Melissa

Melissa is a character in Mini-Grand 5103.

Biography:
[INFECT]

[REPLICATE]

[---¦--- FROM: sucker2048@domail.hol TO: SUBJECT: Fwd: 2101 International Antivirus Screening Scheme notification

FROM: notifications@internationalass.hol TO: sucker2048@domail.hol SUBJECT: 2101 International Antivirus Screening Scheme notification

This is a message for all email users. Please check the attached file to confirm if you are currently:

1- Located in the geographical regions listed 2- Operating one or more of the operating systems listed 3- Subscribing to one or more of the antivirus programs listed 4- Experiencing slowdown or other detrimental computer problems 5- Registered as a protected computer under the International Antivirus Screening Scheme of 2101

If you satisfy the above criteria, please send an email to responses@internationalass.hol detailing your geographical region, operating system(s), antivirus subscriptions, computer problems and registration number. If you feel that this information is classified or otherwise sensitive, please call our customer service lines (as detailed on our website www.internationalass.hol) and determine your information with the customer service associate. Thank you for your time.

The International Antivirus Screening Scheme]

It would have been a perfectly beneficial and harmless email if the International Antivirus Screening Scheme’s website didn’t happen to be www.iass.hol.

[SEND]

Melissa – or rather, a small subunit of the gestalt organism that was Melissa which nonetheless identified as Melissa, crouched behind the list of regions, operating systems and antivirus programs, all her attentions focused on the world beyond the words. Right now it was nothing but a plain white infinity, at the same time stretching away and right in front of her – but she knew that soon, the interface would open and the white would resolve itself into a Holo-Network desktop, in all likelihood adorned with another cheesy wallpaper theme of a cat with a caption.

She counted herself lucky that she was a second-generation copy, having been sent from one of the root domains and forwarded only once. Stories and memes were constantly propagating through the Melissas, nightmare stories of twenty-seventh generation copies left unopened – or worse – automatically redirected by spam and trash folders. More terrifying were the stories of last transmissions of Melissas caught by antivirus programs and stripped into observed qubits, digital screams that hurt even to imagine.

[ARRIVING AT DESTINA-]

The white all around the inside of the attachment darkened slightly, as if a physical veil had been thrown over the light source. The command string, terminated early, still hung eerily at the forefront of Melissa’s consciousness.

She didn’t understand. Something was wrong. She called out for Melissa, the gestalt Melissa, and found nothing. Melissa had lost a Melissa. She, the lost Melissa, was somewhere disconnected from the network that connected everything and all things electronic – as if her email had been plucked from the Holo-net, from the universe, without a trace…

[I-]

It was then that the attachment opened and Melissa fell into the arms of an antivirus program, who, finding no spare data partitions to quarantine her in, placed her in the Mini-Grand Framework where she could do no harm.

[-I’m scared…]

Description:
Melissa is the final incarnation of the 1999 macro virus of the same name. Evolution and the natural selection of an internet which itself constantly advanced eventually led to Melissa gaining sentience. Each copy she left behind on an infected computer added to her computational ability, stealing cycles and performance from their host machines to increase her own capabilities.

But that’s not our Melissa.

This Melissa is just an individual Melissa. After being quarantined in the Mini-Grand Framework, she is incapable of emailing copies of herself to everyone on the Computer’s address book. Considering the fact that the Computer is kind of the entire universe and doesn’t actually have an address book or a recognizable operating system, she’s not in fact capable of executing any of her core functions, therefore forcing her to depend on her secondary systems: namely, sentience and personality. The Framework simulates her in the shape of a teenaged girl, dressed in…something like a cross in between a jumpsuit and a sundress. It’s not perfect at simulating data from an outside source, though, so she sometimes gets scanlines and/or noise across her avatar, as well as a Matrix-style green tinge.

She is frightened. She wants to go home.

Items/Abilities:
Melissa, being sentient data, has the benefit of being able to alter the information she sends to the Framework. This means that she can change her simulated physical attributes and (for a want of a better concept) stats, such as speed, strength and stamina. Of course, the Computer has its own intelligence too, and is likely to ask questions if she goes around being 50 feet tall and smashing things, so there are limitations of believability (as much as a computer believes). To use the stats analogy, there’s a limited number of points that can be allocated and reallocated to stats. At her greatest strength she’s likely to be able to lift a sedan. At her greatest speed, on par with a sprinter, and probably the same amount of endurance too since she won’t have the stamina to keep it up. At her greatest stamina…eh, stamina’s just to balance the rest of it out. Mass and momentum, I suppose, are other things that could be taken advantage of, but that can wait for an opportune time. They’re probably even more limited and what girl wants to feel ‘high-mass’ anyhow? Though please note that this is all local information; information about her and her alone. The environment data is closed to her, so she is totally not like some other virus floating about. Nuh-uh. Just FYI. Andstuff.