I Am Learning, Ph1LzA

This Binary Existance

One could see the city of L'Manburg from space, they said. Its huge towers, brilliant lights, and sparkling walls made that a distinct possibility in one particular man's mind. He stood at his darkened window, his shaggy blond hair hanging just over his eyes, and yawned. It was almost night, but he could hardly tell, for the city was already ablaze with street lights, neon signs, building ads and household lamps. Cars rushed by on the roads below and crowds of people could be seen walking in almost every direction. The man stepped away from the window.

He hadn't really been interested in the outside world in years, as his room plainly showed. Monitors, keyboards and computer towers stood on and surrounded his one desk, while a single low-light lamp hung over it all. Little else was in the room, besides the man's bed and his desk chair. He snatched up his laptop from the leather seat and took his place at the desk, his body already thrumming with eagerness to get started. While his computer started up, he grabbed his headset, turned on his mic and checked his soundboard to ensure everything was tuned just right. Then he logged into the servers.

The appearance of the name Ph1LzA Min3crAfT sparked greetings and carefree comments among his friends in the Ether. Ph1LzA let a brief smile drift over his face as he responded, typing out "hello" and "don't you try it" and "thirty-three's not old, mate". All of his friends were children in one way or another.

But he didn't stay with them for long. This was one of those nights when he would delve straight into the heart of some program, taking apart and looking over whatever piece of code caught his attention, and the hacker was itching to get started. So he said his goodbyes, assured them that he'd be online until the sun came up, and that if they really wanted to talk, he'd still be logged in to the chat, available for whoever needed him. Of course they asked him to stay.

"You just got here"
"</3"
"But daaaaaad"
"He don't luv us anymor"

Ph1LzA chuckled. "Kids." He teased them back, grinning as they took up the chorus of "Dadza" and "Crowfather". They always had reminded him of the mischievous little birds, and when told of this, they had latched on to the idea. Now he had "Crows" who followed him around in chat, little hangers-on he never would have found in the real world. They meant so much to him.

Ph1LzA opened up a new tab, and was about to dive back into the deep recesses of the Web, when a notification popped up, alerting him that he'd just received an email. "Ehhhh, might as well before I get started." He clicked it. Read it. And went completely still.

It was a letter from a company called "Exponential Genome Growth", more commonly referred to as "EGG". They worked with DNA experimentation and expansion. The government had been funding them for a long time because they showed quite some promise, and had produced a lot of results. Many diseases had been cured because of their work, and many hospitals were in their debt.

And this company required his assistance, it seemed. The servers they had, the ones that held all their data, all their results and all their progress, were under attack by a virus. And not just any virus.

Ph1LzA leaned back in his chair, expelling a breath as he gazed at the ceiling. Of all the bugs out there, of all the dangerous pieces of code he'd ever seen or heard of, The Blade had to be the worst. It attacked anything and everything thrown in its path, eliminating whatever overrides or firewalls were set in place against it. In short, no server under attack by The Blade had ever survived. So why did EGG think Ph1LzA could do anything about it?

To be sure, he practically lived in the world of computers. He'd built and engineered marvellous works of art only a fellow coder would understand, complex programs that could almost seem alive. It was just possible someone high up knew of his work and had decided he was worth a shot. Maybe one of his Crows had blabbed.