ChaosButterfly.exe

[[This is a companion fluff story for the /tg/ homebrew game Server Crash.]]

What? Did I hear you right? You want the ChaosButterfly.exe? Who told you it was for sale? Hell, who told you about it?

Ach, don't mind me kid. I'm sorry I got riled up. Ain't your fault, you weren't to know. It was Rufus who put you up to this, wasn't it? Little punk- what's that? What is the ChaosButterfly? Oh son, you don't want to know. Get out there and enjoy your life, while you can. If youâ're very lucky you'll find someone who- you'll find someone.

You really want to know what it is? Alright, sit down, take a load off and have this one on me. But you've got to promise me something, OK? Never fall in love with a Rider. They'll break your heart. See, I was once one of those adventurous types who went off-fort. Yeah, I know, even I look at myself now and can barely believe it. But back in the day I was actually a pretty good Cracker, good enough to get hired for more than a few lucrative jobs. That's how I was able to buy this place when I retired. Contrary to what Rufus might have told you, webspace was never cheap, even back then. I used to roll with this crew. It was just me, Mikhael our Hacker, “OmiKroN” - damn silly name if you ask me, but a damn fine Prober nonetheless, and Jade. Jade was a Virus Rider. One of the best I've ever met. She was my- friend. Hell, she was my best friend, but ultimately she was nothing more then that. She loved her butterflies to much to be anything else.

See, Jade had managed to tame these- things. She called them butterflies, but really they were just another type of virus. Tiny, self-replicating programs with fractal edge wings, individually powerless but in a swarm they could be devastating. Imagine it kid, a giant cloud of rippling colour pulsing and drifting across the net, carrying the most beautiful woman you've ever seen in the middle of it. Gods, but it was a sight.

And then- well. You've heard what they say about the Virii Riders? That even the best aren't long for this world? You know why they say that? It's because if you live with viruses you're signing your own death sentence. Sure, it might not be today, it might not be tomorrow, but one day you will slip and you will let your guard down. And when that happens there is nothing in the world that will save you. Jade got infected. We never knew how, we never knew why, but she did. She hid it for the longest time. Hah! She didn't want us to worry about her. Stupid. Just so stupid- Anyway.

When we found out, we tried to help. We blew our savings hiring the best code-monkeys pix could buy to try and find a way to patch her. We toured the forts, we contacted a few folks who knew a thing or two about viruses, hell, once we even went into the Deep Net on the strength of a rumour. Didn't come to anything in the end. They said the best she could hope for was a partial personality recovery, along with a total memory reformat. She refused the treatment. Said it sounded like death. Anything was better then that. And to tell you the truth- I agreed.

So. What did we do now? We didn't know how long Jade had left, we had no pix and we had burned through every last favour that we had ever gained. We had a choice - go our separate ways, find a new way to live in a fort someplace that would take us in and try and forget Jade. Or we could stay together, we could do what we had always done and we could go on one last big score. All of us together. For Jade.

So we went. We travelled to one of the largest forts, I forget which one now, and signed up for the biggest bounty we could find. My Gods it was an adventure. It was something to do with a dispersed cache of compressed files, which individually weren't worth a lot, but in each one was a hidden password needed to unlock further files and- I'm boring you aren't I? Alright, suffice it to say that we needed to pick up a lot of these things OK? Lots of buried treasure chests out there, each one holding a map to the next one - that an easier image? Ok, so we go after these things and let me tell you it wasn't easy. We had to dig through the architecture of abandoned forts, we had to fight off wild cybers on the fringes of the net, once - and I kid you not- we had to build an airship entirely out of pix for some loony collector. I know, mad right? But we did it. It even flew!

But all the time Jade was getting worse. Oh, she tried to hide it but we all knew the signs. The way she started to forget things for instance. Or the odd changes to her behaviour, or the way her Ride seemed to respond faster and more effectively to her commands then ever before. We knew she was on the way out, and I think she did too, but we stuck together.

You look shocked. It sounds like a crazy risk, doesn't it? But we did it anyway. And I'd do it again in a second, believe me. Even if I knew how it was going to play out.

OmiKroN had found us a link. By this stage we thought we'd been everywhere, seen everything, coded the t-shirt. But this was a new one. The other end of the link seemed quiet. Not dead exactly, but just- quiet. Mikhael wanted to try and find another way, but OmiKroN and I insisted we had to use this one. By this stage I think we all realised Jade wasn't long for this world. Her skin was already rippling with colour, and she had withdrawn into herself. I thought- I thought that looking for another way would take to long. That if we didn't take this chance- well, if you were there you'd have understood.

So we chanced it. We followed the link. And what we found on the other side- Gods, I still have nightmares. It was a hive. That's the only way I can describe it. A bloody hive. This place had been a huge fort once, but somehow it had been overrun completely by a powerful virus. Completely. Not a scrap of data remained uncorrupted - not the architecture, not the files, not even the frigging people man! Not even the people. Every single thing in that place had been converted to viral matter and fused together into a single form. It was like- well, imagine being inside a huge sphere made of toxic data. Just hanging in space, right in the middle of it, not touching the walls since even the pseudo-gravity program has long since been absorbed. And then, just as you're beginning to come to terms with this abomination, a glowing yellow eye opens. And then another. And then another. And then another, until it looks like you're in deep space surrounded by stars. And then a mouth opens- We quickly guessed what had happened. When the infection had ran its course, and nothing remained to corrupt here, the virus must have gone dormant. That was why there was so little noise from the link. The thing was asleep. And our arrival had woken it up.

I've heard about the Root. I've heard about the Olds. But I tell you that I'd rather ride an Old bareback to the centre of the Net then see that thing rise up again. And do you know what the worst part was? It was the fact that we knew it wasn't going to kill us. No, we were going to be its vectors outside. It had grown too fast, see? Killed off and absorbed all potential hosts before they could escape and spread to other websites. So it had left a link outside itself as bait to bring in new ones.

What did we do? I'll tell you what we did, we crapped our pants and prepared for the end. No way back outside, no way to fight it. No hope.

But then... it happened. Jade- well. We'd been told that high stress could trigger the change, the hidden reconfiguring of priorities shutting down her immune protocols- but this- we never expected this-

I'm sorry kid, I don't tell this story very often. It's just- well- it was so- beautiful. It's the only way I can describe it. Beautiful. She just sort of- dissolved, her raw data spiralling out in these long, rainbow coloured strands. And as each strand flew off her, it began to reformat itself into one of her butterflies. First one, then ten, then hundreds of them. Thousands of them. More then I had ever seen before in my life. And they mingled with the ones that had formed her ride, until you couldn't tell which ones had been Jade and which ones had been the virus. And do you know what? We weren't scared. Not really. That was the strangest part. I mean, if I said to you that you were trapped inside one hungry virus and surrounded, completely surrounded by another one, you'd freak, right? Anyone with half a brain would. But we didn't. It felt right somehow. All of us together, even at the end.

And then the strangest thing happened. The butterflies- Jade- attacked the hive. All of them, millions of fractal wings flapping away. They ignored us entirely, they just cohered into a single mass and launched at the thing. You know I said earlier that they didn't do much damage on their own? Well, given size of this swarm it was as though a hurricane full of knives had hit it. Toxic data was spewing out everywhere, waste bits rising like an ash.gif, whole portions of this thing just shrivelling up and dying as the butterflies bled out its data in billions of razor cuts. We made a link out of there before the whole thing died. It was so weak, so open by then that it wasn't actually that hard. And when we were out, we closed it all down and locked it tight. We even ringed it with warnings and alert scripts, to make damn sure that nobody else was going to get in there again.

I think after that we didn't have a lot to stay together for. The guys and I went back to the fort, gave them what we could, told them we couldn't do anymore. They were disappointed of course, but they still paid us well for our trouble. Even gave us Jade's share. I don't think we kept it. It was such a long time ago-

Anyway, we all went our separate ways after that. Mikhael settled down in a little fort, found himself a partner. Got a little prog of their own now, I heard tell. Nice kid by all accounts. OmiKroN went out into the great blue yonder on a quest to hone his skills. Never saw him again, although I hear stories sometimes that he's among the best now. As for me, I bought this little establishment. It's not much really, but then I've never really wanted much. And I only need space for one.

Hmm? Oh, the ChaosButterfly.exe? Oh yes. Didn't I tell you?

After we all parted company for the last time, and I bought this place, I had a look through all my folders. And hidden inside one I found it. Hang on, stay there, I'll go get it- -Look at that. Isn't it beautiful?

It was just sitting there, folding and unfolding its wings. It must have come through with us when we linked away. Why it didn't attack I'll never really know, but it did't. I took it to a guy I know, who used to be friends with Jade. He coded this cage for me as a precaution. Even risked a look at its code, the crazy bastard. He said it was very similar to Jade's Ride, but not quite the same. It had a few commands more, but he couldn't tell me an more then that. Just that it was- that it felt like it was hers.

So yeah, kid. Yeah, I have the ChaosButterfly virus. And no, it's not for sale.

It has sentimental value.