Page 181 of Nearly Roadkill
His dirty dozen, as he has come to regard them fondly, swarm through EcoTech like ants at a picnic. He knows he’s just missed them. Shelly Dunlap looks up from one of the monitors.
“Got something interesting here, Wally. It’s the master database for the Registration. They tapped into the ACI master file!”
“How? Never mind. What’d they do to it?”
Shelly pauses before answering.
“Well,” she says slowly, “they’ve given it a command it can’t comply with.”
He lifts a craggy eyebrow. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” she says, “there’s gonna be no more database, no more Registration, no more online marketing, and…” She pauses.
“And?”
“And you won’t have to be Ms. Budge anymore.”
“Well, ain’t that a pleasant surprise.”
The two of them stare into the screen for a few moments.
“Those two little idiots won’t find anything important, will they, Wally?”
“Nah, they hit delete. But we’ve got them. On my home turf. I’ll have them in custody in less than two hours.”
On the screen before them, the hourglass sits squarely in the middle of the screen.
END JABBA NARRATIVE ENTRY
PERSONAL LOG, JABBATHEHUT
There is only the gun-rights node left, and my own of course. No strike. Well, not unless I tap this little button here. The button that someone there should have tapped but didn’t know how. When oh when did activism become the bureaucracy it was founded to take down?
::flicking my wrist::
And the node is disabled.
My own node is easy as well. For me that is.
::flicking my other wrist::
All this wrist flicking has made me weary.
Viva la revolución and goodnight!
END JABBA PERSONAL LOG
17SHOTS FIRED
To:Editor, They/Them magazine
From:D.I. Drew
Subject:Anthems
Hi Asa,
As we all learned in school, against all odds the internet shut down. But imho one of its biggest obstacles was its biggest achievement: cooperation. Every single node eventually shut down, even the last few holdouts. Also uplifting were the range and depth of people’s signoff “anthems.” Here’s one I really loved.
