Making A Killing

The ghost appeared and tried to scare me with a loud screech, with lots of teeth and such.

I sighed and shook my head.

"New here?"

The ghost looked confused.

"Look, I get it, you died, that sucks, I get it, and you have the compulsion to try and kill someone else, that's to restore the balance of life and death, just so you know. But the scary faces and such, they only work in specfic circumstances.

So look, just work with me here, I have bookings for assassinations, just go where I tell you, and we both win, cool?"

Uploaded

I had only a few minutes to upload the file. There was no time for discussion of the whats and whys I'd left it so late, that could, and would, come later. All that mattered was that the file was fully uploaded before midnight.

I watched the progress bar with more intensity than I'd watched anything in my life, as it moved, slowly, quickly, paused, backwards even? But finally, with a few seconds left, it finished.

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, until midnight passed.

And I saw that it was still waiting for a description and wasn't finished.

Levelled Out

It was to be the great equaliser. He'd spent a few years piecing together all the code he needed for the virus to do what he wanted. It would hack into every computer system that held financial records and remove all evidence and trace of owed money. Medical debts, student loans, home loans, all of it gone in an instant. Once people destroyed their hard records, they would be free.

The virus worked, but then the government just rammed through legislation that allowed those in power to 'calculate' owed money based on their own judgement.

It levelled everyone with debt.

Typed Up

The Embassy had been sending the messages for months, highly encrypted, cutting edge stuff.

We had dozens working on it for most of those months, intercepting them, analysing, trying to break the encryption.

Eventually, after we called in almost all our top people, and dedicated most of our tech to the project, we finally broke the encryption, revealing it was their supply requests. Like for paperclips and coffee stirrers.

Everyone began to work on breaking this obvious code system. Except me, as I began to focus on all the other messages they'd been sending unencumbered as we'd focused on this.

Call Around

When criminals, sorry, "enterprising individuals" reached out for someone to hack into a computer or security system, they always have lofty ideas of what they assume I'm like, not to mention my set up.

They expect some supernerd with a computer system out of a space station. The amateurs are disappointed when they see me and learn my most used skills are sounding pleasant on the phone as I ask about password protection. The experts just want to know if I can do the job.

Of course, for the rare times the phone call fails, my computer is space station-esque. 

Sunrise

As I opened my eyes, I saw another blasted sunrise, and I had to ask myself if I truly cared about seeing another.

The world was a trashfire at the best of times, and this was very much not the best of times. And then all my personal losses had come, one after each other, until I had nothing left, practically.

And so, here I was, contemplating... things, as I stared into the sun that had been around for billions of years, and would be around for billions more.

The bastard.

Spite isn't a traditional driver, but works for me.

Belt Tightening

I paused for the fifteen time that hour to pull up my pants. She couldn't help but notice.

"You ok?"

I sighed.

"I've lost weight recently, and now my pants keep falling down."

"Oh, congratulations!"

"It's not a positive, I'm sick of having to yank on these things!"

She seemed shocked.

"But think of all the health benefits you have!"

"I think of them maybe once an hour. I'm pulling up my pants once a minute. No contest."

"So buy new pants!"

"I can't, I've spent all my money on all the fresh food needed to lose the damn weight!"