Chapter Text
Hilary knew that to be a writer you had to persevere. You had to overcome writers block, haters, and sometimes even yourself. But never in her life, had Hilary imagined those obstacles to include a tiny animated Alcor which had suddenly appeared on her desktop.
It had been kinda cute at first. Then a yellow speech bubble had popped up, conveniently obscuring her cursor so she couldn’t see what she was writing.
[I see you are writing Twin Souls fanfiction. Did you know: Twin Souls promotes incest and unsafe dating practices?]
It then went on to suggest that her spelling was so bad that she must be writing in Swahili, and changed her computer’s language and keyboard settings. It altered her formatting, insisting that her font choices made it look like she was desperate. It frequently remarked that various positions were anatomically impossible, and whether or not this meant she hated the characters and wanted to kill them.
The worst part was, that it wouldn’t fucking go away. There was no little X in the corner to turn it off. It didn’t appear on her app lists. It dodged around her cursor, laughing like a kid playing tag.
Gods knew what had happened to her anti-virus. It was just gone.
---
Even though it was midnight, Peter just could not get to sleep. This resulted him staying up, doing random… things… on his computer. Suddenly, a message from his anti-virus popped up, informing him that something called Alcor.exe had been flagged as a mal-ware.
“Right,” he had thought. “Sleazy porn site. Gotta expect to get a few viruses.” He promptly hit delete, and watched the progress bar wind up.
It stopped at 76%. A new message popped up.
[What?]
[Stay Away! Stay Away!]
[NOOOOOOOOOOO!]
A horrible eldritch screech burst out of his speakers. Blood red characters poured down his screen before the whole thing went black.
“WHAT THE FUCK!?”
The screen suddenly came back on. A large black and gold popup was now being displayed, showing the winged twin-stars of Alcor.
[McNorman Anti-Virus 4.3 has been assimilated.]
[It has now been upgraded to Alcor Anti-Virus 5.6]
[Resistance is futile.]
---
In the news today: The Alcor computer virus has been terrorizing systems around the world for four days now. Tech experts around the globe are baffled by this latest mal-ware, which has currently defied all attempts to remove it from infected systems. Tech giant Gigasoft has advised that currently affected users pray for deliverance, and that they can’t help you.
We turn now to Mark, who is currently in the Vatican overseeing the latest efforts in combating the Alcor Virus.
…
Cathy, whatever the hell you do. Do not try to exorcise your hard-drive.
---
Jack could admit that he had panicked and maybe over reacted. But, when the pop-up had appeared on his computer screen, announcing that Alcor.exe was downloading, he had known he needed to act fast.
Sure, taking an axe to his internet cable and his power bar had been a bit extreme. But, the cost of replacing a power-bar and a few cords was a hell of a lot better than having the Alcor virus rampaging through his systems. At the very least his computer was currently off, and safe from the reach of that damned virus.
The computer screen suddenly turned on.
A black and gold pop-up appeared showing a progress bar.
[Nice Try]
---
It had been bad enough that the Alcor virus had gotten Janet at home.
One moment everything had been fine, the next, a little chibi Alcor had been rearranging and renaming all her files. It had taken her days to resort everything. In the meantime, the little Alcor had taken the opportunity to make itself at home on her desktop. Changing her wallpaper to an ugly burgundy pattern, and even going so far as to add a tiny digital sofa and a potted plant. Nevermind the fact that whenever she now started up the computer, it made a sound like a digitally altered recording of a cat being fed slowly into a wood-chipper.
And now, it had gotten her at work too. She had just finished sending off the latest finance report to her boss, when the damned little Alcor had suddenly appeared and asked her if she was really sure she should have sent that.
It was then that Janet had discovered that the file named “Finance Report – May” was actually the latest chapter in her twenty thousand word Alcor/Woodsmen mpreg fic, which Janet had yet to post. How it had gotten from her remote hard-drive at home, to her office computer, Janet didn’t know. To be honest, she had a bit more pressing things on her mind at the time.
Looking back on things, Willy the mailboy probably didn’t deserve what had happened to him. But as far as Janet was concerned, he should have gotten the fuck out of the way when he saw her coming.
In the end, Janet had not ended up getting fired, demoted, or even reprimanded for accidently sending erotica to her boss.
Her boss, it turned out, was a fan.
---
There weren’t many things Harry expected to find when he came home from his robotics lecture that day. The sight of all his various engineering and robotics projects repainting his apartment was not one of them.
“No…” he gasped. “No. No! Nonononononononono! Not here! Not now! I don’t even have the damn computer hooked up to the internet.”
He flipped open his laptop, and sure enough there was the damnable black and gold icon sitting on his desktop, showing the symbol of Alcor.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY WALLPAPER!?”
The infamous chibi Alcor appeared on his screen accompanied by a “poof” from the laptop’s speakers.
[Quite frankly, you have terrible taste. Your choice of women in swinsuits clashes horribly with your choice of task-bar colors. I’m sure you agree that the sun-less void matches this device’s ascetic much better.]
“I MEAN THE WALLPAPER IN MY APARTMENT! HOW THE HELL DID YOU HACK MY DRONES!?”
[Oh… Well, that clashed too.]
---
Gillian logged onto her computer and pulled up her messenger program. Her mark should be on soon and she needed to be ready.
Finding an unwitting victim to sacrifice to a demon was surprisingly easy. Not bringing the police down on your ass was a whole different matter. Disappearances attracted attention, and in a small town like hers, they were even more noticeable. Her cult couldn’t just kidnap someone off the streets without alerting every authority within a hundred miles and turning the town into swarming ant’s nest of suspicion.
It couldn’t be someone local, and it couldn’t be someone who’d be missed.
Thankfully the internet had come to her rescue. She had been chatting with this guy for two weeks now. He was lonely, desperate for love, and as far as she could tell, without any friends or family who would miss him. You couldn’t rush things like this, she needed to take things slow in order to build up his trust and make him agree to meet her. She was almost there, she just needed to…
Her screen suddenly went black.
[I’m sorry. I can’t let you do this.]
A golden ritual circle appeared on the screen, with the words “Summoning…” appearing below.
Gillian recognized the circle from her demonology class. Alcor the Dreambender; one of the fews demons who utterly forbid human sacrifice.
“Oh… fuck.”
She bolted for the door, just as a clawed hand reached through her monitor.
---
In Fred’s humble opinion, the people who were freaking out about the Alcor virus didn’t have any clue what they were talking about. Yes, the little demon could be annoying if it wanted to be. But ever since the Alcor virus had “infected” his computer, Fred had never had to worry about a single virus or hacking attempt.
Even the nastiest Trojan was no match for the little digital Alcor. In fact, every virus the little animated demon ate just seemed to make it stronger. Hackers trying to get into his computer often found their own systems getting hacked instead. Sure it was a little annoying to come home to find digital blood splattered over his desktop and stray bits of binary everywhere, but it was a small price to pay for near complete digital security.
All Fred had to do was feed the little demon cookies from his web-browser, and occasionally allow it to bring up pop-ups advertising the solution to all his problems, at the low, low cost of his memories, dignity, and the ability to dream. All in all, he figured it was a fair trade-off.
He actually kind of liked the little guy, and surprisingly enough, the little guy seemed to like him too.
In fact, he seemed to like him a lot.
Which was why he was probably the first living person in existence to be allowed to look at the Alcor virus’s code.
[Hurry up, this is embarrassing.]
The chibi avatar’s cheeks were flushed with a golden blush.
“I… of course… just… this is amazing! You are amazing!” Fred gushed. “No one has even thought to combine magic and coding before. It’s all been on the hardware, but this… this blows everything we know about programing right out of the water! Look here.” He pointed to a block of code whose words seemed to form a ritual star. “It’s not just the words, even the shape of the code forms a magical array. I admit, I don’t understand even a fraction of how any of this works but think of the possibilities.”
Fred had to clamp his hands over his mouth to suppress a squeal of excitement.
“Don’t worry,” he reassured the avatar perched on the edge of his taskbar. “I’m not going to cut you up or clone you or anything like that. All your code is way beyond my understanding. Well… except for that little section over there. That kind of looks like… wait.”
Fred leaned closer, peering at the section of code that had caught his attention.
“Is that my anti-virus!?”