Day Zero, Part 3

Watching Mai enter the dorm, Anna shook his head to clear it. He went to his dorm and worked a little on the virus. His plan was to trigger it this coming Sunday, Easter.

He removed the code to ping his own computer and decided to make it a random lesser number of infected computers that would actually burn. The others infected would just destroy the hard drive and most likely not result in fire. He also modified the code to just print the one page and have the infected systems use one GMT time no matter where they were located. Everything would happen at about the same time, everywhere.

He scrapped the option he had to wake up computers that were turned off, so they could join in the fun. This was going to be more than enough to get his point across without that. Lastly, he lifted the governor that had restricted the spread of the virus.

He figured it would take a day or two to spread globally, so he decided to plant it at a local coffee shop that also had wireless access, this coming Thursday. On that afternoon he went in alone, stayed to himself and using his flash drive, planted the virus on one of the computers owned by the shop. Most people brought their own systems, but he didn’t have a Laptop.

From the one machine, it reached out to any 10 computers it could connect to and pass on the virus. Those computers then reached out to only 10 other uninfected computers and did the same (computers already infected didn’t count). This reduced the risk of someone noticing a major surge in activity on their system. The virus stopped trying to attack other systems after, 5 minutes.

Twenty minutes later over a million computers were quietly infected and sat waiting for Sunday. That number continued to grow as Anna finished his coffee and left the shop.

Several EU internet providers took note of the strange traffic, but ignored it because it died off so fast. They didn’t even try to analyze the data.


Mai and Anna had both been busy that week with class work and only talked a few times. He asked her if they could go out Saturday and she said yes. He planned on an early dinner, then a movie and a few drinks at the pub after. Anna didn’t drink much, but he was fine with sipping a few brews.

They met Saturday, late in the afternoon and walked down the path to catch the bus. Mai looked radiant and was very bubbly. They stopped to kiss several times on the mostly secluded path. Again she held his arm, as if to bind them together.

At dinner (different joint) Mai told Anna about her family and the Indian tradition of arranged marriages. Her parents were killed on their way home, in a terrorist train bombing in Mumbai in 2006. Her Aunt had arranged for her to come to Prague to finish her school and to get her away from that situation. She has been on her own here, except for financial aid. The arranged marriage she has was cancelled.

She asked Anna about his family and he explained the accident in Chernobyl that had slowly killed his mother and left his father a babbling mass of flesh, back in 1986. He was just a baby then. He was eventually taken to America where he finished middle and high school. He learned English and appreciated the opportunities he had there. Anna had not seen his older brother, who had not joined him in America, but talked to his Uncle a little. His father had died in 1988, but Anna didn’t find out until he was 10 years old and first met his Uncle.

After America he bounced around several British schools and wound up in Prague on a computer science scholarship. He was a star pupil here, but kept a low profile. He wrote custom code for the school and helped to manage the network to earn spending cash.

Anna noted that they had a lot in common, but not many good things and Mai did about the same. They changed the subject and talked about music and their teachers. Mai did a funny impression of her Physics professor that made Anna spit out his wine, some running out his nose.

Professor Maelick had a minor aneurism that left him twitchy and in less than full control of his left arm. It turned out that Anna worked closely with him, on the Campus Network and knew him well. They laughed a lot, but Mai felt bad when she found out about the Aneurism.

“He jokes about it himself and if you got to know him more you might like him.” Anna told her.

Mai looked at him curiously and said “So I should take dinner with him?” And laughed.

Anna grabbed her arms as he pulled her towards him, across the small table, her face close to his. She looked up after a few seconds, still giggling and he could only kiss her.

She pulled away after a second and whispered “Not so much here with people.”

Anna felt hurt for a second, but understood after he thought about it. They left the restaurant and went to the theater up the street. It was not too crowded at all and Anna paid for the tickets. They went into the theater hoping for the best and cuddled together through the movie.

At this same time, Hewlett Packard contacted the US Department Of Energy’s Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CAIC) about a vulnerability it had identified in their BIOS. This was the result of backwards engineering the attack Anna had created.