Norne ran his stubby, greasy index finger lovingly across the otherwise pristine surface of his new twenty-six inch monitor. With much hesitation, he took it away again and jabbed at a small silver button on the five thousand dollar computer's seven hundred dollar case, and the boot-up sequence commenced. Or at least it did briefly in Norne's imagination, before it occurred to him that the smell of burnt electronics is not normally associated with having a really leet computer.
Three days later, after having taken the computer to the local repair shop at which it was discovered that, in defiance of all engineering efforts and quite possibly several laws of physics, Norne had managed to plug the power chord in upside-down, he was surfing the web, downloading random pieces of software that looked cool and generally attempting to get his new computer back to the state his old one had been in. Which was, in all likelihood, not a particularly sensible thing to do. Not that Norne cared.
Then a dialog box appeared, so Norne clicked OK. Then another one appeared, so Norne clicked OK again.
Later that night (or in real world terms, mid-morning), Norne's Internet connection slowed to a crawl. Then his computer crashed and failed to restart. Norne promptly rectified the situation by shouting loudly and snapping the tray off his DVD burner.
In the gloom of an evening one week prior, the high priests of the Church of Bovinity staged an inaugural meeting in the Computing student common room. The first order of business was the establishment of rituals. It was unanimously agreed that this and all subsequent gatherings should commence with a toast to the Cow God. Beer was to be used for the purpose. The conclusion of each gathering would see a similar toast, and in order that members be able to prove their loyalty at will, an unlimited number of additional, personal toastings would be allowed at any point during the gathering.
'Binge drinking already, I see,' Lisa observed as she entered the room, carefully stepped over several bodies and finally found a relatively clear patch of floor.
'To the provvet, Lissaahrk,' grumbled someone slumped over a sofa in the far corner. The figure loosely grasped a half-empty bottle in one partially outstretched hand, and was only being spared a worse fate by their apparent inability to actually manoeuvre the bottle into a suitable drinking position.
Lisa felt something grapple with her leg.
'Hey mate!' Sarah beamed up at her with a special kind of inanity usually reserved for excessively happy Muppets. 'Have a drink!'
Lisa again surveyed the surrounding devastation. Most of the floor was covered either by semi-conscious students, empty bottles, or both. It was like being invited to swallow a small piece of depleted uranium after seeing the remains of an Iraqi tank. She gave Sarah a disarming smile and tried to disentangle herself from the creature on the floor.
'Andrew?' she tried. Another figure slumped against a wall slowly raised its hand. Lisa raised an eyebrow and walked over. Andrew rubbed his forehead in apparent agony.
'It was alright for a bit,' he explained, as Lisa crouched down in front of him, 'before people started turning up.'
'How much did you have?'
Andrew's eyes rolled in unnatural directions. He indicated an empty bottle lying beside him. It was very large, and plastic. Lisa picked it up and turned it over.
'This is red cordial concentrate. Or was... That's all you had?!'
'All?!' Andrew exploded as best he could. 'There's no beer that could do this to me. That stuff was barely liquid. I can't feel anything below my neck, and my head feels like there's a dolphin living in it.'
'Why?!'
'I don't know! Maybe it wants to learn about computer science. Oh... er... well, I was supposed to be a designated driver. I think. There's this kind of red haze... I think I might have diabetes...'
'I see... nothing below the neck? You raised your hand a moment ago.'
'I did?' Andrew looked straight ahead as a worried expression began to advance across his face.
'I thought,' Lisa began, attempting to interrupt whatever thought process the aquatic mammal in Andrew's cranium was trying to produce, 'all this was supposed to have something to do with cows.'
'Oh, that. Yeah, we had red meat on the agenda somewhere. Don't think we've gotten to it yet.'
'Is this it?' Lisa asked, plucking a battered sheet of file paper from underneath three empty beer bottles. 'Ah yes, right underneath "Adoption of bread and wine deal".'
Andrew winced.
'Sounded like a good idea,' he said. 'Nobody brought any bread, though. Actually,' he grunted further, 'nobody brought any wine either, but we thought beer would probably do. We also made you a prophet.'
'How thoughtful of you, and I'm sure you have the situation well in hand,' Lisa said, slapping him on the shoulder. His head, apparently having been dislodged from its resting position, fell forward awkwardly, provoking a painful mumble. Lisa quickly repositioned it, but it appeared to have blacked out. She shrugged.
'My first duty as a prophet,' she announced to the room as she stood up, 'will be to take over the responsibility of the designated driver. Anybody who wants a lift home, feel free to follow me to my car.'
There was movement, no doubt. There were also numerous moans and muffled cries for help. Attempts by various humanoid heaps at actually standing up met with little success and a certain amount of bruising, but there were some valiant attempts at crawling towards the door, which clicked shut after Lisa had hurried through it into the distinctly less toxic outside atmosphere.
In the subsequent days it emerged that one item actually had been discussed at the gathering, before it had collapsed under the ultimately unstoppable force of beer which some suspected had been spiked with red cordial. Some less scrupulous elements of the Church had wanted to construct a computer worm, for the sheer hell of it. Some of the more scrupulous elements (though there wasn't exactly an impassible chasm between the two groups) objected. It had been Sarah, apparently, who had negotiated a compromise.
A worm would be created, but it would ask the user before it actually did anything. It would be called Eugenicia, and would provide a simple service: anyone who wanted the worm sent onwards to a thousand artificially constructed email addresses had only to answer OK when confronted with the choice. If they additionally happened to want their hard drive and all other permanent memory in their computer wiped and their hardware, insofar as it was possible, rendered inoperative, there was a second OK button awaiting their decision.
Its transparency would, in theory, ensure that they were safe from prosecution. After all, there were any number of existing programs, some of which costed money, that would erase your hard drive if told to do so. This was simply another one. There was no cunning disguise, no misinformation, and every opportunity to decline the offer. If it so happened that a large segment of the Internet community treated all dialog boxes as opportunities to tell the computer what a good job it was doing, then... well, they had it coming, didn't they? It wasn't as if anything was being done behind their backs.
Pieces of old computing assignments were pasted lovingly together, and the worm rapidly took shape. It was released, with much secretive fanfare, a few hours before the second weekly meeting of the Church of Bovinity, at which the priests discussed initiation ceremonies and the possibility of having cool purple robes. Udders were suggested, but were voted down.