Ryan Somma - The Spiraling Web

Dana leaned in to look over Alice's shoulder, "Show me what you've got."

Alice used the mouse to pull a window forward from the stack, revealing a page of light-blue text. Dana could not recognize any of the characters on the screen. It looked like cryptography to her.

"That's the virus' code?" she asked.

Alice shrugged, "I guess so, although I couldn't tell you what programming language. Something extensible, I think. I've never gotten results like this from the decompiler before"

"'Extensible'?" Dana asked.

"A dynamic programming language, it can grow and build on itself. This is an unknown font-type, after all, so the program must be telling the computer how to read it, spawning its own operating system on the fly. Now watch this," Alice selected a code string and deleted it. The surrounding characters began changing, filing into the missing segment, until the code returned to its original state. Alice looked at Dana expectantly.

Dana looked at Alice, "Okay, explain what I just saw."

Alice's smile dropped in disappointment and she pointed at the screen, "The code repaired itself. It didn't just copy the erased lines back into the whole, like some viruses do. In those cases, you simply empty its cache so it has no way of remembering what was there in the first place. In this case, the program actually rewrote itself back to its original state, like it sensed the missing data and ran a process to calculate what was needed to replace it. It actually healed the data. Isn't that fantastic?"

"No, it isn't," Dana said, shaking her head, "What I just heard is that we can't just erase this thing off the infected computers. Am I right?"

Alice half shrugged, "Not quite, you see, it's more complicated than that," she selected the same section of code and tried to delete it again.

A warning message from the Operating System popped up with an alert chime:

CANNOT DELETE PROCESS

AS IT IS REQUIRED BY

THE OPERATING SYSTEM

Alice turned back to Dana, "The virus has disguised the damaged code as a necessary system file. So the security won't let you remove it, but..." she selected the segment of code and deleted it using her administrative privileges, the code was removed and slowly healed again, "The program wasn't smart enough to disguise the healed code very well. The system may not know the difference, but I do."

"So the virus has a chink in its armor," Dana said, nodding.

Her sunken eyes and cheeks made Alice's smile almost ghoulish, "Wait till you see my solution." She glided over to another terminal on the wheeled office chair. "Nobody breath," she whispered. Eyes locked on the monitor, she hit the "enter" key, "This is attempt number seventeen. The first eight attempts the virus pwwned me with its ability to alert copies of itself throughout the network. It used everything from instant messaging to commandeering the server's e-mail and Internet services to broadcast the alert, communicating it exponentially, until they were all adapted to the new threat."

"At least, that is Alice's interpretation of the behavior," Mow interjected.

Alice continued, oblivious to Mow, "Overcoming this seemed impossible at first, but programs require processing power to work, right? If the anti-virus program could monopolize the system resources, the virus would have nothing to react with. So I had to force the system into dedicating all of its processing power at once to the anti-virus.

"A programming loop was the easiest solution, but the virus kept figuring out the simple timing. So I tasked the anti-virus with testing the first 100 billion integers for prime numbers simultaneously using an inefficient algorithm developed by the Indian Institute of Technology in 2002, with additional steps added to further reduce its efficiency."

Dana looked at Mow, "Was that English?"

Mow shrugged unhelpfully.

Alice did not miss a beat, "After depriving the virus of all system resources, came the hurdle of extracting the virus from the system without damaging legitimate programs. The virus is undetectable to my existing code sweepers. It would lie dormant until the danger passed and then re-infect the computer with a newer version.

"I patched a decompiler, scandisk utility, and an omni-language debugging tool together to form the method of attack, decompiling and analyzing every byte on the hard drive for symptoms of the alien code. It works in the momentary processing gaps found in the algorithm, occurring whenever a prime number is confirmed. There are 4,118,054,813 primes-more than enough chances.

"You didn't use proprietary softwares to build this did you?" Dana asked.

"This solution required ideas from the greatest minds around the world," Alice replied without looking at her. "No one person or corporation could accomplish it."

"They'll see what you've done after you release the anti-virus," Dana said. "You'll loose your job. You might go to prison."

Alice was silent, watching the anti-virus flood the network, consume its resources, and painstakingly sifting through each bit of code. The process ran at a snails' pace, and would take half an hour to complete in simulation. On the World Wide Web it could take days, possibly weeks. Normally such a solution was unacceptable, but half the Internet was down. The situation called for extreme measures, even breaking the laws her agency enforced.

A poster crawling with anime characters striking action poses towered over Devin, who bounced on his heels impatiently in Patrick's bedroom. He tried remaining patient, immersing himself in the many fan boy collectables littering the room, but couldn't help glancing over his shoulder every few seconds to check on the boy standing across the room decked out in the VR helmet and gloves.

He could not shake the idea that this was all his fault. He told Flatline to go for it. It was like in the second grade, when Devin had thrown a rock at a playmate, splitting the girl's forehead open and sending her to the Emergency Room for stitches. For days his mother nagged, "What were you thinking?" and he honestly did not know. He felt no animosity towards the girl. The rock left his hand before he even knew what he was doing. At least, that was all he could remember about it. That, and immediately wishing he could take it back, but the scar was in place, and all the apologies in the world could not undo it.

Here was something different. Here was a situation he might yet undo. The rock was loose, but still in the air. If he could find Flatline and end the assault before anyone else was hurt, he might redeem himself.

Devin checked on the seventh-grader in the VR helmet again and decided to ask for a status update. He pressed the intercom button on the computer, interrupting Patrick's Web-surfing, "Have you found anything yet?"

"Not much," Patrick answered through the computer's speaker, the helmet soundproofed his voice; "It looks like he's got a bazillion avatars, which is making it impossible to know if I'm getting anything on him. The Internet's crawling at a snail's pace thanks to that virus. It's like I'm on my grandmother's old T-1 line. Half of it isn't even coming up. I'm checking some nicknames against the law-enforcement databases to see if anything turns up. Tell you what, why don't you check in with me every sixty-seconds to see how it's going? That helps."

"Sorry," Devin turned the intercom off and sighed deeply. He felt fatigued, going on thirty-something hours without sleep. Slumping down onto Patrick's bed, he noticed the "Super Science Ninja Squad" bed sheets with mild amusement. When he lay down, it felt like his body was melting into the mattress, warm darkness enveloping him as he fell away into its bliss.

"Found something!" Patrick exclaimed through the intercom. Devin bolted upright.