Re: The Show Must Go Off

The Show Must Go Off–part ten
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MCL-BeltMiner#C485640624
Preparation hadn’t been enough. Reading the Bible passages and researching what clergy did for cops had helped, but that wasn’t enough either. Quick thinking and cagey promises got me through that ten seconds without my implant confessing for me all over the local net or putting me to sleep and paging the Enforcers. The Old Testament had plenty of examples of people killing each other righteously, but I always wondered how they were sure. Those crazies that kill abortion specialists, divorcees, infidels, what have you–they all think they’re doing it righteously too. And there wouldn’t be any people LEFT. “For all have fallen short,” right? It wasn’t but two hundred years ago that that cult started building the doomsday weapon on Earth’s moon and had to be put down. They were only going to kill the sinners, too!
Cops, soldiers, Enforcers, all of them get special blessings, forgiveness, grace, or whatever their own religion does when they have to kill, maim, do what they do. The problem there was, no one was paying me to do something that incidentally might have included killing. Or were they? The woman of their group had hacked in to Arbitration and declared that I had okayed knives for this one fight. It was a lie, but did she get a cut of the winnings? She obviously WAS in an arrangement with Shorty–and he had paid me for use of the room via a pro cleaner fee . . . That only worked if I appointed myself the cleaner and asked for no help. And verified she had an arrangement with Shorty . . . And forgave her that lie. Oh! And told Chugger the room wouldn’t be ready. I resolved not to avenge the lie. To make up the difference of forgiveness as I could. I pinged Chugger. I quick-referenced her sign-on and got their identities. Circumstantial evidence existed in chat form. My StayNeur equalized.
The knife and implants had fallen on the body. I ran twenty-seven scenarios as I walked the six small steps to it. I picked up the knife, gave myself three small nicks on my left forearm, impersonating defensive wounds, and started arranging the implants. I unlocked the bathroom, got out some spray cleaner with strong ammonia, sprayed the room. I knifed his wounds a bit more, making them less precise. I cleaned the knife. I GameFaced ethereal psychotic calm, laid the clean knife on the floor, and opened the door–ready, I hoped, for anything. Three minutes the door had been shut max.

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