Imagine if you will that the universe and everything in it, everything that has existed, everything that will exist, is all part of an impossibly huge computer program--like "The Matrix," but on a scale unimaginably vast.

We do not know the "programmer"--perhaps a member of a civilization that perished eons ago, perhaps what we know as God.

All programs can be corrupted, either by accident or design. The same holds true for the program known as our universe.

Now suppose a virus has done just that.