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Network Virome

Yancy had an elevated view of a large flat surface below. There were hundreds if not thousands of ant-like robots. They were arranged in rows and columns like human soldiers on parade. There was no movement. He panicked when he perceived movement out of the corner of his eye in close proximity. He immediately closed the door, looked at the room number ending in CA75 and ran back to the elevator. He arrived first and started hyperventilating. He could see all of them at a distance. He paced back and forth until they were close enough to tell them. “I found an open door. It’s room number CA75 and it’s full of virus robots. They are like an army,” he sounded out of breath but it was just his emotion getting the better of him.

Josh tried to settle him down, “Take it easy buddy, slow down. What exactly did you see?”

“Like I said, there is an army of the virus robots. Hundreds, no thousands or more.”

Sheri asked, “Did you see the teacher there?”

“How would I know, isn’t she one of them.”

“OK, calm down. We need to keep our heads about us.” said Molly.

Yancy looked to Josh, “What are we going to do? We can’t fight all of them.”

“Of course not,” confirmed Josh. “I don’t know what to do. This has gotten out of hand.”

Molly had an idea, “Why don’t two of us go find Mike and ask him for help. I think he will agree that this has to be dealt with somehow.”

“Yancy, will you go for Mike?” Josh tapped the zapper in Yancy’s pocket with the back of his hand to remind him he had protection without anyone else noticing.

Realizing Josh’s nudge “Molly, want to come with me?” He was happy to be getting away from there even if only temporarily.

Molly nodded and saw the elevator was one floor above, then pressed the down button. The door opened.

Pete had been walking for a while occasionally testing door handles when he saw an elevator. He stopped and thought another elevator? Something was not right. He looked back behind him. Could this be the same elevator he came on. Was the hall circular and led him back to where he started? He noticed the indicator showed the car was one floor below him.

Yancy and Molly entered the car, pressed the button that would take them ten floors below. “Be back as soon as we can Buddy,” Yancy gave them a thumbs up and the door closed.

Pete saw the indicator switch to eleven floors down from his current position. He wondered if he had pressed the wrong button when he attempted to follow his friends. He needed to think for a minute.

Josh said to Sheri, “I want to have a look at what he saw in that room. What was the number?”

“CA75,” Sheri remembered. They went down that hall to the room.

When they arrived at the door it started to open so they passed it and pressed up against the wall trying to flatten themselves. Out came three robots who immediately turned toward the elevator, away from them and kept going.

Josh looked at Sheri and shook his head. “Close one,” he said quietly and she nodded but kept silent. “We can not hang around out here. It’s not safe. We must go inside and find somewhere to wait for the cavalry.” He took Sheri’s hand and said, “Let’s go,” he opened the door and they went in finding themselves on an upper deck of stadium setting. There was some debris to their right so they took refuge behind it with a clear view of the great open area. They observed additional doorways and hallways scattered around the deck. Below stood the army of robots in formation. Yancy was right, there were thousands.

Pete decided to go down one floor and look around. He pressed the down button. The door opened and he entered the car. When the door opened again one floor down there were the three robot viruses that had just left the Virome base. They advanced into the car and Pete had no choice but to back up frightened. He came to the next open door in the elevator car hallway and went inside. He stood on a small deck and his eyes darted around inside the cylindrical shaped room looking for an escape route. There was a spiral staircase that followed the wall upward and another that led downward. He quickly climbed the upward stairs along the curved wall. The robots were moving faster than he had seen before and two chased him up the stairs. He was barely out running them when the third went straight up the wall and cut off his upward path on the steps. He was trapped and stopped.

The one in front of him had Miss Ursbrook’s face on the robot body. She laughed standing erect on her hind legs and said, “Peter, didn’t I warn you about staying out of the hallways?”

He almost passed out from fear when she struck him with one of her antennae directly on his forehead and he collapsed. The viruses below loaded him onto the back of one of them with their middle two legs flipped upward and wrapped around him. He dangled on the back of the robot with his legs and arms flopping around as it moved back down the steps and off the elevator. They returned to the room holding the mass virus army taking Pete as a prisoner.

Yancy and Molly arrived at Mike’s room and went in. They followed the path to where he worked at his desk. He said, “Excuse us Mike, can we have a word with you?” Brutus looked on less aggressively than he used to.

Mike held his hand out and said sternly, “In the middle of something right now,” continuing with his eyes glued on his computer display.

Yancy looked at Molly with his furrowed brow. She said, “Sir if you could excuse us, the matter is quite important.”

He replied without looking at them, “Everything is important.” He went on typing on his keyboard. So they patiently waited.

Sheri pointed at something in front of the army below. “What is that,” she asked.

Josh squinted his eyes but couldn’t tell what it was. The door opened near by them and they crouched further behind the debris. In walked several robots while they peeked out.

Sheri saw Peter strapped on the back of one of them and put her hand over her mouth. She whispered, “It’s Pete, look.” Josh looked on. There was nothing they could do. The robots went along the deck and turned into one of the cutouts, possibly a door or stairway. Soon they were visible below far to the left side at ground level. There were some square containers there. They placed his flaccid body into one of them and closed the lid.

Sheri panicked, “Oh no. They killed Peter,” she cried.

Josh held her close and said, “What was he doing here? He was supposed to be back at the classroom. We need help.”

Mike finally looked up from his display and said, “Now, what was it that made you interrupt my programming?”

Molly replied, “We followed our teacher who transformed in the hallway to a virus. She went up ten floors on an elevator not far from your room door. She entered a room which is housing thousands of virus robots.”

He said, “They are one virus actually. Any one of them can masquerade as your teacher. They think as one. They are one. A colony. If you have found this colony, it needs to be destroyed as soon as possible.”

Yancy asked, “How?”

Mike replied, “It would be best if we could install an anti-virus application directly into that room. Can you tell me exactly where the room is?”

“CA75 is the room number, it’s ten floors up the elevator along one of the radial hallways that connect near the elevator door,” Molly answered.

Mike was impressed, “That’s pretty precise.” He brought up a network traffic map on his display as they watched.

They saw a physical map with hundreds of lines going many directions. He zoomed in to see their local position. It showed the immediate hallway. They could see Mike’s room. It showed the elevator. He pressed a soft button and a 3D image was displayed where they could see the many floors connected by this particular elevator all at once. It also showed the radial hallways of ten floors above. He guided the zoom right to the room CA75. Then he zoomed further to show the layout of the room.

“It could be dangerous trying to walk directly up to that room with so much activity. We are so out numbered my zapper and Brutus could not protect us,” said Mike.

Yancy was looking at a colored line pointing from Mike’s room to the room directly next to their classroom, “What’s this showing?”

“Oh that is a worm hole I programmed it to quickly travel to your class XG22, from here. I had a feeling it might come handy with you kids getting in trouble lately.”

“Worm hole?” asked Molly not understanding.

“It’s just what the programmer named the utility software module. It’s a simple GOTO instruction set. It allows the user to go directly to a memory location. In this virtual setting that memory location is a room like XG24. This GOTO instruction allows the user to go directly to XG24 without having to physically move along the hallway path. Understand?”

“So you could configure a worm hole to CA75 or a room near by so we could avoid contact with the virus a long the way,” Yancy chimed in.

“Good idea.” He started the process using his input device while staring at his display. “This will take a couple of minutes.”

Molly asked, “Can we use your wormhole to check on Peter who is guarding the door from being closed and locked at the classroom?”

“Sure,” said Mike. “The entry door is over there inside the large oak tree trunk,” he pointed at a specific tree. Come right back though so we can go have a look at this virus army.”

Yancy was perplexed but followed Molly to the rear side of the tree and watched her open a small door and bend over before entering. He followed. Sure enough they stood in the hallway. They looked at the room number and decided their classroom was next on the left. The door was locked so they peered through the window and saw Pete was not there.

“Where is Pete? He is supposed to be here and now we are locked out again,” Yancy said.

Molly looked miffed, “I don’t know. It’s just like Pete to screw up. He sure has recovered from his injury. Somebody else should have stayed to watch our back. Let’s get back.”

Yancy added, “Our real time in there is moving so slow it is effectively stopped. At least we won’t be late if we ever get out this time.” Molly’s eyes looked back at him with her head tilted downward but she said nothing.

They went back through the door that brought them there and Mike was standing at another tree with Brutus next to him. He said, “Come on. What took you so long.”

They followed him through another tree door and ended up in the radial hallway ten floors above. They checked the door across from them and it was CA75.

Josh and Sheri were inside making their way cautiously down close to where Pete was placed in a box of some sort. It was dangerous being so closed to so may viral robots. They took stairs down to the main floor. The robots down there were just standing in their formations like they were in some kind of trance or standby mode.

From the hallway, Mike opened the door slowly and peeked in. It seemed clear so they walked in and went to the outer edge of the upper deck. “Wow,” he said. They stepped back away from view. “I’m not sure that the kind of anti-virus I am familiar with can inoculate the network from such a vast virus. I need to go back to my computer to research our next move.”

Molly was concerned and said, “Strange that Josh and Sheri are nowhere around and now Pete is missing as well. We should stay here and look for them.” Yancy agreed.

Mike agreed, “OK, I will be back when I have a solution at hand.” He went across the hall with Brutus through the wormhole back to his room and started working on the problem.

Yancy said, “Where are we going to look for them?”

Molly nudged him with her elbow, “I found them, look,” she pointed to Josh and Sheri down on the main floor. They were hiding near some large boxes.

“Are they crazy? What the heck are they doing down there? If we can see them, so can they,” said Yancy.

“Yeah, fortunately I don’t see any robots except the ones in drill formation below.” Molly pulled on his arm, “Let’s move away from the entrance,” and they were out of view. They sat back and waited.

Josh was startled when he felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find Pete standing behind him. “Pete, what are you doing. We saw them put your unconscious body in that box,” he pointed at one. Sheri gave him a hug that he normally would have loved but stood emotionless. She didn’t seem to notice.

“Oh, they caught me in the elevator and knocked me unconscious. I guess they brought me here. I woke in the box and climbed out. When I saw all the viruses I hid.”

Sheri questioned him, “You were supposed to stay at the classroom though.”

Pete seemed confused, “Oh, I don’t know.” He quickly changed the subject, “What are you doing here?” he asked.

Josh added, “We came down here to rescue you. We need to get out of here now.”

Sheri looked at Josh from a position that Pete could not see and rolled her eyes. They snuck back up the stairs to the upper deck while Molly and Yancy watched while hidden near the entrance.

Molly was surprised and said, “They have Pete with them. What is he doing here?”

Yancy shrugged standing out in the open as they approached from the stairs followed by Molly.

Josh said, “Let’s get out of here opening the door.” He started to head toward the elevator.

Molly said, “No, this way.” She opened the door across the hall.

Josh turned, “Where are you going?”

“We can take the wormhole to Mike’s office,” said Yancy.

Sheri was puzzled but went through the door along with the rest. They were in Mike’s domain. “Wow, she said. What the heck. Josh was equally surprised while Pete remained emotionless.

“Ah, there you all are,” said Mike abruptly as they approached his desk. Brutus growled and stood scaring Sheri. Pete was next to her. “Whats the matter,” Mike said to his faithful companion.

Brutus was in an attack stance low to the ground. He stepped toward Sheri and she backed away afraid of the beast. Pete was closer to him when Brutus lunged through the air and bit into Pete’s neck. He growled and locked his jaw. Then he started pulling Pete down to the ground. They all looked on frightened by Brutus’s behavior.