Daemon

one over on you. Call the FBI.’
    ‘Russ, no one faked this video. If you listen to him, you’ll see what I mean.’ Lindhurst released the pause button.
    Matthew Sobol came back to life on-screen. The infomercial music faded as he finished his nod. ‘By now you’re beginning to realize that you no longer control your network and that your backups are damaged beyond repair. I am now an integral part of your organization – and have been for several months. Let me assure you that your corporate data is safe, and that sufficient backups exist off-site to provide seamless protection in the event of a natural disaster or other calamity.
    ‘Before I continue, let me caution you to watch this video in its entirety before contacting your local or federal authorities.This recording contains important information that may affect your decision to involve those entities in this situation.’
    A light musical jingle accompanied a twirling inset picture that spun to a stop alongside Sobol’s head. It was a video of Sobol’s mansion roaring in flames.
    Sobol smiled pleasantly. ‘As you can see, involving the authorities is no guarantee of your safety. Although they would certainly be willing to try again at your location.’
    The inset video image transitioned to a collection of quivering question marks.
    Sobol looked intently into the camera. ‘But you’re probably wondering just how you got yourselves into this situation. To answer that question, surprisingly, we need to go back hundreds of millions of years to the very origins of life on Earth.’
    The question marks expanded to fill the screen and faded away as the entire screen dissolved to an image of primordial Earth. It was a 3-D computer animation of the ancient seas, teeming with exotic life – razor-toothed fish with whiplike probosces and flitting schools of tiny translucent organisms.
    Vangelis music rose on the surround-sound speakers. Sobol narrated, ‘Let me tell you the story of the most successful organism of all time: this is the story of the
parasite
.’
    On-screen a large, particularly evil-looking fish with twin rows of splayed fangs and a spiked dorsal array glided into view. Just then, a small organism swam for the area just behind the enormous fish’s gills, where it latched on, unnoticed. A dozen others followed it and also latched on.
    Sobol spoke. ‘Early on, evolution branched into two distinct paths: independent organisms – those that exist on their own in the natural world – and parasites – organisms that live on other organisms. And it was, by far, the parasites that proved the more successful of the two branches. Today, for every independent organism in nature, there exist three parasites.’
    The computer animation transitioned from one eon to thenext – from amphibian to reptilian to mammalian – with parasites continuing to evolve along with their hosts, infesting some species, driving them to extinction, while other species evolved means to keep them at bay – at least for a time.
    ‘These two strains of evolution have been locked in a primordial arms race, constantly evolving to best each other for supremacy of this planet. As parasites evolve to perfect their systems against a species of host, the host evolves to evade their attack. Scientists call this theory of an eternal genetic struggle the Red Queen Hypothesis – a name taken from Lewis Carroll’s
Through the Looking Glass
.’
    On-screen, the image suddenly changed to an animation of Alice in Wonderland – with the Red Queen running along a hedgerow maze and looking toward little Alice, who struggled to keep up. She was saying: ‘Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.’
    The screen changed to a video of a small pond, with snails moving through the mud.
    ‘Animal behavior has evolved to battle parasites. In fact, we have parasites to thank for the existence of sex. Sex is a costly and time-consuming method of reproduction. Experiments have shown that, in the absence of parasites, species evolve toward parthenogenesis – or cloning – as the reproductive method of choice. In parthenogenesis each individual is able to self-replicate. But this produces almost no genetic variation. In the presence of parasites, cloning, while more energy-efficient, is not a viable reproductive strategy. It presents a stationary genetic target to parasites, who, once introduced into such a system, will quickly dominate it.’
    The