User:LurkingWolf/Puppy Virus
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Puppy Virus
Chaos was about to be unleashed on all the inhabitants of planet Earth, but on the eve of the sinister attack, someone was looking out for the rest of his fellow men.
Or rather, some ONES.
Reynalds stepped quickly through a maze of hallways. The halls didn't seem to go anywhere, but he knew where he was at any turn, and was quickly approaching his destination. He finally stepped into a giant room, every inch of it covered by some sort of technology. A solitary form sat in the middle of the room, shrouded in shadow but for the flickering lights from the screens around him.
"Give me a report!" the voice demanded before Reynalds had even had a chance to speak.
"Michael, you..." Reynalds began.
"SSSHHH!" Michael hissed from his seat. Reynalds sighed and rubbed his eyes. Michael suddenly yelled and dropped back deep into his rotating chair.
"Do you know what you have just done?" Michael asked once he had recovered his temper. Reynalds just shrugged. "You have caused my team to experience the ultimate failure!"
Reynalds sighed. "Mike, there's something a bit more important than that going on," he commented. He flicked a switch beside the door, and fluorescent lights slowly flickered to life.
Michael gave a muffled yell from his chair, but it was no use. Despite his best efforts, he had not yet found a way to grant access to the lights from the chair.
Reynalds sighed when he saw the screen in front of him, showing condensed highlights of the preceding deathmatch. "What was it this time?" he asked.
The muffled answer was barely intelligible. "$2000 towards a new gaming machine."
"Like you need one," Reynalds sighed. "All right, war's over, commander." He grabbed the corner of the comforter that Michael had wrapped himself in and walked in a circle around the revolving chair, slowly unraveling the bundle that contained the reluctant gamer.
"Focus," Reynalds said, reading from the page in his hand as the slim form of his friend slowly became visible. "All right, newsflash; Microsoft has had a major security breach."
"Another one?" Michael asked drily, bedraggled head coming into view. "Which department is it his time, XBox?"
"The whole ruddy thing," Reynalds responded.
"All of LIVE?" Michael asked, genuinely surprised. "That's even worse than usual."
Reynalds shook his head. "All of Microsoft,"' he clarified.
"Now that's funny," Michael commented, returning to his Ubuntu machine's desktop. "Where'd you get the headline?"
"My personal security filters," Reynalds said. "They caught it and I looked over the code myself. Still trying to fix it, though. Here, see for youself." He handed Michael the papers that he had printed off and Michael glanced over them.
Michael leafed through the papers one at a time. "Nice complex bit of code... Could take me a while to figure out what it's meant to be. By the way, how do you figure that all of Microsoft is compromised?"
Reynalds pointed to a string that spelled out, verbatim, "This code has been planted in all current Microsoft data files. You are doomed!"
"Subtle," Michael chuckled. "I'll see what I can dig up. See if you can't contact the major antivirus companies to start updating, one way or the other."
Reynalds nodded and stepped out of his friend's basement. Chances were, there would be a few infections before Reynalds could convince anyone to adopt his security code...
Reynalds was back later that morning after emailing or calling all the major security companies, minus Norton on which he had long since sworn vendetta. He had some responses, but had little clue how long it would be until they actually did anything. Even the more reliable companies had unreliable employees, so it was bound to be a while. Unless someone had accidentally had the proper stops in place, most of the companies would be crippled with the virus before they got anywhere.
The one thing Reynalds didn't know was exactly what effect the virus would have, and for that he went to Michael once again.
He returned to the basement, and again navigated the halls created by the odd twists in the basement's piping. As he walked into the room that his friend occupied, however, he found the papers with the code on them, laying unmarked on the desk beside the chair. If Michael had done anything to them, he would have reduced them to nothing more than red marks where there wasn't code already.
It didn't take Reynalds any time at all to find out why. His friend's wireless 360 controller sat on his seat, and the console tower was lit up and active, although Mike's screen had fallen asleep.
"Mike!" Reynalds called. "Get out here and translate this code!"
He heard no reply, but couldn't think of anywhere Michael would be at this time of the morning, the bathroom was empty, and that was the only place he would be other than his game room at this time of day.
"Mike!"
"Go away!"
Reynalds jumped. That wasn't Michael...
"All right, whoever you are, where's, Michael?" Reynalds demanded. Trying to track the voice. It had been close...
"It's me, I came down with something, now get out!" the voice responded.
"Michael's voice isn't even near that high... Or cute..." Reynalds said the last to himself more than to the voice, but the comment didn't escape the our person.
"DON'T CALL ME CUTE!" the voice demanded.
For the time being, Reynalds ignored the comment and stepped up beside the rotating chair. The voice had come from nearby...
As he leaned over with his hand on the chair, the voice came from straight above him.
"Don't touch thrrt!" The last word was muffled, and Reynalds was well aware as to why, as a pair of teeth clamped down around his hand as the final word came.
"Yah!" Reynalds jumped and knocked his head on the chair, and he dropped in a daze.
He came to with an odd sight in front of his eyes. A pair of deep brown eyes stared down at him, and he was momentarily unable to think of something to say.
"Hello, boy?" he said uncertainly, raising a hand to pet the puppy that stared down at him.
The puppy snapped at him. "Call me boy again on pain of death!" it said in the same voice Reynalds had heard earlier. At the sight of a talking dog, Reynalds might have fainted had the words not conflicted so comically with the voice.
"What the...?" Reynalds started.
"It's me, Michael. I think I know what our mystery virus does."
Reynalds dropped his jaw in surprise, but recovered as quickly as he could. "No way, no way a computer virus can do something like this. Where's the man behind the curtain, Mike? Your robot's nice, all right?"
"Not a robot!" the very infuriated German Shepherd puppy insisted. It hopped up on the rotating seat, swaying as it slowly turned under its paws, and pawed at the 360 controller. The screen woke back up, and Reynalds saw a very familiar message.
"This code has been planted in all current Microsoft data files. You are doomed!"
“I didn’t think that playing a quick death match would cause any trouble,” the puppy who claimed to be Michael explained. “My 360 decided to update in the middle of the match, though, and now look at me…”
Reynalds had to mentally kick himself to keep from laughing as the puppy sulked down into the rotating chair, looking so unbelievably cute throughout the action that it made Reynalds have to stifle a snicker.
“I heard that!” Michael said with a high pitched snarl. Even that was mangled by the little body into something too cute to be threatening, but Reynalds knew that, if this was really Michael, he didn’t want to challenge his resolve.
“All right,” Reynalds said. “If this happened to you, it has probably hit the ‘net too. Do you think you could switch over to your computer so I can check for other signs of trouble?”
“Just switch the RCA adapter,” the puppy responded. “My 360 won’t turn off now unless I unplug it, and I’m not going to bother with that. Just let me take care of this…” Michael took the controller in his mouth and hopped off of the chair. He deposited it in a corner, away from the reach of Reynalds should he accidentally reach for it. Reynalds hadn’t seen anything to indicate that touching a controller connected to a Microsoft product was the reason that his friend had been changed, but he wasn’t taking chances either.
Reynalds did as Michael instructed, and soon the computer’s output was displayed on the widescreen HDTV. He had his browser started quickly, and typed in a query about computer viruses in the search box. Just as he reached for the Enter key, the puppy’s voice rang out.
“Wait!”
It was too late. Reynalds hit the key before he could react to the warning. He quickly glanced over at the German Shepherd with confusion on his face.
“My internet provider reroutes all searches through Bing,” Michael said quietly. Reynalds looked back at the screen for a few moments as the page loaded.
“Maybe it was just Microsoft’s software,” Reynalds suggested. He was really trying to comfort himself more than making an actual theory, but he breathed a momentary sigh of relief when the normal Bing search page popped up.
Only it didn’t have the search results as it should have.
It had a message that said, “Bing is currently encountering technical difficulties, we apologize for the inconvenience.” Reynalds have a sigh of relief, but felt it stick in his throat as a popup ad appeared on his screen. It seemed to be some sort of console, as there was a running list of commands appearing and then scrolling off screen. They went too fast and were in type too small for him to read, but he could tell he was in trouble. A miserable whine from the puppy beside him just confirmed this.
And then, for the third time since early that morning, the familiar message appeared on the screen in bold letters. “This code has been planted in all current Microsoft data files. You are doomed!"
Reynalds heard a whine escape from his own throat as he saw the message appear on the screen, and then everything went black.
It took him a few moments to realize that he wasn’t blind or unconscious. By that time, the mound of cloth that was lying on top of him was oppressively hot, even in his friend’s frigid basement. He struggled until he caught sight of some light and pushed his way towards it. Finally, he reappeared into the light of the room, although now much different from when he had disappeared.
Where Reynalds had been a moment before, a golden retriever puppy burrowed its way out of the discarded clothing. It was smaller than the German Shepherd that waited for him outside, but not significantly so. The only significant similarity between the two was how absolutely adorable they both were.
Reynalds whined a few times while he took his new form in. Everything looked, felt, smelt, and sounded different now. He could see well, but the tones of colors were indistinct, and he had trouble putting a finger on the exact color of anything in the room. The cold concrete floor didn’t affect him very much, either. It felt muffled beneath little padded paws that has replaced his hands and feet, and the usually freezing basement now felt comfortable through his thick golden fur. A thousand smells assaulted his nose, from dirty laundry to old pizza crust in the trashcan in the corner (which smelled oddly appetizing), but he found it easy to keep track of them. In fact, he found himself sniffing in the direction of things even before he had taken a good look. Lastly, he could now hear much better. Even the nearly undetectable whir of computer systems fans and processors was quite clear to him now, although he found it easy enough to shut out.
“This has to be a dream,” he finally stuttered, his voice now audibly higher.
“I already checked that theory,” Michael offered sympathetically.
“How? You can’t pinch yourself with paws!”
Michael suddenly looked rather bashful. “Well…” he stammered. “You see, I thought it was a dream too, but I couldn’t pinch myself to check, so…” He lowered his head, obviously embarrassed. “Well, I bit my tail.”
Reynalds looked back at his own tail, but found no matter how far he craned his neck, he couldn’t catch it. “How…?” he started to ask, but then came up with the answer and turned back to Michael, smiling as best as his muzzle would allow. “You were chasing your tail!”
“Well, what would you do?” Michael asked, but Reynalds was already rolling on the floor laughing, literally kicking his paws in the air as he laughed. Michael didn’t take that for long. He gave a short growl and launched himself onto the golden retriever, latching onto a floppy ear with teeth much too short to do any real damage.
Reynalds yelped, more in surprise than in pain, but was quick to recover and push the large puppy off of him. There were no floppy ears that he could lock onto, but he managed to roll the German Shepherd off of him and start nibbling at the long tail behind his opponent.
Michael gave a sound somewhere between a yelp and partially human laughter, but wasn’t going to take that sort of thing lying down. He batted Reynald’s muzzle away from his tail with a quick paw swipe, then fell into a disorganized wrestling match with the retriever.
By the time it was over, the former hackers were curled up together in a ball, taking a rest after a long wrestling match.
The results of the two puppies waking up at the same time was predictable.
“Aw, man! Get off me!” Michael virtually attacked Reynalds to push him off, then curled into his own ball, pouting off by himself. Reynalds looked at him for a few moments before figuring out what in the world had just happened. He finally shook his head as the memories of what had just happened to him over the course of the last few hours.
“Well, now what?” he asked. “Sitting here is getting us nowhere. We need to do something.”
“Like what?” Michael asked, raising his head off of the floor. “You want to try to learn to type with paws?”
“We could at least figure out how to set up speech recognition. You’re headset should work just fine for a good quality mic, as long as you don’t get up too close to it.”
Michael put his head back onto his paws and sighed. “One way or another, we’re probably going to have to do some serious coding to undo this, if it even can be undone, and believe me, you do NOT want to try programming via voice recognition.”
“Well, we’re not going to get it done typing, now are we?” Reynalds lifted up one of his paws and showed the stubby little toes that were all that were left of his fingers. “I really doubt either of us still has the dexterity to type. Anyway, we might not have to do very much. Hopefully, we’ll be able to figure out what it is that the code did, and edit it to our own specifications.”
Michael stared down at his paws for a few seconds, then stood, stretching, to his paws.
“Well, if we’re going to do something, we need to start somewhere,” he sighed. “Where is that code you printed off for me to look over? It’s a good deal more important now; maybe I’ll be able to concentrate on it.”
“How are you going to take notes?” Reynalds asked.
“I’ll figure it out. I might just have to chicken-scratch in pen with my mouth. I’ve seen real dogs do it as a trick, so I should at least be able to be half-legible. While I’m at it, see if you can get the computer back up and running, set up the voice recognition so we can mess with it later.”
The two friends were soon hard at work, although it was quite an odd sight. A golden retriever puppy sat on a rotating chair (which seemed to rock back and forth whenever he made a move), messing with a wireless keyboard and trying to figure out how to type just the letters he wanted, while down below a German Shepherd puppy had a pen in his muzzle and was trying to scratch out notes on the paper around the unfamiliar obstruction of a muzzle.
Fortunately, the computer allowed access to it without a problem. That is, the virus didn’t cause any extra trouble after it was done turning the user into a puppy. It didn’t make it any easier on him as he tried to figure out how to type with paws. Somehow, he managed to set up the voice recognition option before his friend was done analyzing the code, and he proceeded to fumble his way through trying to grab the source code of the virus like he had done on his own computer.
By the time he had the code somewhere where they could edit it, Michael had found what he was looking for.
“Rook,” the German Shepherd said, speaking around the piece of paper he held in his mouth as he climbed onto the chair. He let it go, trying his best not to get too much spit on it and run the ink. “Look, there.” He pointed with his nose to a section of code he had roughly highlighted with the pen.
“It references a data file here, one that it imported…” Michael flipped back a few pages with one of his paws. “Here. Check it out, it also imports several other data files along with the first one.”
The list of imported files was named in a relatively recognizable fashion. The one that they had seen referenced later on had been marked in Michael’s sloppy penmanship. “ANIMPUP.TF,” was the listed name, but there was also a decent list of other files: “ANIMCOON.TF, ANIMFOX.TF, ANIMMOUSE.TF…” But it wasn’t those files that interested the two puppies. Below the list of files prefixed by “ANIM” was another couple of files, including one that gave them a little bit of hope.
“HMNRTRN.TF”
“It’s ‘human return’, it has to be!” Michael said.
Reynalds wanted to object, but nothing among the rest of the files seemed even close to what they were going to need.
“Why would they give us the solution to our problem along with the problem itself?” Reynalds asked.
Michael shrugged as best as he could. “Why did they bother writing up these files in the first place? My guess is that they probably had the first part of the code already written, and just added the necessary code to cause the specific change they wanted; check this page.”
Michael flipped over to another page of code, where adjacent lines were broken by a good deal of commented-out code. “Looks like this was intended to randomly choose between the earlier data files, except for ‘HMNRTRN.TF’, and execute one of them when this code was used. The other file was kept in reserve for some other use, but I don’t see it included anywhere else in the code right now. Probably just imported it with this file, and had another file to execute it. If this is anything like most other innocuous viruses, it probably started as a prank.”
“Some prank,” Reynalds noted. “So, genius, since you found the ‘human return’ file, why don’t you be the one to find out whether it works or not?”
“Gladly. I’ve already been like this for far too long.”
Michael had to mess with the code that they had extracted for a while before he could change the executed TF file to the appropriate one. When they finally got it compiled and run, it was almost humorous when the message came up saying about how the file was planted in all Microsoft products. As the effects of the program became obvious, however, both puppy programmers gave a sigh of relief.
Soon both of them were back as they should have been, and were working hard on a surprise for the people who had sent the virus out. Perhaps the virus’ creators should have made sure not to add a line detailing who the programmers were…
A raccoon sat in a heavily modified office chair, staring at the screen of his computer as he typed expertly with little clawed fingers. He gave a chuff of surprise when an email notifier popped up on his screen, with an address line from his boss.
The raccoon gave an angry chitter under his breath. He had thought that his boss would be on vacation all week… Still, he had to make sure there was nothing important…
The email very briefly stated that it had special instructions for the next week, and pointed the raccoon to the attached file. The real surprise came when he had finished downloading and opening it.
“Thank you for your time, and for graciously downloading this file into your firm’s servers. Every computer on your network is now infected with your own virus, with some special, personal modifications from us to you. Every computer in your firm will pick a TF file at random every ten minutes until you can figure out how to stop it. Good luck. Your first change is: ANIMKITTY.TF”
The raccoon sighed. “Well, here we go again.”
