_ | \ | \ | | \ __ | |\ \ __ _____________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ _____________ | ___________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ ___________ | | | _/_/_____ | | > > _/_/_____ | | | | /________/ | | / / /________/ | | | | | | / / | | | | | |/ / | | | | | | / | | | | | / | | | | |_/ | | | | | | | | c o m m u n i c a t i o n s | | | |________________________________________________________________| | |____________________________________________________________________| ...presents... SatanTrek by Necrovore >>> a cDc publication.......1991 <<< -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc- ______________________________________________________________________________ ... ... ... [And now, for the lighter side of the Virus issue....] Uh, hey Martha, he's at it again. You know, that Necrovore fella, just doesn't know when to stop.... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The reviews are in! "SatanTrek" is a hit! "...what a [classic] piece of [literature] ..." - Anaxagorus ":-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)" - Nobody special "Brilliant... bravo..." - Asmodeus "I really don't know what 'EnterBoing' is, perhaps Jimmy might" - T.F.Bakker "Hey, my voice isn't that high!11!!@!!1!!!" - K-Rad Kid ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ With that out of the way, I humbly submit for your (dis)approval, [mentally change to Bold Face type] ------------------------------------------------------------------ >>>>>>>> SatanTrek - The Dying Generation - Volume I <<<<<< ----- ---- --- -- -*- The Virus Strikes -*- -- --- ---- ----- #define PARODY_BIT ON LORD SATAN: (stern, square jawed, no frills, stands gazing distantly out through the portal in his quarters, hands clasped behind him) Captain's log, 32-28-32.8, the StarChip EnterBoing was on its way to a rendezvous point in the Denise star system. We were scheduled to meet the StarChip RSN Procrastination. This is the fourth time we've tried to meet Procrastination, but so far, they have yet to show up. (We hear a short burst of musical notes over the intercom.) ENSIGN CHE: Captain, we're getting a number of distress calls about an outbreak of a "virus" of some sort. SATAN: I'll be right up. (Two stagehands open the elevator door, and a determined SATAN stumbles into the bridge taking his seat.) SCIENCE OFFICER GLASYA: Sir, we're getting word that this virus has infected and either destroyed or seriously messed up numerous disks out in the Pirate Community. CHE: Several compliants are coming from AE-land sir, virus talk is clogging systems around the known universe. LIEUTENANT MOGUL: A transmission sir, coming from the StarChip Apple Mafia. SATAN: On screen! (A fuzzy, broken picture appears on the screen. We see the sullen face of the much respected and feared ADMIRAL ACKFART, his eyes are distant and glassy. Piles of disks lie scattered around him. The picture breaks up as it fades in and out. ADMIRAL ACKFART seems distraught, perhaps delirious. He looks up into the camera, shaking two handfuls of floppies towards it.) ACKFART: (the image breaks up, scratch, garble) Disks! All my (garble) destroyed! (snap, crackle, pop) Murder the fuckin' r0dent! (garble, snap) Fear, trembling amongst my crew! Look at this, Satan! (rolls computer on desk closer to viewscreen so we can see the monitor) "Your computer has a virus, HA! HA! HA! Your..." (fade, pop, scratch) "...HA! HA!" (garble) Are you receiving this? Get me a IIc! SATAN: The man is obviously suffering from delirium. ACKFART: (crackle, snap) ...black leather and chains and asphalt... (fade, flicker) Sex, drugs, and... shit? (pop, grech) Vote for Danny Quayle the 12th! (EnterBoing looses the signal.) SATAN: It's clear he desperately needs our help. (Being true to his 4096 colors, LORD SATAN blits the EnterBoing around and goes into hi-res mode.) SATAN: Ensign, set course for the BAADG Star System. If anyone can figure this stuff out, please do so. We must make this a universe of Safe Sectors. (CHE grabs his mouse and selects the new "preferences" of Workbench 666.666. Hitting a couple of wrong buttons on his twenty-seven button mouse, a strange message appears in the menu bar saying, "Eat me, conformist pig!") GLASYA: Sir, more messages about the virus coming in. Apparently there are several different varieties from "harmless" ones on up to deliberately malicious ones which can cause serious destruction in this and neighboring dimensions. SATAN: And I thought that we had evolved beyond this sort of thing. What sort of wanker would do this?! (The EnterBoing sails on towards the unknown, while all Cyberspace users cower in terror, wondering if their copy of that great new screen-hack "OingBoingWoingZoing" will be >>>The One<<<.) (At last, EnterBoing reaches the borders of the Infected Zone and goes into orbit around the small puce-colored planet Foo. The crew beams down to a hideous sight. Smoke pours fourth from special effects generators, turning the sun blood-red. Burned-out buildings line the streets, while people wander aimlessly clutching stacks of their beloved disks just cleaned of all those nasty byte thingies. Everywhere people mumble things like, "Click click click," or, "Formatting, verifying, formatting.") (The crew steps over piles of rubble (joysticks, CP/M emulators, Andy Warhol issues of SUCK ME, little red unicycles) in the street. Bonfires burn openly. Babies cry as their mothers comfort them with soft humming.) (A thirteen year old boy comes up to GLASYA, tears streaming down his round little cheeks.) K-RAD KID: PLeaZe MiZteR, (he pleads in a calculated pitiful tone) y00 g0t A g00d kRAcK 0f SPuDZz0Ne?!?!?!!!!1!!1!pULEEeEeZZze??????/EyE haVen't F0unDde' dA >*{}>>"ZECReT LeVEL"<<{}*< yET!!!SHhHHhHH!!!!11!!!1 (The crew is obviously touched and angered by the expressions of pure hopelessness. The sight of the young boy is EORed into their collective cortexes.) (Later that night, SATAN is in his study lost in thought.) SATAN: Hmmm... I guess we'll "[E]nter the city". Gee, after four years of this and with 533,979 hit points you'd think that I'd have found Mangar by now. (Leaning back in his chair, he props his feet up on the table, ready for a relaxing evening. Suddenly....) ([cymbal_crash=ON] On his screen appears: "HA! HA! HA! Your computer has a virus! Formatting disk....") (SATAN's face bleaches white, then turns red as the purest form of anger grips him. The only noise in the room is "Click click click-Formatting, Verifying, Formatting....") (From deep inside the Captain's throat comes a sound quite unlike anything we've ever heard before. Louder than the mating call of the Altarian Megadonkey, louder than Steve Jobs being fired, even louder then a thousand Timex/Sinclair owners saying why they don't "need" a real keyboard.) COMPUTER: Formatting, click, click, click (heh heh heh).... (GLASYA looks up from the book she's reading. (_The Beastess Speaks_)) GLASYA: What the hell was that? CHE: It sounded like the voice of someone who just reformatted their Bard's Tale character disk. MOGUL: How do you know that? CHE: Just look at page 10 of the script, fuck-head. (LORD SATAN bursts into the crew quarters, kicks aside the piles of dirty laundry, Nibble subscription notices, stolen software registration forms, growling....) SATAN: Let's get these worthless mortals! NOW! (The crew roll out of their cots and rush up to the bridge. GLASYA immediately sets to access the EnterBoing's database for a search of possible culprits.) GLASYA: Damn it! Where's the dongle! CHE: What? GLASYA: That thing you're playing with. CHE: Oh, heh, sorry. Thought it was a mouseport protector. (Plugging in the dongle, GLASYA checks references from vandalism to religious worship, from Democratic presidential candidates to leprosy to BCPL. Anything that might offer a lead.) GLASYA: Wait, wait a minute here. Under the heading of "Religious hackers from the East" it says that "the great Lord Jesus is a smug and flatulent fellow, proud of his own cleverness. In order to demonstrate just how clever he really is, Jesus likes to play 'pranks' on computer users across the galaxy. He has his servants, a form of 'mental eunuchs', create software 'viruses'. These have little more utility than to create terror, discord and all round nastiness in the user community by systematically trashing disk after disk. 'Can't a guy have a little fun, huh?' Gronk remarked once ater one of his viruses was mistaken for a simple-minded operating system. Later called 'Windows', it almost single-handedly set back the cause of personal computing by 1200 years. Another one of his efforts unleashed upon the early IBM users caused otherwise perfectly healthy disk drives to constantly repeat his name when running: 'Jesus saves, Jesus saves, Jesus saves.' YEOMAN IMPAYLOR: Let's crucify! (The EnterBoing gracefully swings around and sweeps off into the great unknown to meet their greatest enemy yet.) (After commercials for some feminine hygiene gunk, nose drops and "Chocolate Covered Sugar Bombs" Fortified Breakfast Cereal-Breakfast of Geeks, StarChip EnterBoing settles around a dark and foreboding planet.) MOGUL: I can feel the goodness, the, the... CHE: Holiness? MOGUL: Thanks. Holiness, the... CHE: Churlishness? MOGUL: Yeah! Churlishness. The mental... CHE: Putrescence? MOGUL: No. CHE: Pournellelishness? MOGUL: That's it! (On their viewscreen, the planet looms mightily before them.) GLASYA: Like wow man, look at that planet looming mightily before us! (Looking much like an avocado with a bad case of acne.) (...an orange with hemorrhoids, that is.) CHE: Captain, we're receiving a transmission from the SlimeLord! (On the screen appears the most hideous creature ever seen or imagined. Appearing as an ugly geek wearing a wreath of thorns, or that... that K-Rad Kid!1!!!@!!!!1@1!!2! Jesus' skin, if it could be called that, hangs loose on his twisted frame. Open black sores ooze something too gross to even mention to this bunch.) (His head, resembling a shriveled Mickey-Mouse balloon, is indicative of his overall intelligence. On the wall behind Jesus are the three most virulent letters in Cyberspace (second only to that "I" term): "GOD," the Goddamn Orifice Destructors.) JESUS: Alien StarChip, youse guys want some wares, yes? Real cheap, I got me California Raisins, WordPerfect, Wizardry XXVIII. I've got it all! All of it, I tell you! All the gnuest! SATAN: Not on your life, Jesus, you ugly dude you. We don't want any of your swill. CHE: But sir, he's got Wizardry XXVIII. Can't we make an exception? SATAN: What? And break the "Prime Destructive?" CHE: But siiiiiir, it's Wizardry!1!@11!! CHE: Owww.... JESUS: Well, Satan, wanna deal? SATAN: Yes, we're going to deal with you all right. (The crew don special isolation garments: black shiny jackets bearing the EnterBoing's emblem on the back, a bloody pentacle superimposed upon a goat's head. Check those pupils. The demonic crew shimmer away in a bitchin' explosion of special effects and reappear in a bunch of twisty little mazes looking all alike. Scary stuff crawls down the walls and their feet stick to the floor as if they were in a cheap theater.) (Through a port, they catch the sight of a small band of GOD mutants busily working away dreaming up new viruses, or cracking Tass Times in Tonetown, Deathlord, and Star Blazer. Above them hangs the sign "Why use software when it's not RELIGIOUS?" The crew slinks up to the doorway, Phazers drawn.) CRACKER #1: Ha ha! Hey Lou, check out this new virus. After four boots, it writes a Micro-Prose copy protection scheme to their hard drive. SATAN: (whispers) Those vipers! Ok, Set Phazers to "inferno." GO! (They dive into the room. Crackers turn around, terror showing in their beady eyes and flaccid faces. Squealing like suckling baby pigs they scatter in every direction. Sweeping the room with their destructo-Phazers, the crew hits everything with a monitor systematically violating all possible warranties. Chips writhe in agony, gasping for bits but finding none. CRTs split open, spilling their load of pixels onto the floor like so much sand.) (NOTE: Thrilling, action-packed editing makes this a scene much too intense for words.) (It is over as quickly as it began. The crackers huddle silently in their respective piles of oozing flesh. Liquified computers litter the room.) GLASYA: Gee, that was fun. Let's do this again sometime. (SATAN grasps the only surviving cracker by his soft pliable throat. Holding him up he stares into his little twitching face.) GLASYA: You hold him and I'll sector edit him. SATAN: Where is Jesus? CRACKER #2: At the end of the hall, through the sliding doors that stagehands must open to make look automatic. (The crew make their way down the hall, stopping now and then to shake refuse off their feet. As they approach the door labeled "His Jesusness, 1.0-Danger! 1 Million Ohms," two overpaid stagehands yank it apart.) (Jesus is playing with a legal copy of The Bard's Tale and doesn't notice his guests. Satan sees that he has just found Mangar.) (A brilliant 16 color non-interlaced beam pierces through the stuffy air, striking the system squarely in RastPort.) JESUS: What the hell? (jumping back from the smoldering rubble) Who are you! CHE: We're the Legion Of the Damned/Hairsprayed, here to mop up Cyberspace of your ilk! MOGUL: Snappy dialogue, Che! MOGUL: Owww.... JESUS: Oh, ok. But first, do I get a final requester? SATAN: Well, ok, what do you want? JESUS: An answer. Just what would I do with a pen-based notebook computer? SATAN: Who knows? They're desperate for new product ideas. Glasya, ready? GLASYA: 'natch. Ok extra-halfbright breath, stand back! (GLASYA blasts the piles of legal software and stacks of new virus disks which were being readied for beta testing. JESUS looks on in horror.) SATAN: Jesus, you are under arrest for Software Fundamentalism. ============================================================================== SATAN: Captain's log, 3.14159, following the arrest of His Holiness Jesus, we reformatted the planet in an effort to make it useful to less destructive races. Meanwhile, Jesus is now serving time in Virtual Hell," joining many others who violated the essence of nonconformism, the Hacker Ethic and the Cyberpunk Way. Jesus was sentenced to a lifetime hard labor: developing a real-time parallel processing OS in BASIC on a 2k Timex/Sinclair 1000. (The intrepid crew has one other stop to make, back on the planet Foo. They beam down to check up on the reconstruction efforts as well as to deliver some humanitarian aid in the form of new t-files and much-needed spelling checkers. Hundreds of eager hands reach out for nourishment.) (Meanwhile, GLASYA approaches a familiar adolescent and hands him a properly cracked SpudzZone. The kid's face brightens up immediately.) K-RAD KID: GEE,tHaNkZ d00de!!11!@1!1!W0W.SaY,y00 w0uLDn'T haPPeN t00 hAvE LaRRY tHA LeTCh lEE!cheZ lePpeR LiZaRdZ iN thA lANd 0f tHa lAWnM0wEr LEE!peRz pArT 12,"W00uLD Y000???!111!!21@!! GLASYA: Nope, sorry kid. K-RAD KID: wElL,ThEN,UhHHh...wHAt aB00ut P0NG???!?!!!!!@! GLASYA: That'll teach the little bastard. #define PARODY_BIT OFF ============================================================================== Stay tuned for the next excitigating bit-packed episode of... SatanTrek - The Dying Generation - Volume II - The Trouble with Rodentz _ _ ____________________________________________________________________ /((___))\|Demon Roach Undrgrnd.806/794-4362|Kingdom of Shit.......806/794-1842| [ x x ] |NIHILISM.............517/546-0585|The Polka AE{PW:KILL} 806/794-4362| \ / |Ripco................312/528-5020|Tequila Willy's GSC...209/526-3194| (' ') |The Works............617/861-8976|Blitzkrieg............502/499-8933| (U) |====================================================================| .ooM |Copr. 1991 cDc communications by Necrovore 1988-10/31/91-#194| \_______/|All Rights Pissed Away. FIVE YEARS of cDc|