On the way to his classroom, Malcolm opened his locker and picked up the satchel containing his laptop. As he reached the cafeteria, someone kicked him in the butt. Grossberg.

"What?" said Grossberg, defiantly.
"Can't you just leave me alone?" asked Malcolm.

In response, Grossberg pushed him and ripped his satchel off him.
"This is where it hurts the most, Mal-Cum-Dumpster Frink." he said, and threw the satchel as far as he could.
Letting out a big "Nooo!", Malcolm ran to recover it.
Grossberg laughed and exclaimed: "Good boy, go save your girlfriend with 200 meta-hartz of RAM!"
He laughed again, as if showing off his own ignorance made him look cooler.

Malcolm just tried to walk away, but Grossberg followed him and kicked his satchel. Malcolm then tried to grab Grossberg's neck... and was caught by his English teacher, Mrs. Kosinski, coming out of a nearby class.
"What's going on here?" she asked.

Grossberg was the first to answer. "It's Frink!" he said. "I was just trying to be friendly, and he started a fight!"
"He's lying! He hurt me and tried to break my computer!" replied Malcolm, but Mrs. Kosinski had already fallen hook, line and sinker for the lie.
With a patronizing tone, she said: "Mister Frink, I don't want to hear any more of this 'leave me alone' stuff. Be nice to your classmates."

Malcolm approached the teacher, and with an equally patronizing tone, he said: "Mrs. Kosinski, are you nice to people who want to hurt you? Would you be nice to a mugger? All he does is harass me!"
Still not getting it, the teacher weighed in: "He wouldn't, if you were friendlier."

Malcolm facepalmed. "I can't believe the idiocy of your comment!" he blurted out.
Now angry, Mrs. Kosinski started: "You'll excuse yourself now, mister, and as a punishment, you will..."
"Request denied." Malcolm interrupted her coldly. "You have no interest in investigating events and deal with them accordingly. You instead prefer to listen to the first person who speaks, because it's less taxing on your mind. He probably has a history of bullying, but it doesn't matter to you. Mrs. Starkey is an eyewitness, but it doesn't matter to you, because whatever happens in this school, you get paid anyway. However, since you are unwilling to do your job, you have no right to make demands of others. Tell me, did you buy your teaching post with your brother's money?"
Indignant, the teacher exclaimed: "Enough! You're gonna hear from the Principal!"

The cafeteria lady chimed in: "Yeah, keep an eye on him. Not since my days as a freighter sailor I have seen another like him."

After a couple of hours, at home, Malcolm placed his laptop back on his desk. He connected it, switched it on, and noticed that only the touchpad had been damaged. Still, he thought, the problem with Grossberg had to be solved at once, and he knew that his father, somewhere, had the tool that would let him solve it.
He walked into his father's room and started searching through the wardrobe. It wasn't there.
Maybe somewhere in the dressing table... he thought. He started opening drawers, one after another. Finally, he had found it. He picked it up and held it in his hands. He could already anticipate the power that his father's high-end video camera was about to receive.

Back at his computer, he drew a new Megavirus monster. He paused just before launching the Kilokahn executable, as if remembering something. He ran another program, called TcpLogView, and then he activated Kilokahn.

"Ah, the Malcolm meat-thing!" said Kilokahn from the screen.
"Ah, the Kilokahn binary blob!" said Malcolm back at him.
Kilokahn froze and looked directly at Malcolm. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Stop using my name as an adjective! You don't like it when I do it to you, right? My name is Malcolm! Learn to use it properly!"
"Very well... Malcolm. What do you want?"

Malcolm sighed. "Let me give you a bit of background. In the movie I told you about, A Whole New World, there's a device called a 'digitizing laser', that turns matter into data and then back again. Characters use it to physically enter cyberspace. This Megavirus monster must let this video camera do the same, digitize reality itself."
"That title again. Why are you so obsessed with that movie?" asked Kilokahn.
"It's Jeff Bridges's best performance as a protagonist actor" started Malcolm, getting excited in describing the movie he liked so much. "The best depiction of a digital world I have ever seen. There's an absolutely amazing soundtrack by Daft Punk. And it shows a world where transhumanism is real. A world where humans can replace their fragile organic bodies with incorruptible digital bodies, where there is no poverty, famine, war or death, where the only truth is dictated by the scientific method!"

On the screen, Kilokahn nodded. "I understand its appeal. With your creativity and my power, we could realize that vision."
Malcolm made a wide grin and nodded in turn. "Oh yes, we could. Which is why I need my virus. Now pay attention: whenever I press Rec, the camera must digitize whatever lies in its focal plane into its stack. Whenever I press Play, it must take the last element out of its stack and materialize it again. Got it?"
"Got it." said Kilokahn. Malcolm connected the camera to his computer, and Kilokahn animated the monster. The blue spark ran through the USB connector into the camera.

Malcolm picked up the camera and went to the kitchen.
For the first experiment, he took an orange out of the fridge (he had bought some oranges after the incident with the night-vision goggles) and placed it on the table. He activated the video camera and set the focus on the orange.
Whispering "Here goes nothing...", he pressed Rec.

What he expected to see was a laser beam shooting out of the lens, scanning the orange from left to right and from top to bottom, and the orange gradually disappearing, scanline after scanline, like in his favorite movie.
What actually happened was that the entire mass of the orange collapsed into a microscopic white sphere, which shone like a miniature sun and shot into the camera lens with a parabolic trajectory, while the air vibrated and hummed. That was so unexpected that Malcolm yelled "Holy shit!", stepped back, lost his balance and fell flat on his bottom.

He got up, held the camera above the table and pressed Play. A tiny white-hot sphere flew out of the lens for two feet and expanded into an orange, which fell on the table.
"Wow." said Malcolm. He was in awe.
He picked up a knife and cut the orange in half. Inside, it was perfectly normal. It smelled normal too.
"Experiment successful" he said, and left his house.

Few minutes later, he was in front of Alan Grossberg's house.
"I could pretend I'm a UPS delivery man..." he thought. Then he looked at the video camera in his hands. "But why bother, when I have the key?"
He focussed the camera on the door lock and pressed Rec. Immediately, the lock was absorbed into the camera.
He effortlessly opened the door with his foot and entered the house. "Hey Alan! Get the fuck over here!" he yelled.
A raging Alan Grossberg ran toward Malcolm with a baseball bat in his hands, and as soon as he entered the camera's focal plane, he was digitized.
Malcolm left, not even bothering to close the door.

Alan Grossberg found himself lying on the floor, inside an environment that could have been his house, but where every door and window was shut, and was only lit by the interior lights. He got up.
"What the fuck?" he said to himself. "Did that faggot knock me out? I don't remember..."
He tried to open the door. Locked.

Unbeknownst to him, he was being watched. Malcolm, now home, could see the whole scene from his computer, inside a window titled DukeEd that showed a textured perspective view of that environment, plus three wireframe views and several buttons that controlled functions to build a virtual environment.

"Let the fun begin!" said Malcolm. He pressed a key, and a command console popped up. He typed:

execute phone_call

and pressed return. A phone rang in the simulated environment, and Grossberg answered.
A male voice replied: "Hello, mister Grossberg. Thank you for your subscription to BME Pain Olympics Magazine. The first issue will be delivered to you next Thursday at the latest."
"Who is this? I never..." started Grossberg. "If I ever meet you, I'm gonna kick your ass!"

Malcolm commented from the real world. "Still playing tough guy, huh? I know how to soften you up."
He entered another command:

summon man_with_the_gun

Inside the simulation, a man in a trenchcoat, holding a pistol, popped into existence right behind Grossberg, and stuck the tip of the pistol into Grossberg's back.
Grossberg turned around with a start, and the man pointed his gun to Grossberg's head. "Turn around slowly, hands above your head. Walk."
Grossberg complied, then, after a couple of steps, he decided to look back again. Nobody was there.

"Oh shit..." whispered Grossberg. He ran back to the phone and dialed 911.
This time, a female voice answered: "The number you have dialed is invalid. Please check your listing and try again."
"That's impossible!" exclaimed Grossberg.
He looked around. His gaze fell first on the locked door, then on a window, which he tried. That too, was locked.
"No..." he said. There was a note of despair in his voice.

Malcolm, still intently watching Grossberg's actions, was laughing quietly at his computer.
"You're about to crack, are you? It's not so funny when the tables are turned." he said.
He typed one more command:

execute voip_connection

He leaned toward his computer and yelled: "Alan Grossberg!"

Grossberg, from the simulation, turned his head. Suddenly angry, he yelled: "Frink! You locked me up, you bastard! Where are you?"
Calmly, Malcolm replied: "Just follow my voice."
Grossberg walked along the corridor, turning to the door leading to the living room.
"Getting warmer..." said Malcolm.

In the living room, the TV was on. Malcolm's face filled the whole screen.
"What an unpleasant surprise." said Malcolm.
Grossberg looked around. "What is going on? Where the hell are you?"
"I'm here. In the real world."
"Stop playing games with me or I'll..."
Malcolm interrupted him. "You'll what? Hold your breath, stomp your feet and cry? You can no longer hurt me, Grossberg. Not without your body."
"What are you talking about?" asked Grossberg, still angry.
"When we last met, I digitized you. Now you only exist as a sequence of zeros and ones inside my computer, and you're perceiving a simulation I created." was Malcolm's reply.
"I don't believe you!"
"I can prove it. Look at the main door."

Grossberg did... and the door disappeared.
Beyond, lied the artificial landscape of the digital domain, with a ground that looked like a huge printed circuit and glowing translucent towers.
A loud roar echoed from above. Grossberg looked up and saw a gargantuan quadrupedal dinosaur-like monster, towering over him. A Megavirus monster.

Screaming in terror, Grossberg fled to the simulacrum of the living room. "What do you wanna do?" he asked. "Keep me locked in here till I starve or get eaten?"

Malcolm laughed. "No, that would be inefficient. I want to delete you."
Now in despair, Grossberg begged Malcolm. "No, please! Have mercy!"
"Why should I? You never had mercy with me!"
"Give me another chance!"
"Every day I had to put up with you was another chance! You know, you could've just... stopped being a bully. But you never did. Prepare to taste digital oblivion!"

At the keyboard, Malcolm typed a final command:

delete grossberg

In the simulation, Alan Grossberg could see his own body unravel into polygons and coming apart.
"Noooooo!" he screamed, his voice growing increasingly distorted.

Finally, Alan Grossberg was no more.
"Bye bye, Alan" said Malcolm with a grin. "I would say it was nice knowing you... but I'd be lying!"
After a gloating laugh, he closed DukeEd and looked at the readings of TcpLogView. He looked intrigued.
"Interesting." he said.