Chapter 3:
Another her
who I am is not who I want to be
After two months of online friendship with me, she asked me to meet her. The next day I went to meet her in a cafe. She never showed me her picture without a mask and cap. I didn't know how exactly Does she look like. I was so excited to see her. It’s funny to look back on how our story began.
A certain feeling of indolence was sweeping over me. I craved to talk to Karma or meet her just once.
‘There is nothing wrong in meeting just once.’ My lighter side seemed to speak softly in my ears.
Was I to assume it was love? Oh! The question hounded me day and night.
I headed towards the cafe where we decided to meet. ‘How was it that I’d grown so fond of her voice and I couldn’t just get away?’ I asked myself.
I was sick of questions but the answers wouldn’t be there.
I was waiting for her near a window seat in a cafe that we decided to meet in. I was being impatient and could not wait any longer. She was not coming although Half hour passed. I tried to call her but her phone was switched off. I was feeling anxious and nervous.
A girl passed through the window and entered the cafe wearing a black dress with her face covered with a mask and cap. I felt so happy when she came. At the first glimpse, I was able to tell that it was her. At first, I thought she is not going to come because she was late half an hour.
She moved toward me, and I was relieved. She apologized to me for being late.
She had short hair with bangs. It was that cafe where she asked me for the first time to join her team as a hacker. When she asked me to join her team as a Bug bounty hunter, she was looking timid as a kid and confused, and she said to me:
" 'Little Dude' Do You want to know a secret about me?"
At that, I was so sure that she is about to confess her feelings for me. I was excited. I wanted to stop that moment and live that moment again and again. She had a strange but cute habit of calling me "Little Dude" instead of calling my name "Zack Erwin." Every time we chatted, she used the title of "Little Dude" for me.
I said to her:
" I didn't hear you. What did you say? Can you please repeat yourself?"
I wanted to hear her say that again. So I pretended that I didn't listen to her.
She repeated herself in a little louder voice and said:
" 'Little Dude' Do You want to know a secret about me?"
I was trying my best to hide my expressions, but I couldn't. I was overjoyed after seeing her. She seemed like a little kid, but she was a year older than me. She was 19, and I was 18. after that I had a big smile on my face, and I said to her:
" I want to know everything that you want to tell me."
In a lower voice she said:
" uh hmmm, Are you sure? you want to know you may think bad about me as it's a strange thing to ask for."
I just wanted to hear whatever she wanted to say. I didn't think about what does she mean by bad.
I said: " Just say whatever you want to say I will definitely not judge you as a bad person."
And she said: " I'm a hacker just like you. Can You please become my teammate as a bug bounty hunter?"
I was shocked that how does she know that I'm a little bit into hacking. I never told her while chatting. We never discussed hacking in the first two months of online friendship. That was something really strange. After that, I started believing that she has been stalking my personal life too. She is really interested in me. I asked her how does she know that I'm into hacking.
She said: "I'll tell you this when the right time will come."
We had coffee and some cake. Karma wanted to eat ice cream, but it was not available nearby. I asked her why she wants me to become her teammate and Why not someone else?
She said:
" My old teammate left me as I insisted her to give more time in Bug bounty hunting. No one around me is interested in becoming a bug bounty hunter. I think being a white hat hacker is no fun as a white hat; we are being puppets and following specific guidelines. We don't have 'freedom' in what we do. I want 'no boundaries to control me.' Black hat hacker seems to be free they have freedom on whatever they do. I think it's more profitable being a black hat hacker. "
The way she thinks was kinda scary, but she looked adorable while expressing her thoughts. I was hooked into her. I admired the way she thought about freedom. I wanted to know why she wanted the freedom that could harm her. If black hat hackers get caught while doing unethical hacking, they could even go to jail for the damage they caused to someone's data or privacy.
I was searching for Self Actualization before I meet her. In July 2017, I received an acceptance letter from an organization that provides training to young hackers. I was so happy with that acceptance letter that I wanted to brag about it. I uploaded that in my Instagram story. I thought by becoming a hacker: I will be able to achieve self-actualization. My Training classes were about to start in December 2017. I couldn't wait for it.
Before my Training classes Started, I Started to work with Karma as she offered me to work with her. What I got after working on myself with 'Akane Toru' was an evolution. An evolved state of myself which was just another arrogant and pessimist 'Akane Toru.' I worked with 'Akane Toru' as a White Hat Hacker. To be more precise, I worked as a Bug bounty Hunter.
In the world of Hackers, there are many types of hackers: grey hat hacker, black hat hacker, white-hat hacker, and many more. After we became friends, she invited me to become her teammate as a hacker.
White hat hackers are the good guys who have to hack with a defensive purpose. They report about the vulnerabilities of a Computer system or any internet-based platform to the respective organizations or platform. In computer security, Vulnerability is a weakness. Black hat hackers attack those weaknesses and can cause damage to someone's privacy, reputation, money, data, and many more.
(IMPORTANT NOTE: A white hat (or a white hat hacker) is an ethical computer hacker, or a computer security expert, who after taking the permission of the owner of the computer system try to hack to find the vulnerabilities and fix them.)
(WHITE HAT HACKERS= ETHICAL HACKERS)
(BLACK HAT HACKERS = UNETHICAL HACKERS)
Let me make it more detailed, Karma and I were the type of hackers called "Bug Bounty Hunters."
A Bug bounty hunter is someone who looks for bugs in any system, software, or website. In the World of Computers, a "bug" is an error, mistake, flaw, or fault in a computer program or system. Karma and I, as bug bounty hunters, were supposed to find those bugs which could cause a System to get hacked or could cause damage.
'Akane Toru' was a type of hacker who used to find bugs in systems and websites and fix them before a black hat hacker could cause damage to the system because of the bug. She was more interested in being a black hat hacker, but her luck wasn't good. Never in her bug bounty hunting journey, she found a teammate who was interested to indulge in the activity of unethical hacking.
(Features of Karma:
Height: 5'4''
Skin Tone: Ivory
Characteristics of skin tone: Porcelain to light skin color, without or with minor imperfections, sensitive, and could easily burn under the sun.
Hair: She had Silky short grey hair. Bangs obscured her eyes like a sheepdog. A narrow strip of hair from the left side was Ebony/black.
Hair Texture: Soft and Silky
Descriptive Hair Color: Grizzled (gray)
Eyes: She had “piercing” blue eyes that were intense enough to feel like they were able to “pierce” another person’s soul.
Cheeks: Chubby cheeks with a Hallow dimple
Chin: Cleft Chin
Jaw: Jaw hallmarked her facial features
Nose: Sharp )
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