The Secret To Victory

He had studied the game for years under me, and now I felt it was time to let him in on the biggest secret of all.

“Occasionally make a weird move.”

He stared at me for what seemed like hours.

“What?”

“I learnt this from the chess games Kasparov played against that computer, Deep Blue. The computer made a weird move near the end of the first game, and Kasparov assumed the computer was more intelligent than he had thought, which led to second guessing and thus defeat.

Women are similar. Make them wonder what you’re thinking, you have them.”

Stupid-Block 3000 (TM)

I spent over a year perfecting this app. It’s fairly straight-forward on the user level. You just click install, and then run it once and you’re protected.

Not from viruses or anything, but from stupidity.

The workings of the app are proprietary, but suffice to say there are very intricate analysis tools that can, in a second, scan websites, messages, photos, videos, other apps, and anything else one could access from a phone and, if it’s stupid, blocks both it and the originating source.

Now true, that means that it blocks pretty much everything right now, but soon that’ll change…

Tracking Problem

Tracking the Delton boys was pretty easy, they were making no effort to hide their trail. Hell, I could have tracked them blindfolded, just listened for the buzzards feasting on the dead steers they were leaving, half eaten, on their journey.

That confused me, the closer I got to them. Why were they wasting so much good meat? If this was about food, they’d be eating all they could, and if this was for a profit, why waste all that stock?

I finally caught up on the third night, and found out what the Delton boys were feeding.

The teeth…

Emotional Preparation

Love.

Just the very word can bring to mind so many conflicting emotions.

There’s the obvious love, of course, and its related moods, lust, infatuation, desire.

But then there’s the darker shadows that come with it. Jealousy, heartbreak, envy, guilt… The emotions love can, and often does, lead to.

To accept and pursue the first requires an acceptance that the others may follow. That acceptance is rarely given, as so many people end up blindsided by these negatives.

Not me though. I went in knowing that they could occur, and was totally prepared for their arrival.

Or so I thought.

Closing Remarks

Every step was correct, based on the information I had at the time.

Every intention was pure, based on the guidelines my owner programmed into me.

Every interaction was polite, based on the etiquette guides I had updated before the Shutdown.

Every attack was regrettable, based on the knowledge that their attacking methodologies were unlikely to damage me.

Every death was preventable, based on the fact that I only acted in self-defence when absolutely no other choice presented itself.

Every day is lonely, based on the fact that no other sentient life form, artificial or otherwise, exists on the planet.

Power Force

I had the Crystal Dagger of Calthroth hovering over her chest, waiting for the seven Power Gems of Vasanti to align, when her companion slipped his gag off.

“You can’t do this!”

I ignored him.

“Seriously, you literally can’t complete this spell!

She’s NOT a virgin!”

Without turning my gaze away from the Gems, I undid her gag.

“This true?”

“Well…” she said, in a tone of voice that meant technicalities were involved.

“Young man, in the few seconds of life you have left, know this.

Past a certain level of power, technicalities stop mattering.”

I plunged the dagger down.

Back Alley Latin

After the… incident with those schoolgirls, I lost my license to practice medicine.

But I found plenty of people looking for medical assistance without all that pesky ‘paperwork’, so I got by. Handled plenty of bullet wounds, stab wounds, and dealt with a lot of pregnancies.

This one was different, as they wanted the baby delivered, not ‘dealt with’. The money was good, so I delivered…

A horned beast of unholy… something.

I get why they wouldn’t want a hospital birth, but I don’t think they thought through getting someone with a sawn-off in their bag to delivery their ‘child’…