[ WP ] You are being taken over by a virus . End with the sentence `` ironic , is n't it ? ''

Joey sits at the console trying to remember some archaic nano command as he refines his botnet trojan. `` Shit, how do you delete 4 lines at a time,'' he says to himself as he reaches for a tissue to cough into. 
 
 `` Goddamn cold,'' he says to himself with a scowl. He takes another Aleve-D and chews it in his mouth after seeing there's no liquids nearby. 
 
 More coding, more building, and testing on his Windows VMs. He sneers as the Windows logo appears on the vm which he purposely infects, restores, and re-infects over and over again. 
 
 He stops for almost a minute fighting and losing to a hacking cough. He stands up, pissed at his cough, and kicks the drywall hard enough to crack it. He puts down the tissue, eyes the blood in it, and tosses it into the wastebasket. The short squat wastebasket is almost full of tissues. 
 
 Joey pulls out a V-scan handheld medtron and puts it up to his throat. He holds down the scan button and the light, barely visible under his chin, goes from red to green with a quiet ding sound. He holds the V-scan up to his face, adjusts his glasses, and reads the tiny unlit LCD display. `` INFECTION V # 3948'' 
 
 He punches `` infection v 3948'' into a little command line browser he always keeps open. Google spits out hundreds of hits. The first link is some CDC bullshit. The third from the top is from an Estonian hacker forum. He clicks on it and scans the text. Lots of words he does n't understand, but its obvious this is a tailored biological virus of unknown origin. Causes blackouts, erratic behavior, and a terrible cough. Lots of conspiracy theories but nothing of value. No fatalities and it usually goes away after two weeks. 
 
 Joey tries to read more, the words get blurry, fatigue hits hard, and he falls asleep at the keyboard. He has the same reoccurring dream. It happens just like it always does. He's a toddler and his parents are still together. Mom is screaming as she's holding him and dad is outside under the window yelling something. Mom is surrounded by fire and is burning. His little toddler outfit is starting to burn. Mom throws him out the window, aiming for dad, and as he's flying toward dad he wakes up sweating and gasping for air. 
 
 Joey awakes and groggily readjusts his glasses. He looks at his monitor and finds bash is now pointed at his /home/root/coins directory. Its empty. His entire wealth is mysteriously and suddenly gone. There's nothing in the logs about any sort of remote entry, nor have the logs been wiped. He then presses the up button to reveal the last command typed and sees an ftp command pointing to some server he's never seen before. `` Who typed this?'' he yells suddenly. He tries to reconnect to that server but there's no response. He looks at the clock. He's been unconscious for almost six hours. 
 
 Angry, he stands up and kicks the wall again, puncturing the drywall this time. He furiously researches the virus he has. All the links are just conspiracy theories about mind control, hypnosis, zombies, etc. The earliest entry in a popular Russian forum is from someone named AndroidAndrov. The entry is titled `` v3948 released.'' Its a short cryptic message just consisting of `` autor here- virus good, best work. i hack you.'' 
 
 Joey leans back in his chair, looks at his hands for a moment, and whispers `` ironic, is n't it'' to himself. 

