Chapter 3

Wow!

The next day was truly chaotic. There had been millions-–millions of unexplained sudden deaths, worldwide. Many of the dead were known criminals or suspected miscreants, but there had also been hundreds of thousands of ordinary people -– some of them leaders in their communities –- who had perished.

I had shocked myself with the results of my effort. I fretted over it for days. But despite the solid reputations of many of the people I’d killed off, I knew that my criteria had been reasonably sound. Maybe some of these dudes looked good on paper, but the fact was, they had been active, unrepentant thieves who had escaped punishment.

Until now.

Still, despite having shed my crocodile tears about creating all those widows and orphans, let’s face it, I’d killed off a lot of people this time, and some of them probably hadn’t deserved the death penalty.

The Lone Arranger was perhaps becoming a little careless.

Time passed, however, and soon it became undeniable that the world was actually becoming a far better place. It was more peaceful. Political turmoil was way down, and there was a lot less theft in the world.

I thought about all the remaining evildoers in the world, and set out to do something about them as well. I eliminated all the serial killers. That one was easy. Sure, I defined the terms of the kill group with my usual attempt at care, but I really didn’t have to worry about it too much. I mean, if somebody met the generic definition of a serial killer, how much of a sweetheart could he or she be on the personal level?

Going after the sex offenders was harder. The definition of an offender could vary greatly, just depending on local standards around the planet, not to mention whatever attitudes I personally would be bringing to the table in making the determinations.

Clearly, I didn’t want every wienie-wagger in the world to just up and die. Even the rapists, perhaps, deserved some closely limiting group definitions. For example, I wanted to leave it to the statutes to take care of the statutory rapists. I was only interested in squaring away the forcible rape practitioners.

As had been the case with the world’s thieves, I had to draw some limiting lines around the category, based on factors like how long ago the bad guy’s last rape event had occurred, and on how repentant he might (or might not) have been since then.

So I tried to take some care, but mostly I was just eager to knock off the world’s current crop of forcible rapists. The way I finally left it, if you had dipped your wick in a place (male or female) where it had most definitely not been wanted, and had employed physical or emotional force in the process, well, your wick-dipping days would be over. I limited the class to unrepentant rapists who’d victimized someone within the past five years. I decided against putting any time limits at all on child-rapists.

Too bad the Barbara Walters experiment hadn’t worked out. If I could have given all these guys a Viagra-proof, non-functional Softie-for-Life instead, I’d have probably limited myself to that.

But no. All I could do was to kill them all off.

The international press, and a few religious leaders, promptly noticed the overnight absence of known rapists. I hadn’t been certain this last batch of baddies would attract much attention, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Some of the world’s best-established churches suffered a sudden crushing shortage of clergymen, but in those organizations and others, there was also notice taken that something extraordinary was happening in the world. In fact, whole new religions were beginning to emerge, based on the recent evidence that “God” was beginning to make His moral preferences known far more graphically than in the past.

The deterrent effects were remarkable.

Just as an experiment, I focused my attentions on crimes yet to be committed. When I’d gone after terrorists, thieves, serial killers and rapists, I’d always focused on these peoples’ past offenses. But why not try to see whether I could provide for instant justice as well –- a response to criminal conduct as it happened?

So I described a new class of offenders: forcible rapists who were, hereafter, attempting to rape an unwilling partner of either sex, having employed either physical or emotional force to accomplish their purposes.

It worked! Women all over the world were reporting the violent crime of attempted rape, and police everywhere were calling the coroner to carry off the stiff pricks who now had become stiff all over.

There were autopsies by the carload, and massive investigations of the phenomenon, but nobody could establish any scientific explanation for why all sorts of sinners were receiving their just desserts these days, without the necessity of arrest, trial and sentencing.