FIGHTING THE WORMS AND MAGGOTS

From the archives

This ran on my old record label website in mid-August, 2001, and reflects the last sleepy moments of the world obliterated on 9/11.

This will be my last ‘Friday’ archive piece. Starting something new here next Friday.

Last month, while I was out of town at the Mordam Convention and thus defenseless, a stranger named ‘Terri’ sent the following email; “Hi! How are you? I send you this file in order to have your advice. See you later.” My lone employee opened the attached document and I don’t blame him for the hubbub that followed. Not many people know the golden rule of Ouija boards and file attachments; clumsily spelled names are a telltale sign of the evil wraith attempting entry into the human world. ‘Terri’ turned out to be the popular W32.SirCam virus (technically a worm). Sir Cam proceeded to roll its shopping cart down the dusty aisles of my computer, no doubt whistling a hateful little tune as it plucked items from their proper places. It sent random documents from the hard drive to random friends in my address book. In my browser cache it found more addresses and proceeded to email more random documents to absolute strangers. When I returned on the 31st, I noted dumbly that the little green DSL light on the back of the unit was chugging away, even though I wasn’t online.

On the first, I started receiving returned emails from nonexistent email accounts. It took a few hours to grasp the severity of the problem. If 57 letters were returned from bad addresses, how many were sent to good addresses? Several strangers wrote demanding to know why I had emailed them a column from last February. A friend in Seattle was sent a spreadsheet of people’s birthdays (I checked, and hers made the list). The webmaster at Nofx.com was sent a list of potential short story first sentences I’d written over the years. The office of the governor of West Virginia was sent a file I’d rather not discuss. Computer sickness inevitably draws metaphors with human sickness, especially the ugly belief—often unspoken—that the infected must’ve been careless to get infected in the first place. But this one’s not my fault! When Napster posted that the only virus one could catch using their service “is the one that will affect your mind, body and soul,” I took great pains not to catch that one either! And this is the thanks I get?