I Love U Flu Virus

The I-LOVE-U-flu virus is a lethal, Dorkugese-exclusive virus that is well known for its cruel treatment to victims. See Symptoms.

Fortunately, it can be cured at any stage, and any cure has a 100% success rate. All penguins ever treated for the I-Love-U-Flu has survived.

The only penguins that die are the ones who can not obtain treatment.

Description
The I-LOVE-U virus is exclusive to Dorkugal. Though it can be caught anywhere in said nation, it is mostly likely obtained in the Dorkugese Jungle. The virus acts like a normal biological virus, but with a technological twist...

Infection
The infection takes places in many different phases, but all infections, if not treated correctly, end with the victim's death.

Phases of infection
Phase I. Entrance-- The virus enters the victim, usually via the respiratory system.

'''Phase II. The Throat'''-- The virus, like a normal flu virus, takes over the cells that line the throat of the victim. This is followed by the onset of severe coughing, wheezing, and a severe fever.

'''Phase III. Error 404'''-- At this phase, the virus shuts down the victim's Internet connection. If the victim tries to teleport, change his/her appearance (i.e. picking an outfit from the player card), or anything similar, he/she will be temporarily taken to an "Error 404" page. The only form of navigation is the good old-fashioned waddling. To change clothes, you have to actually change clothes (you know what it means). This is followed by twitching and dial-up sounds.

'''Phase IV. Overload'''-- The virus overloads the victim's circulatory with spam data. This causes the victim to "crash" (like a coma).

Phase V. Blue Screen Of Death-- The virus' final act is to hack into the victim's nervous system, changing his/her behavior to act like a computer that has been taken over by a Blue Screen Of Death. In this phase, the victim repeatedly screams the phrase "An error has occurred. Press Enter to Return to Windows/Mac/Linux, or Press Control Alt Delete/Select "Restart..." from the  (Apple) menu to restart your computer. You will lose any unsaved data."

'''Phase VI. Exit'''-- If the disease is not treated, the infection procedes to the final phase: the death of the victim. The victim's eyes will roll back and turn pale blue, and that's the point where he/she dies. The millions of virus copies that remain in the victim's body then infect any who touch it.

Cure
The infection is particularly hard to cure, because the farther the infection progresses, the more drugs are needed to prevent Phase Six (death) from happening. The cure diagram below was plotted by none other than Dr. Norton himself and his close colleague, Dr. Atik McAfee. The good news is that it can be cured at any level before VI. The bad news, however, is that Phase V can only be cured by Dr. Norton von Symantec.


 * Phase I-- Can be prevented by a quick updating of the patient's immune system.


 * Phase II-- Can be treated by taking a regular dose of immune system booster pills.


 * Phase III-- Can be treated by overriding the virus' disconnect fuction with a special add-on medicinal program written by McAfee. The patient must also take the immune booster pills.


 * Phase IV-- Can be treated by taking a McAfee vaccination, a.k.a. a McAfee shot. This little piece of injectable programming was also written by McAfee and helps to clear out the spam in the patient's programming. A McAfee shot must also be taken with the add-on program and immune booster pills.


 * Phase V-- At this stage, no other doctor can cure the patient except Norton himself. Fortunately, most penguins are long cured by this stage, so it is a rare occurence. A patient must be rushed to Doctor Norton's house manually (no teleportation), located in South Pole City. Alas, a McAfee shot will not work fast enough. To solve the issue, Dr. Symantec wrote a small, yet powerful piece of code that would work the milisecond it got into the bloodstream. It is known as Symantechanine (Sih-man-teck-a-neen) and is a guarenteed cure, which has saved every penguin it was ever used on. The reason the patient must be taken to Dr. Norton is that he is the only penguin that has a supply of Symantechanine. The Symantechanine shot must then be followed by a McAfee shot, the installation of the add-on program, and the booster pills. After a three day recovery period, the patient will be right as rain (Idiom meaning: the penguin's system is working again).


 * Phase VI-- No one can cure the victim at this stage, not even Doctor Norton. The victim will die no matter what. Anyone who dares try will soon get infected, sped up to this stage, and the attempted curer will soon die. Penguins who make it up to this stage and die are rare, because the paitent will probably already received treatment at this time.

Trivia

 * The I-Love-U-Flu is a direct parody of the I LOVE U Virus that took the Internet world by storm in 2000 in Manila, Philippines.


 * Minuscule Marvin, from the holiday classic A Thanksgiving Carol, was inflicted with late Phase III on the I-Love-U-Flu scale.


 * A severe strain of the I-LOVE-U-Flu afflicted Redlink Abbey in 1988. It actually killed a few geeks until some of the Abbey residents flew by plane to South Pole City and brought back a stock of the various cures from Dr. Symantech and Dr. McAfee.


 * Fanny Antics, Explorer's mother, was one of the few unfortunate penguins who died of this illness.


 * Snow is currently working with the Brownie Research Lab to investigate a similar disease going through Puffles.


 * The creator of the Symantechanine Medicine is Streamflow, Matthew McArthur, the cousin of Norton von Symantech, actually got the disease after creating the medicine.