I’ve learned a few lessons over the course of my life. The first is that love doesn’t exist. The second is that there is only one true emotion in the human repertoire: Greed. People always told me that there were things money couldn’t buy; those people were wrong. I’ve been told that you can’t put a price on a human life, but, as my parents proved long ago, you can.
The only thing that matters in life is power. It doesn’t matter if that power is from monetary assets, connections, or political weight. In the poorer areas of the world sometimes power is as simple as a having a gun in your hands.
I’ve spent my entire life clawing for more power, and I guess that’s how I ended up here.
‘Where is here?’ You may ask…
Death Row. I’m slated to be executed by lethal injection today.
My name is Aria Smith, and I’m the founder and CEO of Full Neural Connection Incorporated. That’s right. I own the company that developed the world’s first fully immersive 100% sensory connected Virtual Reality Console… And I’m also responsible for the 300,000 deaths caused by it.
I full well knew the risk of addiction to virtual worlds when I pushed the product past testing phase. I simply underestimated how powerful the stimulation would be. When I first heard that over 100,000 people had died after merely two weeks on the open market, my first thoughts were over how much profit we’d lose from their subscriptions terminating. Then I worried about what potential lawsuits would be coming our way.
I never once bothered thinking they’d go so far as to prosecute me criminally. Of course I realized, after it was too late, that the criminal prosecution and all the fault being laid on my shoulders was due to a plot from the second largest shareholder Justin Whynequest. I always took him for a cuckolded bastard, but even he had ambition in the end. I could only admit my defeat.
In the end, those deaths were my fault. I don’t see why I couldn’t just pay reparations, though. The whole concept behind trying me for genocide felt a bit absurd. Apparently I’m one of the most hated people in the world now. I couldn’t even be placed in a regular prison section because I’d be murdered in seconds. The women were drawing lots to see who got to shiv me first, it seems.
My execution was going to be the first public showing of capital punishment in the last 200 years. It was going to be televised. I suppose the entire world wanted to watch me break down and cry. It’s a shame, but I won't give them anything of that sort. Right now, the only power I have is over my own actions. To grovel, cry, or to beg would tarnish my reputation.
In my last moments, I will give the world a laugh befitting the Auger of Souls. I want the name Aria to become more tainted than Hitler. This will be the last power I can ever hold. The power to damn this world that spawned me. The power to revel in the sin of man.
The guard, fully armed, approached my door. The look in his eyes was incredible. He was smiling. If I wasn’t fully restrained, I’d have tried to gouge his eyes out with my fingernails.
I was walked through the prison. I heard the other inmates screaming profanities at me as I passed. I didn’t flinch, even as they flung bodily fluids through the bars of their cells. I stood firm, ignoring it. It didn’t matter how barbaric those bitches acted, I wasn’t going to give them what they wanted.
“I’ve heard they’re using a slow poison for you, Aria,” said the guard with a bit of a smile. He didn’t seem to mind that unmentionables aimed at me were landing on him as well. Though, to be fair, he was wearing a full on modern hazmat suit. “They want you to suffer as much as possible in your last moments, to show the world that even demons like you feel pain.”
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“Good,” I replied without any intonation, “I look forward to giving a show.”
I was escorted into a small room where a camera crew was set up. In the center of the room was a chair with several leather belt-straps and a tray with needles lined up alongside it. A priest and a man wearing doctor robes were standing beside it.
The guard walked me to the chair and I sat down of my own accord. He quickly strapped my arms, legs, and head down tightly.
“Could you loosen the legs a bit, Paul,” I asked. In reply he pulled the strap tighter. I couldn’t hold back my smirk before replying, “Thank you.”
The priest came over and began reading my last rites or some shit. I hadn’t believed in God since my third birthday, so I simply drowned his words out. Instead I was focused on the camera and the uptight woman talking into a microphone in front of it. Once the priest finished the doctor began preparing the needles and some sanitary pads.
The reporter walked to the chair and held the microphone next to my face.
“Aria Smith, do you regret your actions? Have you come to terms with your death?” Asked the woman in a clear voice.
I looked right into the camera and gave it a shit-eating grin. “Heh, regret? I have no such thing,” I said as my smile grew wider, “why did so many people give in to the Virtual World I created? Why did they choose to die in its embrace rather than return to this reality?! It’s because I gave them something they could not get here. I gave them purpose. I gave them life. I sated their wanderlust. If I had to come up with a regret, it’s that I didn’t develop the SVR fast enough! I invented something that could satiate the greed of mankind to the point that they no longer desired to even live. I am proud of my own value, and that I lived.”
The reporter seemed a bit stunned. She asked no more questions as she backed away from me. The doctor, it seems, had finished his preparations. He flicked the needle in his hand, and a yellow liquid dripped from the end.
Then, very carefully, he injected me with the toxin.
It felt like my entire bloodstream was lit on fire. The pain was immense, but I did not cry out. I did not flinch.
“With this, the world’s most hated woman dies,” said the reporter in quiet words to the camera. I looked directly into the lens and forced my smile even broader than before. I started to snicker. It was hard to hold it in. It was so terribly hard. Eventually I gave in and began bellowing in laughter.
The pain slowly began to fade, and my vision started to blur. I kept laughing. I forced myself to keep laughing. The power I held, with every human being with access to a television watching me, was too immense for words. They were all watching me! I had felt strong in the past, but at that moment I was powerful beyond measure. Imagine if I told people to drink a particular Soda, or eat a particular brand of food! Just imagine how incredible it would be.
The feeling began to fade from my limbs. Then my face. My eyes closed.
With all the force I could muster, I let loose one final laugh before succumbing to the sweet embrace of the reaper.