Mortals on this plane of existence think I spent the day listening to heavy metal music while fixing software bugs. That is how my day started, finishing some work I’d gotten stood up Friday. But that is not how my day ended.
The sign of the Devex and their insidious plot is that despite my best efforts, no data came through from the other side. The other side, you ask? Of the screen, from your computer, to the metaverse. Something, or someone interfered with the transfer. I knew the code used Devexian technology, but it was tamed, bought from a trusted code-herder. Or so I thought.
I stood over the code, a simple ShuffleBox. Pushed the button to move data to the right. That’s when it struck. Tentacles lashed out, wrapped around my arm, pulling me down into the quagmire of binary. It bubbled around me and I flailed my other arm about, trying to grab anything to pull myself out. The ooze flowed up over my mouth and into my nose. I can’t swim, and already could feel the panic swell in my heart.
My fingers settled on something loose and dragged it with as we sank into the abyss of bad data. How deep did I descend, I cannot say, for fear nearly swept my wits away. Then I realized what I held, my Nintendo PowerGlove. I brought my arms in, the tentacles writhing to get a better grip on me. Tucked the glove under my other armpit and jammed my free hand in before it was too late.
My lungs felt ready to burst, I used the air I had to issue a verbal command, “CLS”
The area around me became void and I hovered in an empty sphere, surrounded by ooze. I still couldn’t breathe, this was a null void. Dark spots began filling my vision. My hands free, I keyed in a macro to fill the space with O2. I could breathe again,. I drifted in my sphere, as memory currents brought me closer to the Garbage Collector, an impartial but deadly destination.
I beheld a red glowing form, standing over the black abyss of the GC. Data streams became visible to me, some descending into the abyss as their time was over, some circling around in an orbit, heading for application process. But more of them were passing through this red demon’s hands, as he twisted and bent them, before releasing them. A Devex, asI live and breath, but not for long if he got his hands on me.
I recognized this one, Malloc, Seventh Lord of Devex. I still had a scar from the last time I encountered him. I quickly keyed in the command to summon the only weapon that could defeat him. Task Mangler appeared in my hand, glowing faintly blue with the purity of well written code. I gripped the longsword tightly in my gloved hand, while keying in a rescaling algorithm with my other. I resized just in time to block a clawed hand reaching for me to rip my internal routines out.
We traded blows, disrupting the flow of data, as more of it fed into the maw of the Garbage Collector below us. I had one trick left, something I knew that Malloc did not. I feigned weakness and fell back towards the vortex onto one knee. Malloc loomed over me, ready to strike. I saw processes flying by, then the one I wanted. I plunged Task Mangler into the green blob that represented IIS, the web server process. Malloc screamed, for he realized his DLL was hosted in that application As he began derezzing, I stabbed with my sword again, deleting his source files. Defeated once and for all.
Getting back home, from that stygian depth took more time, but eventually, I returned to the Microsoft Surface, and pulled myself back into our reality. Eleven hours had passed. I missed dinner.