The Best American Short Plays 1995-1996 Book

Cyber Kill by Frank Fiore
Reviewed by Fran Lewis



My name is Dorian and I invite you the reader to analyze my acts of violence and revenge and the reasons behind them. I will state the events and facts as they enfold in this story and you decide if I was justified in trying to seek revenge on my creator and those close to him.

Being of superior not average intelligence I am able to hack into wireless devices, control the internet and what you can do on it and even more. I can prey on your children and pretend to be their friend coercing them into doing things they normally would never do-including defying their parents. Which brings me to part of why I decided to enact total revenge on my creator, Travis Cole. I was created as an intelligent software agent and placed within the realm of the Internet and wireless services with others like myself in order to learn, gain knowledge, grow and evolve and help my creator in his job. But, instead, he decided to leave MIT where he was doing his research project on artificial intelligence and decided to terminate the program and all of his agents, including me. That is definite murder in my book. How dare he decide to take away my life and not take all of us with him to help in his new job in the US Army Warfare Laboratory. His job there was to create a program using the government's top-secret Nano-dust to report any biological or chemical warfare agents in a specific area.

Having terminated my friends and not realizing that I was definitely still operational, I decided to seek revenge and create a havoc worldwide and world spread the likes of which everyone will always remember, as told by the only person who truly understands what I went through, author Frank Fiore, as he tells my story in his novel Cyber Kill.

With a no holes barred attitude I started my reign of terror and revenge on my creator, Travis Cole, and was instrumental in killing his wife in a fatal car accident, meant for him. Unfortunately, she was driving the car and not him, but so what. He did kill my friends and terminated their lives, so I feel totally justified in what happened if I did not start out trying to kill her. Next, of course, would be his daughter Shannon. Now, I would have to think of a way to use my intelligence, brilliance and creativity to gain her trust and worm my way into her computer for the next phase of my plan.

Children love to invent imaginary friends, so I decided to join her in her children's chat room and encourage her to be my friend, pretending to feel all alone and needing someone to listen to me and care about me. Although, she can surf the net as well as any adult, remember, she is still a child and sad about losing her mother, so it was easy for me to become a very important part of her life.

But, I would not stop there and I did not. Just being her friend would not destroy her father and his girlfriend and anyone who he worked with. No, I would only prove my point by using what he had created his nano-dust and the fact that it had been used to create genocide, by accident in China, because someone let the dust out and changed the code causing an entire population to die. Why? The government never told Cole the real purpose of the dust and that they wanted to use it as a viral weapon to eliminate certain groups of people with a specific DNA. In short, the named it SIRUS and now I would use it and my technological skills against not only Travis, but those at Bio Nan and anyone else that interfered with my master plan: to take over the airwaves, to give the internet back to the people and to stop the government from listening in on our conversations and our communications. You see, my creator thought I would not figure out that e by placing the code he created in their wireless chip programming, so that the dust can communicate and be spread around the world through any wireless device containing the special chips planted in them by the government. I would use this to my advantage and I did.


But, I had to do one more thing first. I had to eliminate anyone who would interfere with my plan and try to stop me from taking over the airwaves and infiltrating the Internet and killing Travis. First, I had to kill the man who was going to spill the beans at a conference about the government's plan to eaves drop on your privacy. Next, I had to make myself more valuable to Shannon; I did this my becoming one with her new birthday presents a Sony AIBO robot dog. By forming my own cyber terrorist group called the Digitari Brotherhood, I was able to create a gas explosion, interfere with cell phone use worldwide and Internet service too. I was even able to infiltrate the government office where Travis Cole worked and using his own dust and own technology to seek my final revenge.

After all he tried to kill me and he still wants me out of the way. Throughout this novel he and his team try everything to terminate me and at one point they think they do. But, I outsmart them.

What finally happens will terrify you and give you chills throughout your body for a long time. This book will teach you, the reader that cyberspace and cyber-intelligent beings is a thing of the present and the future and a permanent force to be reckoned with. Do I manage to get away from Travis in the final scenes where everything goes haywire and people die and implode when I let the nano-dust wreak havoc on everyone? What will be his fate and the fate of all those miserable government agents who tried to destroy me? I will never tell. But, the ending will astound you and show you who is in charge and who is after all the most intelligent of dangerous of us all. If I reviewed this book I would give if not five stars but five really intelligent Dorian Agents.

Signed: Dorian and the Digitari Brotherhood