Generation Next Read Online Free Page B

worked and how it was possible to make all those amazing things happen at the mere touch of a button or the flick of a lever.
    Originally I’d gone to Charlton because of their so-called excellent technical departments, but that turnedout to be a joke. By the time I was fourteen, I was writing code, making programs and inserting virtual weapons, tools and all manner of other stuff into games: things that didn’t even exist in the game until I put them there. Eventually I became known as “GODLYM0DZ” in gaming circles online—M0DZ being slang for modifications. It was like being a bit of a celebrity, with people writing about me on forums, desperately trying to find out my real identity like some crazy internet version of Batman. You know what, it felt good . . . for a time. Meanwhile, in my computer science class we were still covering the basics.
    I guess that was when the trouble started. The other boys could see I was bored; they watched me rolling my eyes and slumping forward on my desk while the poor bloke teaching the class tried to explain the rudiments of something I’d known how to do since I was ten. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: I was probably too big-headed, a know-it-all who deserved to be taken down a peg or two. Maybe that was true. I mean, it’s all very well being GODLYM0DZ when you’re sitting in the safety of your bedroom, fighting your enemies with a fast flick of your wrist, but out on the streets, things weren’t quite as neatly tied up as that. In real life I was seen as an outsider by the other boys in my class, and maybe they were right—I certainly felt like a bit of a freak, being one of the few kids who seemed eager to learn something and to get somewhere in life. OK, soI’m not exactly what you’d call a straight-A student, but I sometimes felt like I was the only one in the class knuckling down to study for exams.
    Some of the boys in my form even took the piss out of me because I had a paper round in the week, and before my revision schedule started to get really heavy, I worked in a local clothes shop on a Saturday and Sunday. To be honest, I didn’t really care what they thought; I wanted to earn my own money so I could have a bit of independence and buy my own things. It wasn’t like my mum and dad were super rich, so anything new I wanted I worked for and bought myself.
    During break times and lunchtimes I sat in the computer room trying out new stuff, discovering something great and then trying to work out how to do it myself. I withdrew more and more from the other kids until it seemed like nobody ever saw me outside during school hours because I was always shut in a classroom in front of a screen. I ignored the name-calling when it was just some idiot shouting “Freak!” at me in the playground, but when it came into the classroom, that was a different matter. There’s nothing worse than being insulted and belittled in front of a roomful of your peers, especially when you’re trapped and there’s nowhere to run.
    There were two kids, Dillon and David, or Dim and Dimmer, as I like to remember them, who did this kind of thing on a regular basis. After months of making my life a misery, I eventually got my revenge by hacking intotheir Facebook accounts and locking them out so they couldn’t post anything, use Messenger, or even look at their own pages. It drove them nuts, and for a while they didn’t have a clue it was me. After a few weeks, however, there was more and more online speculation about who this GODLYM0DZ character might be. I was pretty horrified to see my name come up on a few of the forums, and even more horrified when Dim and Dimmer turned up at school one day begging me to stop attacking their accounts. So was my secret out at last? I wasn’t certain, but I wasn’t taking any chances, so I told them both to . . . Well, you can guess what I told them both to do.
    It’s funny, all the rest of that day I felt like I had a little bit of