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PC also encourages the transfer of viruses among families. A student might transfer a virus from college to home; a parent might transfer a virus from home to office. For the most part, viruses are spread innocently, but there is now such a large traffic in diskettes that it is usually impossible to trace the source of an infection.

After 700 hours of intensive effort, the technical support staff felt confident they had eliminated all traces of Eddie. Their confidence was short-lived. Within a week Eddie was back. This time they lost a further one and a half days' work. (Because it is very difficult to remove all traces of a virus, in 90 per cent of cases victims suffer a recurrence within thirty days.)

After the final bout of Eddie was cleared away, executives of the company tried to quantify how much the bug's visit had cost them - not that any of it would be recoverable from insurance. 'We lost $500,000 of business - really lost business, not orders deferred until we could catch up, but business that had to be done there and then or it went to a competitor,' said the company's chief financial officer. 'We also lost data. That cost us $20,000. But what really hurt was the lost business. If we force a customer into the hands of a competitor, he might go there again. I guess that could cost us another $500,000.'

The company tried to find out how the virus had got into its machines in the first place. Sometimes disenchanted employees (or ex-employees) have been known deliberately to sow havoc on computer systems. It seemed unlikely in this case. The company concluded that the infection was almost certainly accidental, and probably introduced on a diskette brought from outside. All they knew for certain was that some Bulgarian who called himself the Dark Avenger had cost them $1 million.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in England, computer operators in government offices in Whitehall and regional centres were confounded by a new virus that spread, seemingly unstoppably, from office to office, department to department.

The virus was first observed in the House of Commons library in the Palace of Westminster. In early October 1990 researchers at the library became concerned about one of their computer systems. The library operates a PC-based research service for Members of Parliament.

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