When doing non-work stuff, he was charged per word. But he did that less nowadays: iSpyAI analysed his texts and he had heard his young neighbour once wrote a message to his lover. Before the teenager could press Send, armed men broke down his door and beat him unconscious. Now he walked with a limp and was blind in one eye.

Still, landing on GooBing was expensive. Joe opened Wowser's settings. Changing a default would only cost cents. He located the Home page option and switched it to justlikefood4u.com. You had to make a purchase on every visit (RA0888), but Joe lived off of that stuff anyway.

He clicked Save.

An alert flashed over the display. Angry letters on a red background:

RA0101 VIOLATION DETECTED. REMAIN ON THE PREMISES.
AGENTS WILL ASSIST SHORTLY.

There was a loud thump at the door. 🚨

KDE keeps you in control of your software, giving you the choice and privacy you need to safely navigate the digital world. Please donate so we can continue producing the tools you need and enjoy.

A claw-like hand, its flesh eaten away exposing grey bones, came through the crack and felt around for the latch. The buff guy in dungarees whacked it with his curling iron and the whole hand came off at the wrist. It scuttled haphazardly around, like a blind, panicked spider. The lady with the wrench came down hard on it with her military boots. It spasmed and twitched, its phalanges splintered, finally laying still.

The zombies did not try that again, instead intensifying their attempt to ram the door off its frame.

And then it all... Stopped. The door stopped heaving, the half-inarticulate murmurs ceased. The survivors, their ineffectual weapons still held tight in their hands, listened as the dragging shuffle sound of undead footsteps receded down the passage.

"What happened?" asked the lady holding the wrench. "Why are they leaving?"

"I can answer that," said the girl. She was still tapping on her phone, but slower now. "I just posted that KDE was accepting vibe-coded AI slop merge requests into their projects."

"But they aren't," said the woman.

The girl gestured towards the door and the retreating ghouls beyond: "They don't care."

"You monster!" murmured the buff guy in dungarees. "Those folks are so f—..." 🧟

I got nothing for this one. I guess please donate because… zombies?

“Whose ‘we’?” she asked, trying to fake a collectedness she did not feel.

“What?”

“You said ‘we call it’. Who do you work for? Microsoft? Apple?…”

He paused a second.

“No. We're… facilitators.”

He drew a curtain and she found herself looking down into a conference room from behind a one-way mirror. Her companion flicked a switch and the sound from the meeting clattered through a tinny speaker.

The crowd were all executive types. All men. She recognised a keynote speaker, a minister, several MEPs who'd been on a panel, the undersecretary for digitisation from the Luxembourg government… A rep was extolling the virtues of some groupware product, “Now with more AI!”

In the centre of the room, a space had been cleared and a rude wooden altar had been erected. On the pedestal sat a grotesque figure, with a red pig's face and a human torso, and arms. Four of them. Below the waist, the body devolved into a confusing, messy mass of slimy, green-black tentacles.

Amy jumped: the figure's face was contorting, the head swivelling, examining the room, its tentacles writhing. The thing was not a statue, but a living being.

“WHAT IS THAT!”

“Jesus! No need to shout. That there is Yerieg. Turns out that a bunch of yak herders are the ones that got the spirit realm thing right. Who'd have thunked, eh?”

He patted her arm lightly: “But you ain't seen nothing yet. Watch.”

The monster suddenly lashed out with one of its tentacles. It wrapped around one of the attendees' necks, and pulled tight. The tip thrust into the man's mouth. Startled, the man's eyes first bulged and then glazed over as he started sucking on the appendage. The monster leered, and its black tongue flickered over its sharp teeth.

Amy realised that the creature had ensnared several other people in a similar fashion. Most audience members were already drinking greedily in stupor whatever the vile beast was exuding.

“We are not sure what that stuff is,” said the facilitator. “We call it ‘death soma’. Hell of a high. Literally. Wait! Where are you going?”

Amy staggered out of the room. In the deserted passage outside, she heaved, bent double, feeling the world reel as her mouth flooded with saliva.

“Are you alright?” The facilitator was by her side. He patted her back.

She flinched and shied away from his touch. She breathed in deep trying to control the nausea. Once. Twice.

“You… You invoked a demon to secure your contracts with public administrations?”

“A death god,” corrected the suit. “Or maybe THE death god. The jury is still out on that one.”

“You are insane!”

He looked down at his nails and tutted, disappointed. He'd heard that one before.

“No. Just practical,” he snipped back. “Our clients were getting nervous about all the lobbying and bribing. The bad publicity when they were caught, the fines… all that was putting them into weaker negotiating positions. All this sovereignty stuff has also made things harder.”

He shook his head disapprovingly.

“But this?” he jerked his thumb towards the door. “We can do this no problem. Not even technically illegal.”

“You can't… It can't be.”

“Our clients asked us to think outside the box, no bad ideas, et cetera.” He shrugged.

“Why tell me?”

“Let's get the obvious out of the way: no-one will believe you, so why not? I was dying to tell someone and it didn't matter if I did or not. Besides,” he wagged a finger at her. “I told you: you're good at what you do. It pains me to see you waste your talent on a cause you can't win.”

“But you won't win either. You can't win. You are… You are literal devil-worshippers!“

“Excuse me, but did you not just see the drug-dispensing Mongolian death deity — not demon, not devil — we have in there? It is the first of many. God knows..." He corrected himself: "Goodness knows what power the next thing we invoke will give us. We have control over Pandora's box."

"The whole point of the Pandora box thing is that it released all the evils onto the world. That humans are irresponsible and can't control it."

He brushed her objections aside.

"One man's evil is another's opportunity. With that kind of power, who could possibly overcome us?”

“Against evil? The people! The will of the people!”

“That is the will of the people,” he snapped, nodding his head towards the door. “You elected those men. You elect the same guys over and over. You'd think you'd've figured out there was something wrong with them by now.”

He took a deep breath. After a beat, he raised his hands in conciliatory gesture.

“Look,” he said levelly. “My guess is you'll come to appreciate the insight I've shared with you today. And if you ever decide to join the winning side…” He pressed a card into her numb hand.

He straightened up and took a step back. He tightened the knot on his tie, and gazing steadily at the shocked woman, spread his thumb and forefinger and traced a semicircle over his heart.

“Until next time,” he said softly. “Praise Yerieg.”

He turned and walked away, towards the post-event networking cocktail, losing himself in the throng of other similarly suited attendees. 🐷

KDE is working to make Free Software the default software used in public administrations. Please donate so we can develop the resources we need to convince politicians and officials (or at least those not already enslaved by Yerieg) that this is the correct way to go.