Chapter 18: Senate Shenanigans
"Alright, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thunderdome! Or, as the government calls it, a Senate Hearing. Where ambitious politicians try to look important, and a billionaire genius tries to look modest. It's a delicate dance of ego and posturing. Perfect. My kind of crowd. Today, we're not just going for annoying. We're going for 'unforgettable.' The kind of unforgettable that makes grown men question their career choices and their faith in stable internet connections. Let the chaos… begin!"
The Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was a circus, precisely as Alex had anticipated. The room buzzed with reporters, camera crews, and stern-faced politicians. Tony Stark, looking impeccably tailored, sat at the witness table, exuding an aura of barely contained impatience. Senator Stern, a man whose face seemed permanently etched with disapproval, presided over the proceedings. Alex, dressed in his most nondescript attire, sat in the public gallery, a faint, almost imperceptible smirk playing on his lips. His heart hammered with a familiar thrill. This was his stage.
His "Masterful Hacking (Network & Device)" skill was primed. He had spent days mapping the committee room's wireless networks, the secure internal lines, and even the antiquated public address system. He had found vulnerabilities in the digital broadcasting equipment, the kind that only a truly dedicated digital phantom would bother to unearth.
"It's amazing what you can do with a little bit of curiosity and a whole lot of apathy from IT departments. Seriously, Senator, if you're going to grill a man about advanced technology, maybe invest in some advanced technology yourself? Just a thought."
The hearing began with Stern's opening remarks, a bland recitation of national security concerns and the perceived threat of a privately owned weapon. Then, the questioning. It was tedious, predictable. Tony, predictably, responded with a mix of defiance, sarcasm, and thinly veiled contempt.
Alex waited for his moment. He focused on the public Wi-Fi network, the one used by journalists for live updates and by bored congressional aides for checking their fantasy football scores. He didn't crash it. No, that was too obvious. He tweaked it.
He deployed a subtle code. For precisely five minutes, any device connected to the public Wi-Fi would automatically redirect any attempt to access a news website, a social media platform, or even an email client, to a single, obscure webpage. This page displayed nothing but a looping, low-resolution GIF of a dancing hotdog. With sunglasses. And tiny, exaggeratedly muscular arms. And the sound of an actual hotdog sizzling faintly in the background.
The effect was instantaneous and hilarious. Heads snapped up. Journalists, mid-tweet, stared at their screens, bewildered. A collective murmur rippled through the press section, then stifled chuckles. A few reporters, convinced their laptops were possessed, frantically rebooted. Senator Stern, mid-sentence, paused, his brow furrowed, as he noticed the distraction.
"Oh, that's beautiful. The dancing hotdog. It's abstract, it's nonsensical, and it's utterly, beautifully pointless. The perfect, infuriating digital graffiti. You're welcome, internet. Your day just got a little weirder."
Just as the hotdog GIF was causing peak confusion, Alex moved to his next target: the teleprompters used by the senators. He didn't change the words. That was too easy to spot. Instead, he subtly shifted the font of the text on Senator Stern's teleprompter to Comic Sans, then to Wingdings, then back to a perfectly normal font, only slightly askew, making it almost imperceptible but just off enough to be distracting. Stern squinted, blinked, then cleared his throat awkwardly, trying to stay on script while his eyes darted to the oddly rendered words.
Then came the pièce de résistance. Tony Stark, having just delivered a particularly pithy retort about the government's attempts to replicate his suit, leaned back. This was Alex's cue. He accessed the audio feed for the live broadcast, just for a split second.
As a serious-looking general began to drone on about military capabilities, a tiny, almost subliminal audio clip played through the broadcast's live feed – a single, unmistakable cluck. Not loud enough to be immediately obvious, but just enough to make a percentage of viewers at home rewind their DVRs, convinced they'd heard something. And then, a few seconds later, another, even fainter cluck. It was a ghost in the soundwaves, a final, mischievous nod to the vanquished Stane.
The cumulative effect was glorious. Tony Stark, watching the proceedings on a monitor outside the official camera view, caught the hotdog GIF. A small, knowing smirk played on his lips for a fraction of a second, before he quickly suppressed it, perhaps even wondering if his own paranoia had finally come to life. He glanced around the room, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. He still didn't know who, but he knew something was up.
Senator Stern, meanwhile, was clearly flustered. His questioning became more disjointed, his temper visibly fraying as he struggled with the teleprompter and the constant, low-level buzz of digital chaos in the room. The entire hearing felt subtly, inexplicably off-kilter. The government looked bumbling, out of touch. Tony, despite being the target, came out looking even more like a maverick genius, the only one who could truly control his own tech.
[Mischief Target: Senate Armed Services Committee | Annoyance Level: High - Public Embarrassment, Digital Disruption, Questioning Competence.]
[Mischief Target: Tony Stark | Annoyance Level: Moderate - Amused, Intrigued, Subtly Validated by Chaos.]
[Calculating Rewards...]
[Reward Acquired: 180 Mischief Points]
[Hidden Achievement Unlocked: "The Bureaucratic Bane"]
[New Plot Alert: The Russian Menace. Opportunity for preemptive mischief and technological counter-measures.]
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