Field Trip

Papers were thrown all over an Office room.

Wilfred Connor was enraged after reading this week's reports. ER games had been harassed by hackers for the past two weeks. The damage was not too severe; however, the persistence of the hackers was unnerving. There were concerns from players and board of directors. He had to get the situation under control.

To make things worse, His Vice-President Lewis had died in a car accident last week. Lewis was the man Wilfred used to handle problems that needed "creative" solutions. Ultimately, he was just a pawn and would be replaced soon; however, the timing of both events was unfortunate. He almost suspected that this was a coordinated attack; however, he could not think of anyone in the gaming industry that would have the courage to fight against them.

" Ring Ring Ring"

Wilfred picked up his phone; It was his Chief Technology Officer. After two weeks, the attacks had finally stopped. Wilfred was glad to get the good news. Now he just needed to get a new VP and all his problems would go away. Wilfred started thinking about who to pick as the next VP.

Austin, Texas

Michael was doing research on ER games. He was trying to come up with a plan for the counter-attack on ER games. He could easily hack their games and shut down their servers; however, that would not give him any benefits. Michael always believed that one should slay his enemies in a manner that reaps the most benefits. Of course, there were some exceptions like personal vendettas; however, the issue with ER games was just a business rivalry.

His first thought was to hack their bank accounts and steal the money; However, bank accounts of large corporations are often monitored. There would be a stop transfer before he could even get the cash. Then there is the issue of the paper trails such a heist would leave. Even if he routed the cash through many different accounts it would eventually be traced. Furthermore, the scope of the heist meant that several national agencies would start an investigation.

ER games simply did not have enough cash for Michael to tolerate such investigations. He was trying to hide secrets that were worth 100 times more than ER games. However, that did not mean he was completely out of options.

Michael discovered that ER games had recently built a data farm for all of their server needs. It was a huge investment that required loans from multiple international banks. The project's total bill came to an astonishing one billion dollars. The servers were custom built for ER games by Pintel.

Pintel is one of the largest tech companies and the leader in Chip manufacturing. The servers themselves were worth over 600 million dollars. The costly project was seen as an investment in the company's future. The savings from running their own servers would pay off the loans in less than ten years.

" Nice servers you got there, would be a shame if they just disappeared!" Michael spoke out loud.

The server farm was built in Texas; It was located in Taylor County. There was a plethora of wind farms and solar farms in the area; therefore electricity was quite cheap. ER games were initially going to build it in Mexico; however, they received huge incentives from the local government to build it in Taylor County. A server farm did not provide many jobs; so Michael knew that this was just another aspect of the corrupt government at work.

After a four-hour drive, Michael finally arrived near the outskirts of the server farm. He drove the car to a hotel in town and booked a room for a week. Then Michael started brainstorming different ways to attack the building. He could breach the network and control the cameras; He could also storm in and kill the guards. The best method would be to use the camouflage potion to sneak in and acquire the servers. However, Michael stumbled on some interesting news. Next week the local high schools were touring the server farm; ER games were trying to organize community events like this for the sake of PR. Michael smiled and quickly started preparing for the show.

A week later

Dozens of yellow school buses arrived at the gates of Greenridge Facility. This was one of the largest server farms in Texas. The facility was hosting a guided tour for all the local high schools. The students had just gotten back from the holiday break and were excited to go on a field trip.

Helen Waters was a Public Relations expert from ER games. She was in charge of the tour event for the students. It wasn't just the students; their parents were here too. Helen greeted everyone and started the tour.

First, she started talking about the facility and all the effort that went into its construction. Most of the students were interested since they played games that were hosted at this very facility. She led them to see the massive air conditioning units that would cool the facility to keep the temperature down. Next was the command center, where all the servers were being monitored. The students loved seeing the massive screens with cool charts and graphs.

Helen saved the server room for last since it was the main attraction. She had some satisfaction as she noticed the students stupified by the scale of the servers. However, she failed to notice one substitute teacher who had the look of greed in his eyes.

The students turned around and walked back; nobody noticed the servers disappearing one by one. The monitoring team was still entertaining another group of students when one of the boys pointed at the monitor.

" Look, The servers are gone. What happened?"

The technicians turned to stare at their monitor with ghastly faces. They quickly evacuated the students and started restarting the whole network hoping that it was a glitch. However, their hopes were slashed when they restarted the cameras.

" Helen, do you copy?" Helen's wireless radio started going off.

She quickly answered and was informed that there was a colossal problem. Helen dismissed the students and immediately ran to the command room. Her face went pale when she saw the server room with no servers. She personally went and verified that they were really gone. With a frightful expression, she called her boss to let him know what happened.

The children were heartbroken when they found out that the field trip was over and they were leaving. As the buses rolled out; sirens could be heard as cops came speeding in. In the back of a school bus, a substitute teacher was watching everything with a smile on his face.