Xander froze and dodged behind locker as Willow paused to locked over her shoulder. He released the breath he’d been holding in relief, when she shrugged her shoulders after a few seconds and carried on.
This is silly Xander thought as he continued after Willow down the school corridor. So she’s spending a few evenings doing extra work in the computer room. Willow, likes, computers and school work. But it’s not a few evening now, Xander argued with himself, it’s three evenings a week for the last four months. No project would take her this long, the virtual tour of the Solar System she did for the State science fair only took a month, and the Air Force were very happy when she let them have it when they asked for it.
Xander’s thoughts veered off on a sideline as once again tried to figure tried to figure out what she meant when she mumbled ‘Just doing my bit against the snake heads’ He was sure the Air Force would have paid her something if she asked.
Before he could once again begin to argue with himself, they arrived at the door to the computer room. Creeping up to the open door, Xander peered into the classroom and saw that Willow was the only person there. Removing his backpack he quickly removed a foot long square tube a couple of inches wide before place the backpack on the floor. Making himself comfortable on the backpack, he slowly raised his homemade periscope and peered in through the window of the door at Willow. Now lets see what your up to, he thought.
After five minutes, Xander was bored out of his mind. All Willow had done was sit in front of a computer a type. After another five minutes, when Xander was just about to give up and go home, Willow started to get agitated as she typed. As he watched, he had the impression that steam was going to come out of Willow’s ears.
In less than a minute, Willow blew, figuratively speaking. Letting out a loud growl, Willow began to speak as she typed.
“No, no, Cereal Killer! Ballig Set is a Demon from the fifth circle of Hell. Not the third.”
“Yes, I’m sure. Bill Gates is an anagram of Ballig Set and Bill Gates birthday is on the same day that Ballig Set last walked on Earth.”
“I looked it up in the Demonica Noctus.”
“Are you sure CK is Elite, Phreak?”
“A Gibson? Well in that case I’ll explain it to him then.”
“It’s like this CK, now that you are Elite, you get to hear the REAL truth about MS and Windows. This Demon is very smart. Most Demons go all out to corrupt a single person at a time, or even a small group of people. And when these people begin to do really evil things, then the Demon gets a boost to his power.”
“That’s right, a Demon would get a big boost of power if they were the one who corrupted Hannibal Lector.”
“Now that’s how most Demons operate, but not Ballig Set, he’s a smart one. He figured that it takes a lot of effort to corrupt someone enough to make them do something really evil. It would be a lot easier to corrupt a lot of people to do a tiny bit of evil. He figured that if he was directly resposnable for making a lot of people swear in a traffic jam or if he made someone so irritated that they got in an argument with someone for no reason, then he would gain a lot of power. And he was right. Practically every new computer bought in a shop has Windows on it. The computer manufacturers have signed a valid contract with him. When you buy that computer then you become part of that contract. Millions of people have computers.
Swearing alone has given him more power that any other Demon in history. Every time Windows causes someone to swear, a tiny bit of evil power goes to him. It’s not much, but times that by the millions of people it happens to…well…a little bit of evil here and a little bit of evil there, pretty soon your talking real sins.”
“yeah, that’s why Elite don’t like to use windows. We call it the Grandt Protocol.”
“Oh, he’s an Elite from Europe, he was the first suspected to something. That why we call it that.”
“Anyway, now you know what to look out for. We don’t want to dry up your fun or anything. We’d just like you to keep an eye out.
Ballig Set is always trying to expand.”
Xander smiled as he made his way home. Trust Willow find a way to fight evil on the net. Should I ….nah, as smart as Willow is, she’s probably like the Slayer of the net or something.
And as Xander made his way home, all over the globe, the Elites were fighting back. Where the fighting was toughest, when the Elite pushed back the power of the Demon, there would be the legend. In small internet cafes around the world, hushed voices would tell stories about the legend. When an Elite was on the ropes, seconds from being traced, the legend would appear to loop back the trace for a vital few seconds before moving on to help another Elite. As more and more stories spread, the legend grew. The chosen one. The one chosen to stop the spread of the Demon’s evil power. The Techno Mage.
WILL’O’WISP.