Cyber

Flying around in Cyberspace, it kills your body, and brings your mind to life. Cyberspace
was where Zaley Claque lived. It was her life, her true home. To her if it something didn't
exist there, it was of no use to her.

To an outside observer she looked like the normal drug addicted, rebellious, sex craving
teenage girl. Mr. Claque was a work-a-holic and her mother was an alcoholic, they could
care less about their only daughter. Her hair was long and black, though dyed with bright
blue stripes. She had rings all up and down her ears, in her nose, and a bellybutton ring,
which was the pride of all her piercings. She either had blue or blood-red nail polish on.
Some days she would dress in all black, others she would wear a tight tie-dyed dress with
purple tights, but no matter what she always had her black Doc's. With this strange image,
changing everyday, people never knew what to expect of her, no one ever knew how smart
she was. That was the way she liked it.

She had been on the pill since she was 12, and had more 'one night stands' than she could
remember. Rarely did she smoke pot. Her brain had to be in top working order, so she
wouldn't come close to smoking a while working on the computer. Only when she had a
friend over would she smoke. Coffee was her main addiction, it helped her when she had
only gotten 1 hours of sleep at night instead of her normal 3.

Staying up for 21 hours can get boring, so to pass the time she would program strange
viruses, hack different telnet sights or obscure bbs's, or have a strange guy over for sex.
If she had a lot of time she would get laid twice in one night. If everyone was piss drunk
she would just check out warez and try to upload viruses to huge systems.
As far as she knew, she was the best, no one could beat her. No one had even come close
to beating her. Until that one night.

Zaley was searching around casually in netcom, a simple place to break into, she had been
there before. Then she noticed she was being watched, she tried to lose this spying hacker.
One thing that Zaley hated was to be traced while doing her work. For some reason where
ever she went, he was there too. He chased her down like a dog, from one system to the
next, looking into her computer over the modem. She didn't want to cut the connection,
because that would be admitting defeat. All through systems she weaved, trying to write a
virus to give to this stalker so that he would crash. It took her 3 hours to write the virus,
off it went, a short file transfer. He would notice that his computer was having a never
ending logarithm tying up most of his systems cycles. It didn't work.
This was turning into a bad situation, it had never taken her this long to lose someone, and
no one had ever been able to repulse a virus she had written. Then a message came across
her screen. "I know you are going to die."

"What the hell? this creep doesn't even know me"

It appeared again. "I know you are going to die."

She put in a page to initiate chat.

"What the hell are you doing to me??"

"I know who you are."

"You couldn't."

"Zaley, I know more about you than you do yourself, you should stop going to public
hospitals."

"get lost asshole"

"I broke into your records, your last blood test came back positive, didn't anyone tell you
not to have sex at a young age."

"how did you know I had my blood tested?"

Because of her promiscuous life style, her dad forced her to have blood tests every month,
it was the only thing he made her do. Now this psycho had gotten into her medical records
and was trying to trick her into thinking she had AIDS......or was he?
"remember, I broke into your records."

"screw you, bastard you are just scaring me."

"you just wish I was lying"

"you are"

"ahh poor child, so young, so innocent, so stupid"

"what?"

He had hit a nerve, she never let anyone call her stupid.

"you are too young to die, so much you could learn."

"I am twice as smart as you, and I am not positive."

"you wish that you were a tenth as smart as I."

"go away"

"don't worry, I will, I already did the damage I wanted to."

Silence. Zaley just stared at the screen blank faced, what did he mean? Then she noticed
her computer slowing down, and then she saw smoke coming out of the back. He must
have given her a virus that made a process go thought one circuit over and over again, she
was having a meltdown. All her files slowly disappeared, she knew it was all lost. She
knew the guy was right, about everything. He was smarter than her, the meltdown was
proof. She knew she had AIDS, something hadn't been right about one of those dozens of
guys a few months back.. Then and there she collapsed into a heap, starring blankly up at
a computer screen. Slowly she brought her legs up around her and huddled into a corner.
Her world had disappears around her. Her life was dead.

Zaley kept that blank stare in her eyes as they took her away to the hospital, the
psychiatrists said nothing could help her. Zaley's brain was fried. She stayed in an
asylum for years until she was so sick with disease that she had to get medical treatment.
At some small nameless hospital was where she died, physically. But mentally, she had
died where she had lived....in cyberspace.

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