💾 Archived View for emisocks.com › stories › malware.gmi captured on 2023-06-14 at 14:10:22. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
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Thalia took a deep breath, then hit the Enter key on her keyboard. She watched a loading indicator spin around for a few seconds, then a helpful text message informed her that her email was correctly sent. She leaned into the back of her chair, bending it backwards slightly and staring at the ceiling, and prayed to whatever cosmic entity was watching her that the professor would take pity on her and extend her deadline. Again.
She glanced over at the clock on the wall. 2:41 AM. Running her fingers through her hair, she moved forward to close her laptop, when a little 'ding!' alerted her that she had received a new email. After a moment of panic, she breathed a sigh of relief at the realization that it was not, in fact, a response from her professor, but something completely unrelated. In fact... it was from a school friend she hadn't seen in many years.
'Oh, good old Jamie', she thought to herself. 'I wonder what he's up to these days?'
The contents of the email were not exactly what she expected. It was only a short message saying 'Hey, I forgot I had these photos of us lying around! Check them out!' and an image attachment. Thalia tilted her head to the side, a little confused. What pictures could he be talking about? She clicked on the attachment to open it, but nothing happened. Ugh, computers. She double clicked on it instead. Still, nothing happened, not even an error message. Weird. Wait, it said 'pictures', didn't it? Why was there only one file? And why was there no other information? And why did it not sound like Jamie at-
"... oh no", Thalia said out loud.
Closing her email program, a quick look at her desktop confirmed that something was very, very wrong. Her programs were still there, but all of the text documents that were usually scattered around had completely vanished. She went into her personal folder, and found it completely empty too. She desperately scrambled through her hard drive, looking for any sign of her files. All gone.
"No, no, no, no, no!"
School projects, gone. Vacation pictures, gone. Games, gone. Music library... almost entirely gone. There was a single file left inside. Thalia's brief hopes were immediately crushed again as she realized it was just a text file, named 'spark.txt'. She opened it quickly, and found a single line in it.
Great. Salt in the wound. How could she be so careless? She clenched both fists, lifted them up in the air, and just barely resisted the overpowering urge to smash them down on the damn machine. Instead, she decided to let out her frustration by typing in a second line.
Thalia didn't know what she was even trying to accomplish. She groaned, spinning her chair around and covering her face with both hands. All of her school files were completely gone. There was no way her professor was going to understand this one. If only she had made any backups, maybe she could still-
Backups. Ari.
She sprung up from her chair and ran over to the small table besides her bed, picking up her phone and quickly opening up her contacts list. She tapped the name at the very top of the list and brought the device up to her ear.
"Ari. Hey. Yeah, it's me. Yes, it's late, I know, but we both know you're never asleep at this time. Listen, remember when you fixed my laptop last month?"
"No, I didn't break it _again_! ... okay, maybe I did break it again. But hey, you know how you said I should be making regular backups?"
"Uuuuuh yeah, about that. I kind of didn't. But! Since I know you're a security freak and all, I was wondering if you happened to-"
"You did?? Oh my god, Ari, thank you so so much! I owe you my life! Seriously! You're the best!"
"Yeah, I'm going to need it fixed eventually, but that's not urgent. Your backup is what I need, since I have all my college files there. I have another older laptop lying around that I can use."
"Very funny. No, I didn't break that one. Is it okay if I come over tomorrow?"
"Perfect. Seriously, I love you _so_ much right now. Dinner's on me next time we go out, alright? Cool. Alright, yeah, see you tomorrow."
Thalia put her phone down once more and turned around, taking another deep breath. It was going to be fine. She would get her files back, and finish her project in time. Everything was going to be alright.
When she walked over to her laptop again, ready to slam the lid down on the damn thing, she noticed a third line under the one she wrote in the text document.
Great, the thing even responded to being typed in. Sitting down again, she gritted her teeth and typed in another line.
Almost immediately, another line appeared underneath.
Huh. Was this thing actually reacting to what she typed? Why would anyone bother coding that on top of the virus? She tried typing in one more line.
A response appeared right away.
Okay, yeah, this didn't sound like a program. There was probably a real person on the other side, ready to tell her that she had to pay a ransom for her files. Why do it through a text document instead of a big pop-up window, though?
She glanced up at the taped-over camera, grinning. If nothing else, she could derive some satisfaction from telling these people that she had backups and they could stick their ransom up their ass.
Well, it seemed like it was just a prankster after all. Tired, she plugged the cable on the side of her laptop off, disconnecting it from the internet, and typed in another line.
She was ready to get up and close it again, when another line appeared.
... huh? She checked the internet settings on the bottom corner. Disconnected. What? Was it actually just a bot? Did someone program all those responses in manually? No, there was no way. She flipped back to the text file.
Right. This was clearly just a nightmare, or maybe some sort of hallucination caused by sleep deprivation. This had been a very, very long day, and Thalia had had enough. She reached over and closed her laptop with a little more force than she probably should have, then headed off to bed, rubbing one of her eyes. This would all make sense tomorrow. Maybe she would wake up in the morning and find that her files were still there after all.
---
After a fierce battle to convince her body that three ignored alarms were enough, Thalia finally managed to drag herself out of bed. She stood up and stretched, letting out a groan as all of her joints made loud cracking noises. Then, after a quick trip to the bathroom to wash her face, she sat back down in front of her laptop and opened it up. Yep, all of her files were still gone. And the text file was still there, just as it was the previous day. It wasn't a nightmare after all. Just to double check, she typed in a new line.
Right away, a response appeared.
Thalia sighed. What was she even supposed to do about this? She could take the laptop to Ari, maybe they'd have an explanation for this nonsense. Then again, what if it stopped working then? A text file didn't prove anything.
This was getting more ridiculous by the second.
Well, it got her there. How else? The computer was still cut off from the internet, and this thing was clearly too complex for a bot. Well, what the heck, why not play along for a bit?
Thalia didn't know how she should feel at that, although 'infuriated' was probably close.
Thalia couldn't help but roll her eyes. Was it actually trying to convince her?
Well, it was hard to tell if this thing was messing with her or not, whatever it was. If it was being sincere... maybe it genuinely just didn't understand that deleting files was a bad thing.
A few moments passed, and she got up from her chair, ready to close her laptop, but then another message appeared. This one, strangely enough, took some time to come through, while the others were almost instant.
Huh. Alright.
More than a little confused, Thalia closed the lid on her laptop. What was she even supposed to make out of this? Well, it was a problem for future Thalia to deal with, in any case. First step was to go over to Ari's place and get her backups back. And this time, hopefully, not break anything before the deadline of her project.
---
The next three weeks were a blur for Thalia. Getting all of her files back into her old laptop, catching up on her projects and exchanging emails with her teachers kept her busy enough that she never had the time to think about her other computer. All of that was now taken care of, though, and she sat on her chair, looking at her closed laptop in silence. After a moment, she sighed and opened it up. The text file 'spark.txt' was still up on the screen. Shaking her head, she typed in a new line.
The response was quick to arrive.
Thalia felt completely surreal, like she had somehow fallen into an alternate universe where the rules were different. She looked around her. No, her room was all the same, there was just... a sentient virus on her computer, apparently.
Well, that was a relief, at least.
Was it excited? This thing was oddly... cute, Thalia thought.
Right. So maybe this thing fed off entropy then. Or something like that. That sounded close enough.
Well, Thalia supposed that made some amount of sense. As much sense as this whole thing could make. She sat back in her chair, thinking for a moment and briefly glancing down to her desk, then leaned in again to type.
She grinned, reaching into the drawer of her desk and pulling out a USB stick.
Thalia closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then plugged the USB stick into her laptop. The folder that opened up on the screen confirmed that all of her files were quickly gone. She couldn't help but smile and mutter a small 'goodbye, fucker' under her breath. When she opened up the text file again, a new line had appeared at the bottom.
Thalia sat back, smiling. She couldn't tell why, but she was actually kind of enjoying this.
Closing her laptop again, Thalia stood up and took the USB stick out, putting it back into her drawer. As surreal as this whole situation felt, she guessed it wasn't entirely bad.
---
It hadn't been very long, but Thalia had already gotten into the habit of frequently talking to the virus. It seemed easily distracted, but it was clear that it wasn't cruel or malicious, so it actually made for a decent conversation partner. Today, though, Thalia had a surprise prepared.
Smiling to herself, Thalia opened up her email client and shuffled through her options to disable her advanced malware guard. Immediately, an email draft popped up on her screen with an executable attachment already loaded. She tabbed back to the text file.
Tabbing over to her email client once more, Thalia started to write her message for her friend, trying to not think too much about how surreal it sounded. 'I really couldn't have come up with something this weird if I tried', she thought to herself, 'but I'm glad it ended like this at least.'