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Short Stories 365:174

Recently at a time management course I took as part of manager meetings with my company, there was much discussion of setting up rules and filters in our e-mail to make managing the inbound volume something handier to control. I diligently did so - I'd already been doing it somewhat with my home and work e-mails to some degree - and have found that it has indeed helped. Who knew smarter filters would make for a happier day?

Spam still manages to get through, of course, and no one likes spam.

Some people, though, they hate spam...

"Press Enter to Execute," by Tobias S. Buckell

First off, this story, from the Spring 2012 issue of Fireside Magazine, has more than a little bit of wish fulfillment to it, I daresay. It is told from the point of view of the assassin who is out there killing the people responsible for spam e-mails. It's silly, and I know there are villains of such higher caliber out there, but this assassin wiping out the sources of all those daily annoyances is quite enjoyable. Sure, it's just spam, but there are the people who are so insanely dumb enough that they lose their livelihood to actually replying to them (because the president of some country just needs their help, and bank account number), so there's a slice of morality here.

A thin slice.

Still, where the story begins is not the real meat of the tale. The real story begins when the job goes south, and the assassin starts to realize just who is behind the terminal anti-spam program. It's clever, and a bit dark and noir, and I definitely want to go find more stories by Buckell.