GAH! Malware!

Yesterday was a pain. Dad got around the Parental Controls I put on his brain and nearly infected the whole office with Malware. He showed up wearing a cape which immediately made me suspicious because he only wears them when he’s up to no good. This one didn’t have a giant dollar sign with a cross through it though so, ruling out his return to cryptocurrency based vigilantism, I figured he was hiding something.

 

“Dad, I–”

“Have you tried GoodSearch? It’s good!”, said dad’s cape. Dad avoided eye contact but the eye on the stalk confidently peeking out from under dad’s cape didn’t.

“Searching ‘GoodSearch'”, said dad’s cape.

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!”, said dad.

“This is why I locked most of your brain behind Parental Controls, dad”

“I don’t want to hear it”, he replied as his head dissolved into his chest.

“Searching, ‘It'”, said dad’s cape.

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!”, said dad.

With his head being absorbed into what became a kind of defensive carapace, dad’s cape lost the neck it was attached to and fell to the floor giving me a proper look at the Toolbar. I knew it was a GoodSearch, you always know it’s a GoodSearch, but precisely which shitty fork is always a mad dice roll. The Toolbar is a large VHS player-sized rectangle of flesh protruding from dad’s back with a variety of “useful” body apps that make navigating the world a little easier for the incredibly gullible, the incredibly stupid, and senior citizens. Dad’s had an ear, an eyestalk, a prehensile mouth, several thumbs, and what looked like some gills but may have just been racing stripes. It was an anus short of a literal shitfight and I counted my blessings the dice hadn’t seen fit to burden me with that again.

“Have you tried GoodSearch?”

Fuck

“It’s good!”

Dad grew some more thumbs

“Searching, ‘GoodSearch'”

Dad was a torso-face clearing in a forest of wiggly thumbs.

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!”, said the clearing.

There was a feedback loop that lit-up dad’s pain sensors every time the ear heard the mouth and the mouth was set to announce whatever dad was searching every time he did. Normally, this would be very funny and a fitting punishment for having discovered a perfect equilibrium between the stupidity to download this crap and the savant technical skill required to circumvent my every attempt at preventing him from downloading this crap. But this was happening in my office and now the wiggly thumblepede was skittering up my wall and growing a proboscis that I really didn’t like the look of.

Getting my father the Thumblepede off the ceiling was harder than I expected it to be. The broom was out of the question, mainly because I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t scoot down the handle at me and I was also not sure what would happen if I touched him. I tried throwing Janice at him but her unhelpful resisting telegraphed my throws. After the third lob, the proboscis, which must be the outie kind, started firing download darts into other staff members via the door Janice left open. This annoyed me a bit but also meant that I was now able to give up on fixing this myself and use the office Anti-Viral hardware which I was actually pretty keen to see in action.

A pair of hulking, humanoid mounds began growing from the floor outside my office. As the mounds passed the groin, softball sized sphere’s of light-capturing black grew in the creatures’ centres and began a cursory scan around the beasts. The balls stopped in the general direction of my Thumblepede father, and the Anti-Viral lummoxes began trudging toward my office door. About the only thing GoodSearch is actually good at is evading Anit-Virals but there’s not an awful lot it could do to my nifty, top-of-the line, exceptionally inhumane choice in office biodigital security. When the darts dad’s new proboscis fired at both were easily digested, the eye began a panicked search about the office for an escape and settled on my nice window. The carapace started to shift to the front of my dad organism and focused into a kind of point which was then driven at my nice window as fast as a few hundred thumbs could carry it. Note for later: Thumbs are bloody fast.

The Malware obviously hadn’t read my last office memo, the one where I talk at length about the liquid inertia I’ve got sealed between two layers of Eternal Glass, and the carapace dented straight back into the dadface chest clearing.

“OW!”, said dad.

“Ha ha ha”, said I.

“Searching Ha-aoooooeeuughhhh”, said the mouth as the gleaming white fist of the Anti-Virus clamped around it.

The surface layer of the Anti-Virus quivered a little then rushed to cover dad in an expanding foam. The second one touched the foam and the process repeated in the opposite direction, leaving my bemused father pressed to a window that will outlive the heat death of the universe.

DING, the Anti-Virus dinged, “Would you like to install our Protective Features to your… (the thing checked dad’s DNA against the registered office record) father?”

I said yes and the lummox grew dad a fine, white Stackhat which (touch Leprechaun Brand LuckWood: if it’s not Leprechaun, it’s just wood) will prevent a repeat of this. Dad forgot why he came to visit in the first place. Meaning it was probably the GoodSearch bar the prompted it or bog standard dementia, both of which, I assured him, the Stackhat would take care of. The Anti-Virals made short work of the GoodSearch cells in the other employees and returned to wherever they live in the floor, as quietly as they’d emerged.

Aside from this, everything is ship-shape. The new audio equipment and Sound employees are working together well so the videos have improved. Amber was keen on doing a series of largely terrible old fighting games which is blatant plagiarism of my idea to do a series on completely terrible old fighting games but then I suppose we can keep that idea around as a sequel or reboot or something.

It’s not on the menu, but if you ask for vinegar as your drink at a restaurant they have to give it to you.

Gabriel.