Clack. Click clack. Clack clack clickity clack. Keys erupt into a furious syncopation. The back-lit man assumes a posture as if he is about to dive into the computer screen and his stubby fingers slash at the board with the ferocity of a warthog, yet also the extravagance of a figure skater. "Past the first firewall..." he says, throwing in a few more clacks, "Past the second, I'm going into the mainframe." Click clack. "McAfee Antivirus uninstalling... we're in!"

"Ford! Would you shut up?" The voice comes from out in the hall. 

|----------|

Welcome to the freshest and fanciest new AG ARG, The Hacker! This is going to be the game inside the game, a side-contest for both competitors and readers alike to have some casual fun with as you all work through writing out your entries. So all the points and participation for this will be UNRELATED to the scoring for the actual writing competition. You may also participate in this even if you have been eliminated, or never joined the competition in the first place. Also, as a disclaimer, I will ignore any hacks when grading entries so don't worry about that. 

Each task will have three separate groups: the hacker, the victim, and the citizens. I am trying to make each of these roles balanced so there is no inherent advantage to being placed in any of these categories. I will probably fail. Have fun. 

THE_HACKER: One hacker will be randomly chosen for each of the six tasks in this competition. You will be informed that you are the hacker for a round at least 24 hours before the task is posted. Your job is to choose a victim and write a single sentence (200 characters max) that your victim will have to include in their entry. You want to make this sentence something that will be noticed as suspicious by the readers, but also not something that will lead them to discovering your identity as the nefarious hacker. Some rules to make this harder are that you cannot be meta (mentioning the hacking game, any competitors names or usernames, etc) you cannot be foul (no swearing, no adult themes, don't make people write anything you wouldn't write yourself, basically) and don't bother messing up the grammar of the sentence, because your victim will be able to change the punctuation and grammar to fit it into their story as best they can. I know these rules are pretty subjective, but use common sense and feel free to send anything in and I'll just make you redo it if I have any issues. If you do not send in a sentence and choose a victim, your score for that round will be zero, and everyone else will receive a score of three. Also if you tell anyone that you are the hacker, same result.

THE_VICTIM: One victim will be attacked each task. As the task is posted, I will reach out to you to share the bad news and send you a sentence that you must include somewhere in your entry. If you have any serious problems with the content, please let me know and we will make sure to work it out. I am giving you full veto power. Otherwise, your goal is to seamlessly hide this sentence into your story without detection from the readers. As mentioned above, you can change the punctuation and grammar to fit your needs (such as changing a period to an exclamation point, enclosing the sentence in quotation marks, properly capitalizing and spelling the deranged rant that Levi hacks you with, etc) Feel free to run any changes by me if you are unsure. If you do not include this sentence in your entry, or do not turn in, your score for that round will be zero, and everyone else will receive a score of three. Same story if you tell anyone that you have been hacked. 

THE_CITIZENS: Also known as everyone and anyone else. Your job starts when entries are posted. Read through them and try to identify the hacked sentence. You will send your final guesses in with your votes for the writing competition, submitting your best guesses for who was hacked, who was the hacker, and which sentence was the hack. You will get one point for each correct guess for a maximum of three points. If you do not correctly send in your guesses with a legitimate vote for the writing competition, your score for that round will be zero. 

|----------|

SCORING: Scores are cumulative. Whoever has the highest score at the end of the games is the winner and will receive a glorious prize the likes of which you cannot even imagine. Ties will be broken by rock paper scissors. I will post scores and reveal all in the task chapters. The highest score for a round will be 3 and the lowest will be 0. This is true for all roles. 

The victim will be scored based on what percent of people correctly guess their identity. This will be normalized to the 0-3 scale with break points every 25%. So if you are the victim, and we receive 10 votes and 6 of them vote for you, you evaded detection 4/10 times (40%) and receive a score of 1. 

The hacker will be scored both on people correctly identifying the victim, and on not being voted as the hacker themselves. The scoring will follow the same normalization scale, but two different votes will be added into it. Taking the same situation as above, 6/10 voters identified the hacker correctly, and say only 3 of the 10 votes pick you as the hacker, meaning you evaded detection 7/10 times. Your score would be 13/20 (65%) and you would receive a score of 2. 

(0% to 24.9%) = 0

(25% to 49.9%) = 1

(50% to 74.9%) = 2

(75% to 100%) = 3

I encourage ALL of you to join in on this fun and casual game, read some great entries and stab each other in the back. I really want to drive up the participation in reading and voting later into the games as people usually drop off after they are eliminated so I hope this will be a little way to keep people interested because you guys deserve it. Whether you're keyboard smashing your way to ultimate hacker victory, or keyboard smashing after it all ends in narrow defeat, I hope you all have a good time... We're in.