Highly Compressed | Microsoft Office 2007

The document saved. The clock on his taskbar started ticking backward.

Inside: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and one extra file:

The word Jungian turned green. Then red. Then purple. Spellcheck suggested: "Jungleian? Fungian? Or perhaps you meant to type 'RELEASE THE CLOWNS'?" microsoft office 2007 highly compressed

The message body: "Team RazorEdge thanks you for installing. Your hard drive has been converted into a bootleg distribution node. While you sleep, your PC will upload 0.001% of this Office suite to any computer within a 5-mile radius that searches for 'free resume templates.' You are now part of the swarm. Also, your essay has a typo in paragraph 4. 'Simba's father' is spelled M-U-F-A-S-A, not M-U-F-F-I-N-S. You're welcome."

The final warning came from Outlook, which he never used. He opened it by accident. There was one email in the inbox. From: . Subject: You are the compressed file now. The document saved

Zane printed his essay. The printer output seven copies, even though he only clicked once. The extra six were in Wingdings.

His recycle bin was full of files he'd never deleted. A new user account appeared on the login screen: . His mouse would occasionally move on its own, highlighting text in Excel that was just endless rows of the number 47. And whenever he opened PowerPoint, every slide had a single, tiny clip-art image in the corner: a razor blade dripping a single drop of blood. Then red

He turned off the Dell. He unplugged it. He carried it to the garage, where it sits to this day, under a tarp next to a broken treadmill. Sometimes, at 3 AM, he swears he hears the faint sound of the Office Assistant—Clippy—but his voice is wrong.