Last week a burner made all our student records disappear, and the uni's tech support team didn't notice until Jeshi told them the next morning they spent all night restoring the records from backups. We call those guys "burners" they just like to watch the world burn. There's tons of hunters that walk around invoking bugs and never reporting them. That's the funny thing about this game: you don't have to report the bugs. But I still get to keep the avatar, and since it's fixed now, no one will ever see that exact avatar again. Of course I reported it, and the bank restored the poor guy's money. The bug I invoked last week is still my favorite: a vicious pink mantis-like thing I found at the campus credit union which, when invoked, caused something like $10,000 to disappear from a bank account. My school's data center is the perfect example: I regularly find several bugs a minute when I'm out there.
Matthew banks of jamestown software#
But data centers top them all due to the sheer concentration of software in the area. Banks, office buildings, government buildings all these places have loads of bugs that hunters like me can invoke and report. That data center I'm heading toward tends to be a gold mine for bugs. I keep walking down the street, sliding my phone back into my jeans pocket. I hate physics, might as well accept that tomorrow is going to suck. I mean, I've got the same final, but you don't see me all frantic. My roommate Jeshi and I are dedicated hunters, and normally he'd be out here with me, except that he's got some big physics final tomorrow that he's freaking out about. Of course, the only way the app can know what the bug did is to actually invoke it, so once the bug is invoked, we can report it. Plus, the app tells us what the bug did, and lets us report the bug to the proper organization so that they can fix it. Once triggered, we get to keep the little insect avatar in our collection and can show off what we collected to our friends. We hunters try to "invoke" these bugs by flinging inputs at them only the correct inputs will trigger the bug and kill the avatar. Each software bug is different, and so each avatar is different the more critical the bug, the more dangerous its avatar becomes. The app finds real-world software bugs, and represents them as little insect and arachnid avatars on our phones. I swear, people who didn't know about the app would think we were zombies. Every day, every night and into the early morning, there will be people walking around staring at their phones to catch these little auto-generated bugs. Well, that's original, isn't it? But don't let the stupid name fool you: this thing is the biggest multiplayer game on campus. I glance down at the app again, pondering that name they gave it: BugCatcher. I can make out a few flickering screens in the distance there's some hunters there already, so perhaps they found something worth catching. That building is a data center, and data centers are gold mines for us hunters. Looking up from my dim screen, I locate my destination in the distance: a brick two-story building at the end of the road. That's all it did? I tap the little "report" button, and the app beeps once to let me know my bug report has been sent to the correct authority. 15 points?! That's barely worth the effort! The bug report appears, showing that this particular bug caused the light to turn off when it should have stayed lit. As I unconsciously relax my grip on my phone, the streetlamp next to me flickers and dies.Ī little counter on the application heads-up display goes up by 15 points. I switch the left input to the next option, attempt the invocation again, and this time the little blue beetle falls to the ground and fades away. The blue insect stumbles but doesn't fall I got at least one of the inputs right, just not all of them. I select a couple at random and hit "fire!". I tap on "invoke" and a set of tiny spinners pops up, showing the potential inputs. Two little options appear in the lower corners of the screen, "invoke" and "leave". I tap on the beetle, and its face fills my viewscreen. As I keep walking, the beeping increases, gradually becoming a constant drone before a little blue beetle appears on my HUD.
My phone begins to beep, slowly at first, then more and more rapidly. That's where I should be, studying, but I can't focus anymore. Night will soon blanket the campus, punctured only by the streetlamps and the lights of other students' rooms as they cram for finals. The sun's last few rays are off in the distance, casting a lavender twilight into the sky that would be beautiful if I had the time to admire it.
Shadows flank me as I march down Jamestown Avenue toward the short, squat building in the distance.
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