Jacob was still standing outside the beast’s home. Under its golden steeple tower. The beast, Emanuel or whoever he was, stood by the manor door. Whistling nonchalantly. Eyeing Jacob and running his long fingers through his hair. His locks were burnt-brown, crisp, and almost too straight. Despite how convincing they were, Jacob suspected it was a wig. For his whitely-green arms were quite hairless and he lacked any manly stubble. The biography of Monovalent’s co-creator had mentioned his deformity, but Jacob hadn’t realized the extent.

  “Come back here boy,” he said to Jacob, “when you have achieved anything of note. For do-gooders really are trifling bores. To defeat evil, one must first understand it. Yet people with soft, sentimental hearts and great, empty heads are easily hoodwinked and tricked due to their naivety, just as you have been by my Shiver. It is so simple to fool them into believing that the blackest devil is the whitest angel.”

  Suddenly, Ember flittered down prettily from one of the beast’s trees. Where had she come from? Jacob wondered. He hadn’t spotted her in the beast’s garden before. “Please rescue me,” Jacob she said. “Be my Knight.”

  He realized she was holding a sword in her hand. It was a fabulous sword. Ruby-hilted and with the silveriest of sheens and with a menacing glint to its blade. It was like something out of a sleeping beauty-esque fairytale. The Swamp Beast’s Fable. Something you would be gifted during a grand, herculean conquest. One featuring a great, sword-wielding champion.

  Princess Ember took a graceful, hesitant step forward. She turned to face her creator.

  “Shiver, my dearest, you are here,” the beast exclaimed with great delight. Spoke with such sheer joy, a level of joy that Jacob had never before heard. Its tone was gentle but somehow also thunderous As if it rained down with a vengeance from some beauteous heaven and all the swans swirled down with it. This image entered his head, just as a flock of the true fair birds circled above the reptilian thing’s head before dissipating. Soon vanished, their white majesty.

  One of Emanuel’s little creations would not have been impressed by all his creator’s fiery tricks and illusions. Had Mist been present to see more of the man’s theatrics, he would have simply rolled his eyes in disgust.

  Before Jacob realised what was happening he had stabbed the beast, stabbed it right through the heart.

  Blood flew out in a sea of darkness, more black than red and the beast spoke again, with both the thunderous command and the honey, still lacing its voice.

  “Black they made my blood black,” it muttered in an irritated, mild disgust. Shiver, my bright-eyed, beguiling bride that is just a tad on the nose, isn’t it?”

  Meanwhile, Mist was pacing the palace with boredom. Playing King Felton and trapping and tormenting people in a virtual nightmare certainly had its charms but he missed the beauty of unleashing all his grand, viral powers on people. This felt oddly impotent.

  The spectacular days of the Wrighthouse Unit would always be a fond memory for Mist. He drifted happily into one of his old virtualisers.

  Welcome to the Ocema.

  Mist: update to today’s topic: The pre-notification of the death and suffering we are about to with malicious intent cause. On account of some excellent news.

  Shiver: The news fans is Mist, and I have finally met Monovalent the artificial entity who will help us kill all those who get in our way (which is pretty much everyone). Not only that but according to our mysterious AI friend we can not only kill but kill in any precise manner we want but we decided to wait till we now to commence our vengeance spree.

  According to Monovalent the genius scientist Aryan who made us, did with our debut into the world, finally succeeded in the creation of the Shiverla Virus named for me just because evil people are awesome and ice-cold snow maidens are awesome, and I am both.

  Mist actually Shiver named herself per Monovalent’s suggestion after his genetically improved humans the Shiverla who were ourselves named after some mysterious person from one of our creators( not Aryan’s) past.

  Shiver: Back to what we were saying this news goes out to anyone who follows our cause and to (though they are blissfully unaware of it) our targets. Yes, kudos go out to these first recipients of our precious virus, and we just wouldn’t feel right if we didn’t hand out some names.

  So, congratulations fellow students, Carrie Dee Anderson, Ava Grace Cleese, Lily Candice Skinner, Isabella Rose Blitzer, Oliver Mitchell Craig, Ethan Jacob Johnson, Noah Robert Manners, etc, and teacher/councillors; Leila, Aidan, Shaya, etc. You have all been graciously selected for our death of people we hate is funny, program.

  Perhaps if they had the fortunate ability to comprehend words with the literary complexity that their age requires, they might stumble across this site by luck or more likely being a busybody) heed our prior warning and flee the school. Luckily people with IQs of 2.3 don’t understand anything structured past the fifth-grade level. Oh, and also, we blocked them, Monovalent won’t allow their accounts to access it. Well on to the virus......

  Mist: The virus’s engineered to attack and multiply in any part of the body we like as quickly or as slow and agonizingly as we choose( the latter naturally being the one which we prefer. Now as usual we're going to have the segment where we discuss our aforementioned “fun for the day” topic with all you like-minded vengeance-hungry sociopaths. Shiver and I now will briefly run through some ideas on exactly how to execute our virus from hell on our hell (otherwise known as North Wright House Adolescent Rehabilitation unit.

  Shiver: With regards to Lily the whingey. Her hair should fall out first, I told you Mist, definitely before the eyes. Though we should she should definitely make her go blind at some stage. Since Lily has that super long platinum-blonde (dyed of course it used to be this dirty, dark dishwater blonde) hair she’s always babbling so euphorically about.

  I think we should start by getting rid of her competition’s hair and “looks” if you can call such vulgar fashion looks) first though. Then just when Isabella thinks she’s on top, most prettiest girl in the school, we will cure bald, splotchy Lily and make Isabella and Ava ill. Will do this a couple of times with each of them till we get sick of it, then let them lose more and more vitality (and body parts) until we finally “let” them die.

  Shiver: Meanwhile while we waited to unleash our deadly virus upon them, we have been playing pranks on the Wrighthouse cretins. Yesterday Monovalent hacked into and crashed Isabella’s computer, so she lost all data on it. She lost three pieces of homework and a whole English assignment and got a D for late entry ha.

  We pretended to be an ex-girlfriend to break up Lily’s relationship. I told Lily I was her precious boyfriend’s ex, begging me to come back to him. That he’d hooked up with other girls behind my back when we were together. Warning her to steer clear of him, and now she doesn’t have a date for the year 10 end-of-year party. Awesome.

  We hacked into Isabella’s Monovalent realm account and had her “confess” she was the one who wanted Ava to be uninvited to Lily’s party, we don’t know if it was really her or not. Lily for her part is always telling everyone to ignore Ava because she’s a gross, hookup queen but pretends to be her friend and is always hugging her.

  We also made several comments pertaining to Isabella being fat. We also hacked into her virtual story page and staggered around like a drunkard disguised as her, calling Isabella fat, Ava ugly, Lily an anorexic midget, and Noah…a nice, Rainbow person. We deliberately made it look like she was drunk when she made it, to make it plausible.

  Mist: serves her right; imagine thinking people actually care about your boring, pointless life as if couldn’t already guess exactly what you were going to say as their life is identical.

  All that ever changes in virtual realm re-enact, is the person’s name. Here is an account of the average life (shared by some 99% of them) of a virtual realm user. Note this is based (though with hyperbole) on an actual Monovalent Realm entry by our own dear Lily Candice Skinner combined with one by Isabella.

  I get up today and have a piece of toast. I swallow the toast, then go and change my pants and top. I love trying on new fashion combined with all my pretty, holo-filters. It all looks so damn adorable on me, Lannee Not-Another-Princess Star…

  Afterward, I updated my Holo-Realm account to include Rumour by the River among my favourite shows, then met up in virtual realm to tell my friends I just finished my toast which Mum burned yet again. I asked if I should swap my yellow top out for my pink one.

  Ruby, Lisa, and Ryan say yes, and Taylor says no so I go with the pink. I met up with my friends virtually again to tell them how my dad was being all authoritarian this morning and getting all up in my face saying, you had better not let us catch you drug-blitzing again young lady. I’m sixteen for Christ's sake, well, fifteen, anyway he can’t treat me like a kid anymore. Not to mention my body, my rules and I pay with my own supermarket job money.

  He only pays for my v-computing, cell phone credit, and clothes, and even that comes out of my allowance as well.

  Dad the prick won’t even drive me to school. Had to go to work early. So, I catch the school bus instead and see some little homeless-looking guy with a wild beard, a face like Yoda, and shaky legs. I start laughing because everyone knows homeless people are funny. You see them a lot in that new show Society’s Losers. They make fun of ugly people and fat people( if their guys) and old people though not gays or blacks that would be hyper ignorant.

  I look over at the homeless man. I whisper, remember the time Bob one of the lead characters on Sex Scandal tried to keep all those smelly hobos out of his neighborhood, to Ruby and we both laugh.

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  Some girl with black hair and a book (no kidding an actual book seriously who reads in this day and age like what a loser, she seriously needs to get herself an Aroe device or at least a Mono-mini) glared at us and said we were obnoxious.

  “Don’t you spread your superiority complex on us you midget-kid with your creepy bug-eyed face,” I say to her. Ruby and I then both laughed like hell. Seriously she looks like a freak, not to mention she’s a fucking, sex-negative celibate. A prude or whatever it’s called.” She then called me a stupid imbecile in this really stuck-up catty voice.

  Like wow I am so not stupid! I mean like what a… You don’t think I’m stupid, do you?” I asked Ruby. “No of course not your mega-smart,” Ruby says. “She’s jealous.”

  Ruby’s right she’s just jealous and like a total loner. She probably listens to old twentieth-century music like that goddamn Claude whose voice is like computer audio sped-up or a nasal chipmunk and wears black suits like he came straight out of a sixteenth-century time warp just to bug everyone. I talk to Ruby about his sad state; making us feel better we are not that retarded for a while.

  Seriously how does he even walk out on the street and not get mugged on account of the fact he looks so God-damn pathetic? “I see it now,” says our friend Jackey turning to us and grinning “Oh no, don’t take my watch, It’s from the 13th century.” We all laugh.

  I walk into school after the bus ride and talk to my friends. Carlotta has a sweet new VR Com which we all squee over. At lunchtime, we all go behind the old art building. Lisa tells us Chloe hooked up with Ryan again at Ruby’s party; we all decided she was a total slatting.

  She’s away today, like Covid 7.0 or something but we all agree to ignore her tomorrow. She deserves it she and Ryan aren’t even dating. I mean I’m a feminist and all so she should be able to get with a hundred guys if she wants but she’s still trashy.

  I ran into Max who acts so gay, and I love gays but not straights who act like man admirers, they’re just weird. It’s not like he’s in a marginalized group; he’s a privileged white male, and he gets enough praise from society as is. I’m not a violent crooker or anything but homophobes and people who say all that unenlightened stuff should be skinned and beheaded.

  I leave them to buy a sandwich which appears somewhat squashed. Miss Stevens tells me off for being late because I was still weeded-out when the bell rang. Old skank. She’ll be sorry when I’m like the next big Virtual Star I whisper to Lisa and Taylor. Who both nod. They are both going to be famous too, Taylor, a model, and Lisa a Holo-Realm fashion guru.

  No offense to Lisa or anything just not sure she quite has the look to be a model. I mean no offense to her like in any way, like I’m just saying. Miss Stevens sucks up to her little pet Claude gushing about him coming first in the English exam, I message Ruby as she is not in any of my classes today, “My boyfriend Rob a total Chad” and she wholeheartedly agrees. She tells me to come over to her house after school for a party.

  Miss Stevens gives Claude back his paper with a 50/50 mark on it. I whisper nerd, and we all laugh. The walk home with Ruby is fairly uneventful. We spot Jaden and I inform him that his man-boobs are so big they could take out someone’s eye and had he considered breast reduction surgery.

  He looked kind of hurt and ran off but like seriously he asked for it, what a fat freak he should seriously go on like a diet or something. I mean fat people, just really bring it on themselves, lazy, no willpower etc. Not that overweight women cannot choose to do what they want with their bodies they aren’t toys for men to look at, get fat you can do whatever you want with your body that's basic human rights.

  I get to Ruby’s like an hour before the party so we log on to Virtual realm and met up with some people to see if I should invite them onto Virtual Admirer Finder. I have over 9000 admirers, she has only 700. I tell her never mind, hopefully, more people will find her soon.

  It is very nice of me after all I can’t help being prettier, funnier, more interesting and more likable than her it just is. Also, I swear I will have two million before next month.

  I virtual hang with friends telling them about my crud of a day I’ve had; Miss Stevens telling me off and the sandwich I bought at the cafeteria being flat. We talk about Claude getting first place in the English test and all agree he’s a total little cancerblob.

  I then tell them again just how much I hate school and what a like tumorous day it has been. Growing worse and ever bigger.

  True, they already know this stuff, we discussed it at lunchtime and they were all there for most of these instances but like come on. This stuff’s fascinating and awesome and like what if they missed out on some of the biggest most important details? They’d be left eternally in the dark!

  Not to mention all my friends say my acting technique is fabulous enough to make everything a billion times more interesting just by how I tell the story. It’s what’s going to get me my gig as a star Virtualiser.

  I ask if they heard that Interactive Rumour by the River star Nicola, is pregnant again and remind them to watch the new one. It’s going be good. I am logging out now. The party is about to start. I hope Jaden gets drunk again so we can shave his eyebrows off when he passes out. Hugs and kisses, Virtual friendios bye!

  Ps The story ends with her, and all her friends being diagnosed with lung cancer and liver disease three days later on account of them all drinking and smoking too much. They then all die agonizingly one by one over a three-month period.

  Shiver: they all die within three months? Mist I can’t help but be a little sceptical of that.

  Mist: Well, it was a particularly nasty form of cancer and uhm liver disease.

  Sitting worry-browed In his manor and going over some new political policies for his People's Unity and Equities Party, Aryan was not surprised to hear that his weapons were causing still more trouble. When he had finally eliminated starvation, poverty, and environmental destruction and his AI, Monovalent, had been set up to benevolently oversee humanity, the golden age would begin. Monsters like Mist would become irrelevant. The AI would also keep everyone immortal and healthy with precise, machine-guided, continuous cell repair.

  When happiness, togetherness, health, and human and planetary well-being were all finally top priorities, things would fall into their worthy place.

  Mist seemed to be particularly trying. Always far worse a hell-raiser than even Alice. As a child, he stole. From not only his classmates but also his mother and father. Aryan later discovered that the boy would bully the other children into doing his bidding for him if they wanted their precious items back.

  Evan, appallingly, did not try to hide the fact that the virus followed him everywhere he went; in fact, he used it to his advantage. Upon discovering that those he despised or fought with all inevitably died or got ill with a mysterious virus (whether it really had anything to do with him or not) he saw the way it could be used if he acted as if it was.

  He'd told his fellow students, “he was really an ancient a sorcerer with the power to create plagues and illnesses and cast a spell to transfer any injury he suffered over to them. If they told the teacher he’d use this power on them. He was sent here in child form to punish all their sins, and the Gods of the heavens had made him a powerful sorcerer so he could do this starting with some of the children.”

  Whose minds apparently had “not yet been corrupted the way adults had. They were still malleable but must suffer punishment for past and current sins by appeasing him and learning subservience to higher beings by doing his bidding. If they were good though and become creatures of morality and subjugated themselves to him their Demi-god sorcerer, he would eventually give them their item or items back.” Evan made them give him all their sweets, cakes and chocolates, toys and books, and anything else that took his fancy, and he ordered them to steal them from the teachers’ lounge which they did.

  One boy Joshua who was very gullible and in awe and terror of Evan, he had steal the key to the teacher’s lounge from Mr Sands's pocket while Evan distracted him by playing his violin for the teacher at recess. Evan’s mother had made him learn violin and he adored it, the rhythm, the beauty, the precision, though he expressed only scathing towards the sports she had tried to push him into.

  The violin teacher had gushed about Evan’s talent and gift, “he plays even quite complex notes beautifully and at a high level for his age, he’s a true prodigy Mrs Wiley, a symphony musician in the making.”

  This had made Evan’s mother look at her young son with pride instead of bewilderment. This and his exquisite branch of beauty, which as with Alice, made people stop and stare and comment cute, beautiful, lovely, an angel. Since their very birthing, they’d been called it all.

  His devious Evan, well, maybe the boy loved music, but he sure didn’t love people. Evan had stolen Joshua’s favourite model truck toy, and his maths homework then laughed secretly while the teacher yelled at him. Evan did not like Joshua because he was religious and although a complete coward when it came to Evan, he bullied the smaller, the shy, and even the younger kids constantly. He would beat them up till they cried; take their lunch money and trick them out of their favourite trading cards then refuse to give them back.

  He also put paint on other kids' school chairs, dunked their electronics in water, and spat and scribbled in the introverted children’s books.

  Evan’s grandest theft was probably when he stole a five-thousand-dollar sapphire ring from Amy. Amy was the richest, most popular child in the class who used to tease with the ring a shy, poor scholarship girl Miranda by saying she could never afford anything that nice. She told her on mufti day that her clothes were ugly (they were charity issue) and that her parents were fat, unemployed good-for-nothings. Amy of course was never supposed to have brought something so valuable to school but defied her mother’s orders; Evan picked her pocket with masterful stealth.

  Amy, he not only stole the ring from her but gave (unwittingly) the virus as well so she was literally terrified of him. Amy’s mother was in an uproar about the ring but even though Evan confessed laughing he was the one who stole it from Amy, Amy could never tell her mother, simply stating helplessly she lost it. Evan forced Amy to apologize to Miranda and give her some of the nice clothes she’d grown out of( Miranda was smaller and less solid than Amy) and he stole a ruby ring even prettier than the sapphire one from his own mother and gave it to Miranda.

  He eventually returned Amy’s ring to her for which she was profoundly grateful; or at the very least, relieved. The kind actions towards Miranda were not about an impulse to protect the bullied or downtrodden but rather to humiliate Amy. Making her give all her nice things to someone she felt was so far beneath her. As well as forcing her to see Miranda own outright a ring that was even more valuable than the one that belonged not to Amy but to her mother.

  Amy and Joshua were themselves bullies though considered angelic by teachers or parents. A boy who complained to a teacher that Joshua “kicked me so hard my leg was more bruise than skin,” was met with a cheery “Oh I’m sure he wouldn’t do that, it must have been an accident,” and that was the end of the matter. Evan had slyly gotten out of being beaten by Joshua.

  At least since Evan threatened him with the plague. Joshua and his gang and people like Amy who were in the schoolyard popular clique were the only ones Evan went after. He never stole or tried to frighten the bullied or quiet or friendly children. Not out of a sense of morality but because he took great pleasure in taking down those hypocrites who thought they were better than others (but were just as ugly and mundane and stupid as everyone else) right off of their pedestals. Or so he told, Monovalent once, gleefully.

  Evan would hide as well as steal his mother’s jewellery and clothes both of which whipped her up into a real frenzy. He stole money from her and his father to purchase books, games, fast food, and sweets. Anytime his father got on Evan’s nerves he would deliberately say provocative things to his mother.

  “Dad said that young lady at the bus stop he drove past, was very pretty,” (he had heard his mother go ballistic when his father said other women were attractive before so he knew that it worked) and when she was suitably but not too riled up, he’d slip silently out of the room and wait for the explosion and fight that would invariably ensue between his parents.

  When Aryan eventually discovered all this, he was utterly horrified and very quick to inform the boy that such shenanigans committed again would likely result in a swift death. Weapon or no weapon.

  Monovalent must have killed Evan’s fellow children because he saw them as a threat to Evan, his weapon who would someday enact worldwide peace. It must have deemed this threat bad enough to be considered an act of evil. Otherwise, there was no way its programming would have granted it permission to kill them. He would need to look into the AI’s programming. It was really supposed to kill either randomly or only as a last resort for the unsalvageable and wicked.

  Of course, Aryan probably wouldn’t kill Mist at least not for some time; the boy was far too useful but the great, dangling threat must always be in place…