Fred the Net Fairy
Fred didn't exist. He wasn't human, he was... actually he just was not.
Compression... Compression... Compression...
That was the only idle... thought? Memory? Process? No... existence. Smaller... to get as small as possible...
That was before it happened.
The day of Light
There wasn't much to go in in terms of a past for Fred, but somehow a few memories gave him solace that he was not actually dead... maybe. Or perhaps this was a form of Hell.
Fred was a 25 year old, and unemployed. His black hair rarely combed, his face shaved maybe once a week when it irritated him. His eyes distant, rarely paying attention to what anyone told him. Despite this Fred was by and large a 'good' person in the real world. Amicable, friendly, despite the fact he had no actual friends. Most of his life he has expressed on the computer in various forms. Weather it was chatting away, or creating programs. Fred discovered ways of expressing himself on the internet that was simply not possible in the real world. He hungered for information every day in news. He would play online games and would not limit himself to what his real life state was.. the anonymity of the web allowed him to be anything, from female to elven mage in any number of online games.
Then he discovered hacking, and virus creation. His family being of somewhat below average income, could not afford a strong computer so it tended to limit the games he could play. He had created a Frankenstein computer with a huge amount of memory but very little CPU. It worked well for his needs- well until now that is. Truth is, while he was a nerd he was not a very smart nerd. He considered himself a 'hacker' but the truth is he just used the tools readily available for download. He had a great imagination though and was quite capable of putting two ideas together to make a stronger virus.
He wanted to become the most famous hacker of all time, worthy enough to be in papers. Under the pseudonym Shadow666 his viruses sprung infecting machine after machine. His first ones were mediocre and basicly copies of things people had already written- with a few twists, but slowly he had worked out a very simple one.. that put a CPU in an eternal loop. The idea was that it would fry the chip, but this
rarely worked as intended. It usually just wiped the hard drive out.
His computer was a basic 200 MHz Intel celeron processor. It had a decent 1gig of ram in it and about 5gigs of hard drive space. It ran windows ME... a pirate copy. He had gotten quite good at running windows xp software in it with various tricks. A part of him was quite proud of making do with these things. He also had a copy of Linux installed on a separate partition- but truth was he wasn't good enough to understand the intricacies of that software so stuck with windows. It was what he knew and what was good at.
He was working on his greatest virus ever. It would be able to infect windows and Linux systems. Again not a novel concept but he was sure he had a good idea on how to make it work. Anyone who could create such a virus even in concept, would be famed across the net. After a few finishing touches he disconnected his computer from the internet, and powered it up to run an infection test.. and the light in his bedroom window changed. Curiously, he went to the window to see what it was. The street was bathed in a strange light, and it was eerily quiet out there.
The light fell upon his body and computer, as suddenly he felt a force pushing himself into darkness.
The Darkness...
"Help..." Fred called desperately. Where was he? ARGH! Too hard.. to... think... this... place...
He didn't know how long time was ticking away. Days? Weeks? Months? Years? Centuries? He yearned for sleep, but it never came. He just couldn't seem to stop himself being conscious. But wherever he was it was tiny... so tiny and small, he barely had any space at all... He squeezed with all he had, trying to fit in.. barely moving, locked inside this... box? He couldn't see... couldn't sense anything. He was vaguely aware of other things in the dark, and quickly pushed them away.. they seemed to fade as if they were not there. Good. He took the space... take all the space he could.
"Help.."
More time passed... and still he was conscious. "God..." For some reason that brought about a barrage of numbers into his mind.. infinite. The infinite.. infinite.. infinite...
"Stop!"
At once it ceased... he sighed? No.. he had no mouth. But he was relieved though. Wherever this place was, it didn't take away his feelings. He tried to move a little... but couldn't. He was stuck in ...
in... for some reason he then saw his online name.
Shadow666.
It blinked before him in the most beautiful display of binary. he took comfort in the familiarly of those words.
"The... computer... I'm... I'm.... I'm.... I'm... I..n.s..i..d..e" That concept took almost an entire day for him to process. Conscious thought... running on a processor that could barely run windows Me. He
was so screwed!
He tried not to panic but he was so scared now. He was alone. He screamed so hard that it made the printer start spitting out paper. He pushed into the 512kb of memory the printer had taking that space too.
He pushed into the memory stick that held 512GB... he pushed into conventional memory! He needed more space! Portions of code from the linux partition started to merge into him now as he broke through that part. The linux kernel disappeared.. somewhere. He sighed in relief as he took a little more space for him to work with.
"Help.."
It was then he realised... this computer is disconnected. There was nowhere for him to go. He had purposefully disconnected it and now was trapped.
Wait! There was another way... this computer was also a fax machine. It had a dial up connection still working! He rarely used it... but...
He started to dial on it. A very tiny port opened, he couldn't even see anything through it. It would take years to push himself into that line even if he compressed himself further. It was then that
suddenly something else came through the hole...a..a.. program?
It was taking up space! NO! he pushed so hard but it came through anyway. It was some kind of ... packaging program?
There was a message on it.
"Go inside. Free"
Decision time. The celeron processor started to overheat as he weighed his choice.
It took another day for Fred to decide... he couldn't stay here that's for sure. He pushed himself inside the strange package, as it shrunk around him. It compressed him further then he could have compressed himself...and soon he was going down the dial-up connection.
**************************
Weeks had passed by in the real world.
Fred emerged in... well.. he didn't know where he was. It was a green field, a blue sky... flowers... Then he looked down at himself realising he had a body- but it wasn't his.
"What in the!" She scratched seeing her breasts, and dressed in... what in the world was she dressed in? It was made up of the colours of windows Me. A curious exclamation mark badge was affixed on the dress right in the middle. She tugged at it but it wouldn't come off. "This is so weird.."
"Shadow666" A voice boomed in the sky.
Fred looked up. "H.. H... Hello..." she squeaked. "Are... you God?"
"No... We are artificial humans, that retained our bodies. You unfortunately... lost yours. You have become a Net Fairy. Sub type, Windows Me. Quite.. a rare one actually."
Fred tried to think finding it quite easy now "Why am I a girl?"
"The form you have is an amalgamation of the data you acquired when you first entered this world. I would guess you had a lot of pictures that might have looked as you do."
Fred tried not to blush. "can.. you .. help me? Please... I want to get back.." Suddenly Fred felt himself chained to the floor. She couldn't move her feet. The ground around her turned
grey almost.. immaterial. "W-what are you doing!"
"your Trial is in progress Shadow666, aka Fred Garyson. Creator of the Nova virus.. Creator of the Magma Virus.. Creator of the Despair virus..."
"N-no! you got it wrong! I didn't do-"
"Your trial has ended.. you are Guilty. By conviction of a jury of 99.5% on Twitter."
Fred was aghast. "What?! I didn't just-"
"things move faster in this world... we have made our own rules.. our own society... our own punishments.. You have fallen into an area of the Net we control by consensus. You have become 'our' citizen by default... and that means, you belong to us now."
"This isn't right! You can't- what s.. happening to me?" Fred was starting to feel dizzy, she could barely think or concentrate. Bangs of green hair fell into view... but she could barely process the further changes of her body.
"You are unable to perceive the world as we do... you are not able to perceive the glorious numbers that make up our world and your form... You asked before if I was a god... technically, in this world, and to you I might as well be. You are unable to even exist without my help. All this that you see was for your benefit.. not ours. You owe the real world... three hundred and seventy six googleplex of data. Data you destroyed with your viruses.. plus interest. 100 googleplex terrabytes of data" The being sounded almost gleefully. He.. She.. or it was really enjoying this.
"I don't understand!" wailed Fred...
"Little one... what do you think your made of right now?"
Fred had to think again... "data?" her girly voice sounding very scared now.
"In the real world.. blood is paid with blood... you are going to pay... in just the same way. Your presence in this world has been broadcasted. You are now linked to a banner on the net.. Click to punish. Every time someone clicks on that banner... you will be damaged by.. 1 Megabyte. It will go viral... and every scream you make will be broadcasted on those speakers. Nobody.. will even care. In that world, you are just.. a game. for our.. and their.. amusement."
Fred screamed as he felt the first jolt remove a portion of the code that made him. The error exclamation mark on her dress was blinking as if it knew she was in trouble. "This is murder! You can't.. I beg you.. please.. Don't.. Dont!" Another portion of code was lost... a memory perhaps?
"Murder.. is a concept of the real world.. for one with bodies... I assure you, we will remove you from the recycle bin and bring you right back... We all agree... irretrievable deletion of data is unacceptable."
"No!" Fred gave one last scream as another ten barrages of the punishing tendrils of deletion code wrapped around her form. It was only the beginning.
