The Annihilation of Foreverland

the shelves and levitated in front of him, each with the name Daniel on the cover. He didn’t recognize any of the last names, but two of them had two small words lettered in red just below the name.
    Crossover Completed.
    Danny sent them back to the shelves. The third one centered in front of him.
    “Daniel Forrester,” he said. “Let’s see what you got.”
    He touched the cover. The book opened. There were no words on pages, only the colors of raw data. He put his hand on it and knew.
    I’m Daniel Forrester.

    Daniel Forrester was born in Gilbert , Arizona .
    A healthy boy and an only child. His parents were John and Maggy Forrester. They were both only children, as well. The grandparents all deceased. The only extended family was a great aunt that lived in Rockford , Illinois . She was in her eighties and suffering from dementia.
    Ideal candidate, it said .
    That’s what Danny was labeled, an ideal candidate for the program. He didn’t know if that referred to his health or the dementia. Or maybe the lack of extended family.
    His father was a finish carpenter.
    Memories emerged of his father coming home when it was dark. Danny would be parked in front of the television when his truck pulled into the driveway. His father smelled of sweat and cedar. Sometimes he’d lug his double-saddle tool belt into the house loaded with every tool ever invented and work on a project at home, fixing a doorframe or building a new room. He knew where every tool was located in the tool belt, finding it without looking. And when he was done, he always slipped it back where it belonged, without looking.
    He was very good.
    Until he fell from a roof and severed his spinal cord.
    Danny was nine when it happened. He was on the computer in the attic when his mother took him to the neighbor’s house. She was crying and didn’t tell Danny anything. She didn’t come back to get him for three days. She didn’t talk much then, either.
    His father died on the operating table.
    Danny held her hand at the funeral. It was cold. When he squeezed, she didn’t squeeze back. Her eyes had become blank. No family attended, only neighbors and woodworkers. The house was very quiet that night.
    His mother was not home much. She worked a lot. She had a prescription drug problem and washed it down with gin. She often never made it off the couch. This suited Danny’s lifestyle just fine.
    Danny learned how to hack computers when he was six. It started with online games. He and his friends hacked Xbox and PlayStation databases, rewriting the code for unlimited weapons. They downloaded free music, movies, and games. Sometimes they had games before they were released.
    By the time he was nine, it wasn’t even a challenge. After his father died, he stepped up the stakes.
    They hacked into the school and planted porn in the principal’s inbox. They changed all the jocks’ grades to Fs. They set off fire alarms ten times in a month.
    They hacked their first bank when he was 10.
    They set up a dummy account with false ATM deposits. They never let the balance go over five hundred dollars and they never withdrew the money as cash, simply used it to pay for things online. Because his mother was never home, they had clothes, shoes, computers and software shipped directly to his house.
    It was a parole officer that busted him.
    Danny skipped school, sitting up in the attic on the computer for days at a time. The cops came to the house and wanted to speak to his mother. It pissed Danny off, so he swiped the officer’s identity, repossessed his car and foreclosed on his house. The man’s credit was trashed. They couldn’t prove he did anything.
    He had all the money an 11 year old would want, but he wanted more. He began trolling Las Vegas casinos. At first, it was just jacking accounts and hacking online poker games. But the real money was in Vegas. His friends came over. It took a weekend and a case of Red Bull, but they managed to set up a dummy account with three million dollars and a penthouse timeshare waiting for them at the top of a resort. Their biggest problem was the fact that they were a bunch of eleven year olds.
    But they ended up with bigger problems.
    At first they thought they’d been discovered by Vegas security and they’d lose all the bones in their thumbs. They were relieved that it was just the FBI. They’d be in trouble, but at least they wouldn’t be hung from a hook through the tongue.
    The rest of them wanted to stop, but