Q Report; Q Ends Z
The target was designate Z and Q had no idea where to find him. He had taken what he could of the fallen member’s weapons, but the smoke grenades had plunged into a nest of no less than a dozen Lizardmen which had allowed Q only moments of retreat before the next batch rounded the corner. It wouldn’t be so bad if not for the klaxons. You hear them in video games and campy action movies, but even the makers of these amusements know the threshold of human patience. Not so in the real world. In the real world a high pitched screeching drives hoards of mutated and cybertronicaly enhanced Lizardmen to eat anything that looks non-lizard.
No no. Q would die to these klaxons, but not before he found the target. Moskovitz came around the corner double fisting a pump action and laid a spray into Q that blasted him off his feet like a flying arm-bar. Q’s armor held form, but several ribs would never be fine with inhaling ever again. Moskovitz jack-hammered a shell into the breach but the shotgun jams. Q has just enough time to get to his feet and put a rapier through him before watching a dance of pain, feet soft shoeing like a horrifying marionette hanged with gazpacho.
Moskovitz never believed it would ever go down like this. Back in Harvard everything was so easy. After they launched FB it was a wash of money like none imagined. Why would anyone ever give us so much money? They would often muse to one another. What more can we spend it on? What more do we want?
Billionaires and God Kings alike ponder these questions behind troubled and well manicured brows. I could buy France? I could have a different moon vehicle for every day of the week? I could cure cancer or AIDS? I could give most of it to the impoverished and starving? I could buy an F-16 from Iran and use it to get around? The trouble that afflicts these mongers is the same. When faced with the endless possibility of it all. The Absolute Power of Super-Finance, and the human brain boils down to one simple question;
“How Can I MAKE MORE MONEY!?!?!?”
At the very center of our consciousness there lives our oldest emotions and most lasting questions. Questions we cannot help but continue asking and continue attempting to solve. It is our need to know that unifies us and damns us. For in a world of the infinite; How Much Money Can I Make? Is the question that drives us into ruin, chaos, and damnation.
Q puts the blade into Moskovitz with the cruelty of a bull fighter and the compassion of the doctor he claims to be. It is a masterful lunge that skews through the trigger guard of a shotgun and pierces the viscera like so much pulled pork. A trigger finger falls to the screaming ground and as he falls Moskovitz releases the useless scatter gun. Q spits on him before remembering his gas mask is on. Moskovitz goes for a pocket and Q prepares to remove the hand, but a diminutive gesture says that it’s not needed. A digital control of unimaginable shininess erupts from his pocket and with the press of the three digit combination the klaxons stop. Q captures the combination with his onboard computer.
“MOSKOVITZ! YOU FUCKER! I TOLD YOU I’D PUT A BLADE IN YOU!” – says Q before remembering that his audio out was set in the upper 100s of decibels (klaxons).
Moskovitz immediately falls unconscious from the sonic concussion. There comes then a still silence on the compound. The Lizardmen are singing. Q walks to the balcony to see what the singing could be about and there they are, lined up (dressed?) like the Mormon Tabernacle choir. Screeching in dulcet and lilting harmony. It is Tchaikovsky’s “Nut Cracker Sweet” gently cascading into the night. From this surreal scene Q let’s a cry unto the wind. The insanity of it all. The chaos and misfortune and carnage!
“WWHHYYYYYY!!!?!?!?” he howls into the air, the question resounding into the cool evening.
It was an act of piracy that would go down in history as the worst act ever perpetrated. Eons later the name of Zuckerberg would be spat to the floor and stomped on to keep his foul act from echoing into a far more civilized age. The broadcast came from a secure location that terrible night. There were the three golden children arrayed before us on television and monitor. On cell phone and PDA. Zuckerberg, Moskovitz, and Hughes. The Trisect of Information. They had talked among themselves on how best to break it and they all agreed it would have to be in the air. Much harder to track. Particularly in Africa.
Gazing down at the Serengeti they plotted for only five minutes before deciding it was time to drop the hammer. They satellite linked and used the power of the DataStream to create a world broadcast that made Lex Luthor look like an asshole.
“All your lives are belong to us!!” said Hughes (he was always the joker) and the three set to laughing like jackals. “We have the copywrite to everything you have uploaded, ever. Facebook is now a pay site! We will accept blood and food! Bow before your Facebook Overlords!!!”
The economy collapsed in an instant. Digital information that had once seemed valuable now became intangible trash. They had uploaded it all to the FB. They had foolishly given over baby pictures that would be collected by suicidal Copywrite Police, they only doing it so as not to give so much blood to the FBO’s. America handed over control over information and in an act of deference to the Overlords Three burned the Library of Congress to the ground. Librarians made a pilgrimage to the bonfire to hurl themselves into the conflagration. Commending their spirits to the heavens through ritual sacrifice to the InfoSphere. Wall Street stopped happening.
There is an old saying among pirates; “The only thing that can kill a pirate is a pirate.”
This is of course very true, if not terribly inane. The Guild brooked with the total collapse of government and finance quite well. Monasteries and Heroes Schools operated free of the grid for just such a purpose. Their internal computer archives ensured that literature was saved. Their solariums ensured that the tomatoes watered themselves, and their underground bunkers had canned goods enough to feed an army. Or at least a Guild. It was the ethical dilemma of what to do next that vexed house leaders into internal contestation. The Broadsword House demanded immediate advancement into the most afflicted areas to provide protection for innocents and evacuation to safer elements. With begrudging condescendence the Katana House, honor bound to protect their Guild Brothers followed them into the wasted and were soon enough subsumed by the chaos. Guild Agents who survived past the initial bloodshed parted ways with wards of humanity following them to safety. Begrudging shepherds to a shell shocked flock.
With two houses down, the remaining Monasteries and Guild Houses puttered around. Fighting off hordes of ravagers and lesser pirates until there remained but few to defend the walls. Solarium destroyed by a shoddy catapult and reserve stores of food given to youngsters and oldsters Q knew that the fuse was run out. As House Master he was beholden to no one, and rather than waste away in the monastery he took up his Fine Rapier, called a team to arms, and set out to fell the man who had seemingly Out Pirated the self proclaimed
Greatest Pirate In The World; Q. QP Quaddle D.D.S.
The dental license was honorary, but his skill was peerless. He had taken Hughes in New New Orleans, a wharf community of houseboats, solar rigs, and residential tankers. Hughes had given Q the location but he never did tell him about the –
“Lizardmen Agent Q.” said Zuckerberg, and chuckled quietly, “All of the money and information in the world and all I ever really wanted was an army of Lizardmen.”
Q turned down his broadcast so as not to deafen Z.
“Why...” asked Q, “...do they sing like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir?”
“The answer’s in the question Dr. Q.” said Zuckerberg, “They refused to eat the tainted lizard meat at first, but even a Mormon loses control now and again. The Cybertronic enhancements are not purely for control purposes. They also control fecundity. You’ve come to kill me I imagine?”
“Very astute of you Mark.” Said Q, “But no, I don’t kill people.”
At this Zuckerberg hesitated.
“Surely you killed Hughes?” said Z
“I did the same thing to him that I’m going to do to you, Z. The most depraved physical act you can imagine is but a dim candle in a darkness you shall know for the rest of your days. I have been sent by Man to destroy you, but I will do them one better and create for you a hell beyond comprehension.”
There was a scream as Z hefted a pistol to his defense, but billionaires don’t shoot guns as often as they should, and rarely at humans. The first two rounds were high and to the left and in those impossible milliseconds where the fortune of heroes lay in the whisper-long decrescendo of time, in that window of opportunity Q struck with the righteousness of a robbed bridegroom on his wedding day. He struck with the passion of a million discredited artists and a million more robbed of their songs. He struck home and with the tearing of meat, the splash of blood, and through the ridged throws of pain Q blighted Z out of the DataStream and into darkness forever.
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