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other kids and carted off
     to his old school for classes. The van would pick him up at the end of the day and
     return him to the home.
    Carmack emerged hardened, cynical, and burning to hack. His parents agreed to get
     him an Apple II (though they didn’t know he used the money to buy a hot one from a
     kid he had met in the juvenile home). He found he most liked programming the graphics,
     inventing something in a binary code that came to life on screen. It gave him a kind
     of feedback and immediate gratification that other kinds of programming lacked.
    Carmack read up on 3-D graphics and cobbled together a wire-frame version of the MTV
     logo, which he managed to spin around on his screen. The real way to explore the world
     of graphics, he knew, was to make a game. Carmack didn’t believe in waiting for the
     muse. He decided it was more efficient to use other people’s ideas. Shadowforge, his
     first game, resembled Ultima in many ways but featured a couple of inventive programming
     tricks, such as characters who attacked in arbitrary directions as opposed to the
     ordinary cardinal ones. It also became his first sale: earning a thousand dollars
     from a company called Nite Owl Productions, a mom ’n’ pop publisher that made most
     of its income from manufacturing camera batteries. Carmack used the money to buy himself
     an Apple II GS, the next step up in the Apple’s line.
    He strengthened his body to keep up with his mind. He began lifting weights, practicing
     judo, and wrestling. One day after school, a bully tried to pick on Carmack’s neighbor,
     only to become a victim of Carmack’s judo skills. Other times Carmack fought back
     with his intellect. After being partnered with him for an earth science project, a
     bully demanded that Carmack do all the work himself. Carmack agreed. They ended up
     getting an F. “How could you get an F?” the bully said. “You’re the smartest guy around.”
     Carmack had purposely failed the project, sacrificing his own grade rather than let
     the oaf prevail.
    Carmack’s increasingly cocksure attitude was not going over well at home. After he
     became more combative with his stepmother—whose vegetarianism and mystical beliefs
     incensed the young pragmatic—his father rented an apartment where Carmack and his
     younger brother, Peter, could live while they finished high school. The first day
     there, Carmack plugged in his Apple II, tacked a magazine ad for a new hard drive
     to his wall, and got to work. There were games to make.
    One night in 1987, Carmack saw the ultimate game. It occurred in the opening episode
     of a new television series,
Star Trek: The Next Generation, when the captain visited the ship’s Holodeck, a futuristic device that could simulate
     immersive environments for relaxation and entertainment. In this case, the door opened
     to reveal a tropical paradise. Carmack was intrigued. This was
the
virtual world. It was just a matter of finding the technology to make it happen.
    In the meantime, Carmack had his own games to pursue. Having graduated high school,
     he was ready to cash in the trust fund that his father, years before, had told him
     would be available when he turned eighteen. But when he went to retrieve the money,
     he found that his mother had transferred it to her account in Seattle. She had no
     intention of letting her son use the fund for some ridiculous endeavor like trying
     to go into business making computer games. Her philosophy had not wavered: if you
     want to go into computers, then you need to go to college, preferably MIT, get a degree,
     and get a job with a good company like IBM.
    Carmack fired off a vitriolic letter: “Why can’t you realise [
sic
] that it isn’t your job to direct me anymore?” But there was no swaying his mother,
     who argued that her son had yet to balance his checkbook, let alone manage his finances.
     If Carmack wanted the money, he would have to sign up for college, pay for the