MapleSAP Special: Hackers
Part 4: Alysha’s Story

[Bud]: Mr. Rei said that we could stay in the apartment unit next door to the one Alysha lives in.
Alysha is living with five other kids, none of who speak English, the two women (one speaks Mandarin, the other speaks Singlish), and and old man named Wang Chong. Old Man Chong works for Mr. Rei crunching numbers and record work. He maintains the entire building’s economic records from rent and bill payments to maintenance costs.
After Orchid (the Singlish speaking lady) convinced Alysha to talk with Malon, the frail old man came in and peered at us with suspicion, and began speaking snappily in Mandarin at Lina; who was talking to Cletus.

They argued hastily in Chinese about us and Cletus picked up on their heated debate.
[“Why are those white men here?! They must go!”]
[“Wang, they media! They wan talk to Alysha!”]
[“Media?! No! I want them out! White TV lies! They’ll twist her story around even more and make her look worse of a monster than TV already made her out to be!”]
[“Of course. I want these hutudan-mun gone too! They go around making too many zazhong with our children and call them all hackers!”]
Old Man Chong stared at us and waved his cane in the air.
“B¨´y¨¤oli¨£n de d¨­ngx¨© lah! Ni fei ren! S¨¤n sh¨©! Tu¨­ sh¨¥n! [You people are useless! GET OUT! It because of you her life is ruined! And you have balls to come here and lie to our faces?! You just wan hurt her!]!!”
Lina snapped back at him in Mandarin,
[“Mr. Rei told us to let them in!!”]
Chong stopped, and stared at us. His long beard and wrinkled face rippled as she shook with rage.
[“Alysha talk to the lady in blue cap only!”]
“Shi de, shi de. Ni, san shi!” Chong snapped at us, pointing to the door.
We shrugged and everyone but Malon stepped out.

“Alysha, you and lady go talk in room,” Orchid said. Alysha got up and led Malon into the kids’ bedroom.

The room was big, but double bunk beds took up most of the space. There were enough beds to hold six people.
The two spare beds were covered in stuff like clothes, books and other things; a real mess. Crap was strewn all over the hardwood floor. There’s an old computer on the desk next to the TV stand. The TV is accompanied by a DVD-VHS combo machine and an old Playstation2 with stacks of burnt games.
The window was covered with ugly yellow curtains which were open. The window was fogged up from water condensation caused by the freezing cold outside. A bright flourescent light lit up the whole room. Chinese posters, pictures, and banners hung from the walls, as well as a few faked ads for Singapura movies.

Malon’s bed was the heavy mattress under the window. Some other kid took over her bed.
“So this is your room?” Malon asked. “Yeah. 6 other kids sleep here. They use the beds and kicked me off. stupid morons!”
“How long have you lived here?”
“I think like, two months. I don’t really know.” Alysha sits cross legged on her mattress and adjust the scarf around her neck to make sure it covers the hack marks. She seemed kind of depressed as she pulled close her backpack and pulled out her school work.
“What school do you go to?” Malon asked as she sat on the floor.
“Not telling,” Alysha said. “You people said you’re from MapleSAP, right?”
“Yes. We are-”
“I read the special story on the Justice Arrow. What happened to those guys?”
“The team?”
“Ya.”
Malon thought. Ross Kent made it back in one piece and is working at the office downtown, but everyone else disappeared. Ross said the JA took away their Maple name tags and they had to sneak out of Henesys. Apparently Hank never made it…
“Well?” Alysha asked.
“I don’t know. Ross never said much.”
“How do I know you people aren’t posing for KLON, or the cops, or something else?!” the girl demanded.
“Well…you don’t. We aren’t posing or going undercover for anyone, and if you don’t believe me, you don’t have to. it’s the truth,” Malon said.
“Riiiight.” Alysha said, tucking her knees under her chin. “Who sent you?”
“My boss wanted me to go on assignment with Budweiser. He’s like, ‘Malon, you’re pretty much tweaking out. You need to get out more’,”
“What do you think of this place?” Alysha asked. “You think its a hacker infested shythole full of people who aren’t capable of speaking English?”
“No!” Malon protested. “I didn’t think anywhere was as bad as New Compton! Everyone seems a hell of alot more friendly here, even than in Fraser Crescent!”
“Damn rich people!” Alysha spat. “I asked that because that’s what the media calles 7ung Hwang. The guys on MapleRadio and KLON made a bunch of racist comments about Azns calling them in human aliens not capapble of understanding a sophisticated language as English.”
“Not Mr. Knight?”
“No, he didn’t say that stuff. one of his employees got on the air, interrupted the music program and made his crapass speech. What happened to him anyway?”
“Oh! Now i remember!” Malon said. “You heard it, right?” Alysha nodded.
“Nobodyknight caught the guy talking on the air and kicked the crap out of him, then fired him. Sammy filed a lawsuit, but the judge dropped the case because of what Sammy said on the radio. Knight’s doing damage control and KLON Radio’s broadcasting apology messages all the time now. It was all over the news last week.”
“Oh.” Alysha said. “So you’re sure you’re not cops, right?”
Malon nodded. “Scared of the police?”
“Hells yeah!” the girl shot back. “My mom and dad put a death warrant on me!!”

“Death warrant?”
“Yeah! Even though Kerning and Yazhou are safety zones for hackers, they still managed to get the court to put a contract out on me!”
“With who?” Malon asked in disbelief.
“Who you think? the fcuking cops! It’s like an arrest warrant!”
“How did you find out?” Malon asked.
Alysha jumped up, and reached into her drawer and pulled out an envelope, and pulled out some legal papers.
She handed them to Malon.
“I was coming home from school on Xingqisan, uh, I mean Wednesday, and this cop came up behind me! He taps me on the shoulders, scaring the living crap outta me, and he’s, like, flashing his cop badge. I was like, shaking in my shoes thinking he was gonna kill grab me, and drag me to some van full of cops and kill me! He pulled out these papers and gave them to me. He said that the order just came out and the cops would be looking for me.”
Alysha’s voice started breaking up as she was talking.

“He’s like ‘Alysha Erickson. The court has issued an arrest warrant on the request of Josef and Mary-Anne Erickson. They have asked that you be terminated by the GM immediately.'” A tear started coming out.
“What happened next?”
“The cop said I better be careful and walked away. I was crying and ran home. I didn’t want to be a hacker! I am still me, not some blood thirsty fuqking vampire! What I don’t get is why my mom and dad did this!” she started crying.
“I checked and asked people about the law. I even went to see Mr. Rei’s lawyer and he said this death warrant is illegal! But somehow they managed to twist things around and nobody cares because I’m a damn hacker!” Alysha spazzed.
“And all the media are agreeing with this crap! I was at the wonton house down the street with Lina and the TV was running the english news, and the news reporter said ‘a death warrant has been issued for hacker Alysha Erickson. Once this hacker is down, the conflict will be resolved and the family will fill compensated after the kid dies’!!”

“That is horrible!” Malon replied. “I mean you never did anything to-“
“Exactly! I didn’t do shyt! That fuqking hacker cleric did it! SHE should be killed, NOT me! The idiots from the Grasshopper team didn’t come help me. Hello! I got an arrow in my neck, I can’t breath and I’m bleeding to death!”

Malon paused as the girl cried.
“Umm…I wanted to talk to you because I wanted your side of the whole incident. Lots of people; even outside the Azn area think the TV and newspapers were being one-sided. When you can, can you summarize things from your point of view?”
Alysha wiped her eyes with her sweatshirt sleeve. “WHY was there a bowman there? That’s what I want to know! The evil hackers and the JA are all banned from all sports places. How the hell did he get in without people knowing he’s got a friggin bow?”
“I…I don’t know. That guy got arrested. He was trying to leave town. The prosecutors are trying to book him for murder.”
“But I didn’t die!…wait a minute! The death warrant?”
Malon nodded. “Could be….the guy said he was trying to kill Xina Wen, that girl who was trying to get the ball away from you. They said the JA paid him to shoot her because they were scared of her hacking the Arrowhawks team. The guy fired, missed and got you by accident.”
“I was shot in the neck. I couldn’t breathe and I was bleeding like a pig at a slaughterhouse! Pretty accurate for an accident!”
“So, how about your side of the whole story?”
“What do you want to know?” Alysha asked.
“..The shooting from your point of view.”

Silence. Alysha thought.
“…it sucked. It really did. I didn’t even see it coming. I was dumb enough to think security guard handled everything in a hacker-plureblood mixed soccer game! Our coach, Nelson, who like, knows alot about hackers and purebloods in sports and all the crap to go with that. He kept telling the whole team, the Grasshoppers, he told not to go up on hacker players alone. He wanted at least two of us on a hacker player. Something about safety. But in the game, when things are getting heated, we get tied up and can’t keep doing the safety crap spoken by a racist coach. All the hackers I ran into on the field never tried to shoot hack magic at me. The one time I got zapped was by a magician player!”
“Magician?”
“Yeah! Hackers have better anger management skills that magicians. I see it all the time, even here!”
“What was the general policy concering hackers among all of your coaches?”
“My coach from the school team cancelled any games with Azn teams. We couldn’t go in the playoffs because of that, so we joined the Grasshopper team. Coach Macmillian says hackers are the esact same as us on the field.”
Malon took a deep breath.
“Alysha, what happened-“
“Wait! I don’t even know your name!”
“My name is Malon,”
“Okay, just wanted to know before you start using my name,” the girl said.
“So what were the moments like as soon as you got hit?”

“I wasn’t even lucky enough to get knocked out. Xina Wen was up in my face, kicking wildly for the ball and I was trying to get around her so I could go for the net, and I heard this loud gunshot. Sounded like a musket blast.
We were all startled and then the arrow hit me. When I replay it in my brain, it seems like hours. I felt the tip of the arrow break the skin, carve through the tissue, and I actually felt it break through the artery, and I remember feeling the blood explode and then my windpipe was shattered. The arrow sliced the vein on the left side of my throat, and it got stuck there. My whole head twisted with the impact and i felt something break in the back of my neck and my head twisted totally backwards. I can remember the sun blasting in my face. Then I fell and hit the ground.”
“What were your inital thoughts?”
“I was like, W.T.F.” Alysha answered.

“I got dizzy after that, and everything got so bright I could hardly see. Then a bunch of people came around me shouting in Chinese or something and I felt somebody’s hand on my neck where the arrow was.
Then this other woman was on me and I actually saw black magic coming out of her hands. Before then I didn’t like hackers, and sure as hell didn’t want them touching me. I tried to scream and shake my head but couldn’t. I couldn’t even move. and then a whole bunch of other hackers but their hands on my neck and I felt all this stinging energy in my throat and everywhere. I felt them take the arrow out and saw the green light from a cleric’s heal spell. Then I passed out.”

“What did you think when the hackers were working on you?” Malon asked.
“I thought my life was over. I thought if I ever survived, everyone would hate me like they hate those serial killer hackers. Felt like I failed at life. It’s the kind of feeling people get when they find out they got the HIV virus.”

“What happened when you woke up?”
“I woke up in the hospital. I thought everything was a bad dream. There was heavy bandages around my neck. This Chinese doctor came in with a nurse and a medical mage, and some other girl who also had a staff. I think it was a llama staff. The doc talked to me in English, and I was afraid. I said to him’ I wanna go home!’. Then he said to me that I couldn’t because I had to be tested for hack. I refused to believe it. I called my mom from the hospital. She was surprised, and said ‘We thought you were dead! How can you be alive!”
“I was like I dunno. the doctors managed to fix something in me. Shouldn’t be happy?”
“My mom then got pissed and said, ‘No! you should have died! You’re a hacker!’ and she hung up. I just stood there holding the phone. They took me for hack testing and the sheet said I was a hacker.”

“How did you react?” Malon asked.
“I just broke down and cried. I thought my life was over. I thought they were going to call the GM.”
“I’m sorry all this happened to you, I really am,” Malon said sadly. “Did the hospital staff have sympathy?”
Malon nodded. “No. The closest thing I got to sympathy was the medic mage bich telling me to suck it up. She’s like ‘this happens all the time.’ I wanted to punch her out for saying that!”
“What happened after?”
“More tests. I had to take breathing tests, blood tests- okay, when they took out some blood, it was fuqking black! I swear to God! That scared the hell out of me! It looked so alien! All the testing crap went for about a week, then I was sent to see a social worker and she took me and dropped me off here. She didn’t even go in to talk to Mr. Rei or anybody. I was on the streets for a day or two. People looked at me with the look of death. Bunch of kids chased me down the alleys after I got caught stealing food from a fish market, and these hackers came out of nowhere and grabbed me. They took me here, and ya. here I am.” Alysha said, pointing around the room.

“At first I don’t know this place was a safe house for hackers. I walked around here scared crapless until I found out.
Eventually I ended up following the other hacker kids- at a distance to school. The teachers talked and argued about me and put me in a singlish speaking class.”

“What was it like to be in a new school not knowing the language everyone speaks?”
“What do you think!?” Alysha snapped.
“Okay okay, I’m sorry.” Malon said.
There was a sharp bang on the door, and it opened. It was Mila.
“Alysha! Come! We take wanfan lah! MapleSAP lady! You go! Come back later!”

Alysha and Malon got up.
“Thank you for your time. I do my best to present everything accuately.” Malon said, extending her hand for a shake.
“You damn well better!” Alysha said, not shaing her hand.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
There it is her side of the story.
To be honest, im actually disappointed i hardly ever get feedback from anyone (except silver). makes me wonder if you guys even read this stuff and just click [enjoyed this blog] for the hell of it.
Every other story or blog on this site gets 10+ comments, and i hardly get crap.
seriously, please actually put something for feedback. TY

Wolfy