> Viruses, the History Of

Excerpted from "Cail" by Silver Tiger

      In the beginning of the human invasion, sprite, binome and all and in between had fought side by side. Only one species remained neutral: The viruses.
      They didn't really know what to make of humans--this species that resembled sprites in looks yet themselves in thoughts and deeds. While an individual human might be rational and pleasant, when put together in groups often corrupt leaders floated to the top and therefore the whole group had to act corruptly under the leader's control. But the viruses didn't take the humans seriously.
      Still, they had worked together at the beginning. More than a few times had a virus and its army or its powers been employed, in helping destroy the sprites and their defense. And after they had mutually cooperated, the virus would go back to its lair, chuckling, preparing to double cross the humans and kill or enslave them all.
      And more than once it had awoken to a fleet of tanks and been shocked, angry, and grudgingly admiring at the fact that the humans had double crossed it first.
      The main mistake the viruses had made, the survivors later reflected was assuming that the "Users" as they still called them were like sprites. They weren't. They were considerably nastier and arroganter, and had "God complexes" that freed quite a few of them from any guilt. But the virals had learned not to trust any "Users", and while they still didn't help the sprites they stopped interfering with them. And then the genocide started.
      Many of the top military commanders of the invasion regarded the viruses as their main competition for Net domination. But their advantage was that the viruses were scattered and didn't often work together. When the viruses began to retaliate, the humans started sending their elite to take care of them. Assassins, psychopaths, sometimes large fleets--the viruses were under nasty and relentless persecution. Only a few hid or fled, but the majority spat and cursed the humans and resolved to stay, thinking that they couldn't be taken down.
      They were so wrong.
      The only humans who helped them escape and tried to protect them were their programmers. But this was risky since programmers could also be used to find their viruses. A link DID exist between programmer and virus--the few that had come face to face felt so uncomfortable, seeing something of the other in their faces...
      In certain lab conditions, a programmer's mind could be bent and twisted until it echoed its viruses completely. A complete mind link existed between them. When thus linked, everything the human felt, the virus did, and vica versa. Also, sympathetic injuries existed--the User was scratched, the scratch would appear on the virus.
      When this was discovered, the human government did one of the darkest and unfortunate things in the whole war--it linked up and killed human hackers to get to their viruses. Some of the most powerful viruses that couldn't be touched any other way were deleted by a gunshot to their creator's heads.
      After this was leaked out, many human hackers sought asylum with the underground. The underground, being the only accepting group and realizing that it would be much harder for the invaders to kill off the viruses this way, took them in. Some programmers and viruses fled the Net, even past the Web some rumored, and had vanished into the unexplored regions of cyberspace. So few had gone that none had bothered to look for them.
      Basically, the viruses and humans hadn't gotten along because they had so much in common.