Never heard of Photoshop, so they believe every thing they see! Blonde Baltic sniper girls two meters high. Obama Predator UFOs. Kremlin Little Green Men with virus weapons. All accredited journalists who check any facts are arrested as spies and beaten up by factions. Also trolls and black propagandists pouring fire on rumors machine to panic normal people in their pathetic simplicity.

  Of course, hackers, so we know what a “meme” is. We swiftly create useful fact check wiki leaks site for the public good, upload it, get own URL. We coder brainy guys are good at math, have critical thinking skills. No one notices us except Canadian teenage girls doing high school homework. It is already too late. Facts are dead, truth is over. Civil war life is glorious poetry!

  Ghosts rise up from dark earth of Ukraine. Cossacks with crests and shaved heads. Tragic serf bards with balalaika and long mustaches. Heroic militia commander unfortunate personal friendship with Adolf Hitler. Every dead Ukraine hero, except for long-forgotten Nestor Makhno, who is total wild free anarchist with steam trains and therefore only national hero Ukrainian hackers actually like.

  Ukraine is the largest nation in Europe, vast horizons, wide blue rivers, pretty girls with penchant for sweet flowers hairstyles, also the world’s largest national park wilderness, which is also slightly radioactive. But in spite of our great national wealth and splendor, fierce popular cyberwar exploding all over Twitter, VKontakte, LiveJournal, YouTube and Facebook.

  Looks like we brainy hackers will soon be drafted, put in homemade fake uniform and forced to shoot each other. The situation quickly splitting up on the ground, as good pals “Uroboros” and “Nashie” will have to shoot besties “PizzaHutFan” and “Turla. " Game Over for our hacker club.

  We decide to dismantle our cultural center and go into hiding. Only real choice for us, and besides, this is typical history of avant-garde culture in our region. Destruction of our beloved club is not difficult as Brain Dump is scavenged furniture, leaking roof, bare insulation stripped much wiring, tube TVs and aging Linux PC without any consoles. No one in the three years we ever cleans up the Brain Dump, except for “Kimchi” and “XFox,” our two Femen girls who are big fans of anime video chat, have to make things look nice for fans.

  We decide to collect electronics and hide it place safe from 240 mm artillery rounds. As we remove the fluorescent light tubes as valuable for future use, “Grey Turtle” makes a strange discovery. One of the glass tubes has a secret obstacle inside.

  Someone has put a dense roll of fifty U.S. hundred dollar bills inside this secret place. Cache is five thousand dollars, this is incredible find, as Ukrainian hacker could live a year on that kind of money even with girlfriend.

  How has a huge amount of money fall into the Brain Dump Hackerspace? We consider discovered dollar bills closely. Did they leave here by an American spy? No, some of the bills are counterfeit, like most in Ukraine. American CIA spies not big users of those.

  Maybe some rich hippies left money to annoy us as joke. Maybe, some of them act on weird humor of Chaos Computer Club, as they are German and therefore just not funny.

  We stop arguing about how to divide the money. We are looking for more money hidden around.

  We are anarchists of immaterial cyberspace, never ask for money. Cash just gets in way of our spiritual journey. Also, Ukrainian hryvnia is not a currency in order to provoke a lot of enthusiasm. We find no hryvnia. Not one hryvn. But there are whole lots of dollars stuffed inside round metal chair legs. Euros hidden inside panels of cheap hollow door. Hundreds of dollars stuffed into electrical junction boxes. Thousands of euros crammed secret into wall sockets of telephone jacks. Also some rubles, Swiss francs and sums of Asian currency we can’t recognize.

  We start to quarrel about this. Fantastic black-money situation is like from Bulgakov novel, not really helping our situation. Argument is that one of us in Brain Dump is clearly super-spy or master cyber-criminal. Must be one of us hackers who is hiding the money from the rest of us and secretly amazing rich guy.

  One by one, everyone is denying paranoid purge allegations. “Grey Turtle” is most suspicious as he was first to discover money, but Grey Turtle cannot possibly be any master cybercriminal as he is mere website designer, cannot even code properly.

  “Objekt110” admits he has been selling “Phoenix” and “Adrenalin” trojans to Western teenagers, but only on weekends. “Uroboros” is picking up some fraud credit card traffic with “eCore Exploit Pack,” but just buys cute shoes for girlfriend. “Nashie” is console game cracker, but he is 17 years old so this is just kid stuff.

  “PizzaHutFan” is running proxy server host on cracked machine at local university. “AgentBTZ” is small-time DDOS operative on local Zeus botnet, just does it as favor for uncle.

  I have to admit my part in “Lonely Russian Girlfriend” 419 fraud, but I was only doing that to improve my English on foreigners. By standard of local computer underground we are very clean guys.

  Also, search for illicit Ukrainian hidden money is just not ending for us. Not at all. I am counting over well USD 100,000 in small and crumbled bills, and now bond and stock certificates are show up among old and water-stained O’Reilly coding books. Shell companies in Cyprus, Luxembourg, Cayman Islands, Switzerland. Our humble hackerspace has several title deeds to real-estate properties in London. Also, New York real estate from well-known offshore laundering scheme of “Anna Chapman” famous Russian television star and hot high-tech entrepreneur girl.

  At this point we are ransacking our own place worst than armed militia. “Gray Turtle” remembers the thumb drives. Being hackerspace we have a thousand USB drives, mostly bad mp3s of pirate American scifi TV and YouPorn downloads.

  These USB drives have been replaced with “TAILS” anonymized crypto pre-loaded with control over legendary “Snake” Cyrillic cyberwar botnet. “Snake” is top-notch cyberspy code embedded in so many Russian and Ukrainian systems that Edward Snowden choke on his borscht.

  User logs show that cyberwar “Snake” is all about black money. “Snake” subroutines are all about trade misinvoicing, sales of underpriced gas and oil to false European subsidiaries, under-reported export earnings, and fake advanced import payments. Big-scale global money laundering is pretty new to us, but surprisingly easy and simple compared to Linux coding. Everything on pull-down menu.

  We are rich. We have as much illegal wealth as usual corrupt Ukrainian state politician. We have illegal fortune between three and ten billion dollars.

  We were thinking all along we were helpless victims of situation, but truth is now clear to us. We are Internet people, but also major part of the problem. We are serious power player, frankly. We can do anything Internet black global money can do, buy media, hire liars, recruit mercenaries, ship weapons, buy own private jet get the hell out go live in Costa Rica.

  We’re just like the “Gas Princess” and the “Chocolate King.” We’re oligarchs. We’re moguls.

  But how does that help us? The fires are rising all around us anyway. We can give you a million dollars if you have any answer. What do we do?

  * * *

  Bruce Sterling, author, journalist, editor, and critic, was born in 1954. Best known for his ten science fiction novels, he also writes short stories, book reviews, design criticism, opinion columns, and introductions for books ranging from Ernst Juenger to Jules Verne. His nonfiction works include The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier (1992), Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years (2003), and Shaping Things (2005).

  “The Brain Dump” was previously published by Motherboard’s Terraform (2014).

  RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: MICROWAVE IN THE BREAK ROOM DOING WEIRD THINGS TO FABRIC OF SPACE-TIME

  by Charles Yu

  FROM: JASPER (FACILITIES) TUES 8/12/13 12:17 P.M.

  TO: STAFF-ALL-NYC

  RE: MICROWAVE IN THE BREAK ROOM

  Hey everyone, sorry for the email blast, but please stop using the lower microwave in the kitchen. Someone nuked a burrito in there on high for what I am assuming had to be at least 20+ minutes because it’s barely recognizable as a burrito. Beans look seriously crazy after having been heated for that long. In fact, it’s barely recognizable as a known form of matter—it’s continuing to disintegrate. Or something worse.

  We’re trying to figure out if it’s possible to clean it, but at this point it seems like the inside of the microwave might need to be scrubbed on like a subatomic level, which is probably not going to be cost-effective—I know a lot of you love that microwave because it’s so powerful, but just to give you a heads-up, it might make sense to just toss it and get a new one. We’ll keep you posted.

  Thanks for your attention to the matter and please use the upper microwave until further notice. And whatever you do, please DO NOT use the lower one.

  Cheers,

  Jasper

  FROM: JASPER (FACILITIES) TUES 8/12/13 12:24 P.M.

  TO: STAFF-ALL-NYC

  RE: RE: MICROWAVE IN THE BREAK ROOM

  Okay well I’m sorry to say someone must have either missed my first email or thought I was kidding because, and I can’t believe someone would do this, but someone put their cup of noodles in the lower microwave, on top of the bean-crust substrate, and pressed start and yeah, I think you all know what I’m going to say next: the Styrofoam and the substrate must have interacted in such a way as to destabilize the local microstructure of reality there.

  Before anyone thinks I’m using circumstantial evidence to make a serious accusation, I would note that there is now a ring of empty non-reality inside the microwave, that just happens to be of the exact circumference of the bottom of a standard Nissin ramen cup. I’m not totally sure what’s going to happen now, but we called building management and they’re sending someone to take a look.

  I can’t believe I have to say this again, but PLEASE ONLY USE the upper microwave until we figure out what is going on with the broken one.

  And not to single anyone out, but if you’re making noodles (Brett, Allison, you others know who you are), use the hot water thing from the coffee machine. I thought we’d settled that weeks ago. It cooks the noodles better anyway.

  Cheers,

  Jasper

  FROM: JASPER (FACILITIES) TUES 8/12/13 12:44 P.M.

  TO: STAFF-ALL-NYC

  RE: RE: RE: MICROWAVE IN THE BREAK ROOM

  Since my last update things have gotten a little weird. The ring of brokendown manifold or whatever has continued to do things that would probably be interesting to a cosmologist, but for those of us trying to get our jobs done it’s going to be an inconvenience, possibly through the end of the day. I might be garbling this a little, so anyone pipe up and correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m told that the styrofoam-bean ring underwent a continuous topological deformation, which was fine, until it wasn’t so continuous anymore. Part of the ring tore and glued itself somewhere else in the universe, and so we’ve got that to deal with on top of everything else. Anyway, stay tuned. Ice cream social at 3:30 is canceled, for obvious reasons.

  Cheers,

  Jasper

  FROM: JASPER (FACILITIES) TUES 8/12/13 2:30 P.M.

  TO: STAFF-ALL-NYC; STAFF-ALL-HARTFORD

  RE: RE: RE: RE: MICROWAVE IN THE BREAK ROOM

  Ugh. So that banging you were all hearing was me and the team from building management here in New York, and also some old friends of ours who have gotten much closer in the last ninety minutes or so. The last time I emailed, we were just learning about the tearing and reattaching of the noodle-cup/bean ring to another location in our little reality here. Well, as you may have heard, that location was the third stall in the fifth floor men’s room in Hartford office. It’s an almost incalculably improbably coincidence, which would be cool to marvel over and ponder and debate, except that it’s causing some non-trivial problems with the HVAC systems of both buildings, and other tenants (in both locations!) are complaining. If we don’t get this fixed soon, we might have to answer to the landlord, the NYFD and the HFD, and there is also, I am advised, about a 30% probability that due to this spatial reconfiguration we have set in motion a chain of events that will lead to the imminent collapse of the entire cosmos. The upside is that I’m using cosmos in the narrow sense there, i.e., just our universe and not any others, and also cool is the fact that we effectively have a very, very, very good interoffice mail system between Hartford and NYC now.

  Anyway, that banging you heard was us trying to put some scaffolding up to stabilize the structure of the portal between the formerly-separatednow-connected-regions—we apparently didn’t have the right materials or tools to do such a thing, so it didn’t work. Our next step is to send someone very small into the portal (probably me), to see if we can learn anything about it. That’s supposed to happen in the next 20 minutes, and I’ll do my best to update you all, but honestly I am not sure “20 minutes” has any real meaning anymore, given the aforementioned complete breakdown in space and time as we knew it.

  Cheers,

  Jasper

  FROM: JASPER (FACILITIES) THURS 8/14/13 2:30 P.M.

  TO: STAFF-ALL-NYC; STAFF-ALL-HARTFORD

  RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: MICROWAVE IN THE BREAK ROOM

  Well, that didn’t work.

  We appear to have jumped 2 days in the future. Trying to go back now.

  Cheers,

  Jasper

  FROM: JASPER (FACILITIES) TUES 8/12/13 12:17 P.M.

  TO: STAFF-ALL-NYC

  RE: MICROWAVE IN THE BREAK ROOM

  Apparently the best we could do was to go back to the original point in space-time where it all started. None of you except for me (since I was in the portal) have any clue what I’m talking about, so no worries, but I’m writing this anyway to create what I hope will be a record, either on a computer server somewhere, or if not then at least in some abstract information 112 space, of a transmission documenting what just happened (especially if it turns out we’re in a loop). If anyone out there has residual knowledge for some reason, maybe we could meet up by the water cooler and just chat about what just happened—it’d be great to verify that I’m not going crazy.

  For everyone else, please, if you see anyone with a burrito headed toward the break room, take it from them. I know that sounds really weird, but you have to trust me on this. Take the burrito and do whatever you need to do—eat it, shred it, I don’t care. Just DO NOT nuke it in the lower microwave.

  BTW, ice cream social at 3:30.

  Cheers,

  Jasper

  * * *

  Charles Yu is the author of three books, including the novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and his latest story collection, Sorry Please Thank You. He lives in southern California with his wife and their two kids, and is currently writing for the upcoming HBO series, Westworld.

  “RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: MICROWAVE IN THE BREAK ROOM DOING WEIRD THINGS TO FABRIC OF SPACE-TIME” was previously published in Gigantic Worlds (2015).

  Dance Dance Revolution

  by Charlie Human

  Special Forces secure the perimeter of the town and give us the green light to parachute in. Clearing hornet nests is something of a specialty of ours. Special Forces don’t like us, but they’re wise enough to keep their mouths shut.

  We advance, Alpha Team in Swan Lake formation. The phosphorescent flares Special Forces have sent up make everything glitter with radiance. The town’s populous wail and cry when they see us. A woman, gnashing her teeth and pulling her hair, throws herself at my feet. Navy Seals they spit at. Dancers they beg for mercy.

  Our Killbots trundle next to us awaiting orders. I watch mine, Nureyev, drive over a fruitseller’s stand with his heavy, spiked tracks. I smile. I have a suspicion his programming has a few sadistic lines of code.

  The insurgents engage us with a few exploratory rounds of rifle fire. I click my heels together. You’re not in Kabul anymore, motherfuckers. I pirouette, which sends a volley of heavy machine gun fire back. I know the hit is confirmed even before the green lights blink on Nureyev’s back.

  Alpha Team snaps into motion. Dance is an intuitive, responsive medium. We react to the attack without thinking about it. The machines are linked to us via biofeedback, which translates our dance steps into destruction. My new tutu is lighter and more accurate at mapping my movements, based as it is on cutting edge motion-capture technology used in CGI movies. Heel-toe, Heel-toe and dip. Four men die without knowing they’ve been spotted.

  The first forays into Military Dance Interface were predictably clunky, death by Fred Astaire 1.0, but things improved. It’s easy to marvel at how far information interface has come in society; from the flipping and flicking of touchscreen devices to controller-free sports games which map human movement. This is just like that. Just with 50 calibre machine guns.

  Beta Team moonwalk across my vision laying down a barrage of RPG fire. A round clips my shoulder and I see a sniper on a rooftop with my head in his crosshairs. I break formation to reach for the sky and shimmy. The insurgent dies in a hail of bullets. Disco has saved my life more than once.

  Rounds ricochet off the wall behind me but I hardly notice. In this business you’ve got to dance like nobody is watching you through laser-guided scopes. The fighting has become close and Alpha Team switches to a Bollywood dance sequence. The Killbots respond by initiating close combat mode.

  Clasping my hands together and lifting them above my head; Nureyev chainsaws through Kevlar and flesh. Bobbing my head from side to side: Nureyev snaps necks with the passionless precision of machine jiu-jitsu. Delta Team scythes through opposition on our flank. For a second I pity the enemy. Those line-dancers are brutal.