One of my favorite characters in my new novel is an emaciated hacker named Quartz: As a boy, Quartz had obsessed over dinosaurs, especially the idea of a world dominated not by women and men but by carnivorous beasts who didn’t waste their lives pretending they were anything but predators. He went to Indiana University thinking he might become a paleontologist. But organic chemistry defeated him with the efficiency of a velociraptor eviscerating a hadrosaur. A brief but intense romance with hash oil led him to video games, which cost him his admission to IU but gave birth to a computer repair business. Quartz’s talent for discretion attracted off-hours customers interested in more than getting their PCs running again. Most were mere pranksters, but a few had graver intentions, both financial and political, often illegal. They were the ones who lured him into Anonymous and, later, they would be the ones who had him expelled. The reasons for his banishment remained unclear, though Quartz chose to believe that he was simply too smart for the rest of them and therefore dangerous.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Apr 2014 16:49:41 +0000
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