Thought you guys should all read it.
Quote from SatireA flash of newspaper headlines flickered between the hands of Mr. Jones, Head of IPAU (Internet Protection Agency United, though united against or with what nobody may
ever know), ‘Drug Scandal Discovered’, ‘First Bank of America: Bomb Threat’, ‘Three Children Missing’, he barely took time to look at them anymore. He had much more important things to
be doing, he was protecting the internet. His aged computer monitor flashed blue in his dingy apartment, or as he preferred to call it, Grand Corporation Head Quarters of Crime Fighting
Super Heroes or something like that.
........ Mr. Jones tossed his newspaper into his paper shredder, paper made good kindling, and it was going to be a cold winter. Water dripped from a soggy spot on the roof, a
broken computer monitor, half full with water, collected the water and kept it from ruining Mr. Jones paradise of justice. His eyes were glazed over; he didn’t sleep much these days. On
his computer monitor glowed a myspace home-page of a fake high-school girl he had invented from pictures he had found on google images. He had already befriended several other
‘high-schoolers’ from his city’s area. Technically what he was doing wasn’t wrong, he had approval from the city court, and besides, he was catching criminals, not stealing children.
.......He was particularly suspicious of one of the girls on his friends list, he had the sneaking suspicion that she had the potential to bully someone. He didn’t want her to hurt anybody, he
would have to provoke her. But he was so tired, his eyelids started drooping, how could kids be on myspace at such a late hour? He glanced up at the newspaper headline on his tack
board for support, ‘Girl Commits Suicide over Myspace Comments, that one always helped remind him why he was doing this. To protect kids on the internet, sort of like an internet police
deputy, or superhero, he chuckled a little to himself. That one also, always, helped, an internet super hero, browsing this series of tubes for internet scum.
.............That was enough of a detour, he needed to get back to his work, he clicked on the girl in question and began to type his message. “I don’t like you. You are dumb. I do
not think you are pretty.” If she responded in a mean way she was an internet bully and by law he could have her fined. Now he just had to wait until she responded, his internet was
slow, forget updating to DSL, he didn’t need to be fast, just patient. This gave him a lot of time to think. So he thought a lot. Sometimes, when he was in one of his more pensive moods
he liked to wonder, bitterly, why he was working out of a dingy office and Chris Hanson had his own television series. They were basically doing the same thing, except kind of different.
........That was 15 years ago. Now he had a large office, an up to date computer, and a secretary. Yeah that’s right, a secretary, he wasn’t exactly sure what she did that was worth $16
an hour (the minimum wage) but a secretary at your door said, “Hey world, look at me, I’m successful.” And he liked that. His computer even had tabbed browsing, so he could catch
multiple internet bullies at once. One of his 72 tabs, most of them were open to various forums or myspace accounts, was open to Digg, he liked to be in the know, but he hadn’t checked
Digg for a while now. Most of the stories were uninteresting to him, seriously, how could ‘California strikes against the United states: Becomes Independent Country’, or ‘Russia Declares
War on the Independent Country of Alaska’, or ‘Mexican Drug Lords Establish Foothold in Southern States’, or ‘Terrorist Organization Thwarted: More Members yet to be Incarcerated’, or
‘Entire State of New York succumbs to Energy Crisis: Gas Prices upwards of $12 a barrel/ Nuclear Reactor Malfunctions’, or especially, ‘Internet Pedophile cases have increased by 24fold
since 2010 (That was the year that Mr. Jones managed to convince the government to regulate the internet by forcing users to supply their real names, addresses, and phone numbers, at
the threat of heavy fines. He was quite the go to guy in the government now, if you want to catch internet bullies of course, but not much else).
.......Oh, but he was so proud of his company. He’d fined or arrested thousands of internet bullies since his meager beginnings in 2007. Yes, that’s right, now, at the press of a button he
could have an internet bully jailed for 2-5 years. ‘Verbal Abuse and Judge of Character’, was the legal term for it. Of course the prisons were so full now that people were getting forced
out with every new induction, murderers, burglars, terrorist, but it was no big deal. He was keeping children from having their social lives irreparably ruined by the social outcasts and other
misfits who made fun of people on the internet to bolster their own warped egos. That was one of his slogans; it went over well with parents, well parents whose kids weren’t in adult
prison.
........What the? His internet was out. He couldn’t load any pages, he kept on getting the same damned error message, darned, he corrected himself, he mustn’t sink to the level of the
people he removed from the streets. If only his infernal internet would start working again. He glanced at his watch nervously, it had already been fifteen minutes.
Seven hours later his secretary took off, though he wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t told him so, remember, she doesn’t actually do anything, and the internet was still off. This was
taking forever, the internet had gone down a couple of times before but never for this long. He started to worry. What if the internet never came back on? No, no, no, that would cause
all sorts of problems, that would be worse than Armageddon. If there are no Internet Bullies, then he was out of work. If there was no internet he couldn’t catch any Internet Bullies. No
Internet Bullies, there were no more internet bullies. His life’s dream.
..........Before he knew what he was doing he was up at the door, his eyes glazed over what looked like blue-prints for an explosive or something of the like on his secretaries desk, but he
barely noticed. He grabbed his jacket and winged down the stairs, the door slammed behind him, he didn’t bother to lock it, there was no point, there was no lock, in fact there was no
knob. He raced down the stairs, the handrail fell away from his trailing hands. He pushed away a few begging children and barged out the door. A scream broke from his lips as he looked
around.
........But it was not the scream of a happy, crazed, ecstatic man. Around him men, women, and children ran through the dust clogged streets, gesturing and screaming erratically. Rubble
covered the streets, abandoned needles and cigarettes spilled out of alleyways, a crippled man slept comfortably in a warm pool of his own blood. It was the scream of a man who realizes
that his life is near an end, and that he has done nothing to warrant its completion. Above him the fiery trail of a missile lit up the afternoon sky, casting a pleasant sepia tone on the
cobbled road.