Respawn - Snap Classic

A teenage hacker inspired by “Mr. Robot” takes on his principal, teachers, and the Board of Education. And a night-shift doctor shares a story of life after death. STORIES Code Yellow A teenage hacker inspired by “Mr. Robot” takes on his principal, teachers, and the Board of Education. This story contains strong language, sensitive listeners please be advised. This piece was adapted from the podcast, Darknet Diaries. https://darknetdiaries.com/ Listen to the full story, called Finn https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/17/. Produced by Jack Rhysider with assistance from Nancy Lopez, original score by Renzo Gorrio. Artwork by Teo Ducot. The Lazarus Effect A night-shift doctor shares a story of life after death. This story comes to us from the podcast, The Nocturnists http://thenocturnists.com/podcast, and was performed live in San Francisco in 2018. You can listen to the full story, called The Lazarus Effect http://thenocturnists.com/podcast/2019/3/16/season-2-episode-1. Special thanks to Emily Silverman, Ana Adlerstein, Ali Block, Adelaide Papazolou, Marina Poole, Kirk Klocke, and the storyteller, Joe Sills. Snap Classic – Season 16 Episode 56 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Glynn Washington?

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• 0:48Glynn Washington?

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• 1:21Speaker 01

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• 1:54Glynn Washington?

  When I was a kid, I spent most afternoons riding a flying ostrich around, trying to knock other people off their flying ostriches with my lance. While occasionally stopping to pick up eggs, and of course, there was a pterodactyl occasionally show up and attempt to crash me out of the sky. He could try, but I had that pterodactyl's number. Still, it was dangerous. Dangerous work not for the faint-hearted. And I was good. Very, very good. A champion of the realm, good. No one could beat me. No one could take me. Not for the high score, anyway.

• 2:34Glynn Washington?

  But every once in a while, some clown did manage to briefly unseat me from my flying ostrich.

• 2:43Glynn Washington?

  Resulting in my temporary absence from the action. For a brief moment in time, I was no more. Kind of backstage, being less, body less. And I always loved this part. Because then a brand-new me generated itself on another part of the playing field. No scars, no hurts, no pains. My trusty steed and I would leap back into the air, rejoing the fray, find the maggot who knocked us out of the sky, and extract sweet revenge.

• 3:30Glynn Washington?

  I loved playing Joust. I loved it. My favorite video game, by far. And I always wondered what it would be like if there really was a backstage. A place where you'd come back from, a reset, and real life.

• 3:55Glynn Washington?

  Well, today on Snap Judgment, we're gonna find out if such a thing exists. From the Snap Judgment's underground layout, we proudly present Respawn.

• 4:07Glynn Washington?

  Amazing stories from real people who start over again. My name is Finn Washington. You can beat the unbeatable flying pterodactyl just by pointing your lance in its direction if you know what you're doing. When you're listening to Snap Judgment.

• 4:29Glynn Washington?

  We begin, and we are so excited to present a story adapted from the podcast Darknet Diaries. It's a day in the life of one teenager who goes by the name of Finn. It turns out not to be just any other day. And the boy's real name isn't even Finn. Listeners, please note, this piece does contain some explicit language.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  My name's Finn, and I'm 16 years old, and I'm a computer hacker. I do not look like your stereotypical African American, I'd say, from obviously the way I talk to the way I dress. I mean, I'm wearing Naruto socks right now, so.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  But I'm pretty sure one day I'll probably show you my face.

• 5:35Speaker 03

  Finn won't show his face because of something he did during his first year in high school. For him, that first year was a major transition. He'd been to private schools. He'd been homeschooled, but he'd never attended a public school.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  I went from having, say, round four, five kids in my class that, you know, I would become good friends with, where now I have seven different classes, 20 different students, nobody that I know.

• 6:03Speaker 04

  It was like if you reintroduced the main character back into society. Like, so anything can go wrong. I think it's Murphy's Law. If it can go wrong, it likely will go wrong. And in this case, it actually did.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  So the story begins one Friday in the fall. It was right before Thanksgiving break. Finn woke up and began his usual morning routine.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  My day started off with me watching the show Mr. Robot.

• 6:34Speaker 05

  Hello, friend.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  Finn's on the bus, watching Mr. Robot on his tablet.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  I watched it before, after school. It was, back then, Mr. Robot was like the coolest thing to me.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Was there a certain character you connected to in Mr. Robot?

• 6:51Speaker 02

  I would say Elliot the most, dealing with loneliness.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  The main character in Mr. Robot, this guy Elliot, is an introverted computer hacker in a dark hoodie. He tries to save the world from corporate greed. He also talks to a voice in his head.

• 7:08Speaker 05

  That's a slippery slope. You're only in my head. We have to remember that.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd say we both are lonely in our own ways, if you will. But I know for me, it's like going through high school. I was always just feeling alone. I always stuck to myself, never really talked to anyone.

• 7:32Speaker 03

  Finn gets to school, throws his tablet in his backpack, and heads to class.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  My first period was my computer class. I was failing my computer class ironically.

• 7:49Speaker 04

  My second period was math, and lord God, did I hate that period.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  Third period is health. So I'm sitting in that class and we're watching this video called "Supersize Me." Guy eats McDonald's. I'm not into seeing a guy eat. That's kind of, kind of weird. And I got super bored, super quick. So I whip out my tablet. This was a $52 tablet from Walmart. I would compare it to your average script kitty's tablet. It had an anonymous wallpaper. The apps on it were from this app, I think Bug Troy. It was an app that had a bunch of the apps used for penetration testing.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  The app on his tablet is a toolkit for finding weaknesses in a network.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  There was another guy who was also a hacker. And we both came up with the goal of finding the Wi-Fi password.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  So while "Supersize Me" is playing, Finn and his friends start exploring the school's network.

• 9:07Speaker 04

  There's two Wi-Fi networks. So you have the BYOD, which is the Bring Your Own Device policy. And then you have the Wi-Fi that was only for the teachers. So you were able to see what they had downloaded, what they were holding on their computers, the certain drives and stuff like that.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  As Finn skims through the files, one specific server catches his eye.

• 9:31Speaker 04

  I was definitely curious as to why was this particular server open? As a 14-year-old, I'm like, this isn't right. This shouldn't be open like this.

• 9:49Speaker 04

  That's when I started, I guess, what I like to call my Hulk mode. Hulk mode. So I went around just looking for any and everything. And if something looked interesting, I was saving it. So what I would do is I would get the folder and open Google Drive on like the browser. And I would copy and paste the files into there. That way, there was no paper trail of me actually downloading the files.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  So Finn downloads a bunch of files from this shared folder. And that shared folder happened to be the principal's computer.

• 10:30Speaker 04

  I didn't know the guy was the principal at first. I thought, there's nothing interesting in this. But I guess, I will take a look. And so, I'm scrolling down about 180 files.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Finn finds a copy of the principal's hunting license, his driver's license, and a bunch of the student and faculty information.

• 10:54Speaker 04

  And I'm like, okay, what more is there? Like, there has to be more of this. So I'm at the bottom of the page. And there's this little Word document file titled Password. Password.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  Immediately, I facepalm myself. Because I was quite ashamed that this is what it had came to. That someone was saving passwords, not only in a Word document, but it was unprotected and it was obviously labeled. So I open the file. I see at the bottom of the text document, he has a Twitter password. So you've seen Mr. Robot. I would say it's more like the moments where Elliot's kind of like talking to himself. Please tell me you're seeing this too. So I'm in that phase where I'm like, okay, I've got two options that I could do here.

• 11:56Speaker 04

  I could go to whoever I can even think of, report this, or I could have a little fun.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  It's now lunchtime. Finn collects his stuff, heads to the lunchroom, and looks for his friends.

• 12:18Speaker 04

  So I'm sitting at lunch with my buddies. You know, I'm still thinking about this passwords folder. Because at this point, it's itching my brain. It's like... Like, come on, dude. Like, do something. So I'm like, alright, let's just see if he really is this dumb. I go through the list of passwords. So I tried the first one on his Twitter, doesn't work. Tried the second one on Twitter, doesn't work. And so I make it to, I guess, the, oh, I love it. And I'm like, if this doesn't work, then shoot, the guy's, guy's unhackable. So I entered in not expecting anything to happen.

• 13:04Speaker 04

  I look up and my friends are joking, and then I looked back down at my, my tablet, and all I see is, Twitter would like to use your location. Do you want to allow this? All the noise around me just stopped. Oh, this worked.

• 13:24Speaker 04

  What do I, what do I do? I've never really made it this far. Like, I, I mean, D face pages, I didn't get into the website. So this was the first time that I had, like, really, really, like, got into something. I'm like at a crossroads. So I'm like, super excited, but at the same time, I'm like, super worried. And it, it all kind of hit me, it was like, yo, I could go to jail for this. Oh, man, that's where, uh, hell breaks loose.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  Finn starts posting stuff on the principal's Twitter account, and then quickly deletes it right after his friends see it.

• 14:04Speaker 04

  So I would post something like, uh, God bless the KKK or something edgy, and then quickly delete it, and they were just laughing. Mind you, the principal is, no joke, two, two steps away from us sitting at a table. So everyone was like, dude, you've got some, like, balls. My little kid self comes out again, and he's like, hell, yeah. I'm like, I want to see how far I can really take this. Do I have balls to steal? Next, I'm like, what if I went to the website? So I, I went to the, the that school's official main webpage.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  I first scanned the page using this app called Admin Panel Finder. It looks for stereotypical admin page login. I found the one for the website. I knew the principal's email. Everyone's email is set up the same, so you have last name dot first name at school. So this was pretty common sense type of knowledge. So I entered in this email. I realized, what if he's using the password from Twitter for this? At this point, I'm already pretty screwed, if not, why not? But I'm more pissed at this point because I'm like, this is stupid.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  Why and how do you allow this to happen? So I clicked the enter button, and I'm like, okay.

• 15:40Speaker 04

  And I look up and my friends are like, dude, dude, that's awesome. And then one of my friends, who I call him the bad luck guy. Because I swear on everything that he jinxed me. He was like, dude, you're going to get in trouble. And then got up and walked away. I'm now worried, excited, scared, and pissed. I'm not thinking straight. If you were to ask me one plus one at that point, I probably would have said fifty-two. I looked back down at my tablet and I'm in.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  Finn now has logged into the school's main website as the principal. And this website has things like announcements and school closures, upcoming events and teachers' bios. But Finn's access only allows him to change the principal's bio.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  I wiped everything. So his pictures, that was deleted off this website. His biography, that was deleted. His email, gone. His phone number, gone. Anything associated with him was gone. So I couldn't upload anything more than an image. So I took his name, deleted it, and I put hacked by handle that I used to use. And then I uploaded this image from the game Watch Dog. And I uploaded that as the image of him pretty much flicking off the camera.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  After I uploaded that, I start writing, I said, The school name.

• 17:13Speaker 04

  My principal and the board of education.

• 17:17Speaker 04

  After that, I click post.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  Lunch is over. Finn heads to his next class.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  I'm walking into my, um, literature class. I'm, I'm kind of like in this, uh, surreal state. And so there's this kid who I sit next to and me and him were talking. And so I was like, dude, can I like, tell you something? And he was like, yo, what's up? And so I showed him the, the school website. And he was like, dude, did you, did you do that? I'm like, yeah. He's like, dude, you need to like, don't do anything else, man. Like chill, like don't do anything else, bro. So I'm like, yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right. Right.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  And then a bell rings out of nowhere.

• 18:07Speaker 04

  I thought they were going to call me up to the office on the intercom. So like, everything's going off in my head. I'm like, I don't know what to do. Like, wh- what?

• 18:20Speaker 03

  But it turns out to be just the second lunch bell, which might have been a wake up call.

• 18:25Speaker 04

  I guess you could say that was kind of like what set me off again. I go into Twitter again, I go through the procedure, wipe his name. I change his image, put, uh, hacked by handle that I used to use.

• 18:39Speaker 03

  Finn proceeds to tweet as the principal.

• 18:42Speaker 04

  Guess you just got hacked.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  And that was the first post.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  He then posts the principal's social security number and other private info.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  I, pretty much almost 90% of people who were following him were liking the post that I was posting. So I'm, I'm, I'm getting a little, a little bit cocky again at this point.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  Finn goes on to post links to Pastbin, where he's posting private documents. The first is.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  Employee data list.

• 19:14Speaker 04

  Their names, their birthdays, their addresses, their phone numbers, what car they drive, their license plate, their parking, where they park. It was super detailed.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  And then he does another post.

• 19:26Speaker 04

  Student's parents' name, email, location, phone number.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  And then another post of all student emails.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  I posted the list of everybody's email and then everybody's password. And then I think I capped it off with like, [BLEEP]. The Board of Education and the main IT guy because he was not doing his job. I felt like he failed not only me, but he failed my friends, my teachers, the parents, my mom. I felt like he failed everybody and that's what I guess really set me off.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Okay, because I mean, in my mind, it's like a little bit wanting attention, a little bit flexing, right? Showing people what you can do.

• 20:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'll definitely say a little bit of it was to flex a little bit.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  What kept you going? Like, there's something in your head that said, "I probably shouldn't do this," but then something made you do it anyways?

• 20:27Speaker 04

  That's a very simple answer. It was the adrenaline. It was the excitement. It broke my day-to-day norm.

• 20:40Speaker 03

  And somehow, this whole time, Finn's teacher doesn't notice he's on his tablet.

• 20:44Speaker 04

  Because I was in the back of the class, remind you. So she has to pay attention to 20 other students, which is, it's another reason I hate public school. My friend, the guy I was talking to, he's like, "Dude, put the tablet up." "Okay, okay, I'm done." So I put the tablet in my bag. And at that point, we're pretty much near the end of literature class.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  Finn grabs his backpack and walks to the next class.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  I feel like I'm a terrorist. Like, I'm carrying a bomb and nobody knows it but me. I felt like at any moment, Secret Service was gonna pop out of nowhere and like, just a black bag over my head and I'm gone. So I'm like, "Oh."

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Jesus, what did I do?

• 21:28Speaker 04

  I think I made [BLEEP] up. I don't know.

• 21:33Speaker 04

  I just tried to get my mind off of it while I was walking. I'm about two steps away from the door of my history class. This kid who I knew, who used to be, um, an anonymous, he passed me and he's like, "Yo dude, did you hear? Somebody hacked the principal's Twitter." I'm like, "Damn it."

• 21:53Speaker 04

  I'm like, "Okay, maybe it's just him, who knows?" I walk into class, everybody's talking about it.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  How quick does news get around? I mean, I, I was scared. This was my first giant, like, hack. This was like hacking, uh, this was like when Dade Murphy hacked into Gibson, like, no, it's more like when Joey hacked into Gibson. It's like, whoa. I didn't, I didn't know this is how much I could do. Out of the blue, the intercom comes on. At this point, obviously I'm shaking. And they call code yellow.

• 22:36Speaker 04

  So code red is like an act of shooting, or there is a definite threat in the school. The code yellow is where they're like, "We don't know if this happened in the school or out of the school." When the code yellow happens, all doors are, are locked. Only the administrators are able to get in. You're locked in.

• 22:59Glynn Washington?

  Will Finn get caught? Or will he go home like any other day and watch the next episode of Mr. Robot? Snap us, it is not over. Not by a long shot. When the respawn episode continues, stay tuned.

• 23:17Speaker 06

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• 23:52Glynn Washington?

  When he left, Finn had hacked into a school computer network. And he didn't stop there. He doxed the principal, the teachers, his fellow students, their parents. And now, the entire school is on lockdown.

• 24:09Speaker 04

  They call code yellow. When the code yellow happens, all doors are locked. Only the administrators are able to get in. You're locked in, pretty much. So I'm like, okay, okay, maybe, uh, maybe it's not me. Maybe some idiot called in a bomb threat. And at that point, I hear the doors of the main building open. I hear a cop radio. The principal's like, super pissed. He's pissed, sad, confused. I, I could, I could see where he was coming from. I, I guess you could say, I, I felt his emotion. So they're trying to calm him down.

• 24:52Speaker 04

  They go through one of the classrooms. You don't hear nothing. It's dead silent for five minutes. Uh, my desk just sitting there. After those five minutes, our door opens. It's the assistant principal. So he goes and he's like, okay, everyone, I need to see your phone. Press the power button and let me see what you're logged on. He goes through everyone on the right side and I'm now like, I'm on panic mode. It's, I, I probably looked like a crackhead. I'm like visibly shaken. And he sees that I have my tablet on my desk. He's going to want a second. So not even thinking twice, I slide to the tablet behind the file cabinet to where I can

• 25:36Speaker 04

  still get it, like when I'm about to leave. Then he's like, okay. He radios in all clear and walks out. After that, 10 minutes goes by. The intercom comes back on and the lady announces, "The code yellow is over. Everyone have a nice day."

• 25:56Speaker 03

  Finn grabs his tablet from behind the cabinet, throws it in his backpack and starts heading for the bus to go home.

• 26:04Speaker 04

  At that point, I'm uh, not only am I just shaking physically, I'm pretty much in tears. And I get on the bus and everyone's on the bus is talking about it. Even the guy who I was working with, he was even talking about it, said, um, whoever's in the school is a idiot.

• 26:26Speaker 04

  At one point, I was God. And now I'm the devil in an institute. It's like I had power in my hand and I blinked and it was gone.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  I, I [__] up. Whenever I usually make a mistake, I can usually find a way to be like, okay, I'll fix it this way or another way. It's like if you took a sledgehammer to a computer, there's no way I could go back and fix this this time. I just breathed, I guess. It was like taking your last, uh, having your last meal before you go into jail. This, this is my last time probably being here.

• 27:13Speaker 04

  I had my little old tablet and I, I turned it back on and I plugged in my headphones and I listened to music all the way home. I got home and I, I just sat on my bed, like just thinking. I didn't know what to do. I wasn't necessarily worried worried, but I was still, you know, like a little bit on the edge. I just sat there and tried to forget.

• 27:48Speaker 04

  Every day after school, I had always messaged my mom, cause that, I mean, that's my mom. I wanna make sure she's okay. So I messaged her and she was like, so how was school?

• 28:01Speaker 04

  I don't know what in the hell made me tell her. I was like, yeah, someone leaked the principal's information.

• 28:08Speaker 07

  I asked him, did you have any involvement in it? I don't know what made me ask him that, but I did.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  And that's Finn's mother.

• 28:16Speaker 07

  Uh, of course, at that time, he lied to me.

• 28:19Speaker 04

  And I think that's when she knew that, yeah, he, he did something. And he's not telling me.

• 28:29Speaker 07

  And the school called me and asked me, could I bring Finn's tablet to the school? And so, um, I did because Finn had told me that he had no involvement in the situation.

• 28:41Speaker 04

  So she came into my room and she was like, hey, where's your tablet? And I was like, oh, it's right here. She was like, I need to see it for a little bit. And so I said, okay. I thought maybe she needs to do something. I, I didn't think too much of it.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  Finn's mom took the tablet to school and that's when they told her about the hack.

• 29:01Speaker 07

  I stayed at the school while they did their little investigation, um, trying to figure out if this was actually the tablet that had done it. It had a code on it, so I had to call Finn and ask him, what was the code?

• 29:14Speaker 04

  If I had known, I would have definitely wiped my tablet before giving it to her. So the code that I had, uh, given her was to the tablet's safe mode.

• 29:27Speaker 07

  So Finn gave us some kind of mixed up code. I was there for three hours.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  After three hours, the school does determine the tablet was used in this hack because of a matching MAC address.

• 29:40Speaker 07

  I had, I was, had a mixed up, it was just one, my kid did this? Like, are you sure we're talking about the same kid? And then the other part of me was, wow, like, he did this. I didn't understand why he had done it because it, it just, it didn't make sense. You would have thought that maybe something would have happened that would have triggered this event, maybe like he got in trouble at school, went to the principal's office, something of that nature, but none of that had happened prior to this incident.

• 30:12Speaker 03

  So Finn's mom drives home and has a talk with her son.

• 30:15Speaker 07

  Yes. Yes, we're just gonna go with that. Yes, we talked.

• 30:22Speaker 04

  I'm sending her room. My stepdad's in there.

• 30:26Speaker 07

  He really didn't have no reason why he did what he did. And I think that was the hardest part was trying to understand why and not getting a why.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  That was the first time I think I've ever really seen my mom cry. I would get hit with a nuclear bomb for my mom. I would die for her. But I had hurt her. And I didn't want to ever feel that again. We talked. I can't even remember what we talked about.

• 31:03Speaker 04

  A few minutes go by.

• 31:06Speaker 04

  Two cops enter the house.

• 31:09Speaker 07

  Your heart drops because you know that it's something because you just left the school and you're wondering like dang, how'd they get them here so fast? That was number one. And then number two is like, are they gonna take my child out of my house right now? And then as a parent, there's nothing I could do right now in this moment to fix it. There's nothing I can do to protect him from this moment.

• 31:31Speaker 04

  I was just like, shoot, this happened way too damn quick. At least let me have some time to think at least. I was worried not about going to jail, but how my brothers and sisters would be affected by seeing me go to jail.

• 31:52Speaker 07

  So at the time, I was also on the phone with my parents. And then my mom was like, hey, y'all need to stop talking to them. You need to get a lawyer. So at that time, I had to tell them that we no longer could talk to them. And of course, they didn't like that, but they knew that they had to go because they weren't there with any warrants of arrest.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  And the cops leave.

• 32:13Speaker 07

  Now I'm in panic mode. And I knew that this was about to be bad. I didn't realize at that time how bad it was about to get, but I knew it was bad.

• 32:22Speaker 03

  By 10:00 PM that night, the school's website was back to normal and the tweets were deleted. But there were a lot of views to that private information that was posted. So it's impossible to know how many copies were made and who had it. That weekend, the family found a lawyer and police asked Finn's mom to bring him down to the station. The police took his fingerprints and a mugshot and let him go home.

• 32:45Speaker 04

  I was suspended. I was not to come back at all. I couldn't even be within 50 feet of a school computer.

• 32:53Speaker 03

  The school suspended him permanently and informed the family that they would be taking him to court. He now had to go to an alternative school, a place that kids with behavioral problems or who have gotten into trouble can still go to for an education. But all of Finn's friends were afraid to talk to him.

• 33:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, pretty much. I was on everyone's blacklist. It's, I wouldn't even wish on my own worst enemy. It sucks when one day you're laughing with these people. You're talking to them and then it seems like they don't know you. So now with this new supervillain persona labeled on me, nobody wanted to associate with me. It was back to square one again.

• 33:42Speaker 07

  A year goes by. My lawyer calls. Hey, have you gotten a letter? No, I haven't gotten a letter. We thought it was over with. We thought, you know, nothing's going to come of it because they had told us juvenile court doesn't take this long to process cases. Another year comes and goes by.

• 33:58Speaker 04

  I come home one day after school and my sister comes in with this paper. She's like, this is for you. I open it and it's a court summoning. I'm like, oh, two years and they're now wanting to send me to jail? I was prepared on day one. Why, why two years? So I called my mom.

• 34:23Speaker 07

  You know, you could tell in his voice, like his heart just sunk and so did mine. I was scared, like, why wait so long? He was actually doing very good at the alternative school. Like he was passing all of his classes. He had gotten a job. I mean, all on his own. He was just doing so much better.

• 34:43Speaker 03

  The court date comes. Finn and his mom and his lawyer sit on one side of the courtroom. On the other side was the principal, district attorney, and some members of the Board of Education.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  From what was said in the court, apparently in my county, I'm the first person to ever been there for computer hacking.

• 35:03Speaker 03

  Finn pled guilty, and the judge convicted him of a felony.

• 35:07Speaker 07

  He didn't have to serve time because of the fact that in that time, the two years, he had gotten a job, maintained that job. They didn't want to interfere with him being productive.

• 35:18Speaker 04

  I have to pay restitution, which is 1,300. I had six months that I could not be on social media. Every time I'm on the internet, I have to be supervised.

• 35:32Speaker 07

  Honestly, you would think as a parent that I would be relieved and happy and like, okay, he didn't serve jail time. But part of me still feels like maybe he should have served a weekend just because you need to feel it in order to know that this is a real, real consequence.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  I wouldn't say I felt bad because that would imply that I feel bad about the entire thing. I feel like...

• 35:58Speaker 07

  The principal, of course, is livid because he wanted him to serve jail time.

• 36:04Speaker 04

  So I did apologize for bringing him into the situation. But I didn't necessarily apologize for the hack.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  Do you think it was a success, the hack?

• 36:15Speaker 02

  Let's see, yeah. I mean, it did what it was supposed to do, which was bring attention to these security holes and make the IT department more aware that their systems were open.

• 36:31Speaker 04

  Schools are vulnerable just as much as companies are, too. If you wouldn't want Facebook to be releasing your data, why would you want public schools to be doing the same?

• 36:43Speaker 03

  But you'd... When you put everyone else's info out there, like, did everyone else deserve to get exposed?

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Um, looking back on it now, being older and a little bit wiser, no. I think that's probably my, my biggest regret is bringing innocent people into it. So it's one thing I definitely don't think I should have done.

• 37:11Speaker 04

  That hack pretty much made me into who I am today. A computer hacker who's constantly looking for companies who will give him at least an internship to do the thing that he loves the most. Cause honestly, I don't want to be the black hat. I don't want to be that, that guy who's always on the bad side of the spectrum. I want to be the good guy.

• 37:36Speaker 03

  You don't want to be black hat, but you still are kind of gray hat. And even some of the stuff I'm seeing with you online, some of the conversations on Twitter seem to be weird. Am I like, am I, should I be worried about you? Like, are you still doing things that are not smart or that are, that are illegal perhaps? Or, or just dumb things online?

• 37:59Speaker 02

  I, I've done a lot of, and said a lot of really, really stupid things to somewhat flex. Um, yeah, there's definitely times where I'll be in the, uh, black hat scene and I'll be like, ah, man, I, I really want to join you guys. And then I have to, you know, somewhat like back off a little bit.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  And, and what, what is it that stops you from joining in?

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Um, it's just the thought that I, I kind of got off really, really lucky. So it's just thinking like, eh, if I mess up once, it could be fully game over. So just trying not to make that mistake again.

• 38:51Glynn Washington?

  A huge thank you to Finn for sharing his story. This piece was adapted from the podcast Dark Net Diaries and produced by Jack Resider, found online at darknetdiaries.com. We highly recommend this podcast. You can find a link to the full story. It's called Finn. It'll be on our website at snapjudgment.org. The original score was by Renzo Goryeo. It was produced by Jack Resider with assistance from Nancy Lopez.

• 39:24Glynn Washington?

  When we come back, a doctor has to share some news with a patient's family. News that turns out to be completely wrong. Stay tuned.

• 39:46Glynn Washington?

  From Snap Judgment's Underground Layer, welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Respawn episode. Amazing stories from real people who get depressed, some sort of do-over button. And now, we're going to enter the world of medicine to present a story from the podcast Nocturnus. We're going to go live onstage to hear the doctor take us inside a hospital emergency room.

• 40:13Speaker 08

  When I was an intern, sometimes I'd be asked to go to a room and pronounce the patient dead. Later on, I realized that this was one of the least important jobs, which is why it was assigned to me. These were always patients who had been expected to die and they didn't want to be resuscitated. And all that was really needed was a doctor's signature for the paperwork. But at the time, I was terrified of getting it wrong, that later in the morgue, the patient would unzip herself out of the body bag and I would end up in the news. So I once listened with my stethoscope on this 100-year-old woman's chest for five

• 40:56Speaker 08

  entire minutes until the nurse finally came over and lifted up the diaphragm with my stethoscope and said into it, "Is this thing on?"

• 41:08Speaker 08

  But since then, I've called the time of death for lots of patients that have died in my emergency department, which brings me to Mark. On the day that I met Mark, the day that he was brought to my emergency department, he didn't look so good. His skin was gray and sweaty, and I could see that it was hard for him to breathe, but he made eye contact with me, which is enough for me to at least try and quickly introduce myself before going about the rapid work of keeping someone alive. Hello was about as far as I got when Mark's heart stopped.

• 41:51Speaker 08

  Mark's nurse started chest compressions and I intubated Mark to try and help him breathe, and we went through the typical sequence of resuscitation until Mark's pulse came back. And then it was lost again, and then it came back, and was lost again, and after a few more episodes of that, I searched for Mark's pulse and found nothing, and used ultrasound probe to view his heart up on a monitor, where I could see its musculature had gone still. No one plans to die in an emergency department, but I've become used to giving that news to the families of those who have.

• 42:35Speaker 08

  By now, I was comfortable with it. Sometimes it bothered me how comfortable I could be. I once had an attending compare giving that news to tossing a subpoena through a door that's about to slam shut on your hand. But now I tend to think of it more as a refrain with three beats that must be sung correctly.

• 43:03Speaker 08

  I have terrible news. Pause. Your husband has died. And there's a lot more to it than just that, but that's the rhythmical core of it. It's the part that you must not stammer. And that's what I told Mark's wife, Samantha, when she arrived. I led Samantha down to Mark's room, where he lay, and I pulled up a chair for her and I stood beside her while she cried. And then I waited for a calm moment to excuse myself from the room. And while I was waiting, my attention wandered up to the clock and I calculated the hours I had left in my shift and thought about what I might make for dinner at home when I got there.

• 43:48Speaker 08

  And that was around when Mark gently extended his neck.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  (laughter)

• 43:56Speaker 08

  As if reaching for the surface of a lake. "What's that?" Samantha asked me.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  (laughter)

• 44:05Speaker 08

  And I explained to her that this is what's called an agonal movement and it's a brainstem reflex of the dying process and it's normal. And then I asked her how she and Mark had met. Now, I'd never asked anything like that in a situation like this and I wasn't really sure why I had.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  (laughter)

• 44:27Speaker 08

  Maybe it was to help Samantha remember Mark differently from how he looks now and maybe it was also to distract Samantha while I quietly reached my fingers down to Mark's wrist, where I now felt a weak and slow but undeniable pulse.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  (laughter)

• 44:50Speaker 08

  Yeah. So I stood there with Mark's pulse flickering in my hand while Samantha told me that she had met Mark 15 years ago while at a park. And by that point in their lives, they were each in their 50s and had become used to the idea of being single, but three months later, they were at their own wedding. By now, Mark had been physically unwell for a long time. And Samantha said that she had begun to imagine the ways in which Mark might die. Maybe she would find him in bed one morning, maybe they would be out on a walk together,

• 45:31Speaker 08

  and he would have to take a break and catch his breath and just be unable to get back up. She hoped that by imagining his death, it would somehow make his actual one more bearable, as if she could pay off some of that grief in advance, rather than having to bear all of it in one lump sum. But now that it was here, it felt unreal, as if this were just another version of his death that she had thought up. And she looked up at me and asked, "Is that normal?" Normally by now, I would have left the room. Now, I knew that there was nothing that I or anyone could do to save Mark's life,

• 46:14Speaker 08

  and I already felt his pulse becoming weaker in my hand. But I had never told the wife that her husband was not really dead. I had just never learned how to do something like that. And by now, I think Samantha must have noticed a dent in my composure, and she asked me, "Is something wrong?" And without knowing if what I was saying was the right thing, I told her that I feel a weak pulse, and it's getting weaker now, and I expect it to disappear soon. And she asked me, "What do you think we should do?" And I said, "I think we should let Mark die."

• 46:56Speaker 08

  And she seemed relieved by that, and I felt more grateful for that reaction than I'd like to admit. Afterwards, when I was able to excuse myself, I walked down the hallway into the bathroom and closed the door and locked it, and stood there for a long time, or at least as long as the department would allow. There were already other patients waiting in other rooms, and more tests for me to order, and I could hear another ambulance backing up into the entryway. And I worried about what I'd say next to Samantha, but by the time I had gotten caught up, she had already left for home, and eventually, Mark's body was collected for the morgue.

• 47:40Speaker 08

  The thing about life is that one day you'll be dead. And that's as terrifying as it is forgettable. That contradiction is as much a part of working around death as it is just simply living. So on my better days, I'm mindful of the details and the people around me. And on that day, on my drive home, I reflected on none of that. And instead worried over all the other mistakes that I've ever made in my life.

• 48:21Speaker 08

  I have a really long commute, and so I got as far back as preschool when I tapped on the panels of the class ant farm and collapsed all of the diligently excavated tunnels. But by the time I'd gotten home and parked my car, my anxieties had mostly burned themselves out. And I thought about Samantha and that Mark had been a pretty lucky guy. And walking back up to my apartment where my wife waited, I felt lucky too. Thank you.

• 49:02Glynn Washington?

  That story's performed live in San Francisco at the medical storytelling show, The Nocturnus. For more stories from the world of medicine, check out The Nocturnus wherever you get your podcasts or visit their website at thenocturnus.com. Find them on social media. We love this podcast. Special thanks to Anna Adlerstein, Ali Block, Alay Pappazalu, Marina Poole, and the storyteller, Joe Sills.

• 49:45Glynn Washington?

  Oh, yes. You can get your own respawn moment if you missed even a minute of this show. The whole program awaits your listening pleasure. Snap Judgment.org.

• 49:59Glynn Washington?

  On Team Snap, the union representative producers, artists, editors, and engineers, our members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL, CIL, Local 51. Snap is brought to you by the team that never runs out of lives. Hit the reset button if you would for the uber producer, Mr. Mark Ristich, Anna Sussman, Nancy Lopez, Renzo Goryo, Sheena Sheedy, Liz Mack, Eliza Smith, Telekot, Marissa Dodge, Flo Wiley, Renzo Goryo, Pat Massey Miller, Leon Modymotro, Nikah Singh, and John Facio. You might see a scroll across the screen that this is not the news. No way this is the news.

• 50:40Glynn Washington?

  In fact, you could put your quarter in to play a game of Pac-Man, only to realize you're not moving the Pac-Man around. No, you're moving the ghosts. And you would still, still, even then, still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PRX.