Knee-Deep in Julian Assange's Hilarious Memoir

When I started hacking you were just one layer above the bare metal. You were typing into this wonderful emptiness, waiting to be populated with minds. A few of us were interested in projecting our thoughts into the computer to make it do something new. We began writing codes and we began cracking them, too…. It was certainly addictive. You’d dive down into a computer system — typically, for me at the time, the Pentagon’s 8th Command Group computers. You’d take it over, projecting your mind all the way from your untidy bedroom to the entire system along the halls, and all the while you’re learning to understand that system better than the people in Washington. It was like being able to teleport yourself into the interior of the Pentagon in order to walk around and take charge…. As experiences of young adulthood go, it was mindblowing. By day you’d be walking down the street to the supermarket, meeting people you know, people who have no sense of you as anything other than a slacker teenager, and you’d know you had spent last night knee-deep in Nasa.

— Who ghost-wrote the Julian Assange memoir, Jackie Collins? No disrespect to the talented lady! But boy this is purple. Also, if you’ve seen Swordfish, and of course you have, basically don’t bother with this excerpt.