BOOK ONE: The Originals
In the early part of 1987, there were numerous amounts of busts in the US and in New York in particular. For the most part, many of the so-called "elite" had gone underground or had just gotten scared out of hacking. Many people, as always, thought hacking would die because of the raids. It was right before these raids that MOD had formed.
It came about when Acid Phreak, then using another handle, had been running a semi-private bbs off his Commodore piece of shit and 10 generic Commie drives. It was called KAOS, and it attracted hacks and phreaks from across the country (as well as the usual amount of k0dez d00ds). Nynex Phreak had been co-sysop (having been AP's partner for about 2 years before that) and the board started off with about 140 users but was weeded to the best 60 or so.
On this bbs, Acid Phreak had gotten along with a few "kewl dewds" who enjoyed the mischievous aspect of phreaking. They were Silver Surfer in California, and Quick Hack in Texas. When the raids came however, Silver Surfer got nabbed for using a PBX in 404 and therefore, retired. Quick Hack and Acid stayed low and called each other less frequently than usual. Soon they had both stopped completely.
In early 1989, Acid had come back into the scene and had called a local New York board with a somewhat "k0dez-e" attitude called ShadoWorld in 212. Of course there were lots of neophytes eager to learn more about hacking and how to call places for free. Most of them had been in the "does 950 trace?" stage, except for someone who went by the handle Harry Hazardous. Under the handle Phuck This (also Bell Bandit which had originally been Nynex Phreak's other handle), he met with Harry. Soon they had gained enough respect for each other and decided to meet. Harry turned out to be HAC, a cyberpunk to the "T".
In numerous conversations between the two, AP had mentioned the sweetness of telephone company computers and how interesting their intricate structures were. HAC was a hardcore systems hacker himself, but he had also been partners with someone who came across (and had an impressive knack for) some telco computers. He went by the name Scorpion and he also lived in the NYC area. Soon the three were partaking in all sorts of mischievous pranks and under the guise of numerous handles (ie. The Potent Rodent, Dream Master, Phuck This) they took to knocking down the locals who thought "I know all there is about hacking". It was in the midst of all this fun that they agreed to form an underground group called MOD (approx. June 1989).
About one month later, Acid had been on Altos (revisiting a chat that was once, but never again, the heart of a lot of good hacker convos since early '84 or so) when he came across someone asking for Unix gurus. His handle was The Wing, and he ran a Unix system from his home in Pennsylvania. Scorpion was always a Unix guru while Acid had only come across it in college two years back. The Wing offered Acid an account on his system and soon he became "Phreak-Op" on The Seventh Dragon, his bbs run off the Unix, using yet another old alias "Depeche Mode".
Relaying the information to Scorpion on yet another good addition to the group, they decided to recruit him into MOD. The fun, it seemed, had just started...
--EOF
(end Book.One)
