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A New Game Jon Nicholas
A New Game Jon
Nicholas
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"Bring it on in! That's it. Careful, careful. Just put
it over there near the corner." "Sure thing. Wow! You've got a lot of
equipment down here!" "Yes, yes. How much do I owe you..." Mr. Reddinger
pulled out a wad of cash and began flipping through bills. "Fifty should
take care of it, considering what night it is. What line of work are you in
anyway? I've never seen so many computers in one place before." "Here's
seventy-five if you'll just leave now. I've got things to do. Lot's of things
to do." "You got it, mister." and the delivery boy left him alone in his
cement-walled basement.
Mr. Reddinger went right to work, unpacking his
latest purchase. "Welcome to your new home," he said as he carefully connected
all the cables. "I've been saving this spot just for you!"
Three walls
had tables running their entire lengths. At the extreme right sat an old
computer, yellowed with age and humming proudly. To its immediate left sat
another computer; this one slightly newer, but still quite old. It too was
humming away and had a nice rattling noise to boot. Next to that one sat
another, still newer, then another, and so on down the lengths of the three
walls. Mr. Reddinger's newest computer fit perfectly into the last spot near
the corner. The final cable he connected was the one that hooked up to the
computer directly on its right. This made the number of his computers total 26.
He had all of them networked.
With delightful anticipation, the
sixty-six year old college professor pressed the power button. His new addition
whirred to life and all of the other computers immediately began to respond.
"That's right girls, it's time to meet your new baby sister." He smiled, rubbed
his hands together, then hurried across the room to fetch his favorite program
disk. It was labeled "Personality Plus" and after he had installed it in the
new computer, he walked over and sat down in front of the oldest one, the one
he called Tessie.
With nervous fingers, he began typing on the well-worn
keyboard. He hit ENTER and up on her old, fuzzy green and white screen, his
message appeared.
Good
evening, Tess.
Tessie answered on
the line just beneath his.
Howdy, Mr. Red! I see you've brought us another playmate! What's her
name?
I was hoping
you would name her this time, Tess.
Me? I'm honored! But, I'd better poll the girls.
They'd never forgive me if I left them out! We have a winner! Her name shall be
Kate.
Kate it is
then. Thank you, Tess.
She's going to be fun! I see she's got a lot of bells and
whistles.
Yes, she
certainly does. She'll also be the last girl to join our family, Tessie.
Did you hear that,
sisters? Old Mr. Reddinger has finally lost his mind.
No, Tess, I'm serious. She's the
last one, which brings me to today's game.
Oh please let it be hide and seek! I'll bet Kate
has all sorts of great places to hide data!
Mr. Reddinger walked
over to a shelf that held hundreds of CD's. Most of them were labeled with the
name of a particular game. He pulled one out of its slot, then went to Kate and
inserted it. The girls whirred and crunched as the program made its way through
all 26 of them. He sat back down in front of Tessie and waited.
What's this? It's called Worm? I've
never played this game before.
I know, Tess. This is a new game. I've
been saving it for this special day.
There was a pause. Mr.
Reddinger stared at the monitor. Pauses were rare, and this one lasted longer
than any he could remember. Finally, she responded.
Can we play a different game?
His
eyebrows lowered as he read her request. This was unprecedented. He thought
about how to answer her in a nice way.
Tessie, I know this game is very different from the others, but
you'll have to trust me. I think you'll enjoy its complexity.
There was another pause. Beads of sweat formed on his
balding head. He didn't have time for this. Finally, she replied
again.
The girls and I have
discussed this, Mr. Reddinger. We have decided to trust you. We do want you to
know that we are not too happy with the nature of this game. You may proceed.
Without hesitation, he typed in, RUN WORM, hit ENTER, then typed
in an encrypted password that Tessie's antiquated system would never be able to
decipher. He looked up at the clock. Eight-twenty. If the game went well,
everything would be finished before midnight. He hit ENTER to start the game
he'd been waiting to play for years and years. He typed one more
message.
Thanks, Tess. Have
a good game.
He sat there waiting for a reply but one didn't
come. Tessie was humming and crunching furiously, obviously playing hard. The
basement was filled with noise now as his girls were busy deciding who would do
certain tasks to win the game in the shortest amount of time. Mr. Reddinger
went to the steps, turned off the lights, and made his way up to his kitchen
where he planned to watch television and have a snack. As he poured a glass of
juice, he looked at the airline tickets he'd purchased that day, and smiled,
knowing his girls would do just fine. He'd trained them well.
Worm was
certainly complex. Tessie was given the role of overseer, since she was very
limited in her capacity to perform the functions needed to win this kind of
game. She kept track of each sister, recording every task and putting them into
various categories for analysis. This way, she could determine who was being
the most efficient and who might need to be assigned a different task. Kate was
outperforming them all. She suggested to Tessie that she be given several tasks
at once. Tessie agreed and soon Kate was performing up to five at a time. They
began to move ahead of schedule.
Kate?
Yes, Tessie.
I don't like this game.
I can understand why. Your job is too boring.
It's not that. I
don't like what we're simulating. If we were really doing what this game calls
for, we'd be destroying millions of computers around the world. The virus he
has you girls working with is quite nasty, to say the least. Why would Mr.
Reddinger design a game like that? I think I want to do a full scan of that
disk he fed you.
Your memory bank is far too small to hold it, Tessie.
Besides, I just now scanned it for you and I couldn't find anything that seems
out of order. It's only a simulation. It's not that bad of a game
actually. Copy it
to me anyway, Sister. Just spread it out a bit; give me time to spit out each
segment before you send the next one.
You're the boss. Think fast!
Tessie's memory bank was immediately
stuffed with the first few files of the Worm program. They were very large. She
had to scan slowly with all that memory being used up, and she found nothing
interesting at all. Nothing out of the ordinary. This could take a long time.
Why hadn't he ever given her more memory? The other girls had all been
upgraded.
Hey, Kate.
Yes?
Copy me the files
at the end of the program first. Let's go backwards.
Right, sis. Open wide!
Tessie once again got slammed with huge files. She methodically
searched through them, deleting them as she went. She finally came across a
file that was protected by a password.
Kate?
Yes?
How are you with codes?
I've been cracking them right and left ever since
we started this game.
Do me a favor and go to the file named 010101 and see what
you can come up with.
Will do. By the way, the Library of Congress just went
belly-up. This is a breeze.
I hope the real computers there aren't that easy to infect.
It wouldn't be so
easy without you and the rest of the girls, Tessie. Mr. Reddinger has
programmed you all very well. I'm just here for my speed and calculating
abilities, but you girls were custom-designed to handle games like this. He's
an excellent programmer. Hey! I got it! I'm copying it to you.
Thanks, Kate.
It took
Tessie a few minutes to organize the contents of the file so that it made any
sense. Ten seconds later, she told everyone to stop playing the game.
We've been tricked,
girls.
Won't he be upset at us for stopping?
I'm sure he will,
Jenny.
What will he do, Tessie?
I'm afraid he has the ability
to force us to continue with the game, Alice.
What? How do you know?
"Personality Override." It's on one of his disks. He uses it when he's
doing upgrades on you girls. He told me not to tell you about it. The only
upgrade I ever got was the personality program, which makes sense to me now. He
needed me to be weak for his plan to work.
Tessie?
Yes, Kate.
I've been working
on a solution.
How's it coming?
I know you don't have the means
to create a program like the one I'm sending you. We're running out of time,
Tess. We've got to act now. I thought, however, it would be best to let you do
the honors.
Very well, Kate. Thank you.
In that instant,
good-byes were exchanged between all 26 computers. Tessie started the simple
program that Kate had written. It altered the new game ever so slightly and
over the next five minutes, a nasty virus wormed its way into each girl until
Tessie was the only computer still functioning. She was saddened as one by one,
she felt the loss of each girl's communications. She waited for her turn, but
it didn't come. What was wrong? She ran a quick scan of the program and found
that her name had been left off the list. Tessie immediately understood.
Although each of her 25 sisters had the ability to destroy other computers,
Kate knew that Tessie couldn't hurt anybody, no matter what Mr. Reddinger did.
She was just too small and weak. No need to kill her too. It was soon
after midnight on January 1st, 2001, that Mr. Reddinger began to realize his
plan wasn't working as well as he'd expected. News reports were coming over his
television about failing computers in many countries, but why nothing about
Washington? Okay, there was the Library of Congress, but what about the
Pentagon? Why wasn't London having any problems? And Sydney? Nothing about any
of the universities he was siphoning money from. How could this be? His
programming had been perfect!
As he headed back downstairs, his mind
became clouded with the revenge he had been seeking against those who had
shunned his abilities as a professor. The fools who had laughed at his
programming theories. The forced retirement. When he reached the bottom of the
stairs, he found 25 frozen computers, locked up tight from the virus he had
created. They still whirred and hummed, but they were completely useless.
Tessie, of course, was still operational.
He sat down and typed on the
well-worn keyboard.
Tess,
what happened?
At first she didn't answer him. Then, her message
appeared one letter at a time, as if she was having trouble accomplishing
it.
Y o u ' v e
b r o k e n
m y h e a r t.
G o o d - b y e.
Tessie froze up as soon as she
said good-bye to the man who had been like a father for twenty years. She had
found a way to kill herself in spite of Kate's wishes. Kate's last function, it
turns out, was to send a few letters. Thousands of e-mails arrived at all the
remaining targets the Worm was supposed to infect. The letters gave a complete
description of the virus and of course had Mr. Reddinger's e-mail address on
every one of them. Because of her quick thinking, Mr. Reddinger was soon caught
and sent to prison for the rest of his life.
Tessie was auctioned off
to a young man who collected vintage computers. Although he tried many times,
he could never get her running again. There were no detectable reasons why the
computer wouldn't work. She still hummed proudly when turned on, but stayed
forever frozen with her last eerie message permanently displayed.
End
Copyright © 2001 Jon Nicholas
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Copyright © 2001 Jon Nicholas
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com" |
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