Virus

My Grandpa worked with computers, 

when they were just getting popular.

He said he built his first one in ‘79, kept fixing them. 

I would mostly just get rid of viruses, he said. 

And what is that, anyways? I asked. A virus?

Well a virus, he said, these days it's something different. 

Back then, it was malicious code, evil, on purpose,

written into the computer. The computer would be too slow, browser redirection. 

Wouldn’t work right. I learned where they liked to hide.

But why was it there in the first place? Like what did they get out of it?

Hm. I read in a magazine, they interviewed one of them who was doing it.

It’s like creating God, they said. You make it once and it keeps going and going.

Keeps living, system to system. It’s like God. 

They didn’t get money, he said. They didn’t get information.

Shook his head, I don’t know why they did it.

But that’s how we are; someone gets an idea and it spreads. It’s god.

It’s alright, sometimes but sometimes. The virus, it hides.

The little gods, they are named after each other over and over

Truth and then truth and then truth, like a family name.

We do not care about what is true, we care about. About.

We, a whole race of virus-eaters. 

Grandpa, I know where the viruses hide.

It’s in, it came out of my wrist.

I know why the screen is frozen.

We are right until we’re not. The system breaks. 

I know why the viruses come. It’s what we do, isn’t it?

We wind up the false god and watch. And it runs. 

All the way into the ground, it runs.