Malcolm Frink had been around computers since the day he was born. His father, Jason Frink, was a computer engineer who used to work at home most of the time, so it was just natural for little Malcolm to be attracted to whatever activity his dad was performing at the terminal. His extreme curiosity, as well as the patience of his father who managed to answer every question in clear, simple terms, led him to become computer-savvy at an age where most of his peers were struggling to learn how to spell. He could read fluently at age three, was proficient in BASIC at six and wrote his first virus at eight, as a prank on an older cousin of his who did not believe that he could actually write software.

Now Malcolm was sixteen and had just moved to North Valley, because his father had accepted a contract from the Navy to work in the field of artificial intelligence. On the plus side, this meant that for most of the time, he could have the entire house for himself. On the minus side, this meant attending a new school and meeting new people, with whom he would have to socialize. Malcolm hated that: he found most people irritating, deceitful, or just plain incomprehensible.
With other people there were countless activities, subtle body signs, attitudes, ways to talk, that somehow were instinctual to others, but to him they were incredibly hard to learn and imitate. Every time he had tried, he had always ended up looking like a poseur; his attempts to "act casual" had been mistaken for attempts to make fun of somebody else; his sincerity had been taken as insolence. That is why he had pretty much given up on that. He would much rather spend his time by himself, at his computer. Computers were logical, computers just made sense.