The secret computer message

Prompt: Your computer won’t shut down when you are getting ready to leave work at five. Instead, it is looping a message, and then attempts to tell you something. What is your computer doing? Write this scene.

Source

It happens sometimes when you're in the industry you sort of have to come to unusual happenings like these. You start freaking out at every unnatural, strange phenomena and the next thing you know you're not getting job offers anymore. It's a part of the job description now.

Ah the varied, unexpected and often supernatural daily job of a computer programmer.

It wasn't anything drastically unusual. Stranger things have certainly happened in the history of things that break the known rules of physics and computation. For me this was my first introduction into the world of the bizarre and the unknown.

I was in a rush to leave, a date that had been rescheduled for three times already. This person was cute, we shared the same taste in music and reading, and she was open to going on several cooking dates. Despite never having met me. If not a romance, there was certainly some strong friendship vibes in there. You never let go of any sort of a relationship with a beautiful woman, if not her, there's at least one of her friends or acquaintances that will be interested in you eventually.

I put my computer on the shut down mode. The screen didn't go black, it didn't make the 'blingbling blinggg' sound before going on a power-conservation mode. Instead, it started flickering, like when you're connecting your computer to a new display and the two devices are negotiating over each other's capabilities and deciding who can render what and do what sort of processing. It looked like my screen was communicating with some...other device. Strange.

I like to turn all wireless connections off before shutting down, because I work in the industry, there's a hundred different modes your system can be pwned and your passwords stolen. Physical contact and all your secrets are gone, wireless contact and you've opened the room containing the keys to the kingdom. All they need to do is sift through the needles in the haystack of a bazillion needles.

An error message flashes on my screen, bling bling bling. It's like one of those dirty messages, the ones that want to give you a nasty virus and then charge you a thousand bucks for fixing the virus, only to take your money and to sell your information to other scammers. From the late nineties. That can't be. This must be a prank.

We're all pranksters in my office. My coworkers and I code special programs in each other's computers when the terminals are left unattended. As a reminder that nobody is to be trusted, not even your compadres, the partners in crime.

I read the message.

She is not interested in you, the message says. She is roommates with one of your classmates from college, she's coming only for the free dinner.

Strange. Nobody at work knew about my date.

I boot the computer. The date can wait, either way. I check the logs, the network connection, the peripheral device history. The run logs. The message had to come from somewhere, it has to have left a trace in my computer. I'm open to the possibilities of ghosts and supernatural beings, but not open enough to believe that they can break cryptographically secure hardware modules that protect your logs and command history. The amount of energy these ghostly creatures would need for that would be better-utilized doing literally anything else, it'd be sufficient for intergalactic travel surely they wouldn't be wasting it all interfering on my romantic life.

Interesting.

A program I hadn't seen before, that ran for thirty-two seconds before terminating. Origin unknown. Last modified thirty-two minutes ago. I didn't leave my computer then. How was it able to inject itself and run while I was still using the system. Hmm.

Could I be one of those people with disassociated identities? Like the guy from Mister Robot? What's it take to do that?