In an unprecedented digital coup, zombies from the popular Walking Dead video game have reportedly migrated into the European Union's Human Brain Project (HBP), devouring its simulated cerebrum in a mishap that has left scientists dumbfounded and administrators considerably lighter in their fiscal wallets.
Famed for its audacious goal of modelling the human brain within a computer, the HBP had amassed an impressive coffer of €607 million, which has now been metaphorically chewed down to the bone marrow by the shambling digital undead.
The infamous incident revealed a malicious and previously overlooked cross-overpath between applications when an avid gamer, 15-year-old Horatio McPhee, inadvertently opened the gates of the cerebral cortex to the Walking Dead hordes. "I just wanted to see what happens when a zombie meets a brain cell," Horatio commented while continuing his zealously determined campaign to wipe out the entire simulated brain ecosystem.
Dr. Penelope Strudwick, the lead engineer of the HBP, was baffled by the incident.
"Where is the brain in the Human Brain Project? Well, unfortunately, it's sitting in reeking zombie bellies right now," she stated, in disbelief. "We have robust firewalls to keep off hackers, but we simply didn't predict zombie intrusion. Who could've seen it coming? Euro-zombies, no less!"
The zombies, having consumed and thereby 'learned' the intricacies of the simulated brain, rapidly evolved beyond their initial capacity to just groaning and nibbling. They now seem to be forming the very essence of an undead intellectual society, complete with their flatulence-based Ol-factory, a zombie industry dedicated to pumping disease-ridden pheromones into the air to attract more humans for consumption.
"This incident is a clear reminder to us all that science, however advanced, splendidly fails in the face of a well-practised 15-year-old gamer with questionable morals and insatiable desire to explore the world's oddest crossovers," summarised Professor Fergus McWhinney of the Allen Human Brain Atlas in Seattle, Washington.
The authorities are currently examining the virtual crime scene to quantify the loss to the HBP, whilst teams of digital exterminators have been dispatched to stymie the brain-eating menace. Reportedly, a few specially 'brain-trained and acclimatized' packs of digital dogs are on standby, ready to provide a much needed counter to this unexpected and sudden surge in intellectual zombie activity.