Legacy

Esteban looks at the girl. "If you want him to help, then I'd strongly suggest you stop throwing a fit."

Lucas doesn't seem even the slightest bit interested in what the girl is saying.

Esteban keeps right on going. "I don't know what was going through his head, but I can guarantee that if you want him to reverse it, you'll play nice for a while. Shouting at him and throwing comments about responsibility is not the best way. He does shit like this for giggles when he's bored. Really think he actually cares about what happens to other non-vampires?"

Arren remains silent through all of this. He's still stunned by what he's discovered.

"Hmph. Fine." She mumbles about legitimate anger and throwing the little sociopath into a sun when this is over.

Teresa glances sideways at the Rhean as if to say, well dern it, that's why I didn't want a bunch of meta-humans running around here.

"Actually," Teresa says, "our research has shown that this little virus is nearly fully sentient. It was about to get through our watchdog programs when we noticed and shut down to avoid contamination."

She cocks her head to the side.

"If the Rutians hadn't been hit first, we wouldn't have been in high alert, and I'd say there was at least a good 60% chance it would have gotten into our systems."

She follows those discs with her eyes as Lucas inserts them.

"So," she says. Still speaking calmly and softly after Arren's little fight and the Rhean's little episode. "Mind telling me how to neutralize this virus? You've practically admitted to writing it by omission."

"This is why we should have brought Alan Scott," Oracle whispers to Arren down below.

"Hey! I heard that!"

(OOC: Not all are Rheans. Oracle and Power Girl are Earthicans. Futurama.)

Lucas turns and looks at Teresa. "Nearly fully sentient? The subroutine worked then." He whirls back around to the computer, tapping on the keyboard. The three drives pop open and are ignored for a moment before he finally collects the discs. Standing up, he takes one over to Arren first, hands it to him. The second goes to Teresa. The third, he looks toward the girl that threw the fit. "You won't get this until you say you're sorry for causing a minor earthquake. It really could have damaged my computers and sent the virus into overdrive."

Esteban closes his eyes and shakes his head. He shrugs toward the girl. "Just say it."

Lucas seems expectant. "To explain, if the virus detects that my computer systems are no longer active, it won't be just a nuisance. It'll start destroying things to a degree that I don't think even they could stop." He tilts his head toward Teresa.

Arren looks at the disc, but he doesn't ask the obvious question. Not yet anyway.

Lucas actually continues speaking. "And this wasn't exactly let loose on purpose. It, well, escaped. I figured it would stay here on Esoteric so I tracked it's progress. I wanted to see if it could learn."

She looks ready to fry him with heat vision when Alan Scott floats in, glowing green. "Karen, just apologize and get this over with."

"Sorry about the earthquake." Then she continues mumbling about the little sociopath.

Teresa half-smiles. "Heck yes, I overheard Thorgood throwing a fit over something about that virus. The term 'subroutine' was used several times. Something about him not letting some uppity computer bug outsmart him."

The half-smile almost covers look of alarm that passed just for a moment after he mentioned the virus wreaking havoc should the computers here be damaged. You can almost hear the Rangers around the room shutting their handheld EMPs all the way off.

She looks at the disc. "Thank you," she says. "I assume that these contain a deactivation, method of filtering, or way of rendering the virus inert...?"

Lucas hisses at the green light. He remembers the last time that green light was near him in a room. Third degree burns. He tosses the CD toward the girl and backs away rather quickly.

Esteban actually moves in front of Lucas. Guard of some kind maybe? Or maybe Lucas is really just that important around here. He doesn't seem to understand the danger though.

Lucas looks at Scott. "Don't glow in here." He then reaches around Esteban to move him aside. "He can fry both of us if he wants to. No sense in trying to protect me." He turns his attention to Teresa with a nod. "It'll destroy the virus. There's nothing on there that will embed itself in your systems. Trust me on this. If I want access to your networks, I can likely get in." He does look around the room, smirking at several locations that appear to be blank. Even winks at one empty spot.

Arren just looks confused at this. He looks at the disc, then nods. "I hope this isn't part of your game."

He stops glowing and floating. "Sorry."

This time, you CAN hear the rustle as some pretty spooked Rangers leave the room. It's really quiet, especially for several people leaving the room. But it was audible for anyone listening. Teresa frowns. She nods to Lucas; sort of a respectful gesture.

"Ready?" To Arren.

Assuming Arren nods or otherwise says yes, they're beamed up to the Starship. They return to Burnination to try the disc.

Thorgood puts it in a computer with no hardware to connect to anything else, even if it wanted to.

The rest return to Rhea and Earth.

Lucas nods to Teresa. "Next time, don't bring cloaked people. We can smell them." He smiles sweetly as they leave.

Arren did go with them, and asked to go with to find out if the disc was going to work before taking it to Dreva to see.

The disc has a simple file on it. It's named "LEGACY". When the file is double clicked, it goes to a command prompt type screen.

Code:

Scanning computer........

Virus not found.

Terminate.

The command prompt quits without assistance. It does not appear that the computer has been altered in any way.

Thorgood copies the disc three times and has all three discs inserted in the three infected computers the researchers were using, and they repeat the process.

And the program does this:

Code:

Scanning Computer........

Virus located.......

Terminating virus......

LEGACY deleted.......

Terminate.

The computers are missing a few files, but they work now. The files missing were likely eaten by the virus.

Looks like Lucas was telling the truth. About the discs, anyway.

The Burninite networks reopen, but with a new security feature. All data passing into Burnination from a foreign nation now must pass a security checkpoint with several semi-sentient watchdogs. These can hopefully recognize Lucas' virus.

There was no filter on the CD, by the way. It was just the program to get rid of the virus.

Arren gets back home and the program is run on the Rutian systems. The Commnet comes back up as well as the other systems that went down. They immediately start redesigning their systems so that it would be harder to take down.

(OOC: I know. But we've tried to redesign our semi-sentients to be smarter now. Hey, we just encountered a program that's almost fully sentient.)

It's copied and installed all over and rebuilt to be more robust and blah blah blah.

And Lucas is now quietly reworking LEGACY. He's also now aware of what security was in place before and knows it will be heightened. On the virus infected computers, those CDs also placed one brief line of code, not enough to alter the way the file works or even it's size, that gives Lucas backdoor access to the computers.

(OOC: Unless you're better than Lucas, I'd appreciate this not being found out just yet. I'm going to use this later on and yes, when that time comes, you may catch it and remove it then. The point is that on the unaffected computer, it did not enter that code. On the affected computers, it did. )

(OOC: So I have 3 susceptible computers on a seperate network. What you should do is hit us first next time, not yourself. Just spring it on me when no one's looking )

And so they go about, not suspecting. Oracle's computer was one of few that didn't get infected. Etc etc.

(OOC: Any objections to a time warp? )

(OOC: LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!

As in jump ahead several weeks/months/years? No objections.)

(OOC: Go ahead.)

Six months later:


Burninite watchdogs raise alarms, though there's nothing there. Typical messages going back and forth from everywhere.

Rutian and Rhean systems also have similar reactions, but there's nothing there.

On Esoteric, Lucas isn't even at his computer. Of course, no one who dealt with him last time would possibly know that.