VALISSA 1.0
SAVE PROGRAM: VALISSA.EXE
The tech was out of luck. He had just been fired from the WWF for getting Chris Jericho mad. And over what? A lousy web page that could have been hacked by any fourth-grader. His girlfriend had left him because she said he was too needy. He had lost his job and the love of his life, all in the same day.
Now he only had one thing left. His hands caressed the keyboard. He was designing the greatest thing he had ever done.
He typed the last few characters. Done. Now to send it…
RUN PROGRAM: VALISSA.EXE
A .wav file. Aim: To corrupt the file. To change the file.
Open internal file: Language. Select language: Spanish.
The Undertaker roared out of the entrance ramp on his motorcycle, leering at the crowd. They were screaming out the words to his theme song…Yo! Soy! Norteamerico culo mal! Ay, ay, yo soy el cantante en negro…
Wait a minute. The Undertaker's theme song was not in Spanish. And the only Spanish Kid Rock had ever sung was "buenos días," in "Cowboy," and even then he didn't pronounce it correctly.
The Undertaker frowned behind his glasses. Someone was going to get hell for this.
RUN PROGRAM: VALISSA.EXE
A .gif file. Aim: To corrupt the file.
Open internal program: Morbidity.
The Rock came out to his entrance theme, "The Rock Says." It was a really stupid song, but he rather liked it.
He glanced at the Titantron—and did a double take. His face, on the Titantron, was a skull, with bits of green flesh rotting on it. There were worms coming out of his mouth and nose, and his eyeballs were exploded. His eyebrow had a huge gash in his face, showing his brain.
There was a collective "eeew" from the audience.
RUN PROGRAM: VALISSA.EXE
A .vid file. Aim: To corrupt the file.
Open internal file: Irony.
Triple-H watched the tape. Again and again, he came out of the entrance ramp. And again, the tape showed exactly what had happened.
The tape started out normally. Then, the image of Triple-H turned into a ravening wolf in the forest. It ran to a deer, killed it, and started devouring it horribly. Blood was everywhere. DX, turning into vultures, started settling on the carcass and picking the bones.
It was absolutely disgusting.
"How the hell could this happen?" he raged at the tech who had replaced the fired tech. "What the hell was going on here?"
The tech shrank back in her chair. "I don't know, sir," she squeaked. "Possibly someone replaced the tape, although it was the same file. It may have been a virus, although not a random-replacement one. Whoever did this is very smart, sir, and there's very little chance of tracking them down."
Triple-H grunted. "Well, find out what happened. If you don't, you're going to be fired." He turned and stormed out of the tech lab.
The other techs watched him in silence. Finally, someone broke the silence. "You're dead, Marjorie."
Marjorie glared at him. "No I'm not," she said. The light glinted off her thick glasses and her stringy red hair. "I think I know who did this."
"Who?" asked another tech.
"My ex-boyfriend," Marjorie replied. "It's his style, exactly the kind of thing he would do." She stared at nothing. "He was fired a few weeks ago, and I offered to replace him."
There was a longer silence.
"Back to work, everyone," yelled Linda from her office. The tech lab burst into activity.
Marjorie had stayed late in the lab. Her semi-secret boyfriend, Chris Jericho, had dropped by with some coffee. He had only become her boyfriend after she had gotten the job, to ensure that his web page wouldn't be hacked again.
"Marjorie, you really shouldn't work so late," he told her. "It's got to be two in the morning."
"You almost always stay up till three, working out on that thing I rigged up for you," Marjorie countered, never looking away from the screen.
Chris rubbed her shoulders. "C'mon, baby. You should be in bed."
Marjorie twisted away from him. "Look, I've got to fix this virus. It's really important."
Chris shrugged. "Fine. If you really have to."
Marjorie nodded, lost in her work. "Uh-huh."
"Sometimes I think you love that computer more than me," Chris accused her.
Marjorie sighed. "Shut up, Chris. And even if I did, a computer can't have sex with me."
Chris slammed the door to the lab. "Good night, Marjorie."
Marjorie had finally isolated the file. It was pretty ingenious, and so complex it was almost self-aware. Basically, it interrupted and altered the data flow of a file while it was being utilized. That way, when someone ran the program to check for bugs, nothing would come up. Marjorie was impressed, in spite of herself.
She found the bug harboring in an old laptop. The file was VALISSA.EXE. (Note: VALIS is the title of an excellent Philip K Dick book. MELISSA was the first worldwide virus on the Internet.)
Marjorie carefully disconnected the laptop from the network. It wasn't, she could tell, self-replicating. She was about to smash the laptop on the pavement outside, when she thought better of it. She tossed it in the prop bin in the match-planning office.
PROGRAM VALISSA.EXE INTERRUPTED
ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?
The tech banged his head on the keyboard. His darling had been killed! Cut down in her prime! It wasn't fair…
Well. He pushed his chair back from his desk. He still knew the program. He could, if it came to that, always rewrite the program. And make it better this time.
He started to type with lightning speed…