Summary

HP 14" Chromebook (Refurbished) launched on Meh but was already sold out for a bit, and then it wasn’t. It may have just been a clerical/technical problem. Or it may have been something much more sinister…

What Actually Happened:

Moose leaned back in his chair, his cigarette illuminating his face as rain pattered against the window. He had been working in the Fast Action Response Team, Hacked Ecommerce Activities Division for Mediocre Corp for years, and the job had aged him. Still, he had to admit he couldn’t resist the thrill of defending against a solid hack. He exhaled and watched the smoke twist and fade, glowing in the dim light of the electronics at his workstation. He began shaking the cans on his desk, tossing the empties to the floor until he found one that rattled with a few sips left.

His InfoPanel abruptly began to blink and screech a loud alarm, causing Moose to spit his drink out. “Damn, the Bagel Bytes again” he muttered, wiping redbull off the monitor. He flipped his translucent DataEagle down over his left eye and slipped on his fingerless leather gloves that said “BADHACKR” on the knuckles. Typing at furious speeds, he sent a spike to slow them down while he investigated what they were getting into, along with a message.

First things first, Moose checked what was supposed to go up for sale that night. “Hmm, an HP Chromebook? This must be what they’re after. With enough of these even a total noob could pull of some righteous hacks.” He made a mental note to buy one for himself when this is over, but right now he had bigger fish to fry. The Bagel Bytes had decompiled his spike faster than expected and were launching a DDOS attack at the servers. He started derezzing the botnet but couldn’t keep up with the incoming pings. Suddenly he realized the smoke in his eyes weren’t from his cigarette, it was coming from his own mainframe; the bastards were running IceeHawt.exe on him! It was an unstoppable hack, but what they didn’t know is that Moose was roommates with Icee in college and helped him write it. He flipped a switch under his desk, activating the emergency water-cooling system, and went back to work.

As he dropped the DDOS in the recycle bin, something in his DataEagle caught his attention: the attacks were targeting everything except the condition code. An arbitrary feature, all it did was indicate whether or not a product in inventory was New or Refurbished. Moose wondered what they could want with that, but didn’t have long to think because more alarms began to flash as “MEH LAUNCHED SOLD OUT” began to scroll across on the LED board on the wall. “Sold out, of course!” he shouted, “you brilliant nerds, you thought you could distract me and change the condition code, causing a cascade of fetch errors and giving you control of inventory. I’m almost impressed” he said with a smirk. Knowing exactly what to do, Moose double encrypted the condition code to Refurbished and sent a firespike with the message “clever, but u cant mess with the best.” He considered giving them a taste of IceeHawt.exe, but decided to be merciful. After all, this was the most excitement he’d had in awhile.

Impact

• Moose’s actions were applauded by everyone
• The whole company had a party in Moose’s honor and presented him with a trophy
• Moose was given a bonus of a million dollars but donated it to charity (as usual)