Tropical Retribution - Wednesday April 1st 2024

Dave, a world-renowned cybersecurity icon, was ranked as ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ almost a year before his death. Making all of the scandalous events surrounding his death a true tragedy. Achieving such a coveted sex symbol status was a significant feat which many computer nerds were envious of, in addition to his elite hacking skills. Looks, personality, and raw talent? How could so much good fortune land in one person?

The haters boasted many times over in their group chats they would relish in the news of his death, but the reality was just somber. Deep down they understood the world lost Dave's God-level talent in Heartbreak Hotel. Heartbreak Hotel was officially known as Tropicalia Bay, a five star resort in Cambodia nestled in the Botum Sakor evergreen rainforest off the Gulf of Thailand with many sister hotels that fit into the exotic theme. Unfortunately, with Dave’s death there was no way that Tropicalia Bay was going to be able to hide their local nickname from being spread around the internet. Just as some houses have a strange history of particular tragedies, this hotel had the untimely deaths of attractive men of means dealing with major heartbreak. Hotels average one to two deaths a year for the normal reasons such as medical, accident or natural causes due to sheer volume. Yet, this strangely specific issue Tropicalia Bay faced was every year or other year, but not more than three years without incident.

Since the FlyHighIcarus account was involved with breaking Dave’s death to the cybersecurity community, his team didn’t have much time to handle everything. Who or whom was behind this account? It was anyone's guess. Any scandalous or salacious information about Dave Cristiano was the exact reason for this account’s existence.

In the afterlife, he was achieving infamy due to all the chaos surrounding his death. Dave for the most part had a clean reputation for the sake of recruiting more talent to the cybersecurity industry. Public revelations regarding his drug abuse and last damning acts were difficult for fans to hear but explained the recent outrageous behavior on his social media accounts.

A year and half before Dave accepted the title of ‘Sexiest Man Alive’, there was a world-wide cybersecurity outage that rendered airports, hospitals, businesses, and government agencies helpless. The U.S government knew it screwed up on technology and cybersecurity education and finally decided to take better action. So, they did what they do best, merged all three branches: Military, Corporate, and Hollywood to recruit a rising cybersecurity YouTuber to mainstream relevancy. Hence another reason for his haters to dislike him. They knew he was fulfilling an agenda they were too impersonable to be considered for.

Dave Cristiano had the perfect blend of magic for cybersecurity recruitment. As a second-generation Italian American he stood at 5'11” with light skin that turned warm olive in the summer months. His distinct (but not to sharp) jawline with his wavy jet black hair and green eyes made people think he was a model. In his teenage years he was a troublemaker, but self-determined when it came to his interests. In cybersecurity there is a sort of criminality and neurodivergence that allows one to succeed better in this line of work. On that front, he had an in with the cyber community. Dave's attractiveness allowed him to fit in the mainstream, but due to his synesthesia and ADHD he never felt like everybody else. These neurodivergences made him high-energy, creative, intelligent, and with excellent memory abilities. On the other hand it made him impatient, overly independent, and to speak with no filter at the wrong times.

While growing up in Philadelphia his mom dated a corrupt cop. Throughout the whole relationship he was stealing pills from the evidence room, and supplied their addictions until her fatal overdose when Dave was seventeen. These experiences shattered his belief in authority early on. That same year he became a moderator on a hacker forum and eventually dropped out of school to focus on moderating. Not long after he began working under a mentor he met from that forum.

Eric Blake was a pioneer in cybernetics and absolutely cracked in the head. Eric was basically Dave's new father as the pair grew close over the two years they lived together in Eric’s D.C apartment. He was thirty-four, and just as unpredictable as he was accomplished. He worked at the prestigious physics particle and accelerator facility Fermilab during college, got into Bitcoin the year of it’s release, and found his stride in AI before it was mainstream, as AI is a discipline of cybernetics.

Cybernetics as defined by Britannica Dictionary is interdisciplinary in nature; based on common relationships between humans and machine. There were many nights of drinking in Eric’s apartment. On one of these nights he divulged to Dave he was involved in the infamous Climategate scandal in which climate change research laboratories were hacked and told him how he executed his role flawlessly. This was the night Eric also revealed to Dave he was taking him to Europe for seven months for his latest business venture. The one that would change the trajectory of their futures, and the world for the greater good.

That trip ended abruptly when Eric died tragically from a drug overdose from a night of partying after signing a million dollar contract. He went back to their hotel room to sleep and never woke up. His obituary headline read, “Eric Blake, Computer Wizard, Cherished Family Member. 1980 – 2014”.

Dave Cristiano was begrudgingly back in Philadelphia, and ten months into a dead-end factory job when a notification pinged on his phone. It was for a bill he couldn't afford to pay. Dave tapped the notification away with a heavy realization, “I need to find a way out.” Dave reflected on the journey that had brought him here, and decided to take charge instead of resigning himself to sorrow, as sorrow was not his natural state of being.

Dave never gave it a second thought about enrolling in community or regular college because as Eric had told him, “The distance between the average person and you – is the same distance between the average person and someone cognitively challenged.” Eric Blake saw so much of himself in Dave that he nurtured him to do exceptional and misunderstood things instead of exceptional and understood things.

One of the memories he recollected while being more fed up than angry over the notification was a woman he met on that tragic trip. Dave was in one of the lounge areas at a tech event him and Eric attended. This is where he met a YouTuber named Alexis who told him, “I’ve been investing and making day trading videos since I was sixteen, but it wasn’t until twenty-one things really set in.” Alexis eying Dave head to toe now said, “Video content is the future, and you have the right face and personality for YouTube.” She scooted to the edge of her seat and contorted her body around to place her hands on the top rail of the chair. Alexis scanned the perimeter for the friend she had been waiting on. After spotting her friend she excused herself. It was moments like these that stuck with Dave on what was already a whirlwind experience for a young man of nineteen. Eric introduced him to a world where he was seeing first-hand how the new tech wealthy made it. Everyone was smart in their own way, but above all else couldn’t give a damn what society thought about their wierdo passions.

At the factory he had kept to himself and didn't mention the memories that caused him so much pain. Dave didn't know how to tell people as a twenty-year-old he lived with an eccentric tech genius mentor from the time he was seventeen, and up until he died overseas in the bed next to him while beginning his most innovative company to date.

A few days after remembering Alexis' story he began putting his extra money into learning and growing his new cybersecurity channel. Within two weeks he uploaded his first video. And as they say, the rest is history.