Security For All

The Adventures of Captain X-Ploit:
– Part 2 of the week long Halloween special –
Movies Can be Fun…
(but usually not the ones with creepy chicks who need a haircut.)

David slumped quietly on his couch and flicked on his TV hoping to forget the mess with Michael Myers. He decided to watch a movie he’d found on the internet. After firing up the stream he became mesmerized. A series of strange and dark images flashed on the screen ending with a shot of a girl, badly in need of a haircut, crawling out of a well. As the video abruptly ended he was left in horror, silence… and boredom. “That was SO not Inception,” he carped.

These thoughts were interrupted by the shrill ring of his telephone. His heart leapt and he nearly fainted. “That thing I plugged into the wall has never done that before! Maybe it’s broken.” David had only plugged that strange antique into the wall for decoration sake. He’d never actually received a call on it. He had always figured everyone text-ed now. “Seriously, if this is a political ad for anyone but Ted… Heads will roll.” He picked up the phone and heard a ragged breathy voice say “You will die in 7 days.”

“We’ve been over this. I still have at least 45 years left.” David replied.

The voice drew another ragged breath and repeated “7 days,” then hung up.

He set down the phone and did what any sane, normal, healthy human being would do in his situation. He whipped out his laptop intending to do two things: Post a negative comment on that crappy video and WebMD creepy telephone calls. He was shocked when activity one made activity two unnecessary. Reading from the comments with links posted to news articles he quickly gathered that watching that video, in fact, results in death 7 days later. Fear crossed his face and he whipped out his real cell phone, calling to alert Ted to this new development.

“Hmmm… I see your predicament, my friend. Death WOULD be a great inconvenience to our mission,” Ted responded.

“Like I don’t already know that. Look, just get on Google and let’s sort this out,” David replied.

A couple of hours later:

“ OK, so it looks like I’m going to die. UNLESS I show the video to at least one other person,” David reported.

“So our research would appear to indicate. As your President I highly recommend displaying this cinematographic lethal weapon to someone else. Post haste!”

“Feel like firing up your TV, old buddy?” David said snarkily, “No, but seriously, the part that
worries me is that I couldn’t find a consistent answer on exactly how many people need to view the movie for the magic to work and un-curse me. I think I’ll show it to a few people to be safe.”

The next day:

David was at the movie theater talking to one of the attendants. “So, this job seems neat… do you get to watch the movies when they play?” he asked.

“We sure do! We get to watch them from that little room upstairs where the projectors are,” the fellow said excitedly, “I get to show the next one, actually. I’m excited ‘cus I haven’t seen it before.”

David considered this for a moment then said “I’ll give you $2,000 in 8 days if you show this short video before the new Tom Crap movie.”

Several minutes later:

David stepped merrily from the movie theater, waiting for all those phones to start ringing and thinking, “Oh well, the world could do with a few hundred less Tom Crap fans eating up my precious O2. Damn, this whole ordeal has left me really exhausted I think I’m going to go home and sleep for a while.”

Another classic horror film,  Gore Verbinski’s The Ring, gets the Captain X-Ploit treatment. Seriously, how cool is the idea of a Denial of Service attack on a cursed video. And how about the promise to pay the poor movie theater stooge the day AFTER he’s toast if the curse still works since it’s possible that the 30-year dead psychic who placed the curse [from the original movie Ringu] has the malevolent bandwidth to foil David’s DoS attempt. I’m pretty sure that David doesn’t really care. At least he’s off the hook so to speak. Stayed tuned for more Halloween action in Trustonia.