Now, elaborate pranks–or “hacks” as they’re called–have a rich history at MIT. It’s a predictable side effect of bringing together so many intelligent, technically-inclined people and placing them in an academic pressure cooker; hacks were nothing more than a release valve.

To execute a great hack was also to court a sort of immortality. Who could forget, after all, the Great Dome Police Hack of 1994? On the last day of classes, a group of hackers had moved a full-size facsimile of a campus police car to the top of MIT’s Great Dome, complete with flashing lights, a dummy in an authentic CP uniform, a valid campus parking ticket, and a box of fresh donuts. Any number of electrical engineering majors had gotten laid off of exaggerated or fabricated tales of their involvement in that one.

Andrew Germand’s hack, though, would eclipse them all. And unlike the cheerfully anonymous pranksters of 1994, everyone would know its mastermind–even as they were powerless to do anything about it.