Digital Piracy is Evil(not really)
Chicks and dudes
Who you think is really kicking tunes?
--Gorillaz' "Clint Eastwood"
The rain drummed on the car's roof.
It was in the parking lot of an apartment building, in the part of town largely occupied by people who wore ugly shirts for a living. The ID hanging from a lanyard in the car said two things; that its owner did not photograph well, and that it was the property of the property of the Information Technology Department of Jones and Jones Associates.
Inside the apartment building, Barry Fields had called in sick.
The rain pattered against the door to his balcony, and one hand, snaking out from under the blanket he wore, cupped a mug of tea.
He pondered a paradox; how does one get to the doctor's office to get a sick note when you were to sick to drive? Did he know anyone who had a HazMat suit? Did the CDC make house calls? Was he patient zero in a zombie apocalypse?
Barry sighed, and turned to his computer. He could get onto his company's network from home, but it'd be a security risk, for one, not to mention his inability to be on-call for on-site problems.
He thought about that for a moment. Savoured it. No fixing users' "cupholders". No extracting floppy disks from CD drives. No identifying which version of Windows everyone was using by the color of their Start bar, because when he asked them, they simply said "Office 2007."
At least, until he got over this flu.
Barry booted TorrentGet to cheer himself up.
He had been downloading an anime series called "Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha" over the past few days. Mostly from one user, who never went dead, was always on the network, which was itself unusual. Unless they were some kind of recluse ("The yellow face! It burnsss usss, precious!") who spent all their time online, they would have to turn off their system at some point.
He could see it now; the tiny apartment lined with cheap wooden shelves; the lower ones full of DVDs and games, the requisite copy of "The Fifth Element" among them, the dozens of plastic figurines staring down. Then didn't judge him, as they looked downward, silent guardians of his lotion and kleenex. They would *never* judge him.
Barry raised his mug in a silent toast to the diligence of the Unknown Neckbeard, and spent a few minutes checking his RSS feeds before opening the user's Availables.
Gurren Lagann: Seen it. FLCL: Had it on DVD. FLCL Soundtrack: Add to download Queue. Weezer's Red Album: Got on iTunes. "Dogs" by Pink Floyd (vs DJ Seth): Sure, why not?
The lone MP3 cleared fastest, and while Barry was still chuckling at the latest Penny Arcade,--oh, that Twisp and Catsby--he automatically streamed it to his stereo.
And then wondered if it was broken.
What was coming out of the system was an odd series of beeps and clicks and what sounded like Arabic or Egyptian. He closed TorrentGet-a leecher through and through-and walked over to the Sharp, to check the connections.
He made it halfway.
Barry's right leg gave out, and what with gravity and all, he collapsed to the floor.
"The frak?" he said, untangling his lower body from the blanket.
His right foot had changed, inexplicably, into something longer and more bestial. He could hear the bones moving, reshaping themselves into something entirely different.
The dog's foot twitched.
Barry stared at it for a few seconds, jaw hanging, before he decided to call 911.
Easier said than done, as it turned out. He tried standing up, but his right leg was already too short, and the left was already joining it. The things attached to his hips were already beyond his control, and he pulled the phone off the table with hands that were already blunting. He barely had enough control over them to reach his torso.
"911 Emergency. How may I assist you?"
(I'm turning into a dog because I put a pir--*torrented* MP3 on.)
Barry fought the urge to laugh, and spoke into the phone. "Hrruf!"
"Pardon me?"
Oh crap. He reached for his throat in horror, hands already paws. The shaping had consumed both legs, and was stealing across his crotch now, across his waist--
"Hrruff ruff RUFF!"
"Sir, we don't have time for prank calls."
"Goodbye, sir." Click.
Barry stared at the phone in confusion. Why wouldn't she believe him when he said...when he said...when he said...something.
The radio was important, somehow. Get to the radio.
And he tried, he really did. Pushing with his elbows, and when he lost those, when they stated bending wrong, his chin. He had to get there. Wherever there was. He had to-
It was up to his mouth now. Barry would've groaned if he'd been able, if he could've remembered how to. He knew he should've said something profound, but he couldn't think of a single thing.
With a twitch of his head to the side, Barry's soul was quietly wiped, much like a junkyard electromagnet would if it was activated too near a hard drive. He would've appreciated the metaphor.
On the computer, TorrentGet opened up, despite the only living being in the room being a dog very interested in his new flexibility. Without the mouse cursor moving, "Dogs-PinkFloyd_vs_DJSeth.mp3" moved from the "Recieved" folder to "Availables".
Some time later, someone added it to their queue.
THE END
"Digital Piracy is Evil"
by Eulalie "Nequ" Quentin
2009 Creative Commons By-SA-NC