Judgement Day

and which sites he had penetrated. Their attitude was: Hacking Big Brother? Good on you.

His parents were torn, wanting to encourage Pad's interest in computers but also worrying their son spent an inordinate amount of time glued to the screen. Their mixed feelings mirrored Pad's own occasional concern.

While deep in the throes of endless hacking nights, he would suddenly sit upright and ask himself, What am I doing here, fucking around on a computer all day and night? Where is this heading? What about the rest of life? Then he would disentangle himself from hacking for a few days or weeks. He would go down to the university pub to drink with his mostly male group of friends from his course.

Tall, with short brown hair, a slender physique and a hand- somely boyish face, the soft-spoken Pad would have been considered attractive by many intelligent girls. The problem was finding those sort of girls. He hadn't met many when he was studying at university — there were few women in his maths and computer classes. So he and his friends used to head down to the Manchester nightclubs for the social scene and the good music.

Pad went downstairs with one of the officers and watched as the police unplugged his 1200 baud modem, then tucked it into a plastic bag. He had bought that modem when he was eighteen. The police unplugged cables, bundled them up and slipped them into labelled plastic bags. They gathered up his 20 megabyte hard drive and monitor. More plastic bags and labels.

One of the officers called Pad over to the front door. The jack was still wedged across the mutilated door frame. The police had broken down the door instead of knocking because they wanted to catch the hacker in the act — on-line. The officer motioned for Pad to follow him.

'Come on,' he said, leading the hacker into the night. 'We're taking you to the station.'

Pad spent the night in a cell at the Salford Crescent police station, alone. No rough crims, and no other hackers either.