Coding "
By: Krystal, Hologram, [RNPC]
Maxine Lucinda Tapert, Computer Specialist, [PC]

Stardate: 58208.17 1800

"What are you doing?"

"Coding," Maxine answered the pixie hologram.

"It doesn't look like code," Krystal observed as she fluttered around the three dimensional hologram that Max was working on.

"That's the whole point, pixie. It's not supposed to look like code."

"It almost looks like a tetrahedron," the pixie observed.

"It looks like *parts* of a tetrahedron," Maxine corrected as she reached out and drug a section of the holographic 'puzzle' towards her. "Each one taken by itself is quite benign," she explained. "Looks benign, acts benign, and will appear to any computer system as benign."

"What are you going to do with it?" Krystal wanted to know.

"Give it to a Federation Priority One system."

"Oooooohhhh.." Krystal blinked and moved in to inspect the piece Max was working on more closely. She even delved her hands into the middle of it. "But. Maxie. It doesn't DO anything," she remarked after processing the code contained in the piece. "It's just silly random bits of nothing."

"Each of them are worms," Max informed her. "And each is designed for a specific subsystem within the Priority One."

"Worms?!?" the pixie squealed and fluttered back away, putting a safe distance between her and the coded puzzle piece and then shaking like a dog.

"That didn't look like a worm.. My subroutines didn't recognize it."

"Good. That's the whole point," Max grinned. "Until each piece reaches the subsystem it's specifically designed for, it remains just random bits of nothing. Learned that from Birkoff. 'ow many of his random bits of nothing did you glom onto, eh?"

"Ugh. He gave me worms," Krystal made a face and gagged a little. "And made me pregnant," she nodded.

"YOU were never pregnant," Maxine pointed out. "You were just confused. 'is random bits of nothing were designed to interrupt and confuse your fuzzy logic subroutines."

"Oh. It worked."

"Indeed," Maxine nodded. "And so will this." She replaced the piece she was working on and scanned over the whole before she pulled out another section.

"OH! It looks like an I/O buffer when it's all together!" Krystal exclaimed.

"Rioght. That's the whole point," Maxine grinned. "I'm going to piggy-back it onto one of the encoding converters. Once it's in the system, it'll break apart and each section will make its way to the subsystem it's designed for. Once there, it'll replicate itself throughout the ODN until it coalesces back together in the main sub-processor. Merrily munching on specific data along the way."

"Ewwwwww! A Data Muncher!" the pixie exclaimed. "That's disgusting."

"Well, it's not going to actually *eat* it," Maxine corrected. "It's designed to alter and distort selected data input and output. So it's going to chew on it and spit out something different."

"I don't like it," Krystal announced and fluttered her way to Max's shoulder and half hid behind her hair.

"I'm going to try it out on you," Maxine informed her.

"WHAT???" The little pixie squealed and poofed out of sight with a spray of golden pixie dust.

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