Nemesis is Coming

I'm so brave when my enemies are far far away.  For some reason it never occurs to me that they might travel.  An email hit my inbox the other day that sent a trickle of ice down my spine.  Well I say "inbox" I actually mean "spam filter" because as my Belarusian tech support have pointed out it's basically the same thing and I certainly don't need both.  I'll trust my eastern European technomancers to deal with any issues that arise.  They were perfectly capable of dealing with the modified stuxnet worm the NSA unleashed on my systems a few days ago.  I asked them if they had any idea why the NSA might be targeting me but they said it was probably a coincidence and absolutely nothing to do with what they were doing with my computer while I was asleep.

Anyway the email that chilled me to the bone read as follows;

"Fear me, for I am coming!  From across the seas I descend, my shrieking minions by my side!  Great shall be your despair and devastation your fate!  We shall make a plaything of your hopes and crush your soul beneath our feet!" 

In terror I realised that my Tasmanian correspondent was coming for a visit and she was bringing her children.  Things have been a little, shall we say, "tense" between us recently.  There is the question of several years unpaid salary (in my defence nobody was prepared to convert Australian dollars into Tasmanian currency) a certain level of personal abuse (in my defence I didn't think she would be coming to Sydney any time soon) and boastful threats that I honestly didn't expect to be called on to carry out.  Now I would be made to pay for my transgressions and also the transgressions of my tech support team who (unknown to me) have been using her computer to distribute phishing scams world wide.

In desperation I contacted my Belarusian miracle workers, surely they could prevent this.  It wouldn't be the first airliner they had brought down into the sea.  Sadly they informed me they were tied up arranging North Korea's next missile test and couldn't spare the resources.  Also they'd already sold the television rights to the ensuing carnage when my reporter and I met face to face world wide.  Apparently its 8-1 odds against my surviving the encounter.  They did offer me a share of the t-shirt sales if I could survive more than five minutes.

Traitors!  I won't be lying to the Federal Police for them again.  Abandoned by all I grimly made my preparations.  I covered the floor of my apartment in butcher's paper (to soak up the blood), alerted the paramedics (which didn't do any good as they all had the afternoon off to watch proceedings on tv) and made sure I had a lot of sharp implements near to hand (these are to commit suicide with if the encounter becomes to painful to bear).  With all of that done I set my jaw and girded my loins and waited for the inevitable.  To help defuse the situation I decided to gather my co-workers around me and hold the meeting in a public location.  Perhaps the presence of witnesses would restrain my correspondent's wrath.  The news that all of my co-workers had bet against me didn't give me much hope.

The simple fact of the matter is my correspondent still hasn't forgiven me for demanding that she throw herself in front of the truck taking Mr Moo to the abattoir.  My, thoroughly reasonable, suggestion that she toss one of her kids in front of it instead was even less well received.  On Monday I receive my comeuppance for this and other crimes.