louisehourcade Chapter 177 Welcome Party
Chapter 177 Welcome Party
The day the home internet was installed, Su Hao pressed the power button on his laptop for the first time.
"Um? 』
As soon as I connected to the network, a notification sound for a new email popped up in the lower right corner of the screen.
The sender was none other than the MIT Registrar's Office.
Please register a Kerberos account.
Su Hao immediately straightened up.
Kerberos!
This is not an ordinary account, but a core personal authentication credential that every student and researcher who steps onto the MIT campus must apply for.
At MIT, this thing is your lifeline.
Besides sending and receiving academic emails, selecting courses, and accessing confidential cloud data...
Even the access control for each experimental building, and all the complicated administrative procedures within the school, must be managed through this account without exception.
In the hacker community, this system is legendary.
This is a top-tier online authentication system independently developed by the MIT Computer Science Laboratory.
Looking at the world, the underlying architecture of the security systems of countless multinational technology giants, top financial institutions, and even national research institutes are all designed and extended from it as a basic framework.
It can be said that this is a more powerful and versatile "digital key" than any physical student ID card.
Only when he held it in his hand did Su Hao truly feel the reality of "having really entered MIT".
"But speaking of which... the name is Kerberos..."
Su Hao couldn't help but make a comment.
The official system is named after Cerberus, the three-headed dog from Greek mythology that guards the gates of Hell.
These MIT bigwigs probably wanted to use this name to send a wildly confident message to the world that they would "absolutely not allow any unauthorized noob hackers to intrude."
Click, click, click.
The crisp sound of keyboard typing rang out.
『Su_Hao』
With the ID entered and the complex password set, the authentication process completed the progress bar extremely smoothly.
A green notification pops up on the screen:
Registration Complete.
Thus, Su Hao's digital soul has been imprinted on this land.
He officially became a member of MIT.
.......
On the day of the freshman orientation.
Killian Square, a central landmark on campus, was packed with people from early morning.
Beneath the iconic, massive classical dome, a striking welcome banner stretches across the room.
Between the ancient stone buildings on both sides, red and white balloons are densely hung, attempting to add a touch of liveliness to this solemn academic sanctuary.
"Are these... really freshmen at MIT...?"
An Asian student standing next to Su Hao was scanning his surroundings with an almost blank look, and couldn't help but mutter something under his breath.
Not only him, but even Su Hao couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.
On the lawn, the top students who had gone through the world's most brutal admission selection process and climbed over the shoulders of countless genius peers to get into this place were now gathered in small groups, exchanging pleasantries.
As if to take revenge for the inhumane years of studying in the past, almost everyone dressed up in an extremely exaggerated way.
However... this kind of "careful dressing up" looks rather bizarre and cringeworthy to normal people.
On the left, a guy was dressed in a suit and tie, but he was wearing a very flamboyant pink bow tie at the collar;
On the right, someone is wearing high-top trendy sneakers, but their upper body is covered with a custom T-shirt printed with dense calculus formulas;
Ahead, there was someone carrying a laptop bag covered with stickers of anime girls, and even holding a fluorescent 3D-printed cane!
"Good heavens... is this the ultimate form of the legendary American nerds?"
Looking at this group of abnormal humans who seemed to have traveled out of a science fiction movie from another dimension, Su Hao breathed a long sigh of relief.
That's great! At least in this school full of weirdos, even if he went out wearing a burlap sack, no one should criticize his fashion sense!
Just as Su Hao was about to find a seat, a very clear, yet arrogant female voice suddenly came from behind him.
"Hmph, a bunch of weirdos!"
Su Hao subconsciously turned his head.
"Um? 』
What came into view was a person who was completely out of place in the surrounding motley crew of strange and monstrous people—
A stunningly beautiful blonde girl, seemingly bathed in her own light.
Her long, golden hair shone brilliantly in the early autumn sunlight of Boston.
A gentle breeze blows, and strands of hair flutter in the air like the finest silk.
What's even more striking are her gray eyes, as clear as glaciers, devoid of any warmth.
She wore a high-quality white shirt on top, paired with a well-tailored dark navy blue short jacket, and a perfectly fitted knee-length black skirt on the bottom.
This outfit is so exquisite and dazzling that it doesn't have a single wrinkle.
It was as if she wasn't there for the opening ceremony, but rather as a model who had just finished a cover shoot for a top luxury fashion magazine and stepped right out of the magazine.
The students who had been talking loudly around her suddenly turned their attention to her as if they were being drawn by a magnet.
But facing the intense gazes of the crowd, the girl showed no fear whatsoever. Instead, she nonchalantly raised her chin and smiled brightly at everyone, a smile brimming with undisguised arrogance:
"What are you looking at? Haven't you ever seen a high-IQ blonde beauty before?"
"Holy crap! That's a powerful aura!"
Su Hao's eye twitched, and he subtly moved his feet away, silently increasing the distance between himself and the woman.
We can't afford to mess with them, we absolutely can't afford to mess with them.
After this group of oddly shaped geniuses finally took their seats and assembled like Tetris blocks, a long and unoriginal welcome party officially began.
The white-haired principal's long and monotonous welcome speech, the hypnotic performance by an unknown jazz band that made you drowsy, the student council president's recitation of the school's history like reciting an instruction manual...
These clichéd routines were so bad that even Su Hao, who is usually very resistant to boring things and as steady as a rock, couldn't help but open his mouth and let out a big yawn.
Looking around, all the geniuses below the stage were desperately rolling their eyes and fighting off overwhelming drowsiness, making the scene resemble a zombie horde about to be wiped out.
Just as everyone had finally gotten through these stages, and had been divided into groups according to the list and were about to begin their campus tour, the host who walked onto the stage suddenly changed his expression and slammed the microphone in his hand a few times.
No sound.
"What happened?"
Is the equipment broken?
Students immediately began to complain:
"Thank goodness! It seems my ears have protested by going deaf because of today's program..."
A burst of gloating laughter immediately erupted from the crowd.
Just when everyone thought it was just a normal equipment malfunction, something unexpected happened!
"Whoosh!"
On the huge LED screen directly in front of us, a masked person wearing a black hood with only their eyes showing suddenly appeared without warning!
The host's face turned deathly pale in an instant, as if he had seen a ghost!
Before anyone could react, the entire screen suddenly flickered violently!
The MIT logo, representing the school emblem, shattered into countless fragments like glass in the center of the screen!
Immediately afterwards, the entire screen fell into a deathly black!
"Sizzle—"
Accompanied by an extremely piercing electronic beeping sound mixed with electrical noise, a heavily distorted voice, sounding like a movie boss, boomed throughout the venue:
Hello to all you self-proclaimed geniuses!
boom!
The previously somewhat lazy student group suddenly erupted into an uncontrollable commotion.
"Holy crap! What the hell is going on?!"
"Was it hacked? At MIT's orientation party?!"