"What do you think I should do with you people ?",asked Dr. Biswarup

Sen in a sweet tone.

The volcano is about to burst , thought.

"Come on !Speak up.What should I do with you two ?",screamed Dr. Sen.

"Oops! There goes The Dante's peak, blown right up into the air", Nikhil

murmered into Neel's ear.

"Come on ! Tell me."-Dr. Sen shouted at the top of his voice.

"Sir , we are extrenely sorry sir.We were totally out of our minds", Neel

said apologetically.

"What exactly do yo mean ? Do you have any idea of how much damage this

is going to cause to us and the whole country ? Do you think that the

government grants crores of rupees only to be destroyed by you people ? Do

you know how many crores of rupees this loss will amount to? The only thing

that you two know is that you are sorry ". Dr. Sen kept pouring all his

on the two students who stood there trying to digest what ever he said.

Dr. Biswarup Sen ,the director of Indian Institute of Technology,

Kharagpur, was a very short tempered ,obese person, with a skull much smaller

in comparison to his stomach. The students used to call him Dante's peak

behind his back.

Neel and Nikhil were in 2nd year of their B.Tech course in electronics

engineering in IIT .They both were brilliant students. They were in Dr. Sen's

chamber facing his wrath .They have developed a virus and more importantly

they have infested the main network connecting the 6 IIT's with the virus.

Neel had met Nikhil when they were in their first year of B.tech course.

It was hardly 7 days that their classes had started.neel was working in a PC

in the laboratory.He had claimed that he can break into the main system in

3 mins.Nikhil had challanged him by saying that it is impossible to do so in

less than 5 minutes.Neel had taken 3 mins and 50 seconds to hack the system.

None had won that day but that was just the beginning of their friendship.

Hacking was their hobby.

All these kept flashing in Neel's mind .By one year they had got bored .

They wanted to do something new.As a result of which came the plan of

developing a virus.

"As you have vreated the problem you will have to find the remedy and

if any damage occurs i personally will see to it that you two are rustigated.

You may go now",comminated Dr. Sen.

" We are done for ",remarked Nikhil.

" So what do we do now ?" asked Neel as they came out of the director's

office.

"We'll think about it , yaar, but first let's go to 'The Veggies'.I

need some refuelling ",remarked Nikhil.

"How the hell do you stay so cool?"asked Neel.

They sat in the restaurant biting their vegetable burger."Let's try and

find out if the program had any loopholes ".

"We have got rid of all the loopholes that came to our mind.We took one

whole semester to list all possilble ways that can stop the functioning of

amnesia".Neel commented.

" All the loopholes that came to OUR mind.Don't forget that .There must

be some way out, yaar".

All this headache occured due to virus amnesia that Neel and Nikhil had

On the 25th of March.Amnesia would delete everything stored in the hard disk of

the mainframe connecting the 6 IIT's and every computer that accesses the

mainframe that day.The phrase 'I AM SUFFERRING FROM AMNESIA ' would come up

on every monitor.Moreover the virus would keep replicating itself until the

whole memory is used up. Neel studied all the antivirus softwares that the

IIt's had .He understood their algorith of functioning and protected the

virus from all these softwares.

"It will start functioning in 56 hrs. Come on .Do something ". Anxiety

and fear was becoming unbearable for Neel."Why don't we store everything on

floppies and then restore them after the 25th",suggested Neel.

"Yeah ! That's possible .But do you have any idea of how many thousands

of disks we'll need for that?It's a physical impossibility",Nikhil remaked.

" That's true .But something have to be done".

"I don't think that they'll leave the whole matter on our shoulders.It's

highly improbable.they too must be taking some steps against it. I thing we

should talk with Manoj Sharma about this. He is quite friendly with us.what do

you think? "

" OK! Let's go.I can't think of anything else." Neel confessed ."What I

feel is that the director shouldn't have behaved in that manner .After all,we

have confessed our guilt and have informed the authority about this.If we

hadn't done so no one would have known about it before the damage and after the

damage no one would have been able to trace it back to us."

" You are absolutely correct! he should have given icecreams and cold

drinks to us.Is that what you mean? You are right .Who is he to scold us?",

Nikhil remarked in a tone of sarcasm .

The two guys came out of 'The Veggies' .

"Let's try and find out Mr. Sharma ",said Nikhil.

Manoj Sharma was the laboratory assistant.He was in his early thirties

and was very friendly with the students.

Neel and Nikhil couldn't meet Mr. Sharma before the 23rd ,as he was

out of town.

"See ! As far as I know ,the director has already ordered for two

recently developed antivirus programs called Vaccine and MSDoctor",

Mr.sharma said.

"But Sir it cannot be guaranteed that these will be effective against

amnesia "remarked Neel.

"And what do you suggest us to do? ",Mr. Sharma said.He was utterly

disgusted.

Their conversation was of little help to Neel and Nikhil.Nothing fruitful

came up that day too.Both stayed up whole night trying to find a solution.The

next day they both bunked classes.

It was 24th of march.Nikhil sat by the table sipping tea from his cup.He

took up the newspaper that was beside him. Usually newspapers from Calcutta

reached Kharagpur in the eveving but due to some problem with the railway the

newspapers arrival was delayed by a day. Nikhil silentlyscanned through the

pages of The Telegraph .Then he thought ,`how come the newspaper is here so

early today?'.Then he saw that it was the 23rd March edition.`Kharagpur runs

at a lag of one day from Calcutta',Nikhil thought.

Neel took his cup of tea and joined Nikhil at the table.

"Bunked classes ?,asked nikhil.

"To me it seems that I've had my last class in IIT ",answered Neel.

"See ,we get the news one whole day after Calcutta",remarked Nikhil and

suddenly something flashed in his mind.

He gave it a serious thought.

"Yes! Why not ? We can do it. We can stop the virus ",gestured Nikhil.

"Have you gone crazy by any chance ?", asked Neel.

"NO! No! Listen to me.What if we slow down the mainframe by a day? That

is on the 25th the mainframe and hence the virus knows that it's 24th and on

the 26th we set the correct date again.In this way 25th of March never comes .

Hence no damage occurs.What do you say?",Nikhil was too excited .

Neel was stunned.He hadn't got the idea.

"Come over again.I didn't get even a bit of it",remarked Neel.

Nikhil explained again.

"Cool .But I think we should slow it down by two days so that there is

no problem on the 25th midnight",Neel suggested.

They dressed up as quickly as possible and went to the laboratory. They

hacked into the network again to change the date.

"This is the last time that I am hacking",Nikhil said.

"No. This is the second last time.We have to reset the date again",Neel

remarked.

"Oh! Yes"

After that they went to meet the Director .They informed him about what

they had done and described their plan.

It worked succesfully.Afterwards in a board meeting it was decided that

These students are too brilliant to be rustigated.But as a punishment they

were not allowed to enter the laboratory for a month.

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