VIRUS

                                 Chapter 2


      Virus and Co.  had no sooner left the college when they detected
  the odor of hot plastic.  It was too much to resist and Virus rolled
  his ship toward the odor.  Benny was warming up his car when the
  shipped rolled into his car's distributor housing.  As the ship
  maneuvered it's way into the electronic ignition, Benny's car pulled
  out of the parking place marked "Staff Only".  Benny was on his way
  to visit a fellow sysop I will call Mike.  Benny wondered why the
  car was missing all the way to Mike's.

    Benny and Michael sat around the fire place which had been
  converted to an air conditioning outlet for summer use.
  The drone of the a/c running was mixed with the vibration of the
  tin fire place insert the unit was mounted in.  The mixture of
  the two sounds was like the noise rain makes when it hits a tin
  roof during a storm.  Michael would occasionally smack at the a/c
  and it would quiet somewhat for awhile.  The old unit worked pretty
  well for a $15 yard sale item. It wouldn't fit in his casement style
  windows though, so he improvised the fireplace to vent the exhaust up
  the chimney -- Noisy, but effective.

      Benny and Michael talked about whatever sysops talk about when
  they aren't gleefully pulling the plug on someone just before the
  file they were down loading was finished.  Why is it files are just
  two minutes longer then the time allotted the visiting user?
  Friendly sysops will generally allow a couple minutes overrun so the
  user can finish his down load.  There are of course, no time limits
  imposed when files are being uploaded to the system, and points are
  added to the user's file and result in longer on line time that the
  user can then use to down load even longer files.  Why is it the
  best files always have three or four hundred kilobytes?  And games..
  They have six, seven, eight and even 900k bytes.  That takes an hour
  at 2400 baud.  New users are lucky to get 20 minutes their first
  few times on line.  This is usually moved up somewhat after
  validation.  To a new user, a genuinely validated user is King. I
  can remember when I was down loading CATABYSS.ZIP, a 811k game file,
  when the sysop pulled the plug on me.  (He later insisted it was due
  to a problem with his system).  I got his problem...  Hangin'...

      During the time it took to tell you about the good and bad
  points about sysops, Virus and the rest of the now reduced colony
  had snuggled into their new home.

      All the way home, Benny's old Chevy ran better than ever.  Virus
  and troops had eaten most of the carbon deposits in the distributor
  system.  It was the first clue that a virus could sometimes be user
  friendly.

      Meanwhile, back at Michael's, the first clue that something was
  amiss occurred when the system burped, and the on-line user suddenly
  found his carrier disconnected.  Michael had gone to bed shortly
  after Benny left, and his Macintosh left to it's own devices to keep
  the BBS on the air.  The old Mac was unable to fulfill it's duties
  that night.

                                Continued

--- FMail 1.22