An incredibly complicated tale of mystery and intrigue: Former NuKE virus-programmer Talon, of Brisbane, Australia, makes it into Fictual Facts this month for making life just a little more brutish than it ought to be. "Confusion to your enemies" could be TaLon's motto and you'll agree after reading this whopper. Originally, the writer of the PuKE/Harry McBungus viruses, Talon created Harry McBungus and Terminator-Z as electronic beards for a group predominatly interested in optimizing virus code and poking fun of the NuKE virus-programming group. But, fate took a hand and made the PuKE virus famous down under when it infected a company and the event was publicized in a newspaper. Talon, according to sources, saw the article, called the newspaper and gave them an interview, perhaps thinking editors would keep his name secret. They didn't. Editors passed his name along to the Fraud Squad, a branch of the Australian national crime-fighting force which focuses on computer crime. Agents from the Fraud Squad promptly rounded up Talon and here's where the story gets tricky. Talon, by adroitly using the aliases of Harry McBungus and Terminator-Z, was able to sufficiently confuse the investigation by pushing authorship of the PuKE virus onto people, who essentially, didn't exit. At this point, TaLon applied for membership to NuKE and submitted the Daeman virus. Shortly therafter, the Daeman virus infected a PC network belonging to Australian Telecom, sufficiently inconveniencing the company so that it summoned the Fraud Squad. It was "round up the usual suspects" time and Talon again went into the bag. This time, he shifted suspicion onto two other Australian hackers and NuKE members, Phrozen Doberman and Screaming Radish. NuKE promptly terminated TaLon's membership for this graceless cybersocial faux pas, but did publish the Daeman source code in its InfoJournal #7 before wishing him luck with Australian authorities. TaLon promptly uploaded a fakeware archive called VCL20.ZIP into some US virus exchange bulletin board systems. Advertised as the Virus Creation Laboratory v. 2.0, the archive was "password protected" with the phrase "Nowhere Man Sucks." It was a hoax.