Out of Order - Judy Albietz

What’s going on? What’s wrong with my computer? Peter asked himself. He no longer felt like shouting to the empty room. He felt uncomfortable talking out loud to himself anymore. It was as if there was another presence in the room who might hear him. Rationally he knew there was just an image on the screen—a dog, a jackal-looking creature, the Egyptian god Anubis—who was staring straight at him. But when Peter moved over to the left of the screen, the dog’s eyes followed his. He looked away and then back again. The dog was still staring straight at him. The dog looked like it was alive.

Peter wasn’t sure about anything except that he was totally freaking out. In fact nothing had been normal since he had found those files which were time-stamped with a date from the future, the far future, 2000 years from now. Then he had found those ancient files from 3000 years ago. How could the hieroglyphic picture of the dog come alive? Had there been something dormant in those ancient papyrus fragments which had somehow been activated? Did some alien energy break through the pixels in the images?

The source of power can simply be turned off, he thought as he reached around to the on/off switch on his computer. He pushed it down but it was stuck on the “on” position. Then he crawled under his desk and unplugged the machine. But the computer still whirred on. It must be on battery power—on its own.

Had a virus taken over his computer? His virus scanners were set for current-day viruses but here he might be dealing with a virus from the past. Did something happen when the files from the Past were uploaded on the hard drive which contained those files from the Future? Was there some ancient virus in those papyrus fragments? Could something from the Future activate an old virus?

Okay, so maybe this Anubis—this Egyptian god from the past—is here, right here in my room. It’s even is talking to me in some strange language. What’m I supposed to do now?