Endless Paradigm

The smoke from his cigarette in his left hand curled around the glass of scotch in his right before being sucked up by the spinning ceiling fan overhead. The back room of the police department was dark and stank of sex.

It was gonna be another one of those nights, thought Shady. A night full of thugs who'd like nothing more than to put a bullet between my eyes.

One of those thugs was his partner.

The creaking of a door opening caught his attention, and his eyes darted to the tall, leggy, blonde amazonian stepping into his office. Her name was Trixie, at least that was her professional name. She was a hershey kisses star. She was also his wife.

"Need somethin'?" Said Shady.

"I forgot my diaphragm, hun." Said Trixie, sweat still running down her legs from the powerful orgasm she'd had just minutes earlier.

"That's gross. It's over there, on the floor."

"Don't say that....ya know, nobody in the biz makes me feel like you can, Shady. I Just wish you loved me the way you love your job."

"You can't have sex with a badge, Trix." He said, sipping on his scotch and smiling ever so slightly.

"Shut up, you know what I mean." She sighed, and moved towards the door saying, "Come home safe tonight," before closing the door behind her.

Safe, thought Shady. She doesn't have a clue.

Though Trixie knew that Shady was a cop, she didn't know that he sold confiscated guns to the black market or that he and his partner recruited illegal aliens for use as drug mules. That was the kind of man Shady was, a real rat bastard. The kind of man who'd have a hershey kisses star for a wife.

Shady put out his cigarette and put on his jacket, his gun secure in the holster underneath. He left his office to step out into the night. Little did he know that it would be his last.

In a retirement community in Florida, there sat an old man. Still strong from his martial arts training. Still proud for having led a good life. His friends called him Beaner. His enemies called him death.

Beaner fingered the scar on his abdomen, still wincing from the remembered mental and physical pain of a life now long behind him. He had been a drug mule at the tender age of 15. It was a way for a new life, promised the man from the policia. A way for he and his family to come to America. They would pay him well. Much better than he could make working at the local automobile plant, where his mom, dad, and sister worked, but he could not because he was too young.

It turned out to be quite the opposite. He was caught by the Texas Minute Men and turned over to the authorities. Inside his gut they found a few ounces of pure heroine, and I don't mean a tiny woman who'd saved someone's life.

He spent the next three years in a Mexican juvenile detention center. It was there that he learned many useful things. Things like how to get into America via underground tunnels that the INS hadn't found yet. Things like where to locate the man from the policia, Shady. Things like where to learn Jeet Kune Do. Things like the true identity of Cyborg Ninja.

Many useful things.

Beaner had sworn revenge. In the time he was in the detention center, his mother had become very sick and died. His father and sister didn't have enough money for a hospital. If he had been home, things might have been different. He hadn't even been there when his dear madre died. The shock of her death eventually led to his father slipping into a deep depression that ended when he took his own life. His sister disappeared shortly afterwards, leaving only a simple note of "I love you. Take care."

Beaner was distraught and he wandered around his home town aimlessly for the next few months, knowing not what to do. One day, after awaking from a startlingly-real dream in the back alley of a local bar, it was clear to Beaner what must be done: he had to get his revenge.

Shady would pay, and he would pay dearly.

Over the next few years, Beaner devoted himself to one ideal: to make himself strong, strong enough to exact revenge on the men who'd torn his family apart. After crossing over the border and into America, Beaner had worked odd jobs, learning to speak fluent English along the way.

Two years after arriving in the States, Beaner met a man. That man would teach him Jeet Kune Do, the same style developed by the legendary Bruce Lee. In the years to come, Beaner would use his skills for many things. Among them was revenge, but Beaner was no slouch. He knew that taking on a man in the policia meant that he'd need power of his own, and not just physical power, but celebrity power.

As a younger man, Beaner remembered seeing the Ultimate Fighting Championship and thinking to himself how powerful those men were. It was then, long before he had been recruited by Shady and when his family was still whole, that Beaner knew he too wanted to be a UFC champion.

Over the next three years, Beaner would rise to stardom and become renowned for his l33t fighting skilz. His opponents feared him, because whenever Beaner fought, it was Shady that he saw himself fighting. Doing so, he could not lose.

Soon it was time for Beaner to challenge the UFC Heavyweight Champion. Soon it would be time for his revenge. Shady would feel his sting.

It's a dirty business, kidnapping. But that's what I've always done best. That and slaughtering the English language on internet forums. A healthy baby boy can fetch upwards of $50,000 US on the black market. I made a good living that way.

I'm Irish. My friends call me J'adore le Passions, which roughly translated means 'I have sex with trees'. But that's another story. What I want to tell you about today is how I gave up the kidnapping business when I snatched the kid who was to become my son.

To this day, I still am not sure about why it was this kid and not any other that made me realize that kidnapping kids is wrong. I still haven't realized that having sex with trees is wrong. Maybe it was the way his face was so pliable. Maybe it was the way he took to the houseplants, clinging on them oh so tightly, but I'll never know. Either way, this little Asian boy caused my heart to melt and I knew it was time to change my dastardly ways.

Being a bit reclusive, I had time to kill, so I became a martial arts master. Thanks to my fists of furious steel, I never carried any guns. I was fast, faster than most humans could hope to be. It was probably because I played video games from a young age. I spent most of my childhood in-doors, avoiding the other children who made fun of me because I looked like Gollem from the Lord of the Rings. Soon, I was kicking their asses in street fights --and in Street Fighther II.

Somehow that wasn't enough though. As  I became older, I realized that I wanted my childhood back. I began asking around about where to obtain a childhood. The bartender at a seedy bar in a bad part of town must have misunderstood me, because the next thing I knew I was face to face with a man who would be my black-market dealer for the next ten years. He told me snatching kids is easy, and so it proved to be.

The first kid I nabbed was at a grocery store, while his mother had her big fat donkey buried in the ice cream freezer. Got a total of $37, 489.32 for him. I would've gotten more, but he was ugly as sin.

That money lasted me for a long time, so I didn't take another kid until six months later. After that, I was taking a kid once a week. I had over a million dollars by the age of 26. I didn't know what to do with my money, so I bought a cabin out in the woods. I think that's where I first learned of the love that a man and a tree can share.

I did this for the next ten years, as I said before. No, not the tree sex, I mean taking kids. All that changed, though, when I took my son. I knew I had to retire and take care of him. So I opened up a martial arts dojo for people within my organization. I trained all sorts of people, including Chuck Norris.

Then one day I met a man hell-bent on a path of destruction and revenge. His name was Beaner, and he wanted me to teach him.

He was the perfect weapon. Able to get past any security, hidden even from the most watchful eyes.

Wee created him with one solitary purpose: to do our dirty work. His original name was Jim, and he was a janitor in our lab. Given that, the jump to doing our dirty work wasn't much of a stretch.

All of the team members involved in creating this weapon worked for the same company: Mirage Tech. On face value, it was a simple sewage treatment plant, but there was much more to it than that. In actuality, wee developed secret black-ops projects for various world governments.

It was an unfortunate accident, the one that ultimately killed poor Jim. One of the scientists was conducting an experiment using chlorine gas, and he forgot to inform the after-hours crew. By our best estimates, Jim was dead 30 seconds after breathing in the gas.

Wee tried contacting his family, but he had none. The other janitors said he was a recluse and nobody knew him well. For years, wee had been searching for a man who wasn't bound by normal social constraints. Jim seemed to be such a person. It was at this point that wee knew wee'd found the perfect candidate for one of our experiments: Project Gym Sock.

It sounds crazy, but wee had discovered a way to take a man's brain imprint and digitize it. The end result is that wee could place a man's consciousness on a tiny microchip. And wee put that microchip into a gym sock. Through advanced nanomachine technology, wee managed to create a sock that could actually move on it's own. Combining the microchip with the nanomachines of the sock, wee created a funcional body for what was left of Jim.

Code named Dasme, this sock would become the perfect killer. With the ability to emit stenches right off the scale of the Funkometer, no man or animal could survive an attack.

His first mission: kill the son of a bitch that had kidnapped the son of one of our own.

Somewhere in Canada, a doctor leads a new group of interns down a long, dimly-lit hallway.

The doctor stoped in front of a door on his left and turned to face the interns. Gesturing towards the door he said, "...And as you can see here, this man suffers from an advanced paranoid delusional psychosis brought about by nutmeg abuse. Apparently, kids these days are shooting a nutmeg solution directly into their jugulars. This poor soul will probably never be cured."

The medical students all gathered around the small observation window of a padded room. In it sat a young man with mangy hair and a gaunt complexion. A string of drool dangling from his half-open mouth.

One of the interns raised his hand in a half-up fashion and asked, "Do wee know what his delusions are?"

"Well, wee have some idea, but he rambles a lot and can be hard to understand. He thinks that he's a ninja living in feudal Japan. He'll only take his medicine when wee bring it to him in liquid form and in sake containers."

****

The sound of wind at the cave's opening signified the spirits were back for their daily visit. Sometimes it was just one female spirit, but once a day a group would arrive and hover just at the edge of the cave for a bit, only to move on.

The cave was my hide-out. It was my place to relax after jobs. A place to get drunk and revel in my awesome ninja ability. Unlike other ninja's, drinking actually hieghtens my abilities, but only when I drink the exlixor that the female spirit brings me. I still don't know why she does it, but I won't complain.

Come to think of it, she should be arriving sometime soon.

****

The smoke grenade went off with a loud pop followed by the hiss of escaping vapor. Through the cloud the doctor and his interns could barely be seen fleeing down the hallway, coughing and sputtering as they went. A few voices could be heard uttering profanities at the unexpected interruption of their lecture.

J'adore darted his way around the corner and to BlackNinja's room. He gave the door a mighty kick, much like a lumberjack, and the entrance splintered open. Stepping into the padded cell, J'adore could see his the only man he'd ever really trusted sitting in the exact center, a glazed look in his eyes and drool hanging from his mouth.

"Come on, wee're getting out of here, NOW!" Yelled J'adore.

"What, you're not the lady spirit," said BlackNinja lazily.

"Never mind that, let's go!" J'adore said while grabbing BlackNinja's arm and half dragging, half carrying him out of the doorway. He put his drugged friend across his shoulders and set off at a good pace towards the exit.

I hope I wasn't too late. Those bastards are going to pay for doing this to him.

An alarm began to sound just as J'adore reached his exit.

The police station was quiet that night. Most of the officers had gone home to their families. Two detectives, however, still remained. A clandestine meeting was being held in a back office.

"...But don't you see? It's the perfect plan."

Shady's partner leaned back in his luxurious leather chair, pulling on his imported Cuban cigar with the right half of his mouth, the left grinning in evil smugness.

"No, I just don't see how your plot has anything to do with anything. It's like you just threw together a bunch of random ideas and made everyone think you had some final ending in mind."

"Well, it worked didn't it?" Said Shady's partner, pulling again from his almost-spent cigar.

"Not well."

"Don't argue with me, Shady. You'll see soon enough."

"Look, Ge64, just explain it to me one last time."

Ge64 sighed audibly. Closing his eyes, he put out his cigar and pressed his hands against his temples.

"Fine, and try to pay attention this time." Taking a deep breath, Ge64 continued. "Where does the majority of the knowledge on the internet gather?"

"Wikipedia?"

"Nice guess, but no. Those that know, those that wish to share their knowledge and skill with others do so on forums, on message boards. What if wee could gather together all the administrators and moderators from forums the world over? Wee'd have a massive amount of highly evolved and scarce knowledge all concentrated in a single place. Wee'd not make them work their way up the social ladder on our forums. NO! Wee'd hand out senior memberships and moderator abilities like they were candy. Sweet, sweet candy. That, my friend, is the end game. Wee could finally realize our dream?"

"You mean, no, not..."

"Yes. The Endless Paradigm."

"Your mad! Wee came to the conclusion years ago that wee could never accomplish that! It was a drunken, fevered delusion!"

"I'm quite sane, partner. Things have changed since then. The internet has evolved. It can be done. It will be done. The net will be our play thing. Absolute control will be ours."

A bead of sweat dripped down the right side of Shady's forehead. His hand quivering as it reached towards the gun in his jacket pocket.

"I won't go along with it. It's suicide."

Ge64 reached under his desk and grasped his 9mm. Swiftly whipping it out and pointing it at Shady's head, his face contorted into an evil shape. Drawing back the gun's hammer, he looked into his partner's eyes and said, "You will cooperate or I'll do what I've been promising to do since you 'borrowed' Trixie from me: I'll put a bullet between your eyes."


...

The streets were still wet from the rainstorm earlier that night. Crime must have decided to take the night off because it was very still in the city. And it was quiet. So quiet, that even in the far corners of the metropolis the sound of firing guns could be heard emanating from the 34th precinct.

The bite of the cold steel of the operating table was almost as bad as the feel of the dirty forceps digging into my back. The back-alley 'doctor' was none-too-gentle.

I don't remember much about the operation. I do remember screaming in agony and the doctor saying something about "stop squirming" before passing out from the pain.

When I came to, I was lying flat on my stomach, a bandage covering my left shoulder blade. You could say my assassination attempt went less than ideally.

I've been a hitman for the local mafia for so long, I don't even remember my real name. A healthy drug addiction and overwhelming adrenalin rushes from my kills saw to that. If you must call me something, call me Dedat.

For this job, I had met with unexpected complications. My target was two policemen: Shady and his partner, Ge64. They had upset my bosses, the heads of the Spagatori family, by running their own ring of subversive operations while causing a lot of trouble for the mafia. Several times, the Spagatori had offered a non-interference pact, only to have their open hand smacked away. The last and final time, Shady and Ge64 had signed their own death warrants.

I had been listening to a very heated conversation the two of them were having in their office at the precinct. They seemed to be distracted, so I made my move. However, I underestimated their abilities. They were better shots than I had anticipated, and they were faster on the trigger than I could ever hope to be. The way they reacted, the way they managed to shoot first, I can only imagine how many times they'd had a gun pointed at them. In a sick sort of way, I respected that.

One of my bullets hit Ge64 in the leg, nothing serious though. Shady managed to put a slug in my shoulder before ducking for cover under his office desk. I managed to make it out of there alive, and I felt lucky. I'd never before had such a scare in all the hits I'd done.

Staggering down the stairs from the doctor's office and pumped full of pain killers, I made my way to the Spagatori's central operation center.

For this job, I would need help. I needed pure speed. I needed a man named J'adore.

Inside of a dimly-lit and humid room sat two programmers. Both stank from not bathing for days on end, their shirts soiled with sweat, and also tears.

The glow of the monitors seemed  to them to be a digital prison. In a very horrible and all-too-real way it was.

"What do you think, Tom?"

"I think I told you not to call me that. My name is Gavia, Clyde."

"Hmmph. Fine. Sorry. How about it? Do you think it's ready yet?"

"No, YoYo, I don't think so. Not yet, but soon....soon."

As he spoke the last word, Gavia's mind drifted to his wife and daughter, held captive to ransom his innate programming mastery. He and YoYo both were but at the mercy of Mirage Tech. They had YoYo's family too.

For the longest time they could each remember, all they had seen was code. Both being adept in all programming languages by an early age, they had actually collaborated together in college to create what would have been the world's most efficient and scalable programming language yet. Perhaps even the term 'programming language' wasn't sufficient to describe its power. Using their system, it was as if the programmer could speak directly to the computer hardware in its native binary language. Both machine and programmer became as one. This allowed for programs the likes the world had never seen before.

Unfortunately for them both, their language was so amazing that it attracted the wrong kind of attention, which is how they found themselves the victims of this horrible crime.

In order to get their families back, they were charged with the creation of the planet's first all-digital world. A place where knowledge would gather from many people and be readily accessible. It was to be called the Endless Paradigm.

The name never really made any sense to them, but then, they weren't the ones in charge. All they really cared about was getting their families back.

Suddenly, the monitor on the wall flickered to life. On it was a man they'd never seen before. He was wearing a suit, and in his coat pocket there was what appeared to be a policeman's badge.

"YoYoBalls, Gavia, You have two more days to complete your work. I'll be expecting results."

And just like that, he was gone.

YoYo and Gavia looked at each other and turned back to their computer screens, working furiously because of what might happen if they did not finish in time.