Across the campus, Anna heard her computer's speakers "ding!" to signify that mail had arrived. She said to herself, "Probably just another spam ad," then got up and went to sit at the computer desk's chair. She looked for the new mail, found it was from some agency she had never heard of, and then saw that there was no message in it. She deleted the email, and started to get up.
That amount of time was all the virus needed to have. It superimposed itself on the computer's clock and began to flash its subliminal images and play the subliminal sounds. One of the first things it did was to flash <stay at the computer and surf for a while--look at the news--turn your speakers on if they are off>
Anna didn't see the message consciously or hear the sounds, but she stayed seated and started to check some news organizations' websites. As she did, the program began to do its stuff. After about an hour of exposure to the program, Anna suddenly tapped the spacebar five times in a row. Only barely did she realize that she did this, and the program continued to work on her, based on her positive response. Soon, Anna felt herself get a little tired, but she wanted to finish reading a couple of news articles yet, so she stayed on the computer.
The program was now displaying hypnotic visuals about half the time and the sounds coming out of the speakers in time with the visuals were just barely audible. Anna tapped ten times on the spacebar at some point. Within a few minutes, the program dominated the display. Anna saw nothing else but the visuals and clearly heard the sounds. She sat open-mouthed before her computer's monitor, eyes locked on the screen as it entranced her. |