Chat Room of Enigmas

First Mention: Harry Barker and the Chatroom of Enigmas (December 13, 2010)

This article is a stub and will be fleshed out when more information is available.

In Sharon's dream world of Harry Barker, the Chat Room of Enigmas is a hidden chamber buried deep beneath Hollerith's School of Phreaking and Hacking. According to legend, shortly after Hollerith's was built, a great black hat hacker built a powerful server and hid it somewhere within the school. The server housed a secret IRC node that only "pure-bred" hackers would be allowed access. Supposedly, if the "Sysop of Mitnick" entered a special command, the server would reboot and unleash a terrible "monster" that would "purge" the Internet of all users it deemed unworthy, especially luddies and luddie-borne hackers.

At some point in the past when Dexter attended Hollerith's, the Chat Room was supposedly booted and a luddie-borne girl was murdered. At the time, Dexter had created a spider to index useful files. Suspicions began to rise that Dexter's spider was the "monster" from the Chat Room and that Dexter was the "Sysop of Mitnick". Although his guilt was never proven, the highly-suspicious coincidence was enough to have Dexter expelled and forbidden to code for the rest of his life.

During Harry's second year at Hollerith's, an anonymous actor claiming to be the "Sysop of Mitnick" began terrorizing the school, claiming via messages scrawled on the castle walls in laser printer toner that the Chat Room had been rebooted. Several attacks occurred where individuals were "frozen" or "locked up", being left in a petrified, flickering state. Scraps of CAT-5 Ethernet cable were often found at the scene. Harry and his friends had several theories as to who the "Sysop" might be, including at one point Harry himself. However, it was eventually revealed that the "Sysop" was "Billy", a data ghost of a younger version of Gnawthrylilees who had been archived on an optical disc and slipped into Jenny Measly's books by Luser Mouso prior to the start of term. When Jenny found the disc and executed it, "Billy" was able to influence her and force her to open the Chat Room and boot its server, unleashing a devastating worm that "crashed" everything it came in contact with. Harry and Don were able to find the entrance to the Chat Room, but were separated by a cave in caused by Gedanken Deadlock. Harry was able to open the Chat Room by speaking packettongue. There, he found both Jenny and "Billy", the latter of which was trying to erase the former's mind and "install" himself to take over her body. To stop Harry from interfering, "Billy" ordered the worm to attack. Harry reasoned that a firewall should stop the worm but, not having a firewall handy, he generated a new IRC channel and started a flame war instead. The flame war destroyed the worm, giving Harry a chance to physically break the disc and destroy "Billy's" avatar, rescuing Jenny.

The Chat Room of Enigmas is the analog of the Chamber of Secrets from Harry Potter. Many of the terms used connected with the Chat Room of Enigmas comes from IRC: chat rooms, sysops, and flame wars, for example.