twenty. text. backdated to monday.

[goryteller]

In the 1940s, rumor has it that a prisoner on the island of Alcatraz was killed by a ghost.

Back in those days (unlike these days), they had isolation chambers called hole cells where the prisoners were kept in near darkness for weeks on end. "Bang bang bang," one prisoner cried and pounded. "Someone's trying to murder me in here." But the guards thought he was hallucinating, as those being tortured with solitude tended to, and so they did nothing. When the prisoner stopped screaming, they were quite content until they opened the cell and found that he was dead. He had markings on his neck. Strangulation. No one else was in the cell.

Ghost stories have a sort of charm, don't they? Whether or not you believe them, I mean. I don't generally because we didn't have imports back then and because the living can be fucking horrible enough. I'm certain one of the guards killed him and thought they had a clever way of covering it up. Which they did.

I wonder what the prisoner's crime was. But I don't even have a name.

I know I would take death as a legacy if nothing else.

Comments

[goryteller]

I don't know about commanding people.

What was it you did with an email?

[hacktivist]

Your prison story is a good example. How many people, after hearing that story, would risk disobedience to the point of punishment by isolation? The pain inflicted by regular people has an end in death. Pain from beyond the grave... is a more serious concern.

Heh. Warned them I was around, that I could hear them. Every word. That I was coming for them.

Cleared the way to work in peace, essentially.

[goryteller]

This is probably a personal question:

What do you do? Exactly.

[hacktivist]

Heh. You're right.

That is a personal question.

Should I just tell you?

[goryteller]

I like to know about the sort of people I'm interacting with.

[hacktivist]

I would not be opposed to an exchange of that - possibly sensitive - information.

But not on the Network.

Or you could ask Tony Stark. But as a storyteller, I suspect you recognize the legitimacy of a story with more than one side.