Today's #flashfiction #DigitalMadness

“Springtime is in the air!”

Game Of Thrones* #quote

       The costuming club I went to today was fun. Looking forward to it next week. Anyway onto the flash fiction!

Digital Madness

       Charley Computer had a very organized mind. Thoughts came and went with clarity and every memory fit in its rightful place. The woman who owned Charley Computer kept him nice a clean and kept all the files in a good order. When he got input the electronic gears of Charley's mind clicked and ticked smoothly to give perfect output.

         But one day a sneaky, slippery, vile virus invaded Charley's organized mind. The virus did it's pre-programmed mischief and went through all the computer. Like a dealer at a casino shuffling a deck of cards it shuffled around the memory in its mechanical victim. Where Charley once kept word documents for his owner now went images. Where images went now went sounds. When the computer tried to look at a frame of reference for trying to understand anything an incomprehensible mess appeared. To a human it would be like the mind remembering a teacher explaining the American Revolution with various tastes of ice cream.

       Whoever programmed the virus felt that the havoc their creation should spread wouldn't stop at a mere juggling of memories. The virus then planted protocols inside Charley that changed it so that inputs would change. Mouse inputs would be interpreted as keyboard inputs. The owner would swipe the mouse straight upward and Charley would think the owner was hitting the “escape” key over and over. Every nuanced direction the mouse moved would be a different key. The different keys turned to different mouse movements.

      With all his memories scrambled Charley wished for his owner to make some sense of it, but all input became gibberish. Nothing made sense and the computer, a being of order, felt only lost in the static of his own mind.

       After this the owner took the next action by calling tech support. They put in their own program to fix Charley the best they could. When tech support's program entered his mind all the scrambled memories started vanishing. The strange protocol adjustments to the input vanished. Tech support felt Charley to be nothing but a lost cause and ran a program to wipe the computer clean. They destroyed the virus and Charley. The owner installed virus protection to keep the new mind safe.