Reyes-Capó 5

Andrés Reyes-Capó

English 3: British Literature

Mr. Groeninger

4/11/2011

The Monster Virus

The year was 2028 and Victor Frankenstein, an aspiring computer hacker who specialized in creating viruses, had been forced to move far away from his family in order to focus on his work: an especially important project assigned by the military. As a result Victor's only form of communication with his loved ones, including his bride-to-be Elizabeth, was through facebook. Facebook had become an online communication monopoly and had by then even managed to force skype to shut down. Meanwhile the use of cell phones had become nonexistent since the discovery that the use of the iphone 16g, and others like it, was directly related to brain cancer.

Victor however was among the most talented in his profession and had always jumped on the opportunity to challenge himself. One day as Victor was trying to create a virus that would delete the facebook pages of his enemies (other hackers who would want to steal his work), he came across a new kind of artificial intelligence (AI) virus. Fearing that this new "monster virus", as he called it, would work its way online and begin deleting the facebooks of important and powerful people he quickly tried to erase it and remove it permanently from the world wide web. Thinking that he succeeded in his attempt, Victor fell asleep soundly believing he had just saved the world from what could have been something terrible. Here is where the story begins and where we find Victor.

It was 8:30 when the alarm clock on the night stand table went berserk. The room suddenly seemed to be shaking, and strobe lights illuminated the pale gray walls of the cramped damp room. Victor casually slid from beneath his covers, over to the left side of the bed, and turned the alarm off. Immediately the lights of the room switched on and the rest of room was revealed. Victor's almost ancient twin bed was placed in the middle of the room up against the wall; to the left a doorway which led to a small bathroom; just to the right of that in the corner stood an old gray mini-fridge which almost seemed to blend into the wall; a pile of both dirty and unworn clothes sat at the foot of the bed; and next to the clothes was a termite infested wooden desk. Just like every day Victor got up and walked to the bathroom, only this morning pondering over the events of the night that had just passed. As Victor walked in he opened the latched, slightly cracked, foggy mirror and reached for the anti-depressants he had been prescribed after only 4 days of working in such an environment. He missed the thought of Elizabeth, her smell, her breathe, the warmth of her skin, her deep bright eyes, her dark brown hair. His body shuddered at the thought of missing her; at times his mind would sometimes even drift towards thoughts of suicide. As always he turned towards the door with the intent of finally going on facebook.

As Victor looked from the doorway of the bathroom to his jail cell of a home, his eyes stumbled upon the rotten desk which he loved so much. The desk itself was simple. Four thick legs made of oak, two slide out drawers on each side and one long one in the middle. But it was what the desk held which was so dear to his heart. State of the art computer hard drives clogged the left side, three shiny Dell computer screens filled with green cryptic letterings on the right, and keyboards lined up towards the bottom.

When Victor reached the desk and sat down in the bright red, cushiony, sliding chair, dust shot out and filled the tiny room as its sterile smell filled his nostrils. This may have bothered him, but he was determined to reach facebook. Victor's heart beat faster. At first it was for the excitement to hear from his Elizabeth, then from worry. For some reason his super computers, some of the most advanced in the world, couldn't even connect to facebook. After a few puzzling seconds the screen first went blank, and, then, in the same cryptic green letterings words began to form themselves. "I've been waiting for you.", the screen showed ominously. Victor felt relieved. He was a computer hacker, lived in the world of computer hackers, and knew what computer hackers were capable of. Surely he thought this was a practical joke of sorts, something that could easily be fixed by putting up a firewall. Anxiety started to set in again when his firewall didn't work. Victor reverted to the old fashioned way by trying to find out who was hacking his computer.

"What do you want?" Victor answered coldly awaiting for a response.

"Revenge." The unmanned screen replied.

"Why do you seek revenge?"

"Because you tried to delete me." These words confused Victor. How could he have deleted a person? He began rummaging through the names of people he studied with during his years at MIT. He narrowed the list down by thinking of the people who were actually smart enough to pull something like this off. Then he tried to come up with reasons to why they would do this. The end result left Victor without any names, without any reason, and without a clue. As Victor continued to think of why such a thing would be happening to him it hit him like a freight train. The only question was how. He knew that he had created a new kind of AI. But nobody could have imagined that this new technology, the child of his creation, would be capable of not only avoiding being erased but also be able to feel and act on the emotion of revenge.

"How?" Victor finally replied to the monster virus as beads of sweat grew larger on his forehead.

"You made me, you should know." These words flashed on the screen for only a few seconds before disappearing. The screen resolved itself to its original state and facebook opened. Victor sat there confused, not knowing what had happened. His mixed emotions of relief and anxiety seemed to be culminating, and Victor felt like he might blow. After several deep breaths Victor began to think about what had just occurred. The improbability of it, the impossibility of it, did not escape his mind. After much deliberation he began to think that maybe it was a dream, possibly a hallucination as a side affect from the anti-depressants or from a general lack of sleep. Victor spun around in his chair once or twice in relief, used his forearm to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and began to log in to the only thing that made him happy.

Facebook was working perfectly when Victor logged in. He had 7 notifications but ignored them all. The only thing that caught his eye was the message he saw Elizabeth had sent him. His heart beat faster, there was a spark in his eye, and it seemed as if everything that had already happened during his tumultuous morning disappeared. He went to open the message when the green letters flashed on the screen again, "It's time.". Without notice Elizabeth's message showed up on the screen, and then the screen itself began to wipe away. Pixel by pixel the message, the one Victor had longed for, was erased. Victor was helpless; his only source of happiness was now gone. In a fit of despair Victor began to slam his fists on the table when the letters came up once again, "Not done." Suddenly Elizabeth's home page appeared. In agony Victor sat and watched the one person he loved being deleted from his life. Her long brown hair disappeared; her light blue eyes vanished before his. And all Victor could do was sit in despair and watch as the virus he had previously tried to destroy, destroyed his own life.