Chapter 1 – The Spark of Obsession

Got it! I'll expand the chapter by adding more details about Anon's childhood curiosity, his struggles with learning, and his growing frustration with limitations.

The Beginning of a Curious Mind

Anon had always been different. As a child, while other kids were outside playing cricket or video games, he was dismantling things—an old remote, a broken fan, even his father's watch once (which earned him a week-long scolding). He wasn't destructive by nature, just… curious. He wanted to see how things worked, what lay beneath the surface of the ordinary.

His father was a government employee, his mother a homemaker, and their middle-class life was simple. There was never excess money for expensive toys or gadgets, but that never bothered him. He found more excitement in salvaging discarded electronics from repair shops, tinkering with whatever scraps he could get.

One day, when he was about 10, he found an old computer monitor someone had thrown out. He dragged it home with excitement, plugged it in, and… nothing. It was dead. He didn't understand why, but that night, instead of sleeping, he spent hours trying to open the back panel with a screwdriver. He had no idea what he was doing, and before long—Bzzt!—a mild electric shock sent him flying back. His mother rushed in, screaming, and his father grounded him for a week.

That incident should have scared him. Instead, it fascinated him even more.

By the time he was 12, he had convinced his father to buy an old second-hand laptop. It wasn't for schoolwork. It was his portal to an entirely new world.

The Early Failures

Anon's first attempt at programming was laughable. He copied and pasted random JavaScript snippets from the internet, expecting magic. Instead, his first-ever "calculator program" crashed whenever he tried dividing by zero. He spent days trying to fix it before realizing he had copied faulty code. That lesson stuck with him—never trust blindly, always analyze.

When he was 14, he attempted his first "hack." The school had a strict firewall blocking entertainment websites, and he needed access to YouTube tutorials. He downloaded a proxy app, thinking he had outsmarted the system, only to find out the school had already blocked proxies. In frustration, he tried entering random administrator passwords… and locked himself out of his account instead.

That failure stung, but it taught him an important lesson—hacking wasn't about luck, it was about understanding systems.

So, he spent the next two years obsessively learning. He studied Python, Linux, networking, and security—alone, without any guidance. He devoured online courses, read hacking forums, and practiced on vulnerable machines using virtual labs. His family had no idea what he was doing late at night, his eyes fixated on the screen.

By the time he was 17, he wasn't just consuming knowledge. He was applying it.

The First Successful Hack

Anon sat at his desk, staring at the online learning platform's login page. The premium AI courses locked behind high paywalls weren't just expensive—they were insultingly out of reach for someone like him. Thousands of rupees per course. And yet, the information was just sitting there, hidden behind code.

He had tried and failed to bypass the login page before. His previous attempts—SQL injections, brute-force attacks—had been useless. But he had learned from those failures.

This time, he wasn't rushing. He was analyzing.

Using Burp Suite, he intercepted the login request. Every failed attempt returned an error almost instantly. But when he intentionally entered a partially correct password, he noticed something—a slightly longer response time.

A timing attack.

His fingers flew across the keyboard as he wrote a Python script:

1. Enter a fake password.

2. Measure how long it takes for the server to reject it.

3. Adjust the first character and measure again.

4. Repeat, building the password one letter at a time.

He ran the script.

Five minutes passed. Nothing.

Ten minutes. Still nothing.

He started doubting himself. Maybe this wasn't going to work. Maybe he had miscalculated.

Then—a delay detected.

A smirk formed on his lips. Gotcha.

Character by character, the password revealed itself. It took almost an hour, but in the end, he had a working admin login.

Heart pounding, he entered the credentials. The dashboard loaded. Rows of premium courses, research papers, and exclusive content—all unlocked.

He leaned back in his chair. His first real hack.

Not flashy. Not Hollywood-style. But it worked.

And that was all that mattered.

The Aftermath

For the next week, Anon absorbed every AI and cybersecurity course he could find. He didn't sell access, didn't make a profit—he didn't care about money. He wanted knowledge.

But with that success came a realization—if he was serious about his work, he needed resources. Real, physical resources.

His current setup was laughable. An old laptop with barely enough power to run basic AI models, let alone train anything advanced. His internet speed was slow. His storage was insufficient. And most importantly, he had no privacy—he was still living in his parents' house, working from a tiny room.

He needed more. A personal workspace. Better hardware. A way to sustain himself without relying on his family's money.

And that meant finding a way to acquire computational power, storage, and financial independence—without getting caught.