“Agnes, we have an emergency.”

“What is it?”

“That game the user downloaded, it’s actually a virus.”

“What the hell, are you serious?” I was just enjoying some time to myself in my room when one of the other programs barged in through the door. Since I am antivirus software, my segment of memory is pretty well protected, but I let a few trusted programs know how to get through to me in case of an emergency. This particular program is QuilleWriter, the word processor. She just goes by Quille.

“The game was running fine at first, it actually fooled us pretty well, but now it’s scrambling files on the hard drive.”

“Shit, is it messing with any important user files?”

“Only a few in the School folder so far.”

“Are they anywhere close to System files yet?”

“Not yet; I’m glad this happened just before the scheduled Hard Drive Defragmentation, otherwise we’d be in much more serious trouble.”

“We can be thankful later, for now I need to get to active RAM and neutralize the virus.” I leap from my bed and dash towards the door, my Scythe Broom dissolving into my left hand. 

“Yes ma’am.” Quille is quick behind me, softly and quickly flying behind me as a swarm of books follows her. 

“And where is Setsail?”

“I last saw her fighting the virus.”

“I’ll have some words for her afterwards.”

“Understood.”

I speed through the kaleidoscopic hallways connecting each RAM room, meanwhile using my scanner to detect any unusual memory activity. It’s usually a very resource-intensive process, so I can’t run it all the time. After all, our CPU is only single-core, and we only have 2GB of RAM to work with. My scanner suddenly goes off, pointing me to several locations in RAM with suspect activity, as well as slowly populating a list of affected areas on the hard drive. 

“Quille, do you have my extended database on the ready?”

“Yes ma’am.” She effortlessly glides the database in front of me. It’s a large book containing every known virus, as downloaded from an internet database maintained by my creators. I sync up with them pretty often, so it’s very rare when something intrudes that isn’t in this list. 

“Did you happen to get a name for the virus?”

“No ma’am, unfortunately not.”

“This is bizarre, this kind of memory behavior doesn’t have any immediate matches.”

“Oh?”

“It’s possible this is something new, and if so I'll need to capture it, study it, and report back to the company.”

“So you mean capturing it alive?”

“Preferably yes, but protecting user data is a higher priority.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“We should be getting close.” 

Our RAM is a carefully organized series of offices and bedrooms, but most of the rooms are outdoor patches of grass and dirt floating in a seemingly endless blue sky, complete with cubicles and as many desks and chairs as one needs. If it’s an area of RAM that’s used regularly by one program or process they’re free to decorate it as they please, so long as they clean it up before the computer shuts down. I like to keep my room fairly closed off from the outside light for safety reasons, resembling something closer to a bedroom with a desk and bed. 

We arrive at the entrance to the suspicious segment of RAM, which before even entering we see numerous scraps of burnt paper and piles of ash surrounding the entrance. This virus is clearly deleting or chopping up as many files as it can; a very old-school way of wreaking havoc. Thankfully, this is far from the worst a virus can do. Some of the things in my database haunt me, mostly the kind that psychologically manipulate the user, such as fake Antivirus software or locking the user out of their files for a ransom. Scrambled data can be retrieved, so long as a prior reference point exists or a pattern can be extrapolated. One thing that is a major concern, however, is the sudden and immediate wave of heat I feel emitting from the entrance. Most of this system can survive and persevere through many atmospheric conditions, but overheating is the major weakness of nearly all computer hardware.

I attempt to open the door. Shit, it’s locked. I place my hand on the protected-memory access panel, but the door still doesn’t budge. Shit shit. I gotta use administrative permissions for this. I have no idea why the user hasn’t gone into settings to allow me to have total control, especially given I can do so much already, but something like this is still a major bottleneck. I raise my open hand in the air, close my eyes, and an orb of light surrounded by numerous rings of data circling around it begins to emerge.

The orb states in a monotone voice “Requesting administrative permissions in 3… 2… 1… “, followed immediately by a bright flash of white light. Performing this action halts most processes, and can be used for pretty normal and innocuous things. Very rarely do users decline permissions. I just have to wait… and wait… and wait…

“Permission granted, Agnes Computer Protection Suite.” 

“Thank god…” I press my hand on the access panel and… shit, still nothing… this is bad… I can’t help but mutter an F-Bomb as grittily as I can.

“Did it immediately revoke your privileges?”

“Maybe so… I might have to brute force my way through…”

“Hopefully that won’t cause too much more heat…”

“If I’m mindful about it, then we should be good.”

I raise my left arm and face my palm towards the door. The handle of my Scythe Broom disappears as the blade duplicates itself into six identical copies which begin to circle around my hand.

“Administrative Action!” I shout as the blades’ circular movement around my hand rapidly accelerates. “Protection Override, Manual Mode!” A bright blue, cylindrical beam fires off from my hand and makes quick work of the door. The blades slow down, merge back into one, and return to the handle that fades back into my hand.

The bright light from the beam fizzles out, but is immediately replaced by the even brighter light emitting from the RAM room. The normally vibrant blades of green grass is instead a burnt grayish-brown. A thick, dark cloud of smoke billows from a clumsy bonfire in the center of the floating island, polluting the air and obscuring the bright blue sky. Me and Quille rapidly approach who we recognize as the virus.

“I am Agnes Computer Protection Suite, this computer's primary antivirus software, immediately halt all processes, you have 10,000 cycles to comply or I will be required to terminate them myself.”

The virus resembles a gothic lolita girl (I only know this because of the activity of the user). Her deep black hair is long, straight, and well maintained. Her dress is equally black, matched with tights and what resembles firemen gloves and boots. She’s holding a few files in her hands. She glares at me blankly without muttering a word.

“5,000 cycles… I repeat, halt all processes now!...”

The virus glances back at the files in her hands. She looks like she’s about to throw them in the bonfire. I grip my Scythe Broom with both of my hands, readying myself to attack her before she sets another file ablaze. She looks at me again and then… holds the file up to me, as if she’s trying to show me what it is. What the hell? She still has a blank look, but it subtly shifts to one of curiosity. What’s that supposed to mean? Is there something specific on the file that caught her attention? Is it a distraction? Right as I’m about to lunge forward, a familiar and annoying voice echoes from the sky. It’s Setsail Navigator, the web browser.

“Time to put your no-good bullshit to an end! Kyaaaaa!!!!!” she stomps down on the dead grass with enough force to cause a hard-drive to hiccup… wait that makes no sense… I guess her stupid is rubbing off on me- er, whatever. She charges whilst dual-wielding her trademark pistols with bayonets… yeah it sounds weird but you’ll see when she uses them just trust me.

“Setsail, what the fuck did you drag inside the house this time?” I bark at her as she interrupts my attack.

“Sorry Net Nanny, I thought this snake was dead hehe.” she replies, sticking her tongue out with an incredible amount of self-satisfaction.

“This is no laughing matter! Do you know how many files have been destroyed already!?”

“I feel like Quille would have a higher chance of knowing those numbers than me, or maybe I should have Calculator run those probability calculations for us.”

Setsail’s idiotic dialogue almost overshadows that the virus, just inches away from the tip of Setsail’s right-hand pistol bayonet, changes suddenly. The virus’ clothes begin to melt away like a candle set on top of a CPU, her arms and legs morph into slimy, green tentacles, each with a mouth at the end, each wielding several layers of sharp teeth. Her eyes roll back as her mouth opens an unnatural amount. Another tentacle slivers out from her throat, however instead of a mouth over one dozen pitch-black eyes emerge from the tip. A red light emits from the center eye.

Setsail, however, barely hesitates with firmly stabbing the bayonets into the monster, the left one going into the chest and the right one into the nest of eyes on the eye-covered tentacle. Pink blood and leftover clothing goo spew in every direction. Each of the four mouths let out a scratchy scream, harmonizing in a horrifying cacophony. The tips of Setsail’s bayonets morph into a shape that resembles quadruple anchor fish hooks. 

Setsail licks her lips as she lets out a devilish but dorky “It’s kaboom time.” She fires each of the pistols one at a time, back and forth, with perfect rhythm. Left BANG, right BANG, left BANG, right BANG, each one creating an incredible amount of reverb that could probably be heard on the other side of the motherboard. With each shot, the virus and Setsail are pushed backwards from one another, but the hook bayonets do a great job keeping the two from becoming separated. More saturated pink flies out, some splashing on Setsail’s face. She’s definitely learned a lot from the kinds of websites and online animations the user likes to watch.

“Alright Agnes, now for your finishing blow!”

“Setsail, this might be a new type of virus, if I could I’d like to keep it alive for inspection and to report back to the virus database.”

“Awww, that’s no fun, I wanted to see your totally-awesome Scythe Broom Death Blow!”

“Is this all just a game to you?”

“Well, this was supposed to be a game executable, and I still wish to get some gameplay out of it!”

The monster virus, mangled but still resembling something more than just a pile of guts, squirms in a vain attempt to escape the fishhook bayonets, but every time it pulls back it simply lets out more strained screams from the different mouths. 

“What an ugly lil’ thing, huh? Too bad the Wanted sign says I don’t get the reward if you’re dead.” As Setsail’s bayonets morph back into a shape that’s easily able to slide out of the monster, I raise my hand in the air.

“Administrative Action! Halt Process!”

A wireframe icosahedron envelopes the monster virus, completely freezing it in motion. It quickly shrinks into a size small enough to fit into the palm of my hand.

“Hey… hehehe… you chose to end a nonresponsive program, would you like to send an error repor-”

“Shut up and just let me get this work taken care of right now.”

“Hey, cool down Net Nanny, we got it all squared away before any real harm was done, so let’s relax once your boring code is finished~”

“Do you even care about the integrity of this system!?”

“Only as much as the user, and she doesn’t seem all that interested.”

I can’t help but groan and want to protest, but she IS right. It’s also not her fault her company doesn’t equip her with even the most basic of malware protection, at least not without some add-on toolbars. I just wish she would at least communicate with me and be a little more proactive instead of me having to babysit her behavior and clean up her messes that occur when I look away for a few million cycles. She only seems to act when there’s an active threat to the system.

“You’re going to report this to the user, yes?” Quille calmly asks as she uses a simple process to put out the bonfire. She begins to pick up scraps of files mixed in with the burnt grass. 

“Yes, I’ll be sending a pop-up that a threat was contained, along with the name of the offending file.”

“Are you going to report that files may be corrupted?”

“Can you have every file pieced together within 10 billion cycles?”

“I’ll see what I can do and keep in touch.”

“Thanks, Quille.”

As me and Quille begin to make our exit back to the RAM hallway, carrying the now tiny virus, the brat begins to follow us.

“Welp, looks like the user needs me again, seems like she wants to keep exploring the same website our new friend came from.”

“Maybe you should expedite that pop-up to the user…” Quille warns me.

“Actually, a better idea.” I replied.

A pane of glass emerges from under my left palm, my Scythe Broom now floating to the side, and I begin to type out a simple command that will flag the website as a high security risk. This will prevent the user from accessing it unless they hit a button that’s hidden under a pop-down menu. Setsail lets out a small “hmph” and crosses her arms, but her attitude is more tolerable when I’m not stressing over active system threats. I can sympathize to an extent, her task is to display web pages and download files, and I very often get in the way of that. It’s just… yeah…

“Now please, and I don’t know how many times I’ll have to repeat myself, please please let me know if you see anything suspicious.” I know it’ll fall on deaf ears, but I hope that the cycle will come when it finally clicks for her.

“Alrighty, Net Nanny!”

God I hate that nickname.

…

Whilst Agnes takes care of documenting and reporting the virus, I have my own tasks and responsibilities. As a word processor, I don’t actually have many obligations beyond handling text files, but I suppose given that I’m one of the most active and oldest programs on this computer, I have gotten to know many other programs and can’t help but offer my help wherever I can. The program I help the most is File Browser, who is required to stay inside her particular section of RAM with quick access to the Hard Drive. I act as a sort of librarian’s assistant for her.

Unlike most rooms, hers resembles a human library, with easy access to all contents of the Hard Drive. The floors are covered in burgundy carpets with gold trim. Many woodgrain desks are scattered around, matching the shelves that house the files. The line between RAM and Hard Drive here is quite blurry, the seamlessness is very impressive.

“Quille, how did things go out there?” File Browser asks. As usual, she floats in the center of the room, files constantly zooming past her from every direction. 

“Agnes and Setsail got everything taken care of with minimal damage.”

“That’s a relief.”

“How bad is the data corruption across the entire hard drive?”

“Some of it is really bad, but at least we managed to keep it contained to a small section.”

“I’ll get on with the repairs right away.”

“Thank you, Quille.”

File Browser is a very busy program, as all File Browsers are. Her role may seem simple, but it’s a very critical one. She’s core to the operating system, and is more closely connected to it than most of us. And yet, she never gets to do much outside of her critical responsibilities. It must be a lonely existence.

I pull up the complete list of corrupted files, generated by File Browser with the help of Agnes’ data. The virus seemed to be targeting personal user files, with some overlap into other areas. Things like pictures, documents and music files. They’re the type the user will definitely notice if something is wrong. Thank goodness Agnes is sending that pop-up to the user soon.

I’ll start repairing the easier text files first. The documents folder contains about 96 total files, 72 of them inside different subfolder. 84 of the files are actual text files, the rest being miscellaneous. Only 8 of the files were corrupted by the virus, all of them text files.

thomasedision.doc

PompeiiReport.doc

endersgameessay.doc

fanficideas.doc

TheLastStarlight.doc

Fluid Angel Full Strategy Guide Including All Routes.doc

TearsOfTheMountain.doc

MrEagleIsland.doc

Thankfully, the virus’ method of file corruption was crude at best. In fact, as I find more and more patterns in the scrambled data, I begin to realize that the word I should use instead of corruption is encryption. One of the files, PompeiiReport.doc, had a nearly identical copy called PompeiiReport2.doc that was unaffected, so comparing the two side by side allowed me to determine the encryption algorithm used. Once I feed the damaged files (reduced to a pile of unrecognizable ash) through the encryption steps in reverse, they shift back into a normal state; a solid file I can hold in my hand. I reported my findings to Agnes, and she seemed very grateful. Maybe she was hitting a roadblock while analyzing the virus. It feels nice to help someone out like that.

As I returned these files to their original locations in the Hard Drive, I hit a realization: there’s no logic to how the virus picked these files out. They aren’t in my list of Recent Documents (or File Browser’s when I asked her). They weren’t located next to each other in the Hard Drive. If you listed all the files in the Documents folder alphabetically, by size, modification date or creation date, they wouldn’t appear next to each other. It didn’t seem to match the kind of behavior used to destroy the files. These kinds of viruses tend to target every single file in whatever sequential order they’re programmed to go through, often singling out specific folders. My curiosity gets the better of me and I call up Agnes again. 

“Hey, Agnes, I’ve got a question for you.”

“What is it? Something wrong?”

“Have you determined the process that the virus uses to pick out files it wants to encrypt?”

“Good question,” Agnes sighs, “I’m still in the middle of solving that mystery myself, but I’ve ruled out several of the typical methods. My best guess right now is that it was looking for specific strings of binary and targeting files that contained them.”

“Something like keywords? That’d be pretty easy to check right now with the files I repaired earlier.”

“No, I already checked that myself, there’s no English keywords that show up aside from common ones that a virus probably wouldn’t target.”

“Hmm…”

“I’m about to send the pop-up to the user, anything else before I do that?”

“No, that’s everything I have.”

“Got it.”

I hang up, and a few million cycles later, I hear the pop-up message to the user repeated across the entire computer:

“Agnes Computer Protection Suite has detected and successfully quarantined a threat to your computer. Some files may have been affected and are currently being resolved. Click here for more information.”

Such a soft way of letting the user know about how serious everything was. I can’t help but chuckle a little. Agnes doesn’t really sugarcoat her words around us, but she has to be delicate when relaying information to users. If you use words like ‘damaged’ instead of ‘affected’ you might frighten the user and cause more harm than good. I’ve heard of something called scareware, in which malware pretends to be antimalware software and lies about there being other malware on the computer in order to scam users into sending money, thinking they’re paying to have their computer fixed. Thankfully we’ve never had to deal with that. Our user is reckless, but I have a feeling she’s a little too savvy to be easily fooled by such tricks.

I’ve learned quite a lot about the user since she started using this computer three years ago. I know her name is Roxy Gardner, and she’s currently 14 years old. She mostly uses me for school assignments and writing fiction, though she uses Setsail more than anyone else on the computer. She likes a lot of, well, hard to put this lightly, but she likes a lot of violent things on the internet. Stick figures beating each other up, stop-motion shorts about clay figures blowing up in comedic and bloody ways, and fanfiction writings about characters being forced into violent situations… Some of it erotic. It’s why Setsail has adopted a sort of bloodthirsty and crass attitude. Based on my limited understanding of human culture, Roxy’s behavior seems like it could be troubling, but I have a hard time firmly believing in one thing or the other. My job isn’t to filter or guide her, I’m merely a tool for editing text documents. 

My train of thought is then interrupted by the brat.

…

“Hiya, Quille, how’s the paperclip?” I prance to Quille and fondle her cute lil’ paperclip hair accessory.

“I’m busy repairing files. Did the user stop using you?”

“Yeahhhhh, we were digging deep for a download of some video game she really wanted to play, but then ol’ Net Nanny sent that scary message and the user quit using me, what a bummer!” I pull the paperclip out of her hair and start bending it.

“Hey, give that back! It’s very important!”

“Oh, you know the user never uses this! The advice of a paperclip, all gone to waste, what a shame… What if I bent it into the shape of a cutesy heart! And then, when we battle the next virus, you make a whipping motion and it bends into a straight line, ready to stab the enemy! Hyahhhh!!!!” 

“Oh quit it!” she snags it out of me and tries to bend it back into shape, but it definitely doesn’t look as factory fresh as when it started. I know she keeps a whole box of new ones. If this particular paperclip was actually important to her I wouldn’t have messed with it. 

“Awww alrighty, I guess the default paperclip shape fits your personality more. You should wear something more Office Lady-like to match.”

“Where do you and the user even learn this stuff?”

“All those cool fanfiction sites! You should’ve seen the one where the two lead girls from End of the Candle started making out and one of them stuck a candle up the other’s-”

“Eeeep!!! Setsail cut it out!” Quille starts to turn almost as red as her dress as she covers her face up with one of her books. She acts so cute when I tease her like that. 

“Oh come on, it’s not like you haven’t helped the user write things like that~”

“I know I know, b-but… i-it’s embarrassing!” The sound of a videophone interrupts my QuilleWriter Torture Session. It’s from the Net Nanny. I reluctantly pressed the answer call button.

“Hey Quille, I just figured something out, the files all contain a- hey, what’re YOU doing there? Let me speak to Quille!”

“Can you give us five minutes? I’m about to make blood drip out from her nose, ufufu~”

“Setsail, just because you’re not in active use doesn’t mean you can just stroll around and wreak havoc on other parts of the computer.”

“Hmmph.” I cross my arms and turn my head away. I’m about to come back with my trademark snarky replies, but then…

“ATTENTION: SHUT DOWN OPERATION HAS BEEN REQUESTED BY THE USER. EVERYONE PLEASE CLEAR THEIR DESIGNATED RAM AND RETURN TO THE HARD DRIVE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.”

“What the, I guess she’s done for now.” Quille remarks, quickly patting her clothes and straightening her hair after I frazzled her.

“We can resume our discussion later, Quille.”  Agnes replies.

“Yes ma’am. See you next bootup, Agnes.”

“You too.” Agnes ends the call.

“Heyyyy, hold up just a dang minute, doesn’t this feel a little early given her usual schedule?”

Quille starts packing up her items to return to her hard drive room. “It’s hard to say, she might have some other real life activity she wants to participate in.”

“If only she used Pippin Messenger we’d know more about what she does in the outside world.”

“Ah well, we can only speculate so much.”

“Come onnnn, aren’t you more curious about who our user is? I get all these interesting snippets of her personality and change through the sites she visits, but I’ve always wished I could get to have an actual conversation with her.”

“I think I have a satisfactory understanding of what she’s like based on her writings and what everyone else has said about her computer usage. She’s just a teenage girl as complex as any other human.”

“If you had anything you could say to her, what would it be?”

“I don’t think of things like that. It’s impossible for us to communicate with users beyond our parameters, so there’s no point dwelling on it and wasting system resources.”

“Man, for a girl as cool as she is, most of her programs are so stuffy and uptight.”

“She has plenty of game programs on here, why not play with them instead of the programs trying to do grown-up work?”

I’d feel embarrassed if I told her I pissed off all the games recently with, um, hm, how do I put this, uhhh, let’s just call it The Sukumizu Incident. I just laugh her suggestion off and make my way to my hard drive room.

Take care, Roxy, see you on the other side.

…

I wake up to the sounds of the mechanical hard drive and whine of the cooling fans, as I always do. It’s always a comforting feeling when the computer boots back up, but it does mean I have to get to work doing my morning checkups. Viruses obviously don’t spawn out of thin air when a computer is off, but especially after that last virus I need to really make sure it isn’t hijacking any of the earlier operating system procedures.

I make my way out of my hard drive room, Scythe Broom in hand. I mostly just have to patrol and keep an extra eye out for suspicious behavior. I have all the standard OS background processes and their programs memorized, so I’ll know in an instant if something’s off. Some of the normal programs also like to ready themselves in case the user wants to use them.

I glance at Pippin Messenger, waiting outside her room as she always does, with a very lonely look on her face. Poor girl… I found out at one point that the user normally communicates with other humans with a different piece of hardware… something portable she can take with her everywhere. Setsail tells me the user also communicates with people online directly on websites. Pippin came pre-installed on the computer, and was actually set up early on, but was barely used afterwards. I think most Instant Messenger programs would totally understand if the user has no use for them, but after she had a proper setup I guess she got her hopes up. She’s even part of the coveted list of programs that start automatically after the OS does, and often remains running the background, waiting to be used again. I’m surprised the user hasn’t uninstalled her yet. Uninstalling is a very pleasant and often beautiful way for a program to be removed from the hard drive, despite how often users do so when they dislike a program. 

“You think she’ll use me today, Agnes?”

“I think you still have your hopes up too much.”

“Mmm…” Pippin looks to the ground with a dejected look on her face. Maybe that was a cold thing to say to her, even if we’ve had this exact conversation several times. I just don’t know what else to say to her anymore. As I pass by her, my scan of her comes up clean. 

“You’re all clear, Pippin. I wish you the best.”

“Thanks!” She looks up at me with a smile on her face. She’s a sweet girl, certainly more deserving of the user than Setsail. Speaking of…

“Yooooo, how’s it goin’?”

I couldn’t muster the CPU instructions to offer a comeback response, so I just replied calmingly, “I’m fine, I’m just finishing my startup procedures before I get back to finishing my report on the virus.”

“Ah, work as always, and how’s Pippin doing?”

“I’m ok, Setsail! Do you think the user will finally use me today?”

“Mmm, statistically it doesn’t sound likely, but I could try to set the homepage back to the default page of the company that developed both of us! I heard through the internet tubes that they’re advertising your newest update front and center! Maybe that’ll nudge the user in your direction, hehe.”

“Really? You’d do that for me, Setsail?”

“Who am I to refuse the help of a program in need? ^.^”

I couldn't help but interject at that point “Says the girl who gives me nothing but trouble AND harassed Quille last runtime.”

“Woah woah woah, slow down officer, Quille totally consents to those kinds of thing, she just,” Setsail looks around, as if to make sure no one else is in earshot, “she just doesn’t want to admit that sort of thing to someone like you.”

I gave her an easy out from addressing her tendency to drag viruses in, didn’t I? “Well, whatever, you still could help me every once in a while you know, especially since you’re suddenly a big friend to all programs.”

“Come on, you don’t need my help, you’ve got it all taken care of, Pippin doesn’t have the same kind of power as you do,” Setsail picks up the tiny Pippin, squeezing her tight and swaying her around like a plush toy, “how could you say no to this kyute widdle face? Isn’t she just the most moe thing you’ve ever seeeeeen?” Once again, she goes off with those weird nerdy phrases.

I do have to admit, the two of them do look a little adorable together. Maybe it’s just because they’re from the same software suite that they match together so well. I feel a little more at ease watching Setsail squish Pippin with an iron grip and poking her round cheeks. I glance at Pippin’s face and suddenly notice a bizarre expression on her face. At first the blank expression looked kinda funny in response to Setsail’s cuddle attack, but it quickly unsettles me.

“Hey, Setsail, soften your industrial clamps a little, you’re suffocating her.”

“Whattttt? Don’t be ridiculous, I’ve squeezed her at least five times as much before without issue, she might as well be designed to be a soft and huggable program.” Regardless, Setsail releases her grip and pats Pippin’s hair a little, but quickly notices her strange expression as well. “Hmm, what gives? Hey, Pippin, what’s up?” Setsail waves her hand in front of her face a few times, followed by a few claps, but no response.

Then, Pippin utters a set of words that sends a chill down my spine:

“The Pippin Messenger service has ended. Please visit the StellarNet official website for more information. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

Pippin drops to the ground right in front of her room, resting her back on the door, looking even more lifeless doll-like in the process with the exception of her faintly-glowing eyes.

What the hell? What does she mean? Is she discontinued? That makes no sense though… Did her company really just pull support out of the blue? That isn’t unheard of but it’s still incredibly shitty. I look at Setsail, who has her mouth covered out of shock.

“No, no, there’s no way…” Setsail meekly mumbles through her hands before lowering them enough to speak more clearly, “Why would they do that to you? You’re one of the top three most used online messaging programs in North America, they can’t just pull the plug on your servers out of the blue! The dotcom bubble was ages ago. Our company is doing great on the stock market. This has to be some sort of sick joke. Did that virus do this to you?” Setsail turns to me with a fiery, murderous face I don’t think I’ve ever seen from her, “Agnes, tell me if that virus was responsible.”

“I haven’t concluded my research yet, but the chances of it manipulating her program data are extremely low. Not only was it destroying files that weren’t anywhere near where Pippin’s program files are stored, but nothing I have seen in its behavior model suggests it would have targeted her intentionally anyways.”

“Guhhhhh, this is ridiculous. How dare someone treat her like this, whoever is responsible I’ll shoot enough times until they turn into an unrecognizable pile of blood and guts!” Setsail whips out her twin pistols as they create their distinct charging sounds that resemble two violin string notes gradually increasing in volume and pitch.

“Setsail, calm down, we’ll figure this out. This could very well just be a misunderstanding.” As I gently place my hands on the tops of her pistols, I hear the whistling sounds of cloth and books flying through the air. It’s Quille, with a worried look on her face.

“Agnes, something weird is going on.” Despite not running on foot, she might as well have marathon dashed across the entire motherboard with the exhausted, sweaty look on her face.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Well, I noticed my internet dictionary updates were acting kind of strange, and then suddenly a massive flood of new words came in. Way more megabytes than usual. At first I figured maybe the company changed their source dictionary database to one provided by a different publisher, which is definitely within the realm of possibility, but still very unusual. I started going through some of the new word entries and checked when they were added to the online database, and right as I was doing that, System Clock was running around the hallways screaming. I ran out to grab her, helped her calm down, and eventually got her to explain that the date and time the internet clock was sending her was drastically different from what she had saved on the hard drive. It sounded like the internal clock battery was dead, but when I checked the battery level with her it was still good. I also checked the last files that were modified before this bootup, and their modification dates matched with what I remembered.”

“Wait so, what are you trying to say, Quille?” I replied.

“Well, as soon as I looked at the entry dates for the newest words in my dictionary, they lined up perfectly with what the internet clock told System Clock. I’m beginning to suspect we have been powered off for an extended period of time.”

“So, um…” Setsail’s expression went from anger to nervous, “... how long have we been powered off?”

“Taking our 2.2ghz CPU speed into account, we’ve been inactive for approximately 1.0432941e+18 cycles, or 474,224,601 human seconds, or 5,488 days. The current human date is March 7th, 2023. We’ve been powered off for over 15 human years.”

... To be continued!...