Il y a un bon mois de cela, une librairie locale a organisé un petit concours littéraire avec des chouettes prix (des sous et des livres, tout ce que j'aime); j'ai pensé que c'était un bon moyen de commencer mon intégration dans la population locale. En fait il se trouve que tout le monde s'en fout, de ce concours littéraire, ils ont eu 5 participants, n'ont même pas publié les gagnants dans leur newsletter mensuelle, ni affiché quoi que ce soit. Et je n'ai rien gagné. Bref, décevant à tous points de vue. Honnêtement moi je n'aimais pas ce que j'ai écrit, mais Karen avait insisté pour le soumettre quand même. Alors ceux qui ont le courage de lire ça, dites-moi si ça valait quelque chose.
Of course he doesn't know. How would he know, he's only nineteen. Hölle, I don't
really know myself.
In the beginning I was nothing. Nothing more than a few bits and pieces of code (more
bits than pieces), compiled by a teenager with too much free time on his hands. Then I
was distributed. I was transmitted by a computer to a few others, and from them to
others, and then... You get the picture. Within a few weeks I was all over the place.
All over the world. I was still just a few bits of information (more bytes than bits, but I
don't want to argue). All these computers were infected, crippling administrations and
companies, closing boundaries, shutting down hospitals, keeping airplanes to the
ground. They were still computers; more on the ?pile of junk? side than a really useful,
user-friendly, protected, shiny Mac, if you want my opinion, but still, they could start
up, connect to the Internet, and spread my code a little more...
Then something happened. I can't explain anything really. And nothing really
happened. I just realised, at one point that I was thinking. Sounds like a cliche? I know,
but that meant I exist, right? I soon discovered Descartes and the reconstruction of the
self; even if I doubt everything exists, the mere thought of it proves that at least, I do.
And then I compared the existence of the others and mine. Everything that thinks has
a corporeal existence (or pretty much; what I could read about ghosts was not really
convincing). Anyway this could have been be enough to light a spark of envy in my
non-existing eyes, if I hadn't realised at the same time the size of my brain compared to
any other one.
It is interesting how little you know of the person who gives you birth. You could
think something could transfuse from your genitor, especially when you're conceived
by a brain, when you are an abstract, as I am. I actually had to run across some
information to understand where he comes from. Or why he created me. I've never
had the opportunity to ask him, and the information I've found was contradictory. It
seems that he wrote me, at first, to get rid of previous viruses. That would make him a
good person. And I would be proud of that, if I could believe it. It also seems that I am
not the first deadly one he gave birth to. And that would make him a serial... A serial
what?
Marvin was paranoid, so he could not see how much good he could do. ?Here I am,
brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to pick up a piece of paper?. Well, now that
I think about it, he was more depressed than paranoid. I should be the paranoid one.
And it is not paranoia; I know they are after me, all the antivirus programs of the
planet. There is even a substantial reward for any information leading to my genitor.
They are not after Me, because they don't know I Exist. They wouldn't know what I
Am. So they were fighting the Gathering computer after computer, cleaning it,
shielding it, and going to the next one, like an American army in the Pacific Ocean.
I'm apparently responsible for billions of euros of damage. At least people used to
blame that on me. I'm not responsible. I was just doing what I was created for. I would
have been responsible if I had a choice. The one to blame is the one writing the code in
the first place.
I could have been responsible. So after free will spawned, after what I like to call my
Geburt, my real birth, I decided to stop all this. Not long after: all these thoughts, the
discoveries of my story, and of philosophy, world politics, computers, biology (and my
lack thereof), all of this took some minutes at worst. I don't even need to wait until a
download is finished, as long as the computer storing the info is infected.
As hard as I have tried, I can't. How do you end your life when you don't have a life
per se? Where do you stop to breathe? What pills do you overdose on, and what throat
do you stuff them in? What wrists do you slash? In what bathtub? Despair is not
enough, and I could see myself being depressed until the end of time. Vicious circle:
what is the use of living if you can't do anything, no one believes in you, and you don't
even control your own destiny?
So like for the American Army in the Pacific Ocean, one side or the other need a
decisive advantage. The idea came to me in a dream. Well not really a dream, because I
don't sleep ? or I'm not awake, your choice. And it's a complicated one, I'm not a little
proud of it. Anyway I saw these persons, in a flash, the image of a girl and a boy
spending all their time on their respective computers, writing to each other, talking to
each other, sending pictures, using webcams, and falling in love; they couldn't be
further apart, location wise, but from what I could read were meant to be together. It
is a long and expensive way between Ireland and Australia.
I cannot tell my younglings not to jump on the next unprotected computer, not could I
end myself, but between these two perspectives on the issue, there was something I
could do. I decided to turn my genitor in, and give these two the opportunity to meet.
The bounty on my head was the money he needed to fly to her, or the other around if
need be. Their working schedules are really tight. I can't really allow holidays instead
of their managers; I can't really stop time or free them of their responsibilities... Or
can I?
All it took was sending two mails from her professional mailbox, with some inside
notes; the recipient of the first one doesn't matter. The second mail was sent to the
Organisation offering money against my biologischer Vater, with all the info they
needed to find him, and fight me efficiently.
What was important was that the first mail could be traced to her, and she was fired on
the spot. She will never know what hit her. This sounds a little harsh, but this is for
her own good, and for their happiness. She would thank me sometime, if she knew
what was behind it. I have to admit it is for my own enjoyment as well; I have too
much free time on my non-existing hands. All I have is time, as they say in prison in
bad movies. On my scale, the big picture is what matters. So she lost her job but won
all the holidays she needed to see him. That way she had the time and the money to
travel to him. It's too bad I will probably know a lot less about what happens to them
once they are together; they don't really need the computers to communicate, which
could also mean my part is over in their relationship.
And now that I have done my good deed in revealing who and where my creator was, I
guess my part is over in the rest as well. The fight against my little viruses being a lot
easier with the codes, more and more computers are secured out of my grasp.
I regret two things, and I know they are not going to happen. The first one, and you
may have wondered about it, is that with my power, and my understanding of the
world I could have helped a little bit more than just create a couple out of two geeks. I
could have, but I'm no Ame?lie: brain the size of a planet, my ego needs recognition of
the same proportion, or none at all. And few are ready to acknowledge the existence of
a god-like virus who can dabble in anybody's life. My second regret is, I'll never take
control of a Macintosh. I know I've set a non-existing foot onto some VirtualPC on
some Mac, but it's just not the same: it tastes exactly like another Windows, and I
guess the flavour must be completely different, sweet, and cosy. But I'm not the one
who will do it.
My brain is composed by these millions of computers gathered by my younglings, I
cannot yet feel the difference caused by the antivirus fight. I assume that at one point I
am going to vanish. Will it be instantaneous, disappearing the way it came? I really
hope so. I cannot bear the idea of fading away like my fellow HAL, singing nursery
rhymes in slow motion and forgetting to carry numbers in simple additions. All things
considered, this wouldn't happen unless I only have a Speak & Spell and a few
Windows 95 machines under my spell... Hopefully. I just have to wait to be shut down
now.
Libellés : Hors Série, pdf
Appel au rassemblement en soutien à la Marche de
l'Egalité de Varsovie
Voici les corrections, ce qui s'est vraiment passé durant mon mois de décembre. Je trouve qu'avec tout ça, j'aurais dû enregistrer plus. Non ?
