"Fear of Hacking at DEF CON Vegas" (AFTER DARK SPECIAL)

Valiant didn’t go to Las Vegas expecting to find belonging. He went to DEF CON (the world’s most infamous hacker conference) armed with stickers, a mic, and a healthy dose of paranoia. What he found was something else entirely.

This isn’t your typical conference recap. It’s a raw, unfiltered, and occasionally absurd field report from the front lines of hacker culture. From TSA misadventures and social engineering sleight-of-hand to vishing competitions, AI villages, and many a drink, this is the story of how a n00b stumbled into a world he didn’t know he was already part of.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s really like inside DEF CON, or what happens when a marketing director who is charged-and-synced with the spirit of Hunter S. Thompson goes full gonzo in the name of cybersecurity, this one’s for you.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere you get your podcasts.

Transcript

Fear of Hacking at DEF CON Vegas

The Signal and the Sand: My Mythic Descent into the World’s Largest Hacker Conference.

Editor’s note: It’s been one week since Valiant Puck returned from his assignment in Las Vegas. This blog was supposed to be published as a live report from DEF CON, but as you will read, things at the notorious hacker conference never go as planned. We attempted contact with him every day since he supposedly returned to Oklahoma, but Puck had fallen off the map completely, not responding to emails, texts, or phone calls. Until we received the following narrative at 3:48am this morning. 

Chapter 1: Social Engineering My Way Through Security, Defying Gravity, and a Chaotic Supply Run

We were barreling east on 344, the Beamer howling like a banshee in heat, toward that godforsaken slab of concrete they call Will Rogers World Airport — a name so grandiose it could only be a joke. “International,” they say, as if three ticket agents and a snack bar full of expired sandwiches at $14 a pop qualifies you for global status. But there it was, squatting in the Oklahoma heat like a sunburned toad, named after a dead humorist who sealed his own doom in a plane crash. The punchline? The only other guy in the cockpit — Wiley Post — is who the other local airport is named after. Two men, one crash, two airports. That’s America for you.

Bee slid the car into the departures lane with the grace of a stunt driver on ketamine. I took one last lungful of that thick, swampy Oklahoma air — the kind that clings to your skin like guilt — and yanked my bags from the backseat.

“Try not to get arrested,” she said, smiling in a way that was half-joking, half-not.

“Yeah, see you Monday,” I muttered, telescoping the handle on my carry-on like a man cocking his rifle for war.

Inside, the airport was a mausoleum. Empty. Quiet. The kind of place where time folds in on itself and you start to question whether you ever existed at all. I scanned the QR I received from checking in through the app into the kiosk and printed my boarding pass.

We’d stopped for lunch at some networking mixer, a social meat grinder disguised as a professional event,  where I’d downed a tall, blue rum monstrosity with a name like “Island Bliss” or “Tropical Mirage”, I can’t remember.  It tasted like regret and sunscreen, but it did the job. Six hours until my flight but my nerves were already shot, and the altitude demons were already circling.

If there’d been another bar between check-in and security, I’d have crawled into it and never come out. But no — straight to the TSA cattle chute, where the agents barked orders like prison guards on a double shift.

“Shoes off. Hoodie in the bin. Pockets empty.”

I locked eyes with the woman at the conveyor belt. She looked like she’d seen some things. I leaned in.

“Listen… there might be some stuff in there that looks… strange.”

Her eyes narrowed. I could see the gears turning. I pulled out my business card like a magician revealing the final trick.

“Just computer parts. LEDs. Circuit boards. I’m in cybersecurity and forensics. The card proves it. I’m on a mission to find the meaning of community, to see if it still exists, or if it has changed into something else.”

I didn’t mention DEF CON. No need to invite suspicion. No need to explain why a “Marketing Director” was hauling enough lock picks, door shims, and blinking circuit boards to make a bomb squad nervous.

She nodded slowly, barely looked at the card, then turned to her colleague. “Joe, this guy’s law enforcement. Let him through.”

Law enforcement? I never said that. But I wasn’t about to correct her. Not when the alternative was a full-body cavity search and a lecture on federal aviation law.

Joe didn’t even blink. He shoved my bin through the machine like it was a sack of potatoes. I was through.

I made a beeline for The Hatch — the only oasis in this desert of despair. A brunch joint with cocktails strong enough to make you forget your own name. I ordered two mules — vodka, blackberry, lavender — and slammed them like a man trying to outrun his own blood pressure.

Then Tango showed up.

Tango hates flying. Thinks it’s an affront to God and gravity. He’d rather be in the woods, chasing Bigfoot and living off pinecones. But here he was, the Xanax kicking in, ready to board a metal tube and defy physics.

I closed my tab and followed him in search of food, something better than the $14 turkey deli meat between generic wheat the grab-and-go’s were offering. 

Thirty minutes later I was elbow-deep in a Russian Reuben, a greasy, glorious monstrosity of meat and fermented cabbage, while Tango was shoveling eggs and hollandaise into his mouth like a man trying to outrun a hangover. The Hatch was humming with the low buzz of travelers and the clink of brunch cocktails, when Shins limped in like a wounded war correspondent returning from the front.

He had the look of a man who’d been through hell and brought souvenirs — backpack strapped tight, eyes bloodshot, walking like every step was a betrayal. He’d tweaked something in his back a few days ago, and by all accounts, shouldn’t have been flying. But this was DEF CON. You don’t skip DEF CON unless you’re dead or in federal custody — and even then, there’s a chance you’ll still show up.

Shins is a minor celebrity in this world, one of the O.G. voices of Secure AF, our podcast of real-world threats and cybersecurity gospel. Turns out a lot of people recognize that voice. It echoes through the halls of hackerdom like a war cry, and it usually translates into free drinks, sticker exchanges, and the occasional awkward fan encounter in a casino bathroom.

He dropped into the seat across from us   and flagged down the waiter like a man who’d just survived a plane crash. “Jack and Coke,” he said, voice gravelly, like he’d been gargling sandpaper.

Then came the TSA stories — war tales from the front lines of airport security. Apparently, my little business card sleight-of-hand had worked like a charm. Meanwhile, both Tango and Shins had been pulled aside, prodded, questioned, and scanned like radioactive livestock. TSA was especially suspicious of the medical girdle Shins was forced to wear to keep his guts in check.

“Boarding starts in twenty,” Tango muttered.

We stood in unison, a ragtag trio of black-clad misfits, each dragging our gear like sherpas on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The terminal awaited — a sterile tunnel to the neon chaos of Las Vegas, where the real madness was just beginning.

Two hours later, we landed in Vegas like a trio of caffeinated fugitives — eyes bloodshot, nerves frayed, and brains still vibrating from the altitude. The airport was a circus of slot machines and lost souls, a place where dreams came to die and get resurrected in the form of overpriced cocktails and bad decisions before you even hit The Strip.

Outside, the desert heat hit us like a brick wall wrapped in sandpaper. But hey, at least it’s a dry heat. That’s when Johnny pulled up — our chauffeur, our guide, our spiritual liaison to the underbelly of Sin City. Short, stocky, and built like a bulldog in an ill-fitting black suit with greasy black hair slicked back, Johnny had the kind of energy that made you question whether he was real or just a hallucination conjured by jet lag and suppressed anxiety.

“What’s the craziest ride you ever had?” Shins asked as we buckled in.

“One time I did acid with CarrotTop.” he said like a fisherman throwing out a line with a big juicy wad of bait on the end.

Before we could even respond he launched into the story with the kind of wild-eyed conviction that made you believe every word — a tale of psychedelic chaos, prop comedy, and a hot tub full of glow sticks. Meanwhile, his Cadillac Escalade, a black behemoth of chrome and leather, roared to life blasting 90’s nu-metal band Korn like it was the soundtrack to the apocalypse. 

“Falling Away From Me” indeed.

We cruised through the Vegas sprawl, music up, and Johnny narrating the city like a man who’d seen too much and lived to tell about it. First stop: the liquor store. Shins limped inside like a man on a mission and emerged with a jug of Jack Daniels and two cases of Modelo like he was stocking up for a siege. I wandered in and bought an almond and coffee-flavored cigar from 1990, a relic of questionable legality, and in a rush, accidentally grabbed a Las Vegas-branded bottle opener, thinking it was a cigar cutter. The clerk didn’t correct me. Nobody corrects you in Vegas.

Back in the Escalade, Johnny handed us each a Heineken like communion wafers. “You boys look thirsty,” he said, grinning like a devil in his bulky black suit.

Then came the dispensary. Only I went in, the others stayed behind, sipping beer and listening to Limp Bizkit like it was a religious experience. I emerged with a pack of infused diamond dust pre-rolls, three little sticks of cosmic enlightenment wrapped in foil and promise that should make any headache induced by the gallons of alcohol go away.

Finally, Johnny dropped us at the Horseshoe Hotel — a towering monument to gambling and regret with uncomfortable furniture in the rooms that force you to want to hang out down on the floor. He handed us his number scrawled on a business card that smelled faintly of motor oil and menthols.

“If things get weird,” he said, “call me.”

Things were already weird. But they were about to get weirder.

Chapter 2: Avengers Assemble and a Disappointing Meeting with The Mayor

We stumbled into the Horseshoe like three wind-burned pilgrims arriving at the gates of some neon temple. The air inside was cool, artificial, and smelled strongly of cheap perfume designed to override the smell of desperation and smoke. Slot machines blinked like dying stars. Somewhere, someone was already losing their mortgage.

At the check-in desk stood our CISO, calm, collected, dressed like a man who’d seen the abyss and decided to file a compliance report about it. He wore a straw fedora with a polo shirt and nodded at us with the quiet authority of someone who knew exactly how many firewalls were burning at that very moment.

Then came our infamous leader, Ven, moving with the precision of a man who’d been awake for 36 hours and still hadn’t missed a beat. He pulled us over to a self-service kiosk to check us in. Tango’s, as well as our CISO’s, keys came right out but something was off with Shin’s and mine. Ven broke into an abrupt walk to the concierge desk to straighten whatever the mess was out, and spent the next several minutes in line.

When it was his turn he stepped forward, only to have the N95-wearing lady behind the desk panic and retreat. She shrieked for him to stand six feet back and he begrudgingly complied. 

A few minutes later he delivered our room keys to us like sacred relics… each one a ticket to temporary sanctuary.

Tango and our CISO had already peeled off toward their room, probably to strategize or collapse, hard to say which. Shins and I were bunking together, in a room containing two queen beds and a curtain the color of arterial blood, but not much else. There were paper cups, but no coffee. At least we had something to mix drinks in. We dropped our gear and barely had time to breathe before Shins got the call.

“Ven is downstairs. He wants us to meet him at the bar.”

We descended, finding Ven already posted up at a small round table in the lobby with the kind of posture that said this is not my first whiskey. He ordered us Woodford and Diet Cokes with a lime wedge.

“You boys need to catch up.”

Once the last drop had slid from our glasses, it was high time we began the pilgrimage to find food. It was after 10pm Vegas-time, but past midnight by our internal clocks.  The choice was made by proximity… the closest restaurant open was Guy Fieri’s “Flavortown”, advertised to make you feel it’s a culinary fever dream wrapped in flames and frosted tips. We ordered their Trashcan Nachos to start, as well as more whiskey and mounds of BBQ for each of us.

The nachos took forever. I made the comment, a bit loud, that nothing pisses me off more than an appetizer that appears AFTER the entree. Shins remarked how he always “sends that shit back.” The waiter overheard and apologized, eyes darting like he was being watched by the ghost of Guy himself. When the nachos finally arrived, after the entrees, they were glorious. They outshined everything else on the table.

Ven was unimpressed. “For this price, I could’ve bought a gold-dusted steak and my own distillery,” he muttered, stabbing at his meat with the kind of disdain usually reserved for companies that don’t keep even the most basic security hygiene.

Maybe it was the waves of anarchy rising up in me, anticipating what the next few days were promised to bring, or maybe it was the Jolly Roger-like skull of Guy Fieri with the crossed fork and knife emblazoned across the face of the napkin across my lap, but as we wrapped up, I rolled up that thick linen napkin tightly and slipped it into my pants, a souvenir of our descent into high-priced culinary madness. 

I was feeling that spirit of community starting to come alive. I was starting to feel like I belonged. We had been to see the mayor of Flavortown, and it felt like he had done one over on us. But at least I had made off with one of his prized towels.

Despite the sticker shock we still left full, slightly drunk, with cartons of leftovers and already wondering what fresh chaos tomorrow would bring.

Chapter 3: Malört Ga-lort.

My internal clock was still tangled in the wreckage of time zones, so I came to at 4 a.m., wide-eyed and cursing my luck with sleep. Sleep has always been a scam, a cruel joke played by biology. I’ve scraped by on 4 to 5 hours a night since adulthood began, and no matter when I crash… midnight, 4 a.m., doesn’t matter… I wake up at 6 like some cursed automaton. Today was no different. The machine was running, whether I liked it or not. I got up, showered, and downed some electrolytes.

Breakfast was a sad, greasy affair, leftovers reheated and devoured like war rations before we ascended to Ven’s suite. And what a suite it was. The genius had once again bent the laws of social engineering to his will, upgrading himself into a two-story palace of excess. A master bedroom with a granite bathtub that looked like it had been ripped from Nero’s private spa. Ven was a magician when it came to hacking the human brain.

“Come in, boys. Time to catch up!” he barked, already pouring Woodford like it was holy water. Two glasses hit our hands before the words had even finishing echoing off the high ceilings. It didn’t matter how savage the night had been or how ungodly the hour—Ven was always ready to chase the next high, the next story, the next glorious challenge.

Tango and our CISO were already in line at the convention center. Three-hour wait, they said. We relayed that we’d wait as well. Right there in the suite—in quiet and comfort, before floating into the eye of the storm.

I nursed the drink like it was medicine, slow, deliberate, and stared into the glowing abyss of my analytics dashboard. Tabs everywhere. Numbers climbing upward like on a stopwatch counting to the millisecond as a car races round the track. I’ve got what the shrinks might call “an additive nature,” a compulsive thirst for refreshing, watching metrics twitch and climb like stock tickers. It’s a sickness, but it’s mine.

Then—bam—a lead. A name I knew. Familiar. A client from another life in my past. The kind of thing that jolts you upright like a gunshot in a quiet room. I was down the rabbit hole in seconds, chasing digital footprints like a bloodhound on amphetamines. Where had they come from? What twisted path had led them to our site, to that form, to me?

I was no longer sipping—I was hunting. That is until a voice called me back to reality, asking if I was ready to go. I packed up and headed over to the kitchen area. Shins and Ven were packing small bottles of a nasty little liquid into every spare space of their bags.

“I got a steal from my dealer on this,” Shins confessed with pride. A hundred bottles. Under two bucks a pop. Madness. He jammed another tiny bottle into his duffel with the precision of a smuggler, while I cradled a boxed set of six recognizing the label. Jeppson’s Malört, the sacred swill of DEF CON. The box was the size of a softball but carried the weight of legend.

Malört. A liquor born in the shadows of Prohibition, masquerading as medicine, flavored with wormwood and regret. The company distilled the stuff under the guise of medicine during Prohibition, and describe the palette of it now as “a type of brännvin flavored with anise or wormwood.” Shins, ever the poet of pain, had once described it on the Secure After Dark Podcast as “tasting like a distilled tuna fish sandwich strained through grave dirt.” And he wasn’t wrong. It was the kind of drink that made your ancestors wince.

I asked if they needed help moving more of the stuff. Of course they did. Soon I was elbow-deep in my canvas rucksack, stuffing bottles into every crevice like a mule preparing to run through customs. DEF CON wasn’t just a convention—it was a ritual. And this was our sacrament.

Chapter 4: Entering Hackerdom

We peeled out of the hotel just before 11 a.m., half-awake and half-alive, riding the northbound monorail like fugitives on a steel snake. The air was thick with caffeine and residual paranoia. The Las Vegas Convention Center loomed ahead like a concrete temple of chaos.

The walk from Westgate Station was a war zone—construction fencing, concrete barriers, and the kind of half-finished sidewalk detours that make you question the existence of city planning. Something was happening behind the fencing… machines, men, noise… but we didn’t care. The herd moved forward, a mass of DEF CON pilgrims trudging through dust and confusion.

Inside, the building swallowed us whole. Endless hallways stretched like arteries, sterile and humming. We snaked our way into the West Hall, and suddenly…boom… the place exploded into scale. A monstrous lobby, escalators climbing three stories like mechanical vines, and a dvLED screen nearly the size of a football field. Ninety feet tall, nearly two hundred wide, pulsing with DEF CON sigils in radioactive pinks and purples. It was alive. Breathing. Watching.

This wasn’t just a tech conference. It was a cathedral of madness. 

DEF CON is not a conference in the usual sense, it’s a controlled detonation of the human psyche. A swirling, chaotic vortex of paranoia, brilliance, caffeine, and code. Imagine a thousand minds wired on Red Bull and alcohol, all converging in the neon belly of Las Vegas to poke holes in the digital fabric of civilization.

The atmosphere? Electric. Unstable. Beautifully deranged.

DEF CON is loud. DEF CON is quiet. DEF CON is a place where you can be surrounded by thousands and still feel like you’re being watched. Because you are. Everyone is watching everyone. Everyone is logging everything. You don’t connect to the Wi-Fi unless you have a death wish. You don’t plug in a USB stick unless you want your soul extracted.

And yet, it’s exhilarating. It’s the edge of the edge. The place where the future is being rewritten by people who refuse to play by the rules.

And I had arrived.

We rolled into registration expecting the usual DEF CON chaos…lines, sweat, confusion…but the place was eerily calm. No wait. No stampede. Just a few goons behind the check-in desk, scanning tickets and handing out badges. We flashed our tickets, got the beep of approval, and were handed our loot bags.

We found a quiet corner, the kind of place where you could breathe without being surveilled, and started rifling through the swag. The usual DEF CON stickers, the first of what will end up being hundreds collected by the end of the week.

There was also a physical guidebook in the style of a graphic novel, a sort of “Field Guide to DEF CON 33”, thick with dystopian art and cryptic info dumps. I flipped to the music section, heart twitching. Months ago, I’d thrown a couple of tracks into the DEF CON soundtrack submission pile, hoping for a free ticket and a sliver of recognition. No reply. No rejection. Just silence.

Every year, DEF CON releases a soundtrack for the conference to raise money, with hundreds of hopefuls sending in tracks. The chosen ones get immortalized on Bandcamp, where DEF CON disciples donate what they can and soundtrack their pilgrimage from talk to talk, village to village. I had been checking the DEF CON Music socials like a man waiting for a verdict. Nothing. No news. Just static.

Shins shrugged. “Yeah, it’s more or less a techno album. Mostly drum and bass, trance music.”

“Well,” I chuckled, “next year I’ll just resubmit the same songs with some extra clappity-boom-boom-tiss high in the mix.”

One last desperate search. I opened Bandcamp, typed “DEF CON 33,” and there it was, freshly dropped that morning. I scrolled through the list of DJs and digital sorcerers until—holy hell—track #32. My band’s name. My track. I was on the damn soundtrack.

I jumped like I’d been hit with a taser. Hollered. Shoved my phone in Shins’ face like it was a winning lottery ticket. “I made it. I’m on the soundtrack!”

Shins grinned, cool as ever. “Wow, really? Good job… you know there’s like 40,000 people here who are going to hear that, right?”

I blinked. The room tilted slightly. It was time for another drink.

Chapter 5: The goons aren’t so bad, but it turns out the badges needed a vulnerability assessment.

The high wore off but I felt like I was still on clouds. We drifted to the side of the video wall like desert rats chasing shade, linking up with a few fellow Okies near the edge of the massive DEF CON lobby. Plans were made. 

Ven and I had to run upstairs to check-in at the Social Engineering Community Village. We had entered the Vishing Competition and out of nearly a hundred submissions, made the cut of 15. Tomorrow I would be going into the booth with him to make some calls in front of a live studio audience. But this afternoon we had mandatory onboarding to  make sure we were clear on the rules and expectations.

We gave our names, got our swag bags, and headed back downstairs. Along the way, a couple of goons approached to see what we were about.

Ah, the DEF CON goons, those mythical gatekeepers of hacker lore. In the legends, they’re painted as shadowy enforcers, black-clad and stone-faced, like bouncers at a cyberpunk speakeasy. But the truth? The truth is far stranger and far kinder.

These weren’t the cold-blooded sentinels of paranoia I’d been warned about. No, the goons were shockingly human, despite the irony of normal con attendees being referred to as humans, and anyone with a different badge (speakers, vendors, goons, artists) was labeled “inhuman”. But these goons were smiling, helpful, even approachable. They wore radios and bright red morale patches that screamed “GOON”, sure, but they also wore patience. They answered questions without sarcasm. They directed traffic with grace. They didn’t bark orders—they offered guidance.

I handed them one of our infamous “No clicky on phishy” stickers—bright, bold, and dripping with paranoia. Ven handed them an assortment from his own stash bag. They loved it. Laughed like kids at a carnival. Then, like a back-alley dealer of joy, they pulled out a nickel baggie of enamel pins. I reached in and grabbed a Van Gogh self-portrait, the one where he looks like he knows something you don’t. It felt right.

These weren’t enforcers. No jackbooted thugs or silent watchers. These were caretakers of chaos. Guardians of the weird. The kind of people who could defuse a meltdown with a joke, a zip tie, and maybe a sticker shaped like a giant taco with the phrase “Will hack for tacos” emblazoned across it in a fun, scripted font. In a world built on paranoia and protocol, the DEF CON goons were the unexpected balm—living proof that even in the belly of the hacker beast, kindness still had root access.

I felt good. Suspiciously good. Like maybe this whole quest to find community wasn’t just a fever dream created by mixing Modelos with halls of hacker villages. Ven and I parted ways with the goons and descended the escalator buzzing, bonded, and slightly more patched than before.

The next target: The Fontainebleau. Across the street, unimpressive from the outside, just another Vegas monolith, but inside? A fever dream of wealth and architectural ego.

Layered ceilings shimmered with golden strands of light, jellyfish-like and hypnotic. Abstract sculptures loomed like alien relics—eighty-foot golden nuggets dropped by some intergalactic mining crew. The place reeked of money and intention.

We pushed past the maze of overpriced retail shoppes and slot machines humming like electric sirens until we hit the food court, a sampling of different cuisines from lobster rolls, to tacos, to pizza, and burgers… a half-circle orbiting a circular bar, dimly lit and bronzed like a Roman tomb. Everything reflected. Everything gleamed. It was like eating inside a Fabergé egg.

Ven and I made for tacos, Shins peeled off with one of his crew for pizza.

I was walking forward, minding my own business, when suddenly, bam, badge components exploded like shrapnel across the floor. It was mine. Of course it was mine. A screw and an aluminum post had come undone, the only things keeping the colored lenses together, now vanished into the ether. I clutched the pieces like a man holding his own broken identity, frantically digging through my bag for salvation—wire, zip tie, chewing gum, anything. I was MacGyvering in real time, sweating, swearing, trying to reassemble the sacred DEF CON talisman.

I eventually gave up, for now, put the shards in my shoulder bag and joined Ven in the taco line.

We got our food and found a quiet corner, tucked behind fake shrubbery designed to dampen noise and simulate nature in a place that had none. Once the trays were cleared, we hopped the wall like bandits and hit the circular bar. Old-Fashions all around. The kind of drink that makes you feel like you’re in control—even when you’re not. 

Shins and his crew joined us at the bar. I hadn’t seen Tango or our CISO all day.

“They’ve spent the entire day in tabletop exercises and policy workshops. Can you believe that? Only they would come to Vegas and immediately dive into compliance and policies.”

I could believe it. If there is such a thing as a “structured anarchist”, Tango might fit that description. 

I had two old-fashions, and something called a “Bettie Lemonade” with vodka added as sort of an anti-anxiety medication before heading back to the third floor of the convention center and the SECVC Village.

We walked in through an entrance into a hall we hadn’t seen before. DEF CON’s SOMA FM radio was set on the stage looking longways down the hall. I approached the closest goon and extended my hand. 

“Hey man, I just wanted to thank you guys for adding my song to the soundtrack. It was quite a shock.”

As we shook hands, the goon, who’s badge identified him as “ChrisAM” looked down at my own badge and remarked “You’re on the soundtrack? Why don’t you have an artist badge?”

I explained that I hadn’t known I was on the soundtrack until it was released that morning because no one had notified me.

“Well you should talk to djDead. He’s in charge of the music and could get you an artist badge.” 

I thanked the goon and turned to head upstairs. Ven had went ahead and I soon joined him in the back of the Social Engineering Community Village. 

Chapter 6: A Sneak Peak into the World of Tomorrow

We stumbled into the mandatory meeting like we owned the place, but wanted to keep anyone else from knowing. The room buzzed with nervous energy — a mix of energy drinks and false confidence topped with the faint scent of panic. This was the Social Engineering Community Vishing Competition, and the rules were about to be laid down like the commandments from behind long tables set upon a two foot tall stage.

Before the formalities, a guy approached us — wide-eyed, grinning, clutching a sticker like it was a backstage pass to the revolution. “Secure AF podcast?” he asked. “You guys are legends.” We traded stickers like contraband, a silent nod to the tribe. It was beautiful.

The judges took the stage, a panel of seasoned operators, half rockstars, half referees… all past winners. The Q&A was a mix of genuine curiosity and tactical probing. “Can we film our entrance?” someone asked. “What if the target volunteers sensitive info?” Another asked if impersonating an AI agent was actually a believable pretext. The judges answered with the kind of calm that only comes from years of watching chaos unfold.

Then came the paperwork. A solemn sheet of legalese reminding us that fear, threats, and unethical tactics were strictly off-limits. No psychological warfare. No emotional terrorism. Just clean, clever manipulation. We signed the papers and turned them in, eager        to show our willingness to play by the rules just this once.

Finally, we were ushered into the booth, the purple foam-lined chamber where the magic would happen. It looked like a big soundproofed black box, padded in our company colors, like fate had a branding department. This was the arena. The place where voices would twist reality and targets would unknowingly dance to our tune.

We were ready. Or at least whiskey-soaked enough to fake it.

Chapter 7: A Coked Up Cowboy Rides Again

Later that evening we wound up at a bar called the “Velveteen Rabbit” in the Arts District of Las Vegas. A section of town that reminded me more of the French Quarter in New Orleans and less of Sin City. The Velveteen Rabbit is a fever dream stitched together by hipster alchemists and cocktail sorcerers in the cracked heart of Downtown Las Vegas. A place where velvet couches and vintage lamps conspire to lull you into a false sense of security before the absinthe hits and the walls start breathing. It’s not a bar—it’s a psychedelic rabbit hole disguised as a lounge, tucked away in the Arts District like a secret whispered by Bukowski and painted by Warhol. The drinks? Botanical spells brewed by mixologists who look like they just stepped out of a Kerouac novel. The music hums like a low-grade hallucination, and the clientele ranges from tattooed poets to tech refugees seeking salvation in a glass. You don’t go to Velveteen Rabbit to drink—you go to remember what drinking used to mean before the Strip sold its soul to neon and slot machines.

We ordered two whiskey drinks called “Coked Up Cowboys” that came served with a giant rock that had a generous line of what probably would be described as powdered sugar from end to end with a fake hundred dollar bill rolled up and balanced on the edge. I picked up the bill and took one long snort.

Yep. Powdered sugar indeed.

We got back to the hotel pretty early and I went upstairs to start writing. Shins was who-knows-where partying late. As much as I wanted to stay up and work on this article, yes the one you are reading now, my eyes grew heavy and slumber soon came.

I was in the middle of a fantastic dream where Tango, Shins, and I were roaring down Flamingo in a bright red Chevrolet Impala Convertible. We had just hacked the MGM and made off with millions in cash when there was a knock on the door. Wait… a knock on what door? We were flying down the strip now, heading out towards the desert.

The banging came again and shook me from my sleep. I groggily got up and walked to the door. It was Shins. He was drunk AF but highly alert. You see, alcohol doesn’t shut Shins down. He doesn’t get drowsy like the rest of us. Instead it heightens his focus. It energizes him. And at this hour, 1:36am, he was at peak form.

He bolted past me into the room. The RFID card didn’t work. He’d have shimmed the door but hotel security was walking past. So he had to wake me up to let him in. His eyes scanned the room as if searching for something. He was grinning. He then started on about a party across the street that he might go over to.

“The f––– you are!” I thought. I hadn’t been woken up in the middle of the night for him to leave and not be able to get back in, again.

He hit the shower and I decided to sit back down at the keyboard. After what seemed like an hour, literally an hour, of hearing the water run… Shins emerged from the bathroom.

“Holy hell, I fell asleep!”

“Yeah, I’m not surprised! I was wondering if I should go check on you.”

By the time I turned to face him, I found him face down on his bed, snoring. Night one of DEF CON was officially over.

Chapter 8: Flavortown redeemed and a Hail Mary Pass

We awoke not enough hours later. Shins and I took the elevator down and stumbled into Flavortown. Twenty bucks for all-you-can-eat? A bargain or a trap. I couldn’t tell. But the French toast was divine, the bacon crisp, the eggs greasy, and the coffee black enough to summon demons. For a moment, Flavortown redeemed itself in my eyes. I could almost forgive the crimes of the first night we were there.

But time was a cruel mistress.

We left the hotel at 10 a.m., bound for the Las Vegas Convention Center via monorail. Our call time for the Social Engineering Community Village (SECVC) was 11 a.m., and the trains were running late, crawling like wounded snakes through the desert heat.

At the Westgate stop, panic set in. We were running out of time. The SECVC was on the third floor, and the escalators would be flooded with caffeine-addled hackers and guarded by the goons. Then we saw it: a 1971 White Cadillac Eldorado convertible, parked like a divine intervention next to the monorail station. It gleamed like cocaine in moonlight.

Shins didn’t hesitate. He hacked the starter driven by raw instinct, and the beast roared to life. I jumped in, clutching my badge like a holy relic. We tore across the parking lot, fishtailing through cones and chain-link fences, the Cadillac’s 8.2 liter V8 engine screaming with urgency. Shins was laughing maniacally. I leapt out over the passenger door like a deranged trapeze artist and sprinted inside.

Two flights of escalators. Thousands of bodies. DEF CON attendees in tactical kilts and cyberpunk flair. I dodged them like a linebacker in the Super Bowl, barreling through the chaos and into the SECVC room just in time.

Then the door closed.

Editor’s note: What happened next is difficult to document. Recording devices are strictly prohibited inside the SECVC, and so as the door closed behind Valiant, we could only speculate what happened next based off of what we heard in the hall.

From outside, muffled voices, laughter, and the booming voices of Ven and Valiant could be heard over the sound system.. The energy was palpable. Though the details remain unknown, it was clear that Ven and Valiant’s performance was resonating with the audience. 

There was one last burst of deafening cheers and then the doors burst open.

Ven and I emerged like rockstars from a smoke-filled arena. The hallway erupted. Shins, Tango, and our CISO were there, slapping backs and shouting praise. Tango was grinning like a madman.

“That Hail Mary at the end,” he said. “You asked the bonus question right as the clock hit zero. She answered. You nailed it.”

“One of the judges said we may have in inadvertently started a prank war with that call,” I beamed back.

Victory. Chaos. Vegas. DEF CON. Just another day in the SECVC.

Chapter 9: The Pink Badge of Artists and Being Found Out

We joined the swarms of people on the escalators to make our way back down to the lower level. Shins and I were on a mission—half-mad, half-hopeful—stumbling toward the Soma FM music stage in search of a man known only as djDead, a spectral figure rumored to hold the keys to the artist badge for those chosen to grace the DEF CON soundtrack.

We wandered through the lower levels of the convention center, accosting every goon who crossed our path. “Have you seen djDead?” I asked, eyes twitching. 

One goon, a woman with a badge covered in cryptic stickers, squinted at me.

“Do you even know what he looks like?”

“No,” I said. “Every time I ask, no one will tell me.”

She leaned in, conspiratorial. “He’s got long blue hair. Riding a Rascal.”

Of course. A cyberpunk oracle on a mobility scooter. It made perfect sense. We walked on toward where the stage was set up.

And then—like a glitch in the simulation—he appeared. Blue hair flowing, Rascal humming like a low-flying drone. We hailed him like sailors spotting land after months at sea. I asked about the badge. He spoke with compassion and regret.

“There were instructions,” he said. “Sent in an email. A month ago. You were supposed to be notified and respond back.”

“I got nothing,” I said. “I’ve been checking every folder—focused inbox, Other, even the cursed Spam. Nothing.”

He nodded solemnly, like a man who’s seen too many broken dreams. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try to get you on the list.”

We exchanged Signal handles like Cold War spies, traded stickers, and parted ways.

Then came Tango, emerging from the crowd like a scavenger, clutching a handful of DEF CON badge screws and bolts, the remains of fallen tech relics. He was plotting to sway the Policy Village into awarding him a CTF flag for possessing “a DEF CON 33 exclusive item that is very much desired and in rare supply.” It was genius.

Mission One: Complete. Mission Two: Underway. I debated going back upstairs, to familiarity but the SEC was starting to feel like a padded cell. I needed out. I needed more. I cracked open Hacker Tracker like a man rifling through a spreadsheet full of marketing contacts. I had heard that there are some great talks at DEF CON. I perused  the afternoon’s agenda. There it was, Marketing Strategies and Analytics, a title so dry to anyone else it could have been printed on a box of saltines, but it called to me.

I climbed to the second floor, past the twitchy-eyed coders and the caffeine casualties, to the Creator Stages—a place where PowerPoints beckon like the neon lights of the strip outside. I got in line behind a man who smelled like solder and sweat. When they say people at DEF CON don’t sleep, don’t shower, I will use him as definitive proof. When the doors opened, I took a seat near the front, dead center. Prime real estate for absorbing knowledge. Terrible for escape. I was boxed in like a rat in a velvet trap.

Then he appeared.

A man who looked like he’d just stepped out of a Tolkien fever dream—long beard, granny glasses, wizard hat perched atop his skull like a crown of madness. He clipped a mic to his shirt with the solemnity of a priest preparing for exorcism.

And then he spoke.

“Do YOU know what marketing people do with cookies?”

Silence. The kind that makes your teeth itch.

“Whatever you search for online, that data is stored in cookies, which marketing people then look at so they can see what you are interested in. AND THEN THEY SERVE ADS TO YOU ABOUT THE VERY THINGS YOU SEARCH FOR!”

Sweet Jesus. This was Marketing 101—the kind of stuff they teach in the basement of community colleges and the back alleys of LinkedIn Learning. I felt the sweat bead on my forehead. I was the wolf among sheep. I was the social engineer. I was the one pulling strings, planting ideas, whispering sweet manipulations into the ears of the unsuspecting.

And now the wizard was staring at me.

He knew.

I stayed for ten more minutes, each second a slow-motion car crash. His eyes burned through me like acid on celluloid. I faked a phone call—classic move. Emergency. Urgent. Life or death. I grabbed my bag, hunched low like a fugitive, and slithered out of the room with the grace of a man dodging a subpoena.

Outside, the air was cooler. Cleaner. I had escaped. But the truth lingered like smoke in my lungs. I laughed as I realized that while I had felt like I was the odd one out, imposter syndrome real and in full glory, I had just been exposed as a social engineer in my own right. I was actually one of them.

Chapter 10: Exploring a Universe of Security Vulnerabilities

The halls were alive. Buzzing. Twitching. A thousand minds high on information and a sense of belonging, all chasing the ghost of enlightenment through dimly lit corridors and flickering fluorescent lights. I wandered the thickly packed halls, peeking into rooms like a robber casing a bank, handing out stickers like narcotics to anyone who acknowledged me. No rhyme, no reason, just bonding over clever cartoons and slogans and the slight smell of adhesive.

Then I saw a sign programmed to capture my attention. AI Village. Like a neon omen. I followed it, drawn in by the promise of synthetic minds and digital sorcery. I met a British man inside named Drew and we talked about deepfakes and social engineering like it was a new religion. We had delved into a lot of work this year that revolved around defending against this new magic. I told him my theories on how the filters in apps like Snapchat have warped our perception of reality, made the unnatural seem normal.

He showed me a test. Twenty-five images. Some real, some fake. I had to guess. I scored 14 out of 25—average. Mediocre. Human. The implications were terrifying. Reality was melting, and we were all just licking the spoon.

I left the AI Village with my brain buzzing like a hornet’s nest. Down the hall, I passed an emo hacker girl from Detroit—black eyeliner, combat boots, and an enamel pin collection on her denim vest that could rival those found in the pit at Warped Tour. She wanted to trade. She told me she had social anxiety, but came to DEF CON to break the cycle, to reach out. I told her I came to Vegas chasing the myth of community—where disagreement didn’t mean disconnection, where chaos could still breed kinship.

She lunged forward and hugged me like a long-lost sibling in a collapsing universe. Then she lassoed a black tee shirt around my neck as an offering and whispered thanks for proving the myth was real.

She vanished. I examined the shirt. DEF CON logo: a happy face with crossed bones—like a pirate emoji on acid. Over it, a sticker: “I voted?” with an American flag. I then looked up and saw the Voting Village. It was a sign. A cosmic breadcrumb.

I floated toward the door like a moth to flame. Inside, the room was lined with ballots and machines, like a cyberpunk DMV. I spoke with a man who’d testified before Congress—an oracle of electoral infrastructure. He told me about the attacks on their group from the manufacturers who hated the truth, the vulnerabilities they tried to bury. I remembered Ven—DEF CON legend—who once rigged the machines to elect a rodent mascot as supreme ruler of the universe. Madness. Genius. Democracy. So this is what Hacktivism is all about.

I left the Voting Village with my stomach growling and my head full of static. I needed to find Shins and Tango. I needed to go offline for affordable food someplace quiet.

I needed to recalibrate before the next descent into digital delirium.

Chapter 11: SATURDAY NIGHT HIVE!

The evening started with shrimp. Baja citrus shrimp tacos, to be exact—divine little bastards served at a Mexican joint that, tragically, didn’t serve alcohol. A dry oasis in a city built on sin. We were meeting some hacker village folk there, DEF CON lifers with eyes like surveillance drones and hearts full of caffeine. Their leader, a red teamer by the name of Solaris invited us to join them after at Area 15, some kind of neon art vortex, but all three of us declined. For Tango, it was too much chaos. For me, too much risk. I was already exhausted and anxious to go back to the room and write. I followed Shins and Tango back to the Convention Center via Uber. The driver was a man who was the live-action spitting image of Homer Simpson. He was a Vegas local who was born and raised on Paradise and never left. We spent the drive back reminiscing about the time Paradise was 15 feet under water during one of Vegas’s notorious floods. It turns out that the whole city runs downhill and then pools to drown a whole block of the entertainment district.

I considered taking the monorail back to The Horseshoe, but then we passed a party featuring a rapper/DJ spitting bars about cybersecurity. Firewalls, exploits, zero-days. It was surreal. DEF CON poetry. I was again shocked that I was on the same soundtrack. No comparison. Mine was probably the only track that wasn’t techno, and our lyrics were nothing out of Hacker-core.

After 20 minutes the pulsating lights and bass finally did me in, and so I fist-bumped Tango and told him I was heading back. I left the convention center, making the long walk across the empty parking lot. I lit one of the infused pre-rolls and smoked down a whole gram before I hit the escalator to the station.

On the monorail, I met two Canadians from Toronto—let’s call them Trevor and Barry. They were salesmen for a cybersecurity startup, discussing social engineering and asking about the vishing contest. Once inside The Horseshoe, they asked where the resort tower elevators were. I said I was heading that way. They mentioned a legendary party on the 26th floor that was invite only, but they were inviting me. I said, “Eh, why not for a few minutes?” At the very least, I could make Shins jealous.

Inside the suite, I ordered a Margarita. The bartender apologized—only vodka and Margarita mix. I said it would do for now. 

“It’s gonna taste like shit, you know,” he warns me as he fills the cup. I reaffirmed that I knew what I was getting myself into. I took a sip and laughed hard, “Holy shite, my dude… you’ve inadvertently discovered the secret recipe for Mad Dog 20/20!” He didn’t know what that was. I explained: $4.99 fruit juice infused with alcohol, the nectar of high school degenerates. He laughed. The ice was broken.

Then came a certain YouTube personality, some cyber-famous face, who will rename nameless because I didn’t know who he was. He whispered of a better party on the same floor. We migrated. Inside the second location I got a rum and Coke Zero and followed Barry to a pool table where we talked sales strategy until my soul began to leak out of my ears. I blamed exhaustion and bailed.

Back in my room a few moments later, dazed and vibrating, I decided to descend into Flavortown for another round of trashcan nachos and to work on this very article for the Alias Cybersecurity blog. I sat alone at a booth for three. The server immediately removed the other two place settings and warned me they’d be counting napkins when I left. I played dumb, made a plea of innocence, and as soon as his back was turned, I slid to the next booth and stole a place setting, hiding mine under my thigh like a criminal mastermind.

This is DEF CON after all. This is Vegas. This is madness.

The manager brought my nachos over and then told me how amazing the wings on their menu are. Feeling good I asked for an order. He read back the sauce options, the usual suspects. Buffalo. BBQ. Dry lemon pepper. I chose the latter and he backed away marveling a loud about what a great choice that was. As soon as they were delivered, I sank my teeth into a juicy wing just as chaos ensued next to me.

Before I could even register how it tasted, the staff rushed over like first responders called to a fire. Their night was unraveling fast. Flavortown were suddenly consumed by a midnight meltdown—a woman with two kids in tow, shrieking about the existential difference between Captain Morgan and tequila. It was a symphony of rage and poor parenting. I used the distraction like a seasoned thief, slipping another towel under my hoodie with the grace of a raccoon in a dumpster.

Then came the manager, face flushed with corporate shame, muttering as Randall did in the movie “Clerks” about how he “wasn’t even supposed to be there that night”, apologizing for the woman’s outburst like he’d personally summoned her from the depths of Yelp Hell. I reassured him, no harm done, while anxiously feeling like the towel under my hoodie was screaming out for rescue.

He asked if I needed a box and a to-go baggie, and I said yes—along with the check—but warned him I’d be lingering a bit longer, clacking away at my keyboard like a caffeinated court stenographer. He nodded, understanding the vibe, but reminded me with bureaucratic precision that I had exactly 51 minutes before the place shut down. Not 50. Not an hour. Fifty-one. The countdown had begun.

A few moments later and he brought the check, and there it was: one trashcan nachos at $26.99, one lemon pepper dry rub wings at $35.99… and six towels, itemized at $12.99 each. I laughed out loud. In the end, I hadn’t been a pirate after all. I’d been social engineered by the manager of Flavortown. A towel connoisseur turned mark. The bastard had flipped the script.

Just as I was preparing to vanish into the neon ether, Kelvin (the waiter who’d been verbally assaulted by the tequila-confused banshee) came over to top off my water and clear the wreckage of my meal. I told him he did nothing wrong. The woman was a walking migraine with a misplaced sense of justice. Kelvin nodded, grateful, and then the conversation took a hard left into the deep end.

Turns out Kelvin was a foster kid. I told him I’d been a foster dad. We bonded instantly, two strangers in the belly of Flavortown, trading trauma like baseball cards. He told me his parents were in a cult. His father murdered his mother. Seven siblings scattered into the system like dice on a casino floor. But Kelvin was thankful for the family that took him in and taught him that everyone is deserving of love no matter how different they look. We fist-bumped. It was real. It was heavy. It was Vegas.

As I was leaving, Kelvin chased me down. “Can I shake your hand?” he asked, breathless. “Absolutely,” I said, and he ran over, grinning, and slipped more towels into my to-go bag like a magician planting contraband. I didn’t stop him.

Back in my hotel room, I laid them all out across the comforter like sacred tiles, six, maybe seven, forming a makeshift bedspread in an artistic style called Fieri. A shrine to chaos. A tapestry of absurdity. A soft, absorbent monument to my first DEF CON.

I slid under the covers carefully so that they would still be laid out when Shins came stumbling in an hour or so later. I giggled manically as I fell asleep.

Chapter 12: Last Day of DEF CON

I woke up in a haze, the kind that clings to your skin like casino carpet dust. The room was silent except for the soft, rhythmic blinking of a red LED buried in Shins’ gear bag—his only sign of life. He was buried under the covers like a corpse in a tech tomb. I had no time to dig him out.

The SECVC awards were at 10 a.m., and I needed to be there. No breakfast. No ceremony. I stuffed a six-pack of Modelo into my shoulder bag, a ritual of necessity, and bolted for the monorail.

Then the message came in—our CISO, calm but cryptic: “Monorail’s down. Possibly hacked. Only one train running. And it’s going in the wrong direction.”

Of course. The city was turning against us.

I panicked, summoned an Uber to the Horseshoe, and sprinted through the casino like a man possessed. Slot machines blinked like surveillance drones. The Uber driver, confused and possibly high, parked on the wrong side of the building. We spoke in frantic bursts over the phone, trying to triangulate each other’s location. Finally, we synced up. I told him I was late for an awards ceremony. He hit the gas with reckless abandon.

We tore through Vegas, dodging traffic and existential dread, and screeched to a halt at the West Hall of the Convention Center with three minutes to spare. I bolted up the escalator steps, skipping the lazy crawl of the machinery, and barreled down the hallway like the Coked Up Cowboy from the Velveteen Rabbit had just kicked in.

The doors to the Social Engineering Community Village opened just as I arrived. I flashed my pass and slipped in ahead of the crowd—hundreds of hackers waiting in line. I took a seat near the front, heart pounding, Modelo sweating in my bag.

The first award was for Best Team. The judges spoke: “This team was the most fun to watch. They worked together beautifully.”

Then they said our name.

I stood up, dazed and grinning, and claimed the trophy. The crowd erupted. Cameras flashed. I posed with the judges like a man who’d just survived a war and won a medal for style.

Then, as if summoned by fate, a message pinged on Signal from djDead: “Your artist badge is ready.”

The day was turning golden.

In the hallway, I ran into Tango, glowing with triumph. He held up a Policy CTF flag, proof that his insane plan had worked. He was a winner too.

Downstairs, I entered the “inhuman” registration zone, where speakers, goons, and village organizers checked in. I received my glorious artist badge, a talisman of validation in a world built on chaos.

For me, I had achieved all that I had wanted. It was now time to slow down and take in the rest of DEF CON.

I wandered through the hacker villages like a man in a lucid dream. I saw Blue Teamers defending an airport from cyber attacks in a simulation that felt too real. I saw the Car Hacking Village, where laptop-wielding maniacs dissected automotive systems like surgeons on speed. I saw a Critical Infrastructure Village, where I had a lengthy discussion with a guide, explaining my theory on how future wars might be fought from couches—enemy states launching digital missiles into each other’s power grids and water systems. Taking down countries from within. Floods. Service failures. Like all the things we feared about Y2K finally coming to fruition twenty-five years later.

I lost myself in the hacker world. I had come to Las Vegas to find community. 

And now I was part of it.

Chapter 13: Ass Juice and Nachos at the End of the World

We left the Convention Center like fugitives escaping a collapsing regime. DEF CON was over. The villages were shutting down, the goons were packing up their radios, and the hackers were scattering like cockroaches under casino lights. The air smelled like solder and stale Red Bull. I handed out the last of the cans of Modelo to, no longer strangers, but brothers and sisters in digital arms I met in the hallway as I made my way out the door and back into the sunlight.

I met up with Shins, Ven, and Solaris at the Double Down Saloon, a punk rock dive bar so filthy and legendary it might’ve been built on top of a cursed burial ground. The walls were covered in graffiti and stickers. The music was loud—The Cramps, naturally—blasting through blown-out speakers like a sonic middle finger to sobriety as we entered the place.

The bartender looked like he’d been awake since the Bush administration. Shins, ever the agent of chaos, ordered a round of the house specialty: Ass Juice. A drink so vile it had its own mascot—a crude skeleton man squatting over a glass, liquid squirting from his rear like a demonic juice cleanse.

I raised my glass halfway, and fearing sensory overload turned to Solaris, deploying a subtle social engineering maneuver.

“Does this smell bad to you?”

He lifted. He sniffed. “Smells like beet juice.”

“Oh good,” I muttered, lifting the glass to my nose like a man sniffing a crime scene. It tasted like vegetable juice and vodka. The kind of drink that makes your liver file for divorce and your soul question its lease agreement. We were still buzzing from the chaos of the final day, riding the edge of burnout and enlightenment.

We parted ways with Solaris, still vibrating from the last round of madness, and made our way back to the Horseshoe—the neon temple of sin and salvation. One last pilgrimage to Flavortown, where the nachos are trashy and the beer is holy. Grease and hops. The sacred pairing. The communion of those who’s bodies are on the verge of shutdown after a week of running them like competitors in the annual Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race in Queens, New York.

We debriefed over a pool of melted cheese while an absurd sports channel tried to distract us with   live broadcasts from an extreme Microsoft Excel speed-running competition, slippery stair climbing, and robot combat.

I tuned back into the table conversation. Did DEF CON meet expectations? What knowledge did we extract from the chaos? What alliances were forged in the fire?

Shins talked about air traffic control hacking.
 Ven recounted the SECVC pandemonium for those who missed it.
 I stared into my final beer internally reviewing the answers to my own questions.

I had come to DEF CON chasing a myth. After years of slinging sleazy campaigns from the trenches of advertising agencies and mid-tier marketing departments, I joined a team that gave me something rare – purpose. And I followed them into the desert to find out what hacker culture really meant.

Social Engineering 101.
 If you want to influence an audience, you have to understand them. You have to crawl inside their skulls, wear their skin, think their thoughts. You have to listen to their music, speak their language, and walk their crooked paths. And sometimes, you realize you’re not pretending to fit in—the role was written for you all along.

Ven said it more than once this last week:

“You belong to a world you never knew existed.”

He was right. My path was different, but the rhythm was familiar. I didn’t just understand the culture—I had always understood it. I just hadn’t known its name.

The waiter came to take our plates. I tightly rolled one final Jolly-Guy towel under the table and slipped it under my shirt.

Our flight was early. The night was ending.

We parted ways, wishing each other safe passages home. 

I had come to Las Vegas to go to a hacker conference. But DEF CON wasn’t just a conference. It was a futuristic storm cloud on the horizon—shifting, shimmering, real. A place where we discover not always what is, but what will be.

And I walked into it without looking back.