Mr. McRam suddenly projected his voice loudly towards the whole class.

 

"So class! Today is the day you have to hand in your final assignments… Have we all finished them?

 

He was very proud of all of his students, as they had always scored very high marks in the national exams. But, much to his disappointment, he had never taught the top student of the country.

 

This was his wish, and lifetime dream!

 

Most of the other teachers and students thought it was a pipe dream. Montville High was a small town school, with very few resources, especially when it came to computers. The winners of the national exam, had always been from large, well equipped and funded private colleges.

 

This year however, he just knew Bellasini could do it. She was the brightest computer student that he had ever taught. If ever he had a chance to produce the number one student in the country, this was the year.

 

"Class! What I want you to do this morning, is to download your assignments off your laptops, into my folder on the school network,” Mr. McRam instructed. “Any questions? Then let’s all get started.”

 

The clatter of keys soon filled the room, as students began to transfer their assignments to the main school server.

 

Suddenly! The room filled with shouts of disbelief, as one by one in quick succession, each student’s computer began to flicker, and crash.

 

"What's the problem?" asked Mr. McRam.

 

"There seems to be a glitch, or virus, in the school’s network," someone shouted from the back of the class.

 

"Let me have a look!"  bellowed Mr. McRam across the room, as he hurried to one of the student’s computers.

 

Just as he got there, the computer went blank, leaving just three words on the screen.

 

‘Happy Birthday, Glitch.’

 

Mr. McRam quickly typed in a few commands, but there was no response from the computer.

 

"Everybody disconnect from the network now!" he bellowed once more across the room.

 

But it was too late. One by one, each computer displayed the same message.

 

He quickly re-booted one of the student’s computers, and began to type in a few instructions, to check its programs. He did the same on two others before finally shaking his head in disbelief.

 

"I'm afraid class, we have all picked up some type of computer virus, which seems to have wiped our hard drives."

 

There was a stunned silence among the students. Everyone had lost their final assignments.

 

Mr. McRam spent some more time trying to repair the virus, but it was to no avail.

 

Finally he turned to the class and asked. "Has everyone got a backup of their assignments at home, or in the cloud?”

 

All but a few students replied, ‘no!’ in loud disbelief.