These are various micro stories/flash fictions about assassinations, inspired by recent events.
Brian was an important man, running a difficult business. Health insurance. He had to juggle getting enough money to his shareholders, employees and claimants. He managed to do it admirably, replacing employees with AI and denying as much as 40% of claimants, leaving them typically broke, permanently injured, dead or both.
He knew he’d piss off some folks, but the masses had proven fairly docile for the past 40 years despite increasing hardships. He didn’t think a breaking point would be reached any time soon. His only emotion during his assassination was surprise.
Jojo was a seafarer, an “essential” worker who kept the world’s economies running who nevertheless was in the “unskilled” pay bracket. As he returned back home to a small village in Indonesia after 7 months at sea, he discovered it bulldozed – an oil company had bought the land.
Tyler was running the oil company. Tyler believed the bulldozing of villages happened for a greater good, after all, the world was wholly dependent on it. And he did provide two years’ worth of wages to those villagers that had to leave their homes – a good compromise between benevolence and practicality, especially considering the extremely low wages in the region. Unlike Brian, Tyler wasn’t naive in thinking that he was beloved by the general public. His 300 acre land on Hawaii was well fenced off, and his seaside mansion was full of security features. Tyler’s bodyguards were never far away either.
Jojo would find comfort at his work, staying and living at sea for the rest of his working life. He brought various hobbies on board, started getting into biology, drone videography, and 3D printing. On one trip to Odessa, he picked up a new drone from a shady place, and during the next pacific voyage, he convinced the captain to make a small detour near Hawaii so he could get some cool drone shots.
Tyler was laying at the beach, relaxing when a grenade suddenly exploded on his stomach, quickly followed by a second one.
The bodyguard on duty was tried for murder. He maintained his innocence, though as it couldn’t have been anyone else, he eventually got charged. He never ended up getting convicted due to hung juries.
Elnur, a scientifically minded industrialist who recently bought himself into government, was smarter than that. In addition to a private island, he granted himself the privilege of jamming the airwaves around his palace. This did mean that there was neither wifi nor mobile coverage on his island, but he could cope: He had LiFi instead, light-based wifi, so he could still do his social media postings, and he also had his place largely fortified.
In one particularly ketamine-fuelled night, he comandeered all of his island staff to his office and started berating them, falling into a deeper and deeper frenzy until he finally pulled a gun on his gardener. As that happened, Georg, the bodyguard, had enough, and started wrestling the gun away from him. The situation very quickly turned into an all-out beating, which Elnur, long past his prime, eventually succumbed to.
Elnurs death went unnoticed for another decade. The team continued running his accounts and personal contacts, sometimes using AI generated content to feign his presence. His new perceived hands-off approach to his businesses were praised, his increasing generosity appreciated and his new interest in the submarines rather than rockets observed with interest. Until one day, all activity stopped. When police arrived, they found only an ancient skeleton in an office chair, with the place being deserted. All staff were missing, along with their families and Elnur’s fleet of private submarines.
Kyle always was cautious, only traveling protected by thick layers of glass. One day, he suddenly turned blind – a kid had pointed a laser pointer at him that just happened to be much stronger than the label suggested.
Donald, a TV star, had recently bought a new resort. When Shane the friendly plumber was contracted to redo all of the piping across this massive property, he was overjoyed – Donald was his favorite actor. He had given a very generous quote and certainly wouldn’t get rich off of this, but the gig would keep him occupied for a year or two and, who knows, let him meet his idol.
However, as Shane started working, he noticed very quickly that Donald wasn’t as good at paying on time. That was fine though, actors and artists are known to be a bit of a free-spirit. But after he had done 3 months of work and still not had received his monthly payment, he started getting in trouble. His cash reserves were almost exhausted, and he really needed Donald to pay now. Upon talking to his management, they assured him he’d get paid the next day, but to his dismay he found they only had paid for one month, not everything that was due.
This pattern continued for a while, with payments getting more and more delayed. Shane grew increasingly desperate as his debt grew, but remained friendly and as forward as possible. As Shanes’s mom fell ill, her health insurance wouldn’t cover her life-saving treatment. He begged management to finally pay what he was owed, so he could pay for everything, but again was denied. He threatened to quit the work until paid, which was acknowledged, but at this point didn’t really change much.
His mother died a few months before the assassination of Brian, the health care CEO. Shane’s life was in shambles, deeply indebted and heartbroken. As he saw Donald in an interview praise Brian’s actions as being what any good businessman would have done, he broke.
Minutes later he drove to the shutoff valve of the resort and installed some additional hardware. From now on, every time Donald was there, Shane would add various poisons to the water line.
Luckily for Donald, he got all his liquids from soft drinks. Unluckily for him, every shower, every bit of food prepared by the on-site kitchen, every golf course lawn sprinkler, every mopped floor would leave behind an increasing footprint of heavy metals like lead, mercury and arsenic, as well as other agents.
Donald’s health rapidly worsened and soon, the lead in the water was seen a probable cause. However, as the water supply for the entire area had been deregulated, the blame was given to the utility company which had continued to use lead pipes. An emergency law got passed regulating pipings and water, but it was too late. Just a few months later, Donald died heavily contaminated due to heavy metal poisoning. However, the law seemed to have worked, as various heavy metal-induced diseases gradually declined nationwide.
Leo Wattenberg 