Rubik's Kill

My grandfather was a bombardier during the Big War. He served under Sir Arthur Harris. Gramps flew the first wave over Dresden. He led the squadron that flew the Berlin missions. He did that for days. The Dresden death toll estimates range from 35 to 135 thousand.

After the war, when the death tolls were printed, he was asked by a cherubic faced reporter with a penchant for squalor if the number of people killed at his hand ever caused him sleepless nights or fits of anguish. I live by his response.

"When removed from the first person, death is nothing but an academic exercise."

And this is certainly even truer today, as death can be dealt as swiftly as a thought. A truly deadly academic exercise.

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I am a specialist. My job is one that even frightens my employers; and they are many. I am a SIECD Technician. It is pronounced just like what you do when you send your dog out to menace someone . . . Sicked.

Synapse Interface Electro-Chemical Disruption.

In essence, I am THE short order cook of the mind. For a fee, and the proper set of conditions, I can fry any brain that becomes Coral.

Coral is what became of the archaic information network known as the Web. Just like a coral reef, it is made up of millions of organisms that "live" as a community and leave behind them enough to build the succeeding levels upon.

Coral uses an intra-personal connection to allow for the interface of "becoming" Coral. This is, for the individual, the screen of the mind.

Coral diving, as it has been referred to most often, has not been around all that long. In it’s infancy, jacking into a coral bed was a very intense and hard to modulate experience. Some just didn’t come back.

(Their skeletons, metaphorically, were used to build a better, safer Coral.)

As time went on, differing skill levels began to show within the populace. I am an empath. The Lord can’t protect you from what I can do if we find ourselves on the same circuit.

I haven’t always done this kind of work. Once I used my empathetic abilities to heal and help. Once I was happy with my lot in life’s plan. I had a wife that I adored beyond measure; who failed to respond to the gifts that worked so well with total strangers.

She died.

She died badly.

She died and took my soul with her.

For a year after that I was not consolable. My best friend, and now my primary employer, took care of all the details of my life during that period. I couldn’t face her death, her funeral; my failure. And then death was no longer first person.

I suppose it was a certain amount of bitterness that catalyzed my first job. I know that I was somewhat surprised at the pride and lack of remorse after my first success.

Death WAS an academic exercise, and I was a scholar.

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"This job is a simple matter of burning out a sleazer at the root," Freidrich, my employer and friend explained. "This Weasel has been turning girls in directions they wouldn’t choose alone. Think of this one as a public service."

A Sleazer is the second lowest form of Cyber criminal. Sleazing involves planting subliminal messages into Coral Code to manipulate the actions of individual users. A Weasel is a Sleazer who uses his ability to impress sexual urges on underage prey. Nobody would suffer a Sleazy Weasel to live.