When Two Worlds Collide

It tore him up to know that somewhere, on the other side of the phone line that connected his house to The Internet, Samson was wreaking havoc with his name and there was nothing he could do about it.

A tortured night passed in which he woke up many times. Dreams of what he would do to Samson if he ever met him in person filled his head.

Suddenly, a bright light woke him from his fitful sleep. His covers were tangled all around him and his pillow lay on the floor. It took him a moment to realize that his mother had turned his power back on using his overhead light as a sadistic alarm clock.

He rubbed his eyes and then suddenly sat up with dread. He untangled himself from his blanket and ran over to the computer. It took a minute to boot up and get online.

With shaky hands, Justin typed www.battlereporting.com. Sure enough, on the front page at the top of the list was the name Samson-RK-. The title of the report was, "So now I'm a hacker... big deal?"

Justin clicked on the report and it opened up. Pictures of everything that had transpired during the game filled his screen. Samson had made many snide remarks about everything from Justin's playing skills to his family tree.

Justin scrolled down to the bottom of the report and saw that there were already 24 comments posted. He opened up the comments section and glanced through it. The NoHackers community had made a game of it. "Who can flame Justin the worst?" seemed to be the common theme.

Suddenly a voice from downstairs reached his ears, "Justin, what are you doing up there? You're going to miss your bus and I sure as hell am not driving you to school today."

Bitter anger welled up inside Justin, but he held back his sarcastic reply. The last thing he needed was another night without power.

He threw on some clothes and hurried downstairs, all the while trying to think of new and original ways to tear Samson limb from limb via his modem.

Brandon stood grumpily on the curb as a cool morning breeze blew through his hair. His hand still throbbed from last night's dishwashing mishap and the bus was late again. He wished for the millionth time that his parents could afford to buy him a car.

It was the one thing that Joe teased him about more than anything else. Being sixteen years old and still having to take the bus to school. Joe refused to pick Brandon up because he liked to sleep in until the very last second. In fact, Joe was normally late for first period.

Brandon heard some beeping off in the distance and he looked up. At first he thought the bus was finally on its way down his street, but after a second he realized it was trash day and the beeping was the loud, obnoxious garbage truck.

The neighbor's screen door squeaked open and then slammed shut. Brandon glanced over and saw the sullen neighber boy carrying two overloaded bags of garbage to the curb.

Brandon never talked to the kid much. In the three months since his family had moved here from the farmhouse 10 miles out of town, Brandon couldn't remember one time when the kid had even acknowledged his existence even though they rode the same bus to school every day. He didn't even know the kid's name.

Suddenly, as Brandon watched, one of the overloaded bags split open along the bottom and most of the trash fell out onto the driveway.

The boy cursed loudly and ran back into the house. A few moments later, he returned with a fresh garbage bag and he began scooping the trash in quickly.

Brandon saw that the garbage truck was drawing close and since the bus was still nowhere in sight, he ran over to the boy.

"Here, let me hold the bag for you," he said

The boy looked up with a greatful expression, "Thanks man."

Brandon grabbed the garbage bag and held it open while the boy scooped garbage in.

Suddenly, something caught Brandon's eye, "Hey, is that a Starcraft manual?"

The boy looked up startled, "Yeah, do you play?"

"Yup, I do and let me tell ya. You shouldn't throw away that manual, it has lots of valuable information in it." He put as much sarcastic effort as he could into the word lots and then winked.

There, he thought to himself, being friendly isn't so hard.

"So what channel do you hang out in anyway?" the boy asked.

"Well, its kind of a strange one and quite a few players hang out there. We started hanging out there when there were a lot of players getting map hacks. We set up the channel with the understanding that we were there to have fun. There's no need to hack when you play for fun. So we named the channel NoHackers. Pretty original huh?"

Brandon noticed that as he spoke, the boy's gaze seemed to wander down to his injured hand for a second. Then he quickly refocused his attention back on what Brandon was saying.

"NoHackers huh?" the boy said, "Sounds cool, maybe I'll check it out sometime. Do you know of any cool Starcraft sites on the Internet?"

The boy had a strange look on his face like he was searching for something. It unsettled Brandon just a little, but he shook it off.

"Personally, my favorite Starcraft related site is www.battlereporting.com. Its pretty cool. You can write reports on Starcraft games you play in. People get really crazy with the graphics and shit. Its something cool to do when you're bored on a school night or on the weekend. I post there quite a bit myself. You should check out some of my reports, I post under the name Samson-RK-. There's a hyphen before and after the 'RK'."

The boy got a strange smile on his face. "Yeah man, I'll have to do that."

Just then the garbage truck pulled up to the curb. The driver saw the boys standing there with the two garbage bags and he honked his horn impatiently.

The boys quickly ran the bags down to the curb and handed them to the burly garbage man who tossed them into the back of the truck.

As the garbage truck pulled away, the school bus pulled up to the curb behind it.

"Listen," said Brandon, "it was good to meet you, I'm Brandon." He held out his hand.

"I'm Justin," the boy replied.

He slapped Brandon a stinging high five and then the two of them climbed onto the bus together.

As Justin sat towards the back of the bus, his heart was racing. Brandon had sat down near the front and Justin stared at the back of his head while he tried to fully grasp the implications of this situation.

Somehow, by sheer luck, or destiny. Destiny, that's what it was. Whatever it was, Justin now had the opportunity to exact powerful revenge that extended outside the lines of Internet play and into the realm of reality.

However, it was one thing to flame somebody in an online chat room and know that you were separated by the millions of data lines that make up The Internet. But to realize that the very person is not more than a hop over the picket fence that separated your two houses was something completely different indeed.

But then Justin's thoughts returned to the events that had taken place the night before. Brandon's refusal to get ruffled, the cocky way in which he accepted praise from so many people, the way he had hacked to make Justin look bad, and of course, the battlereport made Justin realize that exacting revenge was the only solution. Not simple revenge like flaming Brandon's reports and cussing at him every time he came online. Oh no. Brandon deserved much more than that. He deserved the mental and physical revenge that could only be dealt to a real life individual.

These thoughts and others went round and round in Justin's head throughout the day. He realized that patience was the most important thing. Good revenge took time to plan. His revenge would not be simple. No. His revenge was going to be something that Brandon would remember when he was an old man sitting in a nursing home.

Good revenge takes time, and luckily for Justin, he had time.

Justin devoted the next few days to gathering information. He was no detective, but it didn't take him long to figure out that he could see Justin's bedroom window from his mom's bedroom window. Most of the time, Justin could tell when Brandon was in his room because he could see the soft glow of the computer screen through the curtains.

The hardest part of waiting came in the mornings when he had to wait for the bus. Now that Brandon had broken the barrier between the two of them, he seemed to have decided that Justin was going to be his pal. He would chat amiably with Justin and try to talk Starcraft with him.

On one particular morning, Brandon asked Justin what his Battle.Net handle was. Since Justin had only one handle and Brandon knew it all too well, Justin was at a loss. Thinking quickly, he had dropped the 15 pages of notebook paper that contained his English paper onto the ground. The early morning breeze spread the pages around quickly.

Brandon had laughed, "You jackass," he had said.

Justin had bent over quickly to hide his livid, beet red face. He took his time chasing down his papers and by the time he had gathered them up, he had cooled off and the bus had arrived.

"I'll show you who's the jackass," he had mumbled under his breath as he made his way back to his usual spot in the rear of the bus.

A few days passed like this and when the perfect opportunity finally arose, Justin was ready.

He was lying across his mom's bed reading a PC Gamer magazine. Every couple of minutes he would glance up at Brandon's window. Even though the curtains were closed, Justin could see Brandon's silhouette outlined by the light in his room.

Suddenly, Justin heard a distinct thump. It sounded like a door slam. His heart beat a little bit faster as he ran over to the window. From just the right angle, he could get a pretty good view of Brandon's driveway. The view showed him what he wanted to see... Brandon's parents climbing into their car.

They were dressed up fairly nice and were obviously ready for a night on the town. They appeared to be laughing as they pulled their car out of the driveway and into the street.

Justin waited five minutes to make sure that Brandon's parents didn't return for some forgotten item, then he ran to his bedroom. He grabbed his new digital camera off the shelf and made sure that there was a floppy disk loaded. Then he grabbed the box that he had prepared for this moment from under his bed.

The box contained some random make up from the cabinet in the bathroom, A hot pink thong with a bra to match from mom's bottom dresser drawer, plenty of rope, a set of handcuffs, and a frying pan.

Justin smiled and his heart beat faster as he hurried down the steps and through the kitchen toward the back door. His adrenaline was pumping now. Brandon was going to pay.

Dusk was falling on a clear spring evening as Justin stepped out into the back yard. A lone cricket chirped near the fence and a couple of street lights from the next street over shone with a ghostly gleam.

From his spot on the patio, Justin could see the glow of the computer screen in Brandon's window. He looked around, searching for prying eyes. When he felt safe he headed across the yard and climbed nimbly over the fence and onto Brandon's side.

Justin's heart beat very fast in his chest now. It felt like it might burst out at any moment. He walked quickly to the back door and said a silent prayer. This was the one spot where his entire plan could be foiled.

He reached his hand out and grasped the doorknob. He turned to the left. Nothing. His heart sank. But then he turned it to the right. A smile crossed his face. Jackpot! He pushed the door open as quietly as he could and stepped inside.

The downstairs was dark and he waited for a second while his eyes adjusted. Then he looked around to get his bearings.

The inside of this house wasn't much different from the inside of his own house. The backdoor opened into the kitchen. The sink was to his left and he could see the dark shape of the kitchen table between himself and the doorway that led into the hallway.

He carefully stepped around the table and into the hallway. A set of stairs stood to his right while the bathroom was to his left. The living room and the front door were straight ahead.

He walked to the end of the hallway to where the bottom of the stairs began and then started his ascent. The stairs were carpetted and they were good stairs. He stepped lightly on each stair and slowly put his weight down onto it. Not a single creak was heard.

He could see over the stairwell with 4 steps to go. He immediately spotted Brandon's room down the hall to the right because the bedroom door was open and the light from the computer screen spilled out.

Softly, he walked down the hall. His heart beat faster as he neared the doorway and a bead of sweat began to form on his brow. He got within four feet of the door and bent down, setting his box on the floor. He silently opened the lid and pulled out the rope and the frying pan. His camera hung around his neck.

He cautiously peaked his head around the door to take stock of the situation. What he saw made his mouth open in shock and he almost dropped the frying pan on the floor. He gripped the pan tighter and pulled his head back trying to let his brain register what his eyes had seen. It took at least a minute.

It took another minute for him to change his plan.

Who can explain the hormone driven teenage years? Brandon sure couldn't, and he wasn't about to try. All he knew was that one moment, he was sitting at his desk, calmly working on his Economics homework, and the next moment the front of his pants were being stretched to the limit and he was having a hard time keeping his hands out of his lap.

That was why when his mom called up the stairs telling him that she and dad were going out to eat and would be home about ten, Brandon let out a sigh of relief.

He listened carefully for the front door to slam and the car to pull out of the drive. A quick check of the curtains showed them to be closed and Brandon hopped out of his chair. He ripped off his shirt and boxer shorts and tossed them onto the bed. A quick examination of himself showed that he was good to go.

He cut the light to his room so that the only illumination came from the computer screen. Then he sat back down in his chair and stretched his feet out in front of him. He typed in the address to his favorite site and once the site was loaded, everything was driven by mouse click so that he had one hand free.

The first pic that he pulled up on his screen showed a tan, hard-muscled man standing under a palm tree. The man's face was grim and he seemed to be saying, "I want you now Brandon."

Brandon moaned softly and stared contentedly at the picture for a couple of minutes, then he clicked to the next picture. This one was a little more graphic. Two men were involved and Brandon stared longingly at the scene for a moment. Then he closed his eyes. With his eyes shut, it wasn't the men on the screen that he saw, it was Joe. This made him even more excited.

The fantasy began to play out in his mind and his left hand started to do its job.

Being alone in the house let his inhibitions run wild. "Oh Yes, Joe!" he cried out in ecstasy.

He heard the click first, then the flash penetrated his tightly closed eyelids.

His animal instinct took over first. His heart seized in his chest and he leapt out of his chair. His head turned quickly to the source of the click. It was the doorway to his bedroom. Nothing was there. Then, just like Adam in the garden, he realized that he was naked and he looked wildly around on the floor for his shorts.

It seemed like hours, but it was only seconds until his reasoning skills began to return. For a moment, he thought that his play had been effecting him much more than usual, but then his oversensitive hearing picked up the sound of light footsteps on the stairs.

Now he was convinced that someone was in the house with him. He realized how vulnerable he was and he became deeply frightened. Four months ago when he had turned sixteen, his dad had shown him where he kept the handgun. "Its a dangerous world and I think you should know how to use it when you're home alone," he had said.

Brandon grabbed his boxer shorts and ran down the hallway to his parents bedroom. He flipped on the light and grabbed the handgun out of the nightstand drawer. Then he sat quietly on the bed. He listened carefully, but there wasn't a sound.

It took him thirty minutes to get up the nerve to leave the bedroom. Even then, his heart was racing and he held the gun so tightly in his hand that his knuckles were white.

He went from room to room, turning on lights as he went. He checked in closets and behind furniture and found nothing. He looked for missing items, everything appeared to be in place. After fifteen minutes of searching, his heart rate began to slow and he realized that if his imagination hadn't been playing tricks on him and someone had been there, they were gone now.

He glanced at the clock on the living room wall. It was only eight. Two hours until he expected his parents home.

He was still a little shaken by the whole ordeal, so he went over to the phone, picked it up, and dialed.

"Hellll - loooo," came Joe's obnoxious voice through the speaker.

"Hey freak."

"Brandon! Whaddya want freak?"

"Listen, I didn't realize the girl I brought home was going to be such a good lay. I'm just now getting started on my Economics homework and I didn't realize it was going to be such a bitch. Do you have it done?"

Joe laughed, "You dumbass, you've been playing that stupid computer game again haven't you?"

Brandon forced a laugh, "Do you have Economics done or not freak?"

Joe sighed, "I suppose you want me to swing by."

"Awww, could ya?"

"I can, but only on one condition."

"What's that?" asked Brandon.

"I want your Geometry problems for class on Wednesday."

"Deal."

Brandon sighed with relief and hung up the phone. Then he ran upstairs to the bathroom. Talking to Joe had reminded him of some business he needed to attend to and he had about fifteen minutes to take care of it before Joe arrived.

Justin's heart rate finally began to slow as he sat down at his desk. His hands shook a little bit as he popped the disk out of the camera and loaded it into his computer's floppy drive.

He opened up his photo editing program and then clicked the Open icon on his toolbar. He selected his disk drive in the drop down box and then listened to the disk grind while it loaded up its contents.

And there it was, the one file that existed on the disk. His revenge.

He was proud of his innovation, his last minute planning. Because of his quick thinking, because he had left the frying pan out of his plan, if he ever got caught, the charges were downgraded from assault and battery to simple tresspassing.

And so here it was, the moment of truth. His heart rate sped back up as he slid his mouse pointer across the screen until it hovered over the file. He paused for a moment, hoping, praying. Then he double clicked.

The disk grinded again and a blue status bar flew across the bottom of the screen. And then, there it was.

Justin stared in disbelief at the handiwork he had somehow managed to create.

In the top left hand corner of the picture was Brandon's perfectly recognizable head thrown back, his mouth open in ecstasy. His body was stretched out in a spasm so that his rear sat on the front edge of his chair. His legs were stretched out to the bottom right hand corner of the picture. In the center, standing straight up was the money, the jackpot, Brandon's erect penis pointing straight up in the air with his left hand wrapped around the shaft.

This in and of itself was damning enough to suit Justin's purposes, but there was a bonus. In the top right hand corner of the picture stood Brandon's monitor. On the monitor, a colorful picture filled the screen. The picture contained a large muscular dark haired man receiving oral pleasure from a blonde man of similar size and girth.

Justin's joyful excitement could not be contained. He jumped out of the chair and started dancing around the room singing, "I'm bad, I'm bad, you know it, OW!"

Suddenly he stopped dancing. He looked at the picture again. Something was missing. There was an open space in the top center section of the picture and Brandon's passionate words returned to Justin.

He returned to his chair, sat down, and created a speech bubble in the opening. Inside the speech bubble he typed, "On Yes, Joe!"

Then Justin sat back with a smile and put his hands behind his head. His masterpiece was complete.