I need to tell you about Zeensuckers.

Sorry – but it’s got to be done.

Are you ready for this?

Well then…

First of all a Zeensucker is HUGE. You know those amazing fish called Basking Sharks, that glide through the ocean with their vast mouths wide open? They look really frightening. Here’s a picture to remind you: http://www.gla.ac.uk/marinestation/research/bask-shark/shark_gape_450.jpg

I said look really frightening, because in fact they’re harmless to us humans, even if we’re close by – their mouths are wide open like that to catch plankton, the tiny creatures that live in the sea in their billions and billions.

But Zeensuckers aren’t harmless. Far from it.

For a start, big as Basking Sharks are, Zeensuckers are bigger – five or six times bigger. And they ARE dangerous. Because what they do is swallow anything that they find on the net that they want. And once in, you can’t get out. They’re called Zeensuckers because down the sides of their throat are thousands of suckers – which hold whatever goes in so it can’t come out.

Another way in which they’re not like that gentle giant the Basking Shark is their shape. They’re long and kind of flat, and roughly oval in shape. They’re covered in thick, triangular scales, striped in a kind of grungy green and yellow, and they have ELEVEN blood-red eyes studded around their heads – all the way round, so they can look up and down and to both sides all at once.

A Zeensucker’s body ends in a ragged flap-like tail. It looks pretty stupid, but it can drive this creature anywhere in net-world – and through most of the defences that are put up to keep out viruses, worms and Trojans.

Along the Zeensucker’s sides stream out seaweed-like ribbons of their flesh, called stick-fronds. These do two things – they can catch any net-creature that comes within reach, and either flick or pass their victim from stick-frond to stick-frond – up to their giant mouths. The victim can’t get away – the stick-fronds are as sticky as Velcro. And indeed, as one stick-frond lets go to pass its captive on, it makes a nasty tearing noise, the kind of sound that shiny brown tape makes when it’s being ripped off a parcel.

But the stick-fronds have another purpose too. They can send out great bursts of what’s known in net-world as deadpower – which destroys any system that might identify it early. That was why all the opticons, and the little screens inside Lucia, were damaged.

The deadpower comes as an invisible tongue of flame - which luckily can only travel short net-distances. Nothing but a Server's max-scanner can see it – not that seeing it does much good.

Once the Zeensucker has caught and swallowed a net-creature, it’s not long before all that’s left are nano-sized data fragments. That’s really small.

To give you an idea how small – a nano-metre is ONE BILLIONTH of a metre.

But the more a Zeensucker swallows and fragments, the bigger he gets.

The Zeensucker moves through net-world in silence. He is invisible to security programmes, and can sometimes even cross firewalls.

He can change shape, to become flatter than a piece of paper, and find his way into any part of net-world – however secure it may seem. And his appetite is endless.

So where did this terrifying creature come from? No-one knows for sure. But what is known, is how he can sometimes even appear in your own computer.

Yes, right there – right in front of you.

How?

Well, you know when you are doing some homework, and you mean to type a capital ‘A’ and go CTRL- A instead? Which highlights ALL the work you’ve been doing?

And then, without looking at your screen, you hit another letter – let’s say ‘n’ - and you look up and all you can see on your screen is ‘n’. Disaster! Well, that’s a Zeensuck – all your work gobbled up. Gone. In an instant.

But luckily, though for reasons best known to themselves, crazy computer programmers have given the Zeensucker this portal into our world without a warning built in, they’ve found a way to close it too: by going Ctrl Z. Which brings back your homework, or whatever you’ve been doing. So that’s what you do – Ctrl Z. Because for just a split second, Ctrl Z disables the suckers that line the long, long gullet of the Zeensucker, and your data can escape back to you.

But DON’T DON’T DON’T Save before you’ve tried Ctrl Z! Because then the Zeensucker has it all held fast, and what he holds fast he never gives back.

So this is the terrifying net-creature floating lazily down towards Nascarbalone Trinth and Lucia’s crew, its giant mouth gaping open to swallow them all!!