Cookie Cutter

I opened my e-mail excitedly, and with a hammer. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The e-mail came from someone named Mandy CandyPants, and judging by the subject line, she wanted to know if I wanted to party all-night. Silly question, of course I did, so I opened it.

It was a little slow to load, a good sign, because that usually meant pictures. Or one big picture, at least. I wasn't disappointed because there she was, a smiling blonde, a provocative pose, a very promising development as each line of the huge image manifested. "Hey Stud!" was in a big black box superimposed over the choicer portions of her upper body, and then in smaller print, in a smaller textbox, covering a smaller but equally choice bit of her anatomy, was this suggestion, "Click For A Good Time!"

I'd been around the internet enough to know I was going to need my credit card number if I planned to proceed. Luckily, I'd been around the internet enough to know my credit card number by heart, so I accepted this gracious invitation eagerly with a mouse-click and a leer, then I sat back and waited for whatever URL was coming to hurry up and get there.

At first nothing happened, then the picture changed, and my sweet little Mandy CandyPants blonde was gone. In her place was a skull over crossed bones, laughing at me, and a new message scrolling across the screen that read, "2bad 4u PREVERT!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!"

Conversely, not such a good sign. I was stunned and at a loss, I knew immediately what had happened. This was a virus, or a worm, or some trojan something-or-other, goddamn computer-killing little bit of code, and sadly, it wasn't even the first time I'd been through that sort of thing. I blame my libido, I'm a sucker for porno in my inbox.

I sat there reflecting on what had just happened. I thought of all those lost files on a surely corrupted hard-drive. I thought of all the pain and aggravation, games I couldn't play, songs I would have to download all over again. I tried to think of an excuse I could use on my not often understanding wife, and then I got angry. What kind of sicko would want to misuse perfectly good porn that way? It was hard enough explaining the credit card statements away, now this?

"Damn you!" I cursed him with a slap to the side of the monitor. I discovered this was somehow cathartic, so I did it again, and again, and again, harder every time until I hurt my hand. This is where that hammer comes in.

Our 'office', which used to be a spare bedroom, was undergoing some renovations, whenever the missus insisted loudly enough that I bothered, and I had a habit of leaving my tools laying around anyway. My hand hurt and I still needed some more catharsis, and there was that claw hammer just as inviting as that accursed picture had been.

"Damn you!" I cursed again with hammer in hand, and I slammed it into the monitor. Sparks flew and parts of whatever the screen was made of went flying, but half the skull was still there laughing at me.

"Hey!" someone shouted at me, "Watch it!"

I tried to pull the hammer free but couldn't, something was pulling on it right back. Standing there behind the semi-shattered screen of my computer's monitor was a blue-skinned little man in fuzzy brown britches, and he had a firm hold on the claw end of my best hammer. "Let...go!" I demanded futilely.

"No, you let go! What's the big idea, anyway?"

"What do you mean? And what are you doing in my computer?"

He snorted, let go of the claw end suddenly which sent me reeling back, waited for me to stop flailing about before he answered, "I live here, what's your excuse?"

I considered that. "You mean you're in there, all the time...? Can you..." I wondered sheepishly. "Can you see through that?"

"Yeah," he confirmed, "And I gotta tell ya, you should get some help. If you know what I'm saying." He paused for effect, then elaborated, "I'm saying it just can't be healthy to do that...that often."

"I think I know what you're saying," I assured him, "And who asked you? Why do you live in my computer, anyway?"

He looked at me like I had asked him why he kept breathing. "I kind of have to. I'm a Cookie. My name's Panacea."

"I'm Joe," I told him before I realized I didn't need to. "Those are goat legs?" I asked for no good reason, or at least I can't think of a good reason for asking.

"Not 'Pan', you dolt, Panacea. But yeah, they are goat legs, actually." He looked down at them proudly, then fixed me with a glare. "So what's with the hammer? Remodeling get out of hand?"

I explained about the e-mail from Mandy, and the laughing skull, and the .exe attachment I must have missed. "But look who I'm telling, you must have seen all that."

He shook his head. "I was a little under the weather, actually." My perplexity apparently showed because he clarified, "It's called a virus for a reason, y'know. Ever have a Cookie make it through a virus? Use your damn head, jeez."

Peeved, I pointed out, "Yeah, well, I probably saved your miserable blue skin, then, didn't I? Besides, I delete my cookies."

Panacea shrugged, "Maybe, but you damn near brained me with that thing so I'd say we're even. And deletion's just amnesia. Viruses are terminal."

I nodded, "Ah, check. So you're a Cookie, huh? What's up with that?"

He explained to me that Cookies are, in actuality, magic. That the entire internet is, in actuality, magic. Another realm filled with many marvels, wonders, and delight. I told him I'd really like to check that out sometime.

He rolled his eyes and told me, "I'd really like to get with that chick that plays Buffy too, but it ain't happening. What we really need to do is get my home fixed up. It's a little drafty like this."

"Oh, c'mon, show me around. I've never been in cyberspace before."

"You're not in cyberspace now," he pointed out, then acceded. "Fine, we'll do this, but you're gonna replace this thing with a big-ass flat panel display, we're talking at least twenty inches."

I acceded in turn.

"First," he directed, "Do this: close your eyes, click your heels together, and say 'There's no place like Nome' three times."

"'Nome'?" I asked, but I did as he suggested. Nothing happened so I opened an eye to seek some further direction and caught him trying not to laugh. "Oh, very funny."

"Yeah, I know," then he held out a hand and said, "Let's go already, Dorothy."

I found myself standing hand in hand with him, which I quickly released in this other realm. Different, lots of meadows and glades and wooded areas and the like, and pretty boring really. "Hey, I have an idea," I remarked after a while.

"No. Been there, done that, and I really do think you should consider therapy."

I scowled at him. "Not that. Let's go see if we can find this Mandy CandyPants. Before she, or probably he, virusizes anybody else. For the Cookies," I pledged to lend it some nobility.

Panacea considered this, then pledged instead, "For the sanctity of good, clean porn."

"I like the way you think, Panacea Cookie. Any idea where to start?"

He shrugged. "Maybe I just been around you too much, 'prevert'. And no, I don't know, never tracked a virus before. Look for sick Cookies, I guess, for starters."

The search was quicker than we expected, viruses are far easier to track than one might think. Along the way I met some really interesting denizens of cyberspace, but Panacea didn't allow me much time to get to know anyone or anything. "We got a job to do," he pointed out pointedly as I was just getting acquainted with a rather pleasant jay-peg. I gave her my e-mail, Panacea gave me a look.

We plodded along on the trail and came upon the home of another Cookie. The Cookie that lived in the virus-writer's PC. A Cookie my host was familiar with.

He knocked on the door a.k.a. comm port and we waited until another Cookie answered. He looked a lot like the Cookie I already knew. He looked a lot like all the Cookies I'd met along the way. I've come to suspect that Cookies don't have a real deep gene pool to draw from.

"Well Panacea, as I live and breathe and remember passwords!" he gushed when he spotted us. "How you doing, you old .gif, you?"

Panacea eyed me significantly, then admitted, "Been better, Amalgama, been better. Something going around, let's say."

Amalgama sighed and confessed, "Yeah, I can imagine." He studied me, wrinkled his nose, then offered, "Well, come in, come in! Don't get much company, forgive my manners."

We did as he suggested, and after some small talk that I didn't really care about at all, Panacea told him why we were there.

Amalgama didn't seem at all surprised. "Yeah, I always knew it was a matter of time. Kind of figured it would be you, too, living up to your name."

"What?" I wondered because I had no idea what that meant.

"Never mind that, spank-monkey," Panacea dismissed me, "Maybe you should read a book some time."

Amalgama studied me again. "One of those, is he? What a waste of the web," he judged. I didn't have any kind of comeback come to me so I just gaped at him until he turned back to the other Cookie. "So you've come to take her out, have you?"

"Her?" Panacea and I marveled in unison.

"But of course," and he led us to his front room where one wall was all monitor screen backside. "Gentleman, meet Mandy CandyPants."

There sat a smiling blonde reaching up to make some minor adjustments to what I assume was a web-cam atop her monitor, then she leaned back, and she didn't have a stitch on! There was only a black placard hanging over her chest that read "Hi Loverboy!" and where her lap would be if only she was sitting more demurely was another, smaller sign that teased, "Click It Real Good!"

"Wow!" I exclaimed.

But Panacea was less stricken. "Why, Amalgama?"

That reminded me what had brought us to his doorstep, and I added, "Yeah. How can you stay here?"

He looked from me to Panacea, and then back to me. "Dude, check the view. How could I not? Besides, it's what we do. I’m a Cookie."

"That's not good enough, and you know it. We have ways to deal with hackers, e-mails to certain places to tip just the right authorities off, that sort of thing. Did you do any of that, Amalgama?"

"Dude, check the view," he repeated, "I mean c'mon. I guess this is how she gets her kicks. Turns out I get my kicks watching her get her kicks."

I had no trouble relating to that, and I had an idea. Here was Panacea getting all high and mighty, and with cause I'll admit it, but it was starting to get in the way of the show. As the Cookies sparred on principle, I dug around until I found how to trip Mandy's security settings.

Delete Cookies, enjoy show. Gotta remember to plug Panacea's name into a search engine too, find out what that means. Probably means boring...oh Mandy's made herself some new signs, this should be good.

Hard to top "Click it real good", though.