IVOR SNOTNOSE AT PLAY

A bored boy investigates digital mischief

Here’s a pretty little scenario.

Ivor Snotnose, aged twelve and with a computer in his bedroom, one that is usually reserved for looking at pictures of ladyboys with willies as well as big breasts on anyone, including aforementioned ladyboys, when his parents are out (homework when they’re not, but they like the local pub so he spends quite a lot of time on his own.) He’s bored because he’s concluded that if you see one ladyboy then you’ve seen the lot and he wouldn’t really like to meet one in the flesh anyway because he’d be scared.

So Ivor Snotnose starts thinking of mischief.

He’s got a computer with a sparkling broadband connection running at an obscene speed, so the whole world is in his hands. He can go anywhere and do anything. He can even secretly play with himself whilst gazing endlessly at pictures of pretty girls (without willies) when he gets to be a bit older. His bedroom is, in short, an opening into the big wide world and its odd little corners, and if he wanted to he could cause big trouble.

And now that he’s bored he wants to cause trouble of any size, big little or small.

So he starts on his plan.

He could send a virus rocketing round the world, one that would infect every computer under the sun, and a huge amount of inconvenience would be caused for one and all, especially the nerd who lives on Fortesque Avenue and has parents that take him to exciting places like the Maldives. How he hates that nerd! And envies him, of course.

So he boots up his computer and ponders over viruses.

He googles the word “viruses”, pretty sure that if he locates one he could make sweetly subtle changes to it that would make it extra powerful and rip hard-drives up and send rays of deadly beams into the heads of their owners.

So he grins with excitement and googles “viruses” and ends up with screen after screen of rather boring information on the subject. He even finds out how colds are spread and what flu is - but nothing about how to send powerful destruction round the world wide web and into Everyman’s home.

So he decided that he’ll have to write one himself.

Now, Ivor Snotnose isn’t as yet particularly literate but he does know a good wheeze when he sees one. And once, ages ago, when he’d been nine and they’d had a really old computer with a green screen that needed instructions actually typed into it he’d learned a bit of a language that they called BASIC, so he got started using that nugget of knowledge.

10 print “THIS IS A VIRUS”

20 print: print: print

30 print “This will combust your hard-drive”

40 goto 10

50 run

he typed, and was so proud of himself that he went to the toilet and examined his privates using his father’s concave shaving mirror.

Then he returned to his flash modern PC and typed in his virus " and nothing happened.

He put it into Word, he put it into Google, he put it into an email, but absolutely nothing happened.

He sent the email to “absolutely everyone in the world” but all he got for his trouble was an error message.

He hadn’t a clue how to send a virus anywhere, or even how to create one. Not properly. Not so that it looked all confusing and complex.

So he went back to the toilet for a wee and then sat down for a poo and got to thinking again.

And his usually thick brain came up with something supersonically good.

It was, without doubt, the greatest wheeze since Fred Flintstone had invented the telephone using a seashell and a macaw, and it would work like magic.

So he wiped his bottom and returned to his bedroom.

Now, it so happened that when he’d been bored a few weeks ago he’d taken out a profile on a site called “Facebook” and he knew a thing or two about contacting the rest of the world.

He could send a bulletin out to his friends and they would pass it on and before you could say Jack Robinson everyone would have received it. Ivor Snotnose would become the most powerful person in the whole wide world.

So he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his jumper and set to work.

“This is deadly important,” he typed, “there’s a maniac on the loose who’s been involved in 273 murders and he’s on the loose and he’s known as ‘TheDarkPersecuter’” (he enjoyed typing that because it seemed threatening and he’d get a back-hander from his dad if the latter found out) “and if you contact him or get a message from him then your hard-drive will burn out, your keyboard will go up in a puff of smoke and you will become infertile.”

That was it! It was enough! It would be passed round everyone in the world (eventually - he only has two friends to start with, and one of them was a mysterious figure called Andy who looks like the creep from Fortesque Avenue) would bow down to him and call him fluffy names. Yes - even with such a lowly beginning he would eventually become the electronic king of the Universe.

So he posted it, and sat back and waited.

For a start nothing happened.

He soon half-forgot his spoof virus and set about school work when it became clear to him that his father would disown him if he didn’t.

The years passed and he did his GCSEs and passed so many they bought him his first motorbike as a reward. He was so excited he forgot everything except that motorbike and the need to triumph with his “A” levels so that it could be upgraded to a car.

More time passed and he got remarkably good “A” level results (and a car), and he went out in the world of work at an exceptionally high level, commanding a huge salary.

His job involved manipulating money using a Very Powerful Computer. He wasn’t really quite sure what he did, just that he pressed keys in a pre-determined way and was paid a huge wad each month for doing it.

For month after month he did just that until one day, quite out of the blue, he got a strange message.

“This is deadly important, there’s a maniac on the loose who’s been involved in 273 murders and he’s on the loose and he’s known as ‘TheDarkPersecuter’ and if you contact him or get a message from him then your hard-drive will burn out, your keyboard will go up in a puff of smoke and you will become infertile.”

His heart almost stopped.

He unplugged the computer there and then in order to prevent any damage for which he’d certainly get the blame if it occurred, and sighed a huge sigh of relief because he’d saved everything in the world from certain destruction.

Next day he got the sack and his position was taken by a bloke with a tan from Fortesque Avenue.