘alien world’, but already, everyone seems friendly, a far contrast to what the media calls them.
As the sun sets behind the mountains, it gets cold fast. The weather station had forecast icy rains for the next two days. As guests who don’t know how to find the bus home, we rely on our politeness, courtesy, respect and our diplomatic skills, and so we set out to find the Toa Payoh Hackers’ House. Wow, they aren’t even secretive about the name here.

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In the next episode, Budweiser and his team talk to actual hackers!