Beverly Carter's Origin Story
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The Origin Story of Beverly Carter
Beverly Carter was seventeen when the court assigned her father to a long prison
sentence. Death, disease and the healthcare system
held her mother's health hostage with a hefty ransom. Her father tried what he could to pay the medical bills, and the cops stopped him, but not before the disease took her mother's life.
Rain hid Beverly's tears at the funeral. Her mother lay in front of her. Her father lay in a cell nearly three hours away. Social services stood by Beverly's side, ready to escort her into a prison of her own called the foster system. Beverly waited just six months before she reached the age of eighteen and took responsibility for her own path.
Sitting on the thin, cheap mattresses draping over loose springs holding together a rackety bed frame, Beverly contemplated her situation. If the Carter family had more money, everything would be better. Momma Carter would be alive; Daddy Carter would be free. The Bank would remain un-robbed. The old woman depositing her social security check would never have been scared to her literal death--a death that would be attributed to her father's actions due to something called the "felony murder rule" (any death occurring during a felony robbery is a murder committed by the robber). More money for the Carter family would have precluded all of these things and rendered them unnecessary.
Rain hid Beverly's tears at the funeral. Her mother lay in front of her. Her father lay in a cell nearly three hours away. Social services stood by Beverly's side, ready to escort her into a prison of her own called the foster system. Beverly waited just six months before she reached the age of eighteen and took responsibility for her own path.
Sitting on the thin, cheap mattresses draping over loose springs holding together a rackety bed frame, Beverly contemplated her situation. If the Carter family had more money, everything would be better. Momma Carter would be alive; Daddy Carter would be free. The Bank would remain un-robbed. The old woman depositing her social security check would never have been scared to her literal death--a death that would be attributed to her father's actions due to something called the "felony murder rule" (any death occurring during a felony robbery is a murder committed by the robber). More money for the Carter family would have precluded all of these things and rendered them unnecessary.
Beverly liked computers, but she did not love them.
She did not love computers until she became forcibly isolated from the rest of
the world by a court system that was cold and uncaring about the pain and
suffering of a poor family. When Beverly immersed herself in the digital world
of the computer, other people ignored her. Perhaps, they believed Beverly too
busy to chat. When they tried to chat, Beverly ignored them. She listened as
they would say to each other about how Beverly could not hear them when she was
"lost in that machine". The computer was a castle wall; it
accentuated Beverly's separation. It disassociated her from the other losers
who were lost in the court's system.
On the Internet, Beverly found nourishment. Like
bread crumbs in the forest, she followed the taste morsels to a digital land
full of wonder. Like Hansel and Gretel, who found the house made of candy in
the forest, Beverly found a playground that was built for people just like her.
The internet held the promise of riches secretly redirected by lines of
invisible code, a perfect crime.
Beverly gathered stories about hackers, crackers,
and password fishers. She educated herself about salami algorithms, tiny
programs that slice off interest from a banking transaction like a butcher
slicing thin ham. The salami algorithms hide in banking software and build bank
accounts with the fractional cents that are usually discarded as being
"too small" by the computer, but instead add up to a large sum in the
hackers off-shore account. She cultivated knowledge about fishing schemes that
produce user names and passwords. With user names and passwords, Beverly could
obtain direct access to the pension accounts of people with much more money
than she, and she could redirect some of the funds to a worthy cause--her own.
The internet brought Beverly hope that her future included all the riches that
her childhood lacked. Once she was properly wealthy, her life could begin, but
not until then. Money first, then she could worry about trivial things like
family, purpose, values, and a lasting legacy.
The NWO puzzles excited the world. Beverly wondered
about their mysteries. They appeared first on the 4chan /b/ board (pronounced
'bee-board'), which is a place that bored hackers go to find randomness. The
/b/ board contains most outrageous content with the express purpose of
'shocking' people who don't belong there and driving them away from the
internet. This board is the source of most new memes and massive online movements.
It is on the /b/ board that the NWO puzzles were first announced. In keeping
with the /b/ board's usual audacity, the puzzles claimed to provide rewards for
those who are "morally depraved" and "sadistic" in nature.
The original post was signed by NocturnalWizeOwl, (a.k.a. NWO), a hacker who
had cracked federal servers the year prior and developed some fame for his
successful endeavors. The digital signature of NWO added immediate legitimacy
to a post that might otherwise be overlooked as mere click-bait.
The first puzzle released a prize of 500 bitcoins.
At the time, it was the equivalent of $100,000. To claim the prize, an
anonymous individual had to (1) solve the cryptographic puzzle; (2) identify
the name of the intended victim, the manner of death and any special
instructions (like a deadline or method for claiming the prize); and (3) carry
out the assassination.
NWO identified the victims by their political
policies. The first victim initiated a bill that permitted corporations to
charge users increasing prices for "special" services. Like private
highways, companies could pay extra to restrict traffic along certain wires to
prioritize those individuals that they deemed to be special. The bill
threatened to make the internet unusable by any person who disagreed with a
major corporation’s political views. It threatened to make the internet a
"pay-to-play" world that was out of reach for poor people like
Beverly Carter.
Was death too high a price to pay in a war for the
information highway? Beverly did not think so.
By the time that she reached her 18th birthday,
Beverly had learned enough to earn a basic living as a criminal on the internet
highway. She rented an dive using cash that she purchased with digital
currency. She created a false identity for herself, and she learned how to
disappear. All Beverly needed now was time to crack the next puzzle piece and
enough money to keep her internet connection active and her belly full while
she worked.
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