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Posted by Ultra-Humanite
on 5/11/2009, 6:42 pm
71.226.186.23
The Winslow child showed great potential. Sounds strange, but I could smell the meta-human gene in his blood. After his first visit, having impressed all the pee-ons at my recent New York expansion, I had to give the boy a look over myself.
The child walks himself into the office of one Mr. Browston, looks around, not afraid, but in a state of pure wonderment. While children often seem amazed by new things both large and small, this boy looked at everything as if through alien eyes.
"Ah, My boy. I've heard a great deal about you." Brownston says in a rich, hardy voice that would remind Brandon of Santa Claus, if the 10 year old had ever met him. "I've got a little game for you here on my computer. See it's a lot more special than the ones downstairs."
Brandon eyes widen and he nearly lets out a cry of joy at the strange new program opened on the flat panel monitor before him. "What... What's this game?"
"This is a toy we like to call a Worm." Brownston continues in a tone as if explaining how a top works. Explaining in the most simple, child friendly way he can muster how his worm virus hopes from computer to computer, seeks out banking information, copies it, then deletes the original before making the jump to the next computer. All in a matter of seconds. "But you see Brandon, this worm seems to be... sick... it doesn't want to go out and collect points for me." By points he meant dollars or thousands of dollars.
Brandon sits at the cushy swivel roll chair before the computer and Browston adjusts it for his height for him. Young Brandon studies the formula for a second, with all its numbers and letters and seemingly randomly placed symbols. then all of a sudden. "Oh, right here....." Brandon points to a point in the highly intricate, patchwork coding, to a section that 'reads' if you can call it that, 'wmr548$'ghimmrpsfd\/tik'. "... no one knows this but computers seem to talk to me... your Worm wants the M's to be number symbols."
"Well, that's simple enough. Why don't we just swap those M's out and watch the worm work?"
"Oh no, not just these three... all of them."
The man's gentle smile fades away as his jaw falls slightly parting his lips. "There's over thirty thousand characters in that coding!"
"Thirty-two thousand, eight hundred, and twenty-nine to be exact." Obviously no one had told this kid that no one likes a no-it-all.
"Yes boss... within the hour, then we... You are a made man." The man says into the receiver.
"Just make sure that the virus works before the kid leaves."
"Will do boss..." The phone goes dead on the other end. The man sets his hand set back into its cradle and returns to the task at hand, changing 'M's into '#'s.
The doors swung open, and a man that Brandon instantly recognized as Mr. Ernie stepped through. Brandon instantly ran up to him and put his arms around him about the waist. "Mr. Ernie, I wanna go home now."
Ernie ruffled the boys hair and assured him that they would be on their way. "Hold on," the man at the computer called. "Brownston wants the kid to stay until this worm is up and running."
"No can do, man. Mary's only got the kid until five thirty. It's ten after already."
The man reconsiders his limited options, then turns his gaze downward to meet Brandon's. "You sure this will fix the worm up the way Mr. Brownston wants, kid?"
Brandon nods enthusiastically, and is rewarded with the man's dismissal as he returns to the screen behind him.
Minutes later, in Ernie's car he asks; "You don't like it here, do ya Brandon?"
Brandon bunches up his mouth like he just bite into a lemon. Not wanting to tell the truth. "It's ok if you don't... just curious as to why?"
Brandon shrugs. "That worm... it's not a toy like Mr. Brownston says... it wanted to take money away from people and give it to him."
Suddenly Ernie realized that the kid had to been made full aware of the programs intents and purposes at a mere glance, given Brandon's knack for technology. "You didn't tell him how to get it to work, did you?"
Brandon looks down at the floor boards of the Mustang as they travel towards Ms. Mary's house.
"Look, it's ok to lie sometimes, you did the right thing, not telling him how to harm people."
"Really, you think?"
"Yes Brandon, I know so. In fact, why don't we take the codding to the police?" He knows what Brandon will say before he responds.
"I don't want to be a tattle tale... could you do it for me?"
"Sure thing, when we get back to my place, you type up what the bad code should look like when it harms people. I'll get it to the police. They have smart people like you monitoring for computer hackers and terrorists and men like Brownston.
A big smile crosses Brandon's face, nearly ear-to-ear. "You really think I'm smart, Mr. Ernie."
Ernie feels pity for the kid for the first time, after all the little man has been through in his short life, being called 'smart' is like winning a Nobel Prize. "Absolutely little man, absolutely."
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