Copyright by Mike Hayes 2012-2019. All rights reserved.

May 30, 2026 20:00 PM

The Hack

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Tommy showed up at the Hack’s secret back door at the arranged time. The doorman let him in immediately. He had a case that followed behind him with speakers and keyboards poking out. Two dish antennas were velcroed to the side. They were moving, swiveling around, and tracking things. He kicked the “No Trespassing—Danger” sign out of the way, and headed through.

Danny and Alex had ordered pretzels. They had been fabricated to order, nuked, and carried to the table. The extruded dough formed a medieval fort with ramparts and cannon made of bacon bits. They were a perfect golden brown with flakes of sea salt sprinkled on top. They smelled delicious. Danny tore the pretzel apart until it was cleaned of spam. The spam sections had an unpleasant bitter taste. Then he took a bite of one of the remaining fragment.

The Good Spam warning was personalized just for him. It requested he come in and get his pre-authorized prescriptions for his addictions. Mega Nazis had auto geolocated him near a known gamer habitat. It was a reminder that Mega Con was there, watching him in his journey through life. They’d used the Internet of Things interfaces to send the Gamer Addict warning message.

Tommy up ended his equipment case, then sat down on it. He stared at the torn-up pretzel. “Yeah, we need to hack pretzel machines. Hack into the next authorized spam message update. Have them all print out ‘Pretzels of the world — Free at Last!’”

Juicer said, “Do the coke cups while you’re at it.” He held up his, with its suggestions that he keep Danny away from gamer infested locations such as the one they were currently in — or face the consequences. He hadn’t read the fine print. He hadn’t read any of it. It was nothing but spam, authorized and protected by the forces of government. Spam, first letter of SHAFT. Once government started to regulate spam, government spam was encouraged. Of course, it wasn’t actually from the government, but from contractors doing work for the government. Once Regulated, spam was Authorized and Protected.

“Major_Tom. How’s business?”

Tommy looked from one to the other. “Vengeance is doing good. I have side angles on the open source project that pay well. I could use help. Seriously.”

Alex replied, “Danny wants to go after the moon prize. With the money from winning Last Bot.”

Tommy was surprised. “The Moon prizes? What chance does anyone have? What I’m doing is solid, steady money. It’s not exciting. Nothing like moon rockets.”

Alex said, “Don’t think moon rockets. Think a game.”

Tommy said, “A game?”

“Maybe a takeoff from Vengeance. Change the map to the lunar map, then use a game profile like for city building. Integrate Sim for testing. To determine what works in the real.”

Alex nodded. “Moon Sim. Moon Real.”

They explored the parallels between Last Bot and a simulation of the Moon game. Sim was in the sandbox, just for testing. Moon Real would be an actual machine moving and doing things on the Moon.

“Suppose we go explore an area with valuable minerals. Suppose we wanted to map an area. Or build a highway. Any of this would involve running bots on the moon. They’d be run twenty-four seven by Earth time, all the way through a lunar day. That’s about two weeks? All those are gamers’ missions in game, like in a SimSin city. It’d take a big team to just run one printer or rover. Those kinds of teams don’t just appear out of nowhere. So, you’d have the Sim, where hundreds of teams could compete, and the best might get a shot at a lunar rover. The teams would be a lot like Bot teams. Captain, drivers, research ferrets.”

Danny was dubious. “So, — what would the game be? How would the players move? Goals? Rewards? Levels?”

Tommy’s greasy hair fell down, half covering one eye. Head down, he looked up. “You know what you’re talking about? A new world. Guys could just start building stuff and exploring. Driving lunar rovers from momma’s basement?” Tommy sat back and stared at the ceiling.

Danny said, “It’s not just software. Like Last Bot, it needs the best hardware. Crazy hot and cold temperatures and the vacuum. We have to get the Heads figured out, the basic bot design hardened to lunar conditions. Then get it tested in the sandbox. We’re just trying to create a winning proposal. If we had fifty to a hundred guys to help create the equipment — this is what I’m hoping for. And if it was the right stuff, it could go big.”

Tommy thought for a moment, “Say you had robots up there. Running twenty-four seven, you could make a run to the equator.”

Danny answered, “First, we’d have to know how to build engines up there, instead of hauling them from Earth. Then we make rovers. And they’d have to be reliable. The max useful day is about two weeks, but we’re talking the North Pole area, so figure it’s less. Maybe two hundred hours. A team would take shifts running a rover, and work straight thru the two hundred hours.

It’s the complete opposite of the Apollo. Those landed and then departed in the lunar early morning when the conditions were mild. If Apollo had landed at high noon, they’d be roasted meat. This is more like the Soviet Lunokhod rovers. Those could run nonstop through the Lunar Day, then they’d sleep through the Night.”

Tommy paused, looking up Lunokhod. He frowned at the shiny, ugly silver turtle, the first rover on the Moon. “Lunokhod. Not going to win beauty contests with anything like that, dude.”

Danny simply said, “Yeah, but it’s intense. Like vodka. If I could get a printer on the Moon, and just make working engines.”

Tommy was quiet, then said, “You’d need a lot of help. Suppose gamers did run rovers, it’d take a couple dozen guys to keep one rover going twenty-four seven nonstop. Suppose a couple rovers did a pole to equator lunar run. You have any idea what the advertising revenues might be?”

Something bothered him. He was silent, and then he continued with a thoughtful look, “To win the prize and make it work, a team would need backup. It’d be a lot more than just drivers. It might be a hundred players. You’d have to prove to them they’ve got an actual world to work. It’d be the biggest thing since well — there’s nothing comparable. It’s an entire world.”

“At the start of the Sim game, say we had a couple hundred gamers. It’d jump to five digits once if the gear went to Moon Real and worked, like you say. Then it could go six digits and up. But you’d need hardware that would work on the moon and not fry or chill out. You’d need testing areas in Sandbox set up for those conditions.”

Danny said, “Open source. Like the rest of the Sandbox code.”

Alex added, “And the Last Bot code.”

Tommy looked at them. Then he said, “Let me work on it. I have to understand the space stuff better. That science stuff. Maybe look up more about what the old rovers did. Then think about what game might be. I’ll talk with the core developers and see what they think. Come over to my place tomorrow?”

Alex looked disappointed. “I have to work,” he said.

Danny said, “Take the call on the job? I’ll patch you in.”

Alex looked unsure. “Message ten minutes ahead, can you? I’ll get freed up for the call.”

Danny nodded.

They walked out.