Experiencing virtual reality first-hand had Malcolm feel like he had discovered a new world, like he could see his video games at their true essence for the first time. No longer flattened by a monitor, but in the real three-dimensional shape all calculations were based on. It was simply the way they were meant to be played.
During the following Saturday and Sunday he never left home, and he even experimented with building his own virtual adventures. Even though he had already built interactive polygonal environments in the past, the ability to experience them in surrounding 3D was enough to make the whole development process feel different. He was no longer writing instructions to display pretty pictures on a screen: he was weaving physical laws through his keyboard and mouse to create worlds, like a god. It was an ego trip.

The next Monday morning, while Malcolm was preparing for school, he was still on a high mood and feeling all-powerful. The sun was shining; the late November air was clear, albeit cold; the sky was a deep blue, the color of television tuned to a dead channel. Malcolm felt ready to face any obstacle, even...

Oh no.

The sudden recall hit him like an anvil. Exactly two weeks before, Mrs. Kosinski had fixed the date for the next English test, and in less than an hour, Malcolm was supposed to answer questions about the life and works of William Shakespeare. There was one little problem: he had not studied anything. With everything that happened in the past days, the test had just slipped out of his mind.

The first thought that came to him was to draw a Megavirus monster and use Kilokahn to modify whatever electronic device he could find, to receive the correct answers directly into his mind.
The second thought was how insanely, mind-bogglingly stupid one would need to be, to actually go on with such a plan. A Megavirus monster that could alter his thoughts would open a backdoor into his brain, which could potentially result in the worst security disaster in the history of information technology.

So, Kilokahn was out of the question. Cheating with his smartphone was not an option either, because students were required to place their phones on the teacher's desk during tests. His only hope was to immediately search information about Shakespeare, hoping that at least some of it would stick long enough to complete the test.
The closest books he could reach were the volumes of his encyclopedia, so he grabbed the correct one and searched S - Shakespeare, William. The facts were presented in a way that was quite easy to memorize, and he remembered some of them from the previous English classes, which gave him a bit of courage about getting a decent grade.

Searching more material on the Internet and familiarizing with it on the way to school further decreased Malcolm's anxiety, so he marched to his classroom with full confidence. However, reading while walking had slowed him down, and when he opened the door, everyone was already inside.

"Frink, the test has started five minutes ago" said Mrs. Kosinski. "What is your excuse?"
The teacher's loaded question - calling his justification an excuse, thus dismissing it as false in advance - irritated him. If an excuse was what she wanted, she would get one. The more ridiculous, the better.
"I was harassed by an idiot outside the school who desperately wanted to sell me some marijuana" he said. "He kept saying it was an amazing way to make friends, like he actually believed I'd..."
Mrs. Kosinski gave him a distrustful look. "You refused, right?" she asked.
"Absolutely" he said. "I called him a vesicular mole and told him he could fellate me."

The teacher was horrified. Most of his classmates looked at him with a puzzled look, and only few of them chuckled.
"Take the question paper and get to work" said Mrs. Kosinski, brusquely.

Answering the questions was easier than Malcolm feared. In fact, it looked like the whole question sheet had been prepared by reading the same encyclopedia, and browsing the same web pages, as he did.
Soon, he had most answers written down in a form he assumed to be reasonably correct, but the last question perplexed him, because he could not recall hearing or reading anything of the sort. It said: Can you elaborate on the historical identity of the Dark Lady to whom Shakespeare dedicated sonnets 127 to 154?
Well, Malcolm thought, since that answer would be wrong anyway, he might as well try to be funny. He wrote "No" and then placed the completed paper on the teacher's desk.

When the class was over, Daniel Miller approached Malcolm. "What's a vesicular mole?" he asked.
"It's a tumor" started Malcolm. "It can grow in the uterus in the place of an embryo, and it looks like a big lump of spongy discolored flesh, with blisters full of serous fluid all over."
Daniel opened his mouth, but left without saying a word. Malcolm placed his laptop on his desk and switched it on.

The next class was Math. First, Professor Dawkins showed the students how to solve the exercises they were supposed to do as homework, and told them to ask him questions as soon as soon as they realized they did not understand something. As usual, nobody raised their hands, no matter how abstruse they found the explanation.
Immediately after, he asked the class: "Now, for the topic of the day. How many of you know what a summation is?"

From the bottom of the classroom, a student shyly answered: "A sum."
"So, is it just a fancier word to express the same concept?" asked the teacher.
"Uhh... yes?"
Mr. Dawkins shook his head. "What if I told you" he said, "that all of you calculated a summation last week?"
His last sentence was met by a number of vacant eyes.
"With Mrs. Stone" he added. "The Fibonacci sequence is a summation. How does it differ from a simple sum?"

Malcolm raised his hand. "It follows a predetermined rule" he replied.
"Good" the teacher said. "A summation is a sum that follows a rule. Their iterative nature makes them useful tools to describe phenomena in Physics, Electronics, Biology and Statistics. Now we will see the simplest example of a summation..."

That introduction convinced Malcolm that he already knew the concept with a different name, due to experimenting with a Math program, so he could afford not to listen to it.
He launched Deluxe Paint VII, because he was already planning to draw a Megavirus monster that morning at school: one he hoped would be the most important Megavirus monster he would ever draw. One for which he had spent days tweaking and revising a specifications text file, until he was absolutely sure it could not be improved anymore, because an oral description would just not be precise enough. One that would guide him to his transhumanistic dream.

The teacher was still talking when the drawing was finished.
The shape of the new Megavirus monster was peculiar, as if to emphasize its radical departure from all previous designs. Far from being inspired by Mesozoic reptiles, this one had instead the proportions of an athletic human male. Over a bright blue body, it was wearing a silver helmet with yellow lenses, a silver cuirass with four yellow elements on the front, as well as orange pauldrons, bracers and boots. The overall effect was that of a futuristic powered exoskeleton, vaguely inspired by the look of feudal Japan warriors.

Malcolm opened the Save window, thinking of a cool name for his file. He was still so focussed, he failed to notice the teacher walking around the classroom as he talked.
"And the operator we use to write a summation is the capital Greek letter... sigma!" said Mr. Dawkins, from the back of the class. Immediately, Malcolm's eyes lit up with inspiration, and he saved his drawing as "SIGMA . LBM".
"Frink, may I ask you what you're doing?" the teacher asked.

Startled, Malcolm turned around quickly, looked the teacher in the eyes and faked a smile. "I'm doing two things. Drawing with my computer, and listening to you."
"If you are listening" said Mr. Dawkins, "then you remember everything I said. Why don't you go to the whiteboard and teach it to the class?"
Malcolm remembered a similar argument with Mrs. Stone. "I apologize, Professor Dawkins" he said. "Next time, I will make it obvious that I'm paying attention."
"No, literally" replied the teacher. "Go to the whiteboard, explain the topic to the class. I will evaluate you."

Malcolm boldly walked to the whiteboard, wearing the self-righteous smile of the student who knows he is getting an easy A.
"As our professor was saying" he said, "the concept of summation can even be used to solve the apparent paradox of a sum with infinitely many addenda producing a finite result. This is called a convergent series, and it's possible to assign a value to it by solving its limit..."
"That's enough" the teacher interrupted him.
Puzzled, Malcolm looked at him. "Did I say something wrong?"
"You proved you weren't listening" said Mr. Dawkins. "I never talked about series, or limits. How do you know about them?"
Malcolm sighed. "I admit it" he said. "Last Summer I tried a computer program called Derive, and I discovered these concepts just by using it. What will happen now? Will I get punished because I knew too much?"

The teacher laughed quietly. "No, that would go against the school's best interest. But school has a code of behavior, and only enforcing it for certain students would make me a bad teacher. You get an A for your preparation and an F for your behavior, which average out to a D+, and don't even think of arguing. School is not just about academic skills, but human skills as well, and you, Frink, have a lot to learn there."
"So everyone keeps telling me" said Malcolm, "but maybe I wasn't born to remain human forever."

The rest of the morning could not pass fast enough for Malcolm: the closer he got to the goal, the most oppression he felt for not being there yet.
In the end, the last bell rang and he rushed home, ready to put his latest Megavirus monster to the test.

The rules of the game were about to change. Forever.

AUTHOR'S NOTE #1: This time, you can actually see Malcolm's drawing (made by me in the real world) of this chapter's Megavirus monster. You can find it at:
devilmaster . altervista . org \ sigma . html
(just REMOVE the spaces near the dots and near the slash, and REPLACE the backslash \ with a FORWARD slash / ).

AUTHOR'S NOTE #2: the next chapter will be a turning point in the story. For this reason, it will be posted as both a normal chapter here, and an 11-minute film on Youtube, with real actors and CGI special effects. The next chapter will include the URL to view it on Youtube.