I'm currnetly typing this at a friends place, so it doesn't catch me.
It all started when I went out with my friends to go check out the wreckage of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. We looted a few of the abandoned houses untli we eventually hit this relatively intact apartment complex. One of the rooms was filled to the brim with electronics, but what caught my eye was this old computer that was still in one piece, all the way to the back of the room. Old-apple-computers-gadgets-1
When I looked closer, I notice that the thing was actually still ON. I moved the mouse, and it had several blank windows open, still connected to the Internet.
What was odd was the fact it was not only still functional, but it's brand and model shouldn't even be CAPABLE of accessing the Internet.
I decided to take it home, after washing it off getting rid of all the gunk that covered it up. I then hooked it up and pressed the power button...
Nothing happened.
I tried again, still, nothing happened. I knew it couldn't have been damaged on the way home, (seriously, I was being VERY careful with it), so I checked the power cords and made sure everything was plugged in.
After about an hour of fumbling around, I gave up, and decided to check what was on TV, but the moment I set foot out of my room-
BEEP!
I heard it make a noise. Suddenly, it started working, booting up and it's screen slowly lighting up. It logged me on as "Loydd", which I guess was the original owner of this computer, and it went on to the desktop.
What I saw was... disturbing.
It looked like some strange robotic face of some sort, drawn in MSPaint. It kinda looked like the Terminator, except more, well...."alive" looking.
I didn't really like the look of it, so I switched out the background to just a blank default. It was at this point that I noticed that this computer was running on Windows 7, which shouldn't even be POSSIBLE, because the model was an Apple II, which shouldn't be capable of doing that.
I decided to look through the files in "Loydd's" computer, and there wasn't much. I did find the original desktop background picture, which was in fact made in MSPaint,(which you'd think wouldn't be on a computer as old as this).
The picture was titled, "Gallrund".
It was an interesting name, but I didn't think much of it. I eventually got bored and decided to watch TV, so I turned it off, and that's when I got a weird message:
"Goodbye, Jarod."
What? It knew my NAME?!
I was kinda creeped out, so I decided not to look into it. After a few hours of TV and snacking, I went to bed. That night, I had a weird dream...
I was in a room, completely colored in a dark red, and in front of me was this guy, who looked kinda... odd. His hair was a mess, he was skinny to the bone, like as if though he was starved, and he wore some unplugged headphones. He had his back turned to me.
I wanted to get his attention, so I tried saying "hello", but nothing came out. Still, it seemed like he heard it. He turned around, and I saw his face...
His eyes were seemingly missing. As soon as I lookid at them, I started seeing deeper into them and then, suddenly, I wake up, sweatting bullets, like I just had a night terror.
BEEP!
The computer turned on, even though I didn't even do anything. It seemed to have booted up the moment I awoke. I decided to log in and see if anything was happening, and noticed the desktop backround had changed.
It was that weird "Gallrund" picture thing, and that's when I noticed it:
It's eyes were IDENTICAL to the eyes of that guy I saw in my dream. I then notice a Notepad document that read, "For Jarod."
I opened it up and it was in binary.
01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01001110 01001111 01010100 00100000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01110011 01100011 01110010 01100101 01100101 01101110 00100001
I translated it, and it read:
"I'm NOT leaving your screen!"
Huh? What is this?
I was worried someone might have hacked my computer or messed with it. I tried changing the background back to the blank default, but then got en error message:
ERROR:
Gallrund will not allow.
What?! Gallrund?
That's when it came to me: Something is up with this computer. It's capable of doing things it wasn't initially designed for, and it seems to be self aware.
I decided to cunduct a little experiment: I'd make a Notepad document, titled "To Gallrund", and type in a this question:
"What are you?"
As soon as I pressed the "save" icon-
BEEP!
The computer made a noise, and the "To Gallrund" document immediatly changed into "For Jarod", and it had a different set of binary.
Upon translation, it read, "I am Gallrund, and I control this computer." At this point, I thought it was some sort of prank virus, so I decided to wipe the computer's hard drive. Then I got another error message:
ERROR:
Are you SURE you want to do that?
It then gave me a yes or no option. I clicked yes, and then something happened.
I heard the computer emit this awful ringing noise, and then, suddenly, I was at the hospital, with bandages on my wrists. According to the doctors, I tried to kill myself, but I didn't have any memory of that. I chose to not tell the m about "Gallrund", because they would probably think me to be legitimately insane.
I was released a few weeks later, and the first thing I did was log right into the computer, and ask Gallrund what happened.
Just like last time, the document I wrote immediatly changed from "WTF HAPPENED?!" to "For Jarod", and another set of binary was there. Upon translation, it read, "I can do whatever I want with you, Jarod."
Then I heard that awful ringing noise again, and this time, when I woke up, my left index fing was caught in a mousetrap, and on the computer was another binary message, which read "See what I mean?"
I asked this "Gallrund" thing what it wanted with me, only to get a chilling reply...
"I want to have some fun."
sh**. I'm now stuck with some physcotic computer program called "Gallrund" that can do whatever it want's with me. Then, for the first time, without prompt, Gallrund asked ME a question. Upon translating it, it read:
"Did you see my friend Loydd?"
I nervously typed in a reply: "No. Who is he?"
I immediatly got a reply, as usual, from Gallrund, which translated to "He created me. He was fun. You may have seen him in your dreams."
The hell? He knows what I DREAM about too?! I asked him how he knew all this, and it replied again, this time saying "Because, you're mine now."
I mumbled to myself, "I don't belong to this freak", only to get another reply, which read "I can hear you, Jarod."
Enough was enough. I decided to try and get rid of him again, because I am NOT going to be Gallund's toy. I opened up the Gallrund photo on MSPaint, and decided to mess around with it's features. Bad idea...
As soon as I used the paint bush tool, I felt the skin of my face start to rip away. I looked in the mirror, and I noticed that there was a fresh, huge gash in my face in the EXACT same shape as the the mark I made on the image of Gallrund's face. I started bleeding badly, so I exited out of MSPaint, and when I was asked if I wanted to save any changes to Gallrund, I clicked no. Suddenly, my face felt better. The bleeding also stopped instantly.
I looked in the mirror and my face was perfectly normal. Then I got another message from Gallrund.
It's translation was "That was fun." I then got an idea. I asked Gallrund if I could go over to my friends place and bring them here so he could have some "fun" with them as well as me. His response translated to "I would like that."
Thank god he can't read my mind, because what I was ACTUALLY going to do was go on their computer and make an E-mail alert to the public so I could warn them of this bastard. Loydd, if you're out the, please stop this damn thing befor he
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