[CASH] Wormy Wormy

Spoiler

Years after the release of computers for commercial and personal usage, some delinquent programmers have created softwares which were harmful to the computer's operating system they contaminated. People generally knew them as Malwares. Malwares are classified into different forms. There were Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses, and many more. However, little do the people know that through the twists of electric cables and wires lie a virtual world of creatures that are the basis of softwares...

On a present day computer...

"Munch munch..." the Sewaddle chewed bits of files with his little brown mouth. After chewing, the little Worm spit the bits to the floor. It looked corrupt and unrecognizable. "This one's ready!" the Sewaddle alerted his other members. and wriggled his squishy body and his leaf-like cape shook.

"I'll get this started," the Wurmple replied, and in a graceful motion, he jumped and shooted numerous amounts of Poison Stings. As the purple barbs injected poison to the chewed bits, it turned malignant and more corrupt. The Wurmple wriggled his red, wormy body and stood aside, his sharp yellow spikes positioned relaxedly.

"Leave it to me," the Caterpie, another member of the group, crept nearer to the bits and started to spray a silky-white String Shot on it. Then, the Worm spewed another String Shot on the parts of the files which the Sewaddle previously chewed on. After that, the Caterpie used his prehensile, Y-shaped, red horn to get the bits and stuck it back. Slowly, the file was now repaired, but hidden within it was the development of a new batch of Malwares.

"Job's done for us," the Sewaddle confirmed, and the trio of Worms crawled away.

---

The three Worms were on standby on the Internet. The Internet was like a huge plaza with a lot of kiosks for each website like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Bulbagarden, and many more. Each stall has its own "merchandise", and if an internet user went inside a kiosk by logging in, then they would be transported to their own buildings. The main building in the plaza is the Cookie Center, the building responsible for all the Cookies. Cookies are the identifications of an internet user. They are being worn like a bracelet for every user that enters each kiosk on the plaza, although some prefer to disable them by not wearing them at all.

"So, where should we go next?" the Sewaddle asked his other groupmates.

"Anywhere interesting," the Caterpie replied.

"That is why we are here at the Internet plaza right?" the Wurmple said sarcastically.

"Oh, look over there! Her Cookies indicate that she returned from Twitter," the Caterpie pointed an internet user.

"Okay then, shall we follow?" the Sewaddle agreed and followed the user with his cape swinging with his motion. The Wurmple and the Caterpie dashed to keep up with the Sewaddle.

---

The three Worms reached their destination: a computer system that looked like the other systems they feasted upon.

"This place is so boring," Sewaddle said. "There's nothing but the Recycle Bin on display!"

"I bet there are more to see once we get to the drives! I can't wait to see Drive C!" Wurmple exclaimed.

"Let's go!" Caterpie said, which garnered the same response from the other Worms.

They reached the My Computer section when a tall dog-like humanoid appeared before them. "HI. I AM AGENT LUKE FILEWALKER. I AM HERE TO DEAL WITH YOU."

---

Scan Complete!

Threats Found: 3

Threats Removed: 3

Thank You For Trusting Aviral AntiVirus!
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A/N: This was from my backburner (read as: folder of text files) and is apparently from way way back then, hence the drastic change in quality if people do read my stories. this is not my proudest fic

Probable Rank: Easiest
Target: $$$
CC: 3,448

 

i'm in class so i can't post julio's grade but claaaaiiim

 

THE PLOT STUFF

Very cute! I liked the wordplay that you had with computer bugs and actual bugs, and there were some nice details with the worldbuilding. There's really nothing too intensive in this story that stood out to me, but given the size of the story that you're trying to convey (a small, casual one with a one-line punchline at end), that seems pretty fair.

One interesting thing with this story was how you treated your characters: in a sense, the setting of the story was a lot more of a character than your actual protagonists. I barely had time to know them, let alone recognize them as individual entities, let alone get attached enough to be sad when they all got zapped at the end. And this is a bit of a mixed bag: clearly you aren't writing this story to induce some sort of emotional investment, but a story like this treads a thin line. You want to keep the readers caring enough to get to the punchline, but you don't really have that much space/material to go off of.

There's a couple of ways to go about addressing this. Juggling genres is kinda rough in general, even moreso in as little space as you have here, so perhaps you'd find it easier to write just an all-drama or all-comedy piece, or maybe a piece that is so dramatic that it's actually comedy! Play around with it a bit -- the weird thing I find with stories like this is that you have plenty of time to mess around since you don't really have to stick with any individual decision for too long.

AND THEN EVERYONE JUST DIES AT THE END. Kinda felt like a lot of buildup to a totally different plot that you cut short in a sentence or two. Worked out okay-ish in a story like this, but definitely wouldn't hold up in a longer work.

THE PRETTY STUFF

Worldbuilding was really cute for a story of this length, and it kinda sold it for me. That being said, I think you went a bit too ham on the descriptions here. Approximately one third of your story was spent on describing the internet stuff, which was cool and interesting, but also felt pretty inconsequential given that all of your bugs get zapped by this deus ex machina figure that we haven't seen before.

The end result is a creative and vivid world that doesn't really seem that meaningful. The characters don't really interact with anything in it and the story pretty much ignores it outside of the "This is the internet and we have antivirus stuff" vibe, which makes the overall story feel a little disjointed. BUT THIS IS WAY TOO MUCH ANALYSIS FOR A PIECE THIS TINY. Overall, descriptions were pretty and your ideas behind the setting were cute and pretty creative, so kudos here.

THE MECHANICAL STUFF

You change between past and present tense a few times, which is kind of jarring. In a story that's this tiny, typos stand out even more than normal + proofreading is easiest, so do make sure to do that.

Otherwise, and this is mostly personal, I would hesitate to capitalize things so often. Having Capital Letter Nouns to signify things that are Important is okay, but it also cheapens the effect overall when Everything that is Important is Capitalized. Things like Worms and Internet and Cookie probably don't need that big-letter designation (and grammatically, they shouldn't), and while you can sometimes break the rules if you want, you need to be doing so for a reason.

OVERALL STUFF

Grade's gonna be longer than the story soon. Uh. Overall, cute and simple plot, suffers from a quick "rocks fell everyone died" ending that was a little rushed for the worldbuilding you did, but still an entertaining and fun read. Like you said, this isn't your most updated or lengthiest work, so I can't/won't dig in too hard, but I do think it merits Easiest-rank cash prize (3k). Nice work!