Hungry Read Online Free Page B

more interesting to meet someone who is different than yourself, and I’d like to believe that maybe my hack made at least one match in digital heaven before my work was undone by security agents.
    As I browse around the general topix board, I see that earlier tonight AnonyGal posted a call to action:

    Anybody see the new product launches in this week’s ICM dox? Looks like fruit ripe for the picking? Who’s in?

    I haven’t bothered to look at my ICM dox—I never do—and I don’t like to join group hacks where people band together to find loopholes and back doors in the code of new products, so they can sabotage them before the launch. Some of the time it works, but most of the time One World finds and fixes the problems before the Dynasaurs act. I respect how AnonyGal works, though. She’s a master at delegating tasks to find holes in One World code. Basically, the reverse of how I work, which is probably why I like her. That and the fact that there are very few girl hackers my age.
    I figure she must be young because she doesn’t sign off like the old-timers with the Svalbard symbol—a tiny sprout emerging from a seed above the word Remember. For the longest time I didn’t know what I was looking at when I’d see that symbol. To me, it looked like a weird alien fetus escaping from a pod. But then my dad explained the symbol and told me that it’s in honor of the Svalbard Rebellion, which happened after the last remaining seed vault near the Arctic Circle went belly up. World governments fought long and hard over who would control the seed vault until One World swooped in and promised to feed any population that capitulated to One World controlling their food supply, including the vault. One by one the governments agreed to let One World take over in order to save their starving masses.
    Then twelve years ago, there was a rumor that One World destroyed the vault and all its contents, which sparked a rebellion. Of course, that ended badly when One World retaliated against the protesters, which drove the movement underground. My dad says lots of people who took part in the rebellion have a tattoo of the symbol somewhere on their bodies. Since lots of older members in the chat rooms use the symbol in their signatures, I assume the old-time Dynasaurs are a legacy of that rebellion.
    Then there are the newbies like me and AnonyGal. No tattoos and sign-off symbols for us. Just some girls looking for a place to hack in peace. I bet AnonyGal never worries about what she wears, either. I finish cruising the chats, and since there’s nothing else of interest going on, I log off for now and get ready to meet Yaz.
    *   *   *
    Before I leave the house, I pop into the basement to say good-bye to Grandma.
    “Heading out?” she asks.
    “Yaz talked me into going to a PlugIn,” I tell her, feeling a little bad for abandoning her.
    But Grandma smiles brightly and says, “Good! You should spend more time with people your age.”
    “I have no idea why people go to those things,” I admit. “Anything you can do there, you can do at home.”
    “They’re like restaurants or coffee shops were for my generation,” Grandma says. “You could make the same stuff at home, but sometimes it was nice to go out and be around other people.”
    “If you say so.”
    “I made you something.” She holds out my red pot holder transformed into a Gizmo-sized pouch with a long gray strap.
    “This is great!” I grab it and slip it diagonally across my body. “Look, it’s perfect!” I tuck my sleeping Gizmo inside.
    “One of a kind, just like you, my dear.”
    I rub the soft fibers between my fingers. “People used to make stuff all the time, didn’t they?”
    Grandma nods. “Mostly because they had to, but sometimes just for the sake of art.”
    “Art,” I say, relishing the word. “Sounds fun.”
    “It was,” she says. “But your generation finds their own ways to have fun, don’t you?”
    “According to Yaz, we