Sheiny The Hacker

  Blender Dumbass
September 19, 2023

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https://blenderdumbass.org/books : 👁 1

Sheiny The Hacker is a book long in making. If you read my article about "How I Started Using GNU / Linux", you know that this book originally was started as a movie project. But slowly I realized that this type of material is technically legally un-film-able.



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Summary

The book is about a 9 year old entrepreneur that, to save her family from starvation, decides to mastermind a company which produces and distributes illegal pornography. From the other side, the girl is a computer genius. She uses exclusively Free Software. She is a programmer. Installs GNU / Linux of computers in school. And overall just amazing.

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J.Y.Amihud’s

SHEINY THE HACKER

THIS BOOK IS LEGALLY UNFILMABLE

Disclaimer

This book is so called Legally Unfilmable. Which means that in common laws of many many countries the text of this book is not transferable to screen without cutting a few scenes. The book contains scenes that people may consider too disturbing. So, reader’s discretion is advised. In countries with Freedom of Speech, the text itself should be legal.

Hacker

Originally the word “Hacking” meant “Playful Clever-ness.”. Something that requires the use of brain. Not necessarily something that will result in some kind of useful result. Some hackers started to use their brain to do one thing. Break security. Those we call “Crackers”.
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SHEINY – THE HACKER
© J.Y.Amihud 2021
You may use this book under the terms of the
GNU Free Documentation License.
www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.html

Or Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike.

CHAPTER 0

Intro

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This all happened during the mid 2010s. Sheiny didn't come

to her Grandfather's funeral. Neither did her mother, who hated the Grandfather deeply. Her mother was upset and nervous. A lone mother, bright woman in her own right, but too afraid of admitting it. She was a young gal, still not earning enough to keep up with the bills. Grandfather felt ashamed of his past actions and supported his daughter monetarily, by sending her bank transfers of support every month. It's was not a lot of money per se. They could not try and keep the living only relying on it. But now, since he is deceased, mother had to find yet another source of income. For a very long time they have received those gifts and started to grow addicted to them. And since the mother is not willing to admit that she is in fact smart, she is acting stupidly while completely realizing it. Thus she sabotages every opportunity given to her to live.

Sheiny didn't like school. While other kids felt that school was

boring since keeping with the education was hard for them. And simply engaging in light-minded activities is considered more fun. It doesn't require to flex a singe brain-muscle. Sheiny on the other hand didn't like school for the sole reason of it being too simple for her. Being a daughter of her mother, Sheiny inherited a bright- brain. But unlike her mother, Sheiny does not have an imposter syndrome. She is not afraid of using her brain.

Being a child in the 2010s Sheiny is well educated in all

things eighteen plus. Her mother made a stupid mistake of gifting her a surveillance device, through which she and her friends in school learned a lot about the world and how it operates. In her 9 years of age she already knew about things Mom didn't think she knew about. The beautiful irony here is that kids like Sheiny do not reveal to adults the full list of the knowledge that they know.

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They know to cover up some things, because otherwise it could result in punishment. Sheiny is not an exception. Her mother, even though loving and acting stupidly, is a smart woman after all. So Sheiny learned to lie quite remarkably.

After feeling an empty stomach for some while, Sheiny

couldn't help but visit ideas of helping her mother to gain a few bucks. But the frustration of Sheiny about the world grew even more when she realized that there was nothing legal that she could do to help. She was trying to convince the mother about a few ideas. But mother felt those ideas were too clever for her liking. And said something stupid like "You're just a child" to Sheiny on each such offering.

Without the mother there was an obvious and only choice to

sell lemonade. A very good way to make enough money for a whole another lemon. She tried selling other things, like candy and chocolate bars. Adding a bit to their price to gain a little, but this was unsuccessful. Kids didn't want to spend more of their lunch money than necessary. And they could buy the same items for cheaper in the school's cafeteria. She sold one chocolate bar to Brandy. But he was ridiculed for that by other children. So she could not sell to him anymore.

Sheiny realized that her inability to make legal money only

meant one thing. She had to make the money somehow illegally. Going to work was illegal enough, but since directors of businesses didn't want problems with the law themselves, they all would've denied her. Selling weapons was not possible because of how would have she obtained them in the first place. Selling drugs was more possible, but there was a competition with Richie and his gang that were already doing it in the school. And they were also carrying knives. She didn't have anything to sell, legal

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or illegal, until she realized something. She is a 9 years old girl with a camera in her pocket. She can try and produce something to sell.

Sheiny wasn't just simply smart, she was exceptional. It's just

that she never had any experience with business, which lead to her failures in this endeavour. But she did have plenty of experience with all thing that could be learned in the school and beyond. A lot of teachers, such a Mrs. Dantonwood just hated her and her wit, that would always put them to shame. Mrs. Dantonwood was a maths teacher that could not analyse any of the equations that she would give to the students. She would simply tell them to use some equation because she herself remembered it to be the right one to use. Sheiny, on other hand could prove all of those equations. She was well versed in how maths worked. She was fascinated with numbers and figures. And when she was asked by Mrs. Dantonwood occasionally, Sheiny always was able to entertain the class with her explanation of any given equation or maths problem. She was not only good in understanding it, but also good in communicating it.

One person that was outright scared of Sheiny was Mr.

Hambleton. He was the teacher of informational technology. Or in today's slang, a computer teacher. He was, as the school policy requires, teaching all kids to use proprietary, nasty software. They would sit lesson by lesson and do tasks in Microsoft this or Microsoft that. The only one who denied those tasks was Sheiny. She argued with the principal of the school to donate her a computer last spring. It was still standing in the class with the other computers but was totally under control of Sheiny. She, in her then 8 years of age, removed the operating system it had on it and installed GNU / Linux on it instead. All the tasks required by

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the school policies on the information technology classes she was doing in LibreOffice or Gimp.

Mr. Hambleton was respecting her computer abilities, but

was not necessarily afraid of her until one incident. Using Windows on his computer he left a vulnerability. His primary mistake was to use the school's WIFI. It was meant for casual telephone uses of the children but all of the computers in the school were also connected to it. Including the now, personal, Sheiny's computer. That day Sheiny was doing something of her own, while the class was learning some basic tasks in Microsoft Paint. When the lesson ended it was already the end of the school’s day, since there was no more lessons to come after it. Kids packed up and ran outside. Sheiny informed her mother that she would come much later that day. She had something to do on the computer. Mr. Hambleton didn't pack. He had to save all of the sessions and check for hardware malfunctions on some of the computers. And while he was dealing with his usual deed, his own, personal laptop was still connected to the school's WIFI.

Suddenly Mr. Hambleton caught a glimpse of a very familiar

image on Sheiny's screen. It was a file from his computer. An image of a naked little girl. Sheiny closed the picture immediately, but it was too late. Mr. Hambleton's true nature was revealed. He wasn't a bad person per se. He was perhaps one of the nicest teachers in the school. But now it was on Sheiny's choosing if he would stay being a teacher in that school. From that point on, without any negotiation or exchange between them, they both knew that she is now in control over him. And now, when she is looking for people to buy her new stuff, Mr. Hambleton is the first man she would be talking to as a potential customer.

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"What is your salary?" asked Sheiny from Mr. Hambleton

once on a lesson. He gave her the figure. "Do you have any kids? Are you married?" she asked more. He told her all the information as if being under a police interrogation. She plotted the numbers into an equation written in a program source code on her screen. "This is..." Sheiny is pointing to the result of the program "... how much spare money you have every month.". Mr. Hambleton didn't know how to react to it, but other kids were in the class, so to avoid suspicion he gave her the regular "Nice Work!" expression. He raised the thumb and gave her a pad on her back. But he already knew that something sinister would come out of it. And indeed, Sheiny was calculating how much she should charge for the stuff.

Afterwards she asked Mr. Hambleton to chat a little after

school. He was nervous about it, but still waited for her after the school ended. She took him away from the school into a place where there is not too many people. And there they spoke about what kind of images excite him. She didn't simply want to get money from him. It was not interesting. Too stupid. Her mother would've done that. But Sheiny is instead doing a rather interesting research project. She is trying to answer whether she could produce stuff that people gonna actually pay for. She already knew his budget, she just needed to know what he would pay for. Mr. Hambleton could not believe what he was hearing. It was too good to be true. She found out about his secret thoughts and didn't just want to take advantage from it. She wanted to make an offering to him. To which he felt morally obligated to agree.

So the deal was done. She would produce some of the illegal

stuff for him in exchange for money. And that's how Sheiny did her

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first real sell. But she didn't stop there. She wanted to learn more about this. For example, the image that she found on his computer should have been gotten there in some way. Is there a competition? How do they spread their stuff? What is the quality of their stuff? How can she produce better stuff? How can she sell more? These were the question on her mind now. Dead Grandfather and an empty stomach turned a little girl into a criminal mastermind.

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CHAPTER I

Chloe

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Chloe is the kind of girl that Sheiny is not going to be friends

with. She is not especially smart. But nothing is stopping her from becoming smart. Her brain works just fine. It's just Chloe was never interested in smart things. She is not a maths enthusiast. She is not a programmer. She is a girl trying to be eighteen plus before being eighteen plus. This is the kind of vulgarity that Sheiny would avoid until now. But now, Sheiny needs Chloe. She needs Chloe's expertise in making men excited. Sheiny needs better stuff to sell.

To put it lightly, it's not a kind of a conversation that's easy to

start. Especially when you are talking to an almost stranger. Sheiny went towards Chloe without knowing much what words she was going to use. "I think that you are making a mistake" said Sheiny looking at Chloe. Chloe didn't understand what she was talking about. Neither did Sheiny. "Using your phone for all of it is not the safest choice." added Sheiny. "What do you mean?" Chloe was still confused. "Let me see" Sheiny took Chloe's phone from her.

Sheiny unlocked the phone, knowing already the password

drawing that she should swipe on the screen. She observed it on a prior occasion. Chloe was trying to take the phone back. Sheiny didn't give. She swiped sideways until she found an application that she was looking for. It had a friendly looking picture of a child and a mom as it's icon. "What do you think this is?" asked Sheiny smartly. "I don't know. It some kind of a boring thing. Now give it back" answered Chloe and then promptly received the phone back. "This is an app that lets you're mom and dad look what you are doing with your phone..." answered Sheiny "... I know how to get rid of it if you want.".

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Sheiny went away from Chloe, leaving her contemplating

about her phone and the spy app on it. Later that day, after the school had ended and kids already left, Sheiny was doing some more programming in the computer class. While Mr. Hambleton was checking the computers, wearing a slightly more satisfied grin on his face this time. Suddenly a door had opened and Chloe came in. "How do I get rid of it? It's not delete-able." said Chloe while stretching her arm with the phone in it. "Well..." Sheiny started her explanation.

She explained that those apps are what's called "Parental

Control". They are not delete-able by the child since they were designed to keep the child under the control. Those apps snoop on anything that the child does, store this information on some remote computer and then give it to the parents on request. So Chloe's parents are probably already aware of the stuff that Chloe is doing. And in order to get rid of this program, Sheiny explained, a wipe off the entire operating system should have been performed. Which required saving accounts and files on Sheiny's computer.

It was not had to be performed. But while there was a chance

to free Chloe completely, Sheiny felt an urge to do more then simply deleting an application. Being a very good explainer, Sheiny convinced Chloe that the next steps are essential to stay safe. She overwritten the operating system to a one not containing a single trace of Google's spyware. Instead of Android Chloe now had Replicant on her phone. Telegram, the app she used to talk to men, still worked. And restoring the theme and the wallpaper, made Chloe feel like if though nothing had changed.

Using this opportunity, Sheiny asked Chloe more about her

adventures online. She wanted to know more information about

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how to excite men. All of this was overheard by the busy Mr. Hambleton. "Are you already selling on the Dark Web?" he said, curiously. "What?" asked Chloe back without understanding his question. "How do you sell the porn?" said Mr. Hambleton. This caused a minute of awkward silence. "She doesn't know that I sell this stuff yet." Sheiny interrupted the silence. Chloe looked at both of them with a confused face. "What the fuck!" asked the 9 year old Chloe from the two.

This was the kind of moment that Sheiny was afraid of doing

herself. But now, that the barricade of ideas was broken, she could speak to Chloe a little bit more clearly. One downside of this situation Sheiny realized but didn't feel much through was that Mr. Hambleton was revealed to Chloe now too. Mr. Hambleton was afraid at first, but he realized that Chloe is quite a bright girl herself. And that he is not under any threat from her. "Relax, Hamb... I'm not police." were the Chloe's words that calmed Mr. Hambleton a little. But there was a bit of calming down yet to be had by him after school to realize that he is not going to jail quite yet.

"Are you already selling on the Dark Web?" were the words

repeating on a loop inside Sheiny's head. She didn't even think about it yet. The dark web is a mysterious place. It's usually a bunch of people on .onion websites doing god knows what. It could range from completely harmless things. Forums about cooking. Websites of rebellious freedom seekers living in China and other problematic areas. Image boards with memes and funny quotes. Small communities of like minded individuals. But in the same time this is a place full of websites selling drugs, weapons and all kinds of illegal pornography.

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The interesting underlying part of the whole thing is the Tor

Browser which connects to a network called Onion. The Onion Routing is a concept of wrapping connections into other connections to conceal anything passed through it. Essentially if you are a criminal, the only protocol good enough to conceal both your identity and the information you pass to and from the website is Onion. And the easiest way to connect to it is the Tor Browser. It was developed to help people in countries without the Freedom of Speech to get Freedom of Speech securely. But because of the free nature of the protocol it's used to do all kinds of crazy and weird things as well.

Sheiny was contemplating using Onion to sell her stuff. But

she knew that there was a problem. If she sells online, money had to be transferred to her somehow. Using a bank transfer was not possible. At her age, having a bank account was not feasible. She could try and use BitCoin or something like this. But there was this same problem all over again. To cash out the BitCoin she would need a bank account. She could perhaps ask the people online to send her money in cash, in an envelope. A thought that she considered for a while. But there was a whole can of worms with this approach as well. For example: people on the Dark Web tent to not trust anybody.

Sheiny was about to ask another favour from Mr. Hambleton.

He had a bank account after all. And she could design a way to conceal the transactions enough, so he would be left free. But as she went to speak to him, he interrupted her. "I have a friend that got interested in your stuff. Have you got anything with Chloe?" said Mr. Hambleton. With Chloe?.. she thought, that's a weird, but an interesting idea. But first, there was a potential new customer. And she couldn't let this opportunity go. She asked more about

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the mysterious friend. Mr. Hambleton replied with "I will show you to him next week. But he wants something with both of you.". Both... Sheiny and Chloe together? Some kind of weird mixed feeling of disgust and interest fired in her. She wanted to talk to Chloe because of information she possessed. But she never thought that Chloe might be an actress in her little illegal plays.

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CHAPTER II

Mr. Humbert

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Sheiny didn't need to convince Chloe too much. She was the

kind of girl that would do that herself. Chloe just never had the same problems and thus never thought of it as a kind of way to make money. But since now she knows what Sheiny does, she cannot simply continue it with the men regularly. They do not pay her. It doesn't feel right. What is point to continue? On the other hand, if they split the money fifty-fifty Chloe is more then willing to try out and make what ever this friend of Mr. Hambleton’s wants.

The funny thing is. The leader of the deed, Sheiny is the one

not sure about the whole "together" thing. Shame came into her. Chloe had no shame what so ever. But Sheiny started feeling herself above it. It was the day when Sheiny came to Chloe's home. Nothing special was needed. A camera. Any of their phone's one would do. A room. Chloe's would do. The absence of parents. Easy to wait for. Her mom was working an evening shift that day. The camera was set and Chloe started to become excited. This was the moment when Sheiny pulled the switch.

"I can't do that." said Sheiny turning away from Chloe in

shame "What are we doing? This is insanity. I've turned into a lesbian whore, fucking for some old men. Doing this for money.". Sheiny was disgust and nervous. Angry and unsure. Putting up the phone and removing her trousers was easy enough alone. But together? This was on another level of insanity. And more so. It's not even a boy she is doing it with. It's another girl. What is this? Sheiny started thinking about other ways to make money. Drugs? No, Richie with his gang. Think, think... Maybe she could try selling chocolate again. Sheiny sat down on Chloe's bed and started crying. All of this was still recorded by the camera.

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Chloe observed it and didn't know the appropriate reaction

that she should make. She sat besides Sheiny and hugged her carefully. "Fuck 'em old men." said Chloe in an attempt to calm Sheiny down. "How can you do that so easily?" Sheiny started asking Chloe "You hadn't have a single doubt about that at all?". Chloe's first experience with it was when she downloaded Telegram for the first time. She had nobody to speak with, but she had a strong interest in Japanese Animation style called Anime, or in other words Manga. Some of those films are quite innocent. But most of them are really soft or even hard porn disguised as children cartoons. It might have been a sinister Japanese plan to turn all Western kids into sexual maniacs. It might have been that in Japan the rules are different. It wasn't much of a difference to Chloe why those cartoons existed. She just liked them. Searching up groups of Manga and Anime on Telegram lead her into talking to like-minded people. A lot of them were extremely pervy men.

Those cartoons desensitised her to sex. Chloe doesn't feel

anything shameful in it. It's kind of terrifying, but Chloe now has a natural immunity against sexual trauma. She would probably just forget about anything happening to her. On the other hand Sheiny was not desensitised. She could understand why Chloe didn't feel that anything was wrong. But that did not help Sheiny. They cancelled the deed and Sheiny went back home.

On the way back home Sheiny entered a local shop and

bought a bottle of sparkling juice. She was drinking it and thinking about what had just happened. On her phone was the recording from the day. She did not delete it. She put her headphones and skipped back and forth through the video. Trying to remember what Chloe told her that day. As she finished the Juice she entered another shop and bought another bottle of it. For a moment she

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thought: this was way too much juice. She never had drunk so much of it. It had occurred to her that for the first time in her life she had more money in her pocket than for one bottle of the juice. She looked at the remaining cash and it was not a small sum of money. She paused for a second and looked at the top of the phone's screen. It contained a clock. It said 17:36. A not so late evening. Sheiny contemplated for about 15 seconds and ran back towards Chloe.

"Let's try again!" screamed Sheiny as soon as Chloe opened

the door.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes I am."

Sheiny took all of her remaining courage to overcome any of

the fears that she previously had. Greed had won her for this instant. No moral reasoning could stop her. She would suppress it, distract from it, do anything but not to feel the shame. Chloe was stunned by that. She didn't except Sheiny to even talk to her ever again. But she broke into her house and exploded upon her. By the time Chloe's mom came back home they had multiple video files. All from different angles. Some were even shot on both of their phones simultaneously. Sheiny needed an editing software to turn this into something watchable.

Using the classroom was not possible. Neither Sheiny or

Chloe had a computer at home and there was no video editors on F-Droid for a phone. She had to get a computer somehow. Mr. Hambleton was bothered again. He had 2 kids and a wife. Neither of them knew about his true nature. Sheiny appeared in his doorstep as if having some kind of computer problem. Something

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to do with the class. She asked him to bring his laptop and they went into his car. It was a family van, but the back windows were dark enough, so you could conceal what you were doing. They were still close enough to his home. So connection to his WIFI was still available.

"Do you have your files backed up?" started Sheiny. She

didn't want to edit the video on Windows. If she didn't care, she would've got some other Android video editor already. She looked up on F-Droid because she cared to keep everybody safe. It was not a matter of security for her. She was a little girl and she understood that nothing would've happened to her. It was just morally unacceptable to put other people at risk. Even Mr. Hambleton. So she wanted to upgrade his device to something like GNU / Linux. And that's why she asked him if he had backed up his files.

This simple question turned into an almost fight. He refused

to install GNU / Linux. He was a person that needed it the most. A person from a minority group that still wasn't recognized. He needed security and privacy more than perhaps anybody else. But he refused to install the software that provided it. It wasn't ignorance. It wasn't reliance on some software that he couldn't have otherwise. It was not some game incompatibility. It was not that he was afraid of the terminal. He was simply too paranoid to use it. Sheiny started talking about surveillance that it’s happening on other systems. She brought up the hack that she did, when she revealed his true nature. But he was still too paranoid to use GNU / Linux. His reasoning sounded something like this: If I use secure software, they ( the government ) will pay closer attention to me. Thus I need to use Windows and Google and Facebook. Which makes me lost in the noise of their data.

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When Sheiny heard it, she got tired of him. She looked down

as if defeated. Nothing already could help her to argue with Mr. Hambleton. "But you have a unique position." Sheiny started her last attempt "You are a computer teacher. It's not weird to expect from you something like this. If they will ask, you can say that you are using it for the fun of it. For the nerdiness. But yet somehow you fail to recognize this. I do not understand you." Sheiny opened the door of his van and started walking towards her home. She would find a different computer, she thought. There is a whole week in-front. Mr. Hambleton stayed in the car stunned for another 15 or so minutes.

When Sheiny came back to school the next day, she started

preparing a sort of privacy zone around her computer. It was already the end of the school day. Kids weren’t there. And Mr. Hambleton also wasn't in the class for some reason. She took big cardboard pieces from the art class and started building a wall. When trying to glue two pieces of the board together, one of them slipped from her hands and the corner of the board pressed a little start button on one of the other computers in the class.

Sheiny didn't notice it until the wall was finished. She looked

at the cardboard monstrosity, trying to decide whether it was a terrible idea to begin with, when she realized that on a screen that wasn't her computer was a very familiar image. It was a default desktop of Ubuntu 17.04. She didn't use Ubuntu. She used straight up Debian. But this caught her attention non the less. Sheiny booted all 20 computers in the class. All of them turned into an Ubuntu session except of her own. Which asked her password in her modified login screen. What is going on here?

Sheiny went to the principal. She knocked carefully on his

door and a deep old voice said "Come in.". Sheiny asked the

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principal about the computers room and the change that it had. The principal said that there were changes in the school's policy and that Mr. Hambleton came up with this change today's morning. The principal said the Mr. Hambleton convinced him that teaching Windows was an unapologetic act from the school. He convinced the principal that it was not nice to teach kids to use software that is meant to take advantage from them and who's source code is not available to read. Further more from the words of the principal, Mr. Hambleton was a very big fan of Free Software, Richard Stallman and GNU / Linux.

Sheiny couldn't believe it. The man that argued with her all

night against installing GNU / Linux was a GNU / Linux fan all along. She herself didn't much like Richard Stallman. Or should I say, Richard Stallman's appearance... He is a wise man, but not a kind of 15 to 17 year old, thin dude, that girls in her age adore. Though Sheiny would agree immensely that Richard was an influential figure on her too. Reading his blog or his Free Software manifestos was very enjoyable to her. It was a mind trilling sensation of already agreeing with all the words that come next. Richard is the kind of dude that will give you mixed feelings no matter where you are on the ideology spectrum. He is a funny man sometimes, but can be very weird and awkward other times. He has grown this kind of great and immense belly seen in horror movies. But his face is always light with a old granny smile. Sheiny had on her computer a very old image of Richard Stallman. It was a picture featured on his biography by Sam Williams. The original print. It is the only image where Richard looks acceptable to her as a kind of man. Even there he looked far from the ideal 17 year old boy. But his mind was a great substitute. In some weird way, she wanted that version of Richard Stallman to be her next customer. But it could not happen.

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Richard Stallman is an influential figure on the lives of many

people. Not only Sheiny, Chloe and Mr. Hambleton. He made a whole ideology of software development. He tried to preserve the freedom of computing from the capitalism and it's constant urge to own things. He coined the terms Free Software and Proprietary Software. Free Software means that people, that masses are ultimately in control of what the program does. Not some company. He described the four principals on which he judges whether the software is Free or not. He calls them the four essential freedoms. Because he believes that any software that's not giving you all four of those freedoms is subjugating you.

Those freedoms are as follows: Freedom zero, to use the

software as you wish and for whatever purpose. Freedom one, to study how the software works. To read it's source code. And to make modifications to it. Making it so the software does only the things that the user wants it to do. And only the way the user wants. These two first freedoms insure that each user has total personal control over the software. But another two freedoms were needed to help people that were not programmers. Not everybody is a programmer. Chloe is not, for example. But she can benefit from Free Software because of the other two freedoms. Freedom two, to give or sell exact copies of the software. To share. To publish the software even if the original developer got bored of it, or has no more motivation to continue developing it. And lastly, the fourth freedom. Freedom three. The freedom to give or sell modified versions of the program. This way any user that has any problem with how the program works thus far, can publish a changed version. A fork, so to speak. And other users will be able to choose from the forks, the one that suits them most.

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In Windows, which lead to the hack by Sheiny, you can only

have the version of Microsoft. They can put anything in there and nobody has control over functions on that system. Mr. Hambleton how ever good programmer he would've been, couldn't edit out the vulnerability. The source code was unobtainable. But with GNU / Linux the way it's developed, insures that nobody will put anything malicious. They are running a constant risk of some other fork being better at anything than themselves. And there is always freedom to borrow changes from one fork to another. And thus those systems are much more secure, much less annoying and much more customize-able.

Sheiny's cardboard construction failed. As she came back to

class, Mr. Hambleton already disassembled it. He was standing there and looking at all the computers, proud of himself. Sheiny came in and didn't even notice that her building effort was broken. "I bought a new computer." said Mr. Hambleton "I put it in the shed. I set it up so the files are encrypted.". Sheiny failed to understand why is he saying it. "Congratulations" was her answer. "You don't understand, do you?" he continued "You don't need cardboard constructions. We have five days left. I made an editing studio for you.". Sheiny now remembered. She had the stuff to edit. There was that meeting with Mr. Humbert later that week. After school she took Chloe with her to Mr. Hambleton's shed and there they made their new masterpiece.

And so the week had passed by and there was the day when

Mr. Hambleton will show their stuff to the new customer. They drove not too far from where they were. About 15 minutes walk, Sheiny measured. And it was an old cinema. An old 1960s Cinerama. It had one screening room but no clients. Occasionally some poor people would visit that place to see an old movie. New

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films were never shown there. Unless a digital copy, downloaded from the internet. But it was rare. Mr. Humbert was the owner of that place now. Once upon the time he was a movie producer. He didn't produce anything people actually watched. But he knew the business.

When the girls came to Mr. Humbert, they expected a new

customer. Instead he offered them a business opportunity. The picture that Sheiny found on Mr. Hambleton's computer did not came from the Dark Web. It came from Mr. Humbert. His true business was to sell stuff like that to people that would refuse to pay with crypto-currency. He was money laundering with the movie theatre. People would come to buy the stuff, but he would record it as if enough people came to watch movies. His proposition was very simple. The girls would make new stuff. And he would sell it. They would split 33% to each. Girls would have 33%, Mr. Hambleton had 33% and Mr. Humbert had 34%.

Sheiny didn't like these maths. So she immediately started

arranging a different split. Mr. Humbert calmed her down. "Let's see the stuff first" he said "what if it's garbage?". He closed the entrance to the cinema and brought up a projector. This was the first feature film directed and edited by Sheiny. There were four people in the audience. Her little illegal film was shown in a real Cinerama cinema with it's curved, wide screen. It was somewhat of a majestic moment in her life. She was slightly ashamed. I mean of course she was. But from the other side, a true film producer is watching. A true film producer had put this film in a real cinema. Sheiny was proud of herself. After the film had ended and Mr. Hambleton came back from the toilet. God knows what he was doing there. They finally arranged a new deal. 65% came to Sheiny. Her directorial talent was unquestionable. 20% came to

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Chloe. She was extraordinary experienced at making men excited. She was worth the money. Mr. Humbert would keep the remaining 15% and Mr. Hambleton agreed to a gratis copy of the films on each release.

And so the business had started. Mom started questioning

where the money is coming from. Chloe dropped all conversations with the men on Telegram. And Sheiny didn't feel hungry. Something that bothered Sheiny was that experience in the cinema. Ones in the while they would repeat it. But she wanted the place full of audience. She started thinking about maybe a normal, legal film that she could do. But it was too complex. Any scene outside the boundaries of a room was unthinkable.

They could buy actors. But nobody would treat her seriously.

So Sheiny focused meanwhile on bringing the quality of her current show up. She bought new cameras with better sensors. She bought lenses, lights, tripods and other various rigs. She equipped both Mr. Hambleton's shed and her own house with new, powerful computers. Now she wanted to expend the number of actors. And a good way to make the show a little bit more interesting was to find somebody that would fit into her category of a nice looking young man. Mr. Hambleton would agree, but he was resembling Richard Stallman more than a 15 to 17 year old thin boy. She had to look further.

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CHAPTER III

Mendel

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Sheiny was walking one evening down the street. It was wet

from rain. But not raining currently. She was contemplating about the situation with Mr. Hambleton and his choice of the operating system. He was too paranoid to use a system for paranoid people. It did not sit right in her head. Some people, she found out from Mr. Humbert, do not trust Tor and the Onion Routing. Their general concern comes from the origin of the software. The US government. They had started the project so their troops could communicate securely from any point in the world. And they later decided to Free this technology so more people could use it as well.

When you want to trust a piece of software, but see that it's

origin is not trustworthy, it's easy not to trust it. She thought that this too didn't make sense. The fact that the software is Free, the fact that the source code is available, readable and build-able, would make for an easy enough argument to trust that software no matter who originally developed it. But then, non- programmers, she thought, do not care about this kind of stuff. They cannot verify the program even if they had the source code. They cannot make changes in the program. They evaluate it the same way they evaluate non-free programs. By the track record. By the history. By the believes of the people that make this software.

But Mr. Hambleton had a different type of paranoia. He

agreed on that Free Software tents to be more secure. He just didn't want to be seen near it. Because being seen near it screamed abnormality of some kind. As if he thought that his choice of software defines his character as a whole. That maybe an even slightly more organized desktop, or perhaps a changed theme, or an absence of full bio in the Facebook account will make

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him stand out of the crowd just enough, so a sea of blame for all kinds of atrocities will come his way.

Sheiny stopped thinking about it for a moment. Two police

officers were passing her way in-front of her. She felt a chilling feeling. They are after me, she thought for a second. They have passed her by. What a shame, she thought. Instead being actually good at convincing people not to do crimes, governments instead force people stupidly to obey laws. Law enforcement it's called. She herself didn't obey all laws. Mr. Hambleton didn't. But there was nothing bad which was produced as a result. There was no need for the Police to even look at their case. It was all mostly harmless. Yes, it was shameful to act in these films of her. But it was this way just because she felt above it. Chloe doesn't feel that kind of shame.

Does Law Enforcement enforce people to use software that

they do not like? What if Mr. Hambleton is so scared of good programs only because of his fear of the Police? Was he afraid more to be different, or more that from all the accusations that could happen from being different, one would be true? Weird. With Windows the Police would've found out about him way sooner than with GNU / Linux. But the question remained. What was Mr. Hambleton afraid of exactly?

Few mornings prior to that Sheiny was walking towards

Richie and his gang. She did not forget her idea of expanding the cast of the show. More than that. Sheiny thought that she doesn't want to be an actor in the show anymore. Rather give this privilege to the new actors and the magnificent Chloe. She didn't want Richie. He was a rough boy. He would probably turn off most of the customers. By speaking to Mr. Humbert who was interested

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in the quality of the show, she found out a few facts taken from the various customers of his, that he kept anonymous.

He was speaking with pure statistics as to not give out

anybody's identity by mistake. He counted that from his current customer base, about fifty three percent of people were more excited to see a boy and a girl, rather then two girls. Most of them regarded that the boy should be older. Preferably as old as they are. Some didn't want to see any boys at all. They were against an idea of looking at a bare male body. In other words, they were afraid of incidental homosexuality. The tastes of the body shape and other factors varied drastically. But it was highly probable to work more on images of tight skin, rather then saggy bags.

Fat people, old women with saggy breast and people who

had been fatter before, but now are not, are considered not desirable by most customers. It's not much about the actual thinness of a given actor. But about the tightness of the skin. You could imagine taking a plastic bag and putting it over a pillow so tight that no wrinkles could be seen. This is the kind of skin that should a good actor have. Some may look what's called "Chubby". A bit fatter, maybe just slightly lower in height. But as long as the skin doesn't just flap around by it self, it's okay.

Sheiny had a slight chub on her thighs. Not very bad. The

skin was still tight, just the silhouette of the leg was a tit-bit wider near the stomach. Chloe was very good. She was thin and light. No such chub could be observed on Chloe. She was not anorexic either. Those girls fall out of the attractive zone pretty quickly because of their unhealthy look. Chloe wasn't eating nothing. She was eating just enough to keep herself perfect for the camera. She did not prepare it, per se. She was perhaps naturally gifted with the good looks.

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One more thing that Mr. Humbert told Sheiny is that his

customers do not like to be cheated. They do not like pretend play from adults that try children's outfits. They do not like uncertainty. You cannot simply point the camera at a part of someone's body that by it's look does not communicate a clear age of the person. This is why, even though it's very risky, it was better to see the faces of the actors. It would calm down the customers, communicating that it's all for real.

Richie, with all it's authority, had quite a chub. He wasn't fat,

per se, but that would not be good for Sheiny. His gang members were two kids. One, Thomas, very fat boy. Not good. Nobody is going to buy this. Even though Thomas was probably dragged into the gang outside of his will. He was a very nice kid. Never did anything at all. Just walked by the gang. Sometimes he would try to look intimidating. It would not help. The boy had quite a heart. Sheiny caught herself on a thought about Thomas.

With Mr. Humbert she was talking plain statistics. And no

numbers were absolute. Meaning some people actually will prefer Thomas. And his wobbly look. This is a potential thing that she could sell. The second Freedom of Free Software, Freedom one, came through her mind. The Freedom to study the source code of the program and make modifications to it. So the program does what you want and only want you want. What if this person, who likes chubby boys, comes across a well produced episode of Sheiny's films. He will look at all the tight bodies of all the actors and will not find a single person to enjoy from. He could've taken the source code, perhaps some files that she could give. And assemble a film the way he likes. Too complex! She thought immediately. But the thought kept moving back and forth through her mind.

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Mark was a fit boy. Not the nicest at character. He had his

moments of wit. But he was not quite Richie. He wore shorts that day. Not too short. The kind that ends right before the knee starts. But judging by the leg underneath it and the shape of his arms, Sheiny knew that Mark is worth trying with. The only thing that was unclear was, how exactly to start a conversation? This was no other girl to speak with. A boy is a whole other level of magnitude more difficult. The steps that Sheiny was taking started to get heavier and heavier. It's not even a harmless "I love you." that some kids might do sometimes. She is going to ask him something completely on other level. And also she was not in love with him. He just was the boy that looked a part for the role.

Sheiny stopped and the boys gone past her. She lost her

opportunity to speak to him. She needed a plan. Something cleverer. She didn't want to lie to him about the nature of the shoot. This was unacceptable from her perspective. But something a bit more clever than simply coming up and talking to him was needed.

To ask Richie for drugs was not the way to go. He would've

denied any knowledge of this. Instead they operated using WhatsApp. He was convinced that it's "secure" because the developers said so. Of course it was stupid. Even to use Telegram was stupid. Telegram has a Free client. But a secret and completely proprietary server side. There is nobody but the Telegram company that can control the server. Even more then that, by default all messages are stored on the server in an unencrypted form. This was a known vulnerability. But compared to some other messengers and since Telegram's client is Free, you could still recommend it.

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Sheiny needed something way better then Telegram though.

Definitely Free Software. Perhaps something that she could design herself. But maybe it wasn't needed. Jami existed after all. Her plan was a little bit too complex for a normal person. But she thought that it would be too boring to do it differently. The biggest mistake by Richie was the way people figured out how to contact him. Perhaps it wasn't that big of a deal. The principal of the school knew about the selling of drugs, but didn't know about Richie. The principal and all of the teachers of the school, including Mr. Hambleton used a special, separate toilet on the third floor. Non of them used the kid's toilets. It was considered unacceptable. Richie, being a complete imbecile, wrote his phone number, with an image of a weed leaf and a word "WhatsApp" in the toilet of the fourth floor. The slightly clever part of it was that this phone number was lost in the rest of graffiti, all done by cheap pens. Sheiny came to that cabin with a pen, and stroked the number. Putting a little arrow to a code of random characters and the link "Jami.net". She tried her best at drawing the logo of the app, but the result was not very good.

Next was some way of making Richie actually see the

number. It was good news that the number it self did not require the use of WhatsApp to be called at. You could call it directly. But calling Richie wasn't the best idea. He would just disregard her. Something much scarier should have been designed. For a single pass into the shooting area of the shed, during production, Mr. Hambleton agreed to falsify a police call. He would pretend to be a police officer while calling Richie and asking about the drugs. He would mention the number in toilet. And would say something along the lines of "If the number will not be removed from the cabin by the morning. We are going to get you.". On a side note, which took Sheiny by surprise, being allowed inside during the

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shooting didn't effect Mr. Hambleton's behaviour. He didn't try to touch them or anything. He just quietly observed from the side. It was almost saddening to see. He did nothing at all. Not even to himself.

Richie came to the cabin immediately after the call. He found

out the link and installed the app. A message "Who is this?" appeared on Sheiny's computer not long after the call was done. "Come to the computer class" typed Sheiny "with the gang.". A few minutes passed until a peeking eye of Thomas could be seen at the corner of the door. Mr. Hambleton gently invited the boys in. Richie was nervously searching for the police, or something. Mr. Hambleton was the normal sight in the computer class. So was Sheiny. Chloe was also there. Richie's phone buzzed. "There is no police" was a new message on his phone.

"Who is typing this?" angrily asked Richie. "I give up. It's me."

said Sheiny. The next part of the plan had started. While Sheiny would explain Richie the danger of using WhatsApp. And how he has to be more careful. Chloe was casually talking to Mark and Thomas. It was casual only for the boys. Chloe knew what she was doing. She was looking for ways to make Mark agree with the shooting of the stuff. But first. The stuff itself had to be communicated somehow. She could not show them anything. The computer class had four security cameras. The computers were way to expensive to leave without it. Chloe, without any hesitation at all, called Mark closer. And spoke something silently into his ear. The boy reacted with shock. Something that she told him made him look around, take her by hand and walk with her out the door of the computer class. Sheiny noticed it.

Later Chloe told Sheiny that they went into the school's

toilet. Where they played the game "Show me yours and I'll show

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you mine.". Mark was not very against the idea of selling this stuff too. He was selling drugs after all. But something about him being in the stuff made him uneasy. He would not be against doing such a thing casually. But only when the cameras were not recording. When Sheiny heard that, a sad realization of a failed plan went through her. She remembered the four essential freedoms. It had nothing to do with the situation, but, as Sheiny realized, it's not requirements at all. It's just freedoms. Somewhere inside of her, Sheiny knew that she has nothing to do, but to agree with Mark. If he doesn't want, it's his Freedom not to do it. They've told him that if he changes his mind he can come. But meanwhile Sheiny thought about more actors.

The two Police Officers just went pass Sheiny as she though

how stupid the whole idea of the Law Enforcement is. It's not like they argue with people to convince them not to do crimes. And leave them with freedom to still do crimes. They forced people to do what the law wants. What freedom is this? The sad environment around Sheiny made her desire a bottle of the sparkling juice. She went into the nearest shop to buy one. There was a man looking at her suspiciously. A police man? Did they track me somehow? The man didn't take his eyes off her if she wasn't directly watching him back. She chose a glass bottle this time. Her plan was to smash it on his head when he comes out. She paid and went out the store. Hiding round the corner. Waiting for the man to get out.

Paranoia, she thought. Maybe it was one of her customers.

She doesn't know them. It could be one. It could be even somebody that saw her stuff without Mr. Hambert. It was definite that the stuff was spread by some of the customers on the Dark Web. Perhaps millions of people already watched it. The last two

36

freedoms came through her mind. People should be free to share copies. It's okay if millions of people saw it. It's okay if it spreads freely. But is it okay that they share this private stuff like this?

The man came out. Sheiny failed to react. She felt a sudden

urge to do something. And the best she could was to smash the bottle immediately in-front of her. The glass shards touched the skin of her legs. Making very thin, but painful pink lines all over them. The man stopped and looked back at Sheiny. She was already crying from the wounds. The man didn't seem to start helping her. He was not sure what to do. He just stared at her stupidly for some time while she was crying.

"Help me!" screamed Sheiny at the man. Finally the man

broke his stance and came closer. He looked around as if being chased by somebody. While he did this action she could take a good look at his features. He was not young. She would give him thirty. Maybe a bit less. Not shaved properly. Not wearing good clothes. But he had a very pretty pare of blue eyes. Something about these eyes and the overall face of the man made Sheiny curious about this man. "Can you help me get home?" she asked him. She didn't need help. She could walk just fine. The wounds were very mild. But she thought she might get to know him a bit. "Where do you live?" he asked. "Right there" she answered, pointing her finger.

She would try to ask him questions. Where he lived? Who he

was? What was his name? Age? Work? She didn't dare to ask him if he saw her in the stuff that she produces. But she was sure that he knew her. Something seemed interesting about this man. What she figured out from him was that his name was Mendel. His girlfriend should be living somewhere near this area. He doesn't know where exactly. They didn't speak for years. Circumstances

37

moved them apart. He is not sure even that she likes him anymore. "Do you have any children with her..." she asked "... I might know them. I know a lot of children from this area." He said that he doesn't know if he had a child with her. They parted so abruptly that maybe one kid would be born since. But whether he even had a child, he didn't know for sure.

Sheiny asked him why he was watching her in the store. And

he told her that her face looked interesting. He felt a desire to look at it. Perhaps he didn't see his girlfriend for so long, that he forgot how she looked. And he tried desperately to piece her face back together from faces of the girls around here. Sheiny just happened to stand in his sight. But also Sheiny had a very interesting face of her own. Maybe that's why he kept starring. "Am I pretty?" she asked Mendel, making his cheeks become rouge. He smiled, not knowing whether it appropriate to answer the truth. "You are a cute little girl." he said. He made sure that she can walk, put her in front of the building where she lived and went away.

Sheiny knew a few things about Mendel. She knew his name.

She knew where he lived. She knew his place of work. He was not the 15 to 17 years old boy. He was not as precise as Mark. But she would like to act with him. She herself. Not merely giving all the job to Chloe. The only problem was, how to convince a real man like this? What should be the next plan? She looked at her legs and the wounds disappeared almost completely. She walked. She was not living in that house. She had lied to him. And while she walked, she was planning a new plan.

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CHAPTER IV

The Customers

39

As much as Sheiny wished Mendel to reappear in her life and

perhaps even be a part of the show, she didn't know much about how would this be possible. The thoughts were interwoven into

one another. All ideas she had thought about it made no sense at all. Didn't add to it the fact that even though he looked like one of

Mr. Humbert's customers, or at least one that would like to be a Mr. Humbert's customer if he knew about Mr. Humbert, after the

walk with Mendel and talking more to him, he seemed to be in love only with one woman. His girlfriend that he had lost some

while back. There seemed to be no way of making him agree with the film role.

She grew tired of trying to argue with people cleverly and

hoping for an actor to present himself. That was when she simply asked Mr. Humbert to speak to some of the better looking

customers of his about the potential role. Sheiny knew that for what ever number of customers that Mr. Humbert had, only a

handful were stupid enough to agree. She had read on the Dark Web about the attention to details that Law Enforcement has

while looking at stuff like this. There was no doubt in her mind that some police officer in some country had seen her work. Only

those officers almost never take the faces of the children as a kind of clue. They are always looking for an adult to blame. Not even

accepting a tiniest possibility that maybe most of the stuff is produced by kids themselves.

The stupidity that the man should have to accept Sheiny's

offer is enormous. Even if the face is not seen. Any other body part will be examined thoroughly by the police until they could

single out the man. If she wanted to get somebody for the role, he had to be very average. Without anything weird about his body.

She would not show the man's face. It would be too dangerous for the man. A thought of not carrying about it came through her

mind. What if she just filmed it without thinking? The man would go to jail eventually. But why would she care? No! She thought.

It's unethical. If she hires somebody, she is now responsible for keeping this somebody safe.

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She asked Mr. Humbert for men with three qualities. One,

they all had to be stupid enough to agree. Maybe a small share could be offered to them. She would not be against sharing a part

of her share with the man. She understood the enormous risk that he would undertake. Second, the man should look right. Not fat,

not saggy. Preferably with good looks on the face, to ease up the girls during production. Third, the man should be average with his

features. No weird marks, with an uncut phallus, shaven completely, to avoid recognition by the color of the hair. There

was no need to shave the head. Only the body.

Mr. Humbert returned to her with the list of 3 people. He said

that only two have met the second criteria. The other one begged

Mr. Humbert for something like this. And he thought, giving the girls his address might yield something interesting. "How bad is

he?" she asked him. "I have never seen him without clothes. But he has a chub." answered Mr. Humbert.

The plan was as follows. Go to the three of them, evaluate

them for suitability for the show and then choose only one to appear in the next episode. Before girls went away from Mr.

Humbert, he stopped them. "Wait..." he said "you may need these.". He turned around and took a box out of the drawer. Inside

the box were two revolvers and bullets to fill them up. Sheiny and Chloe both took one revolver. They hidden them under the dress,

behind the tension of the panties ropes.

The first one, thought Sheiny, would be the man that had a

bit of chub. It would be simple. They would see how severe is the

chub. And will cross him out the list if they do not like him. So there they went. It was a very weird building. On the first floor

there was a warehouse of some kind. And there was only another floor above. With just two floors all together, the entrance had an

elevator anyway. The lift didn't work. But the fact that it was there to begin with confused Chloe. Sheiny didn't seem to care. It

seemed evident that a small elevator like this should exists in a warehouse. Chloe was confused why with two floors there is an

41

elevator, while in her house it was six floors without any elevator

at all.

They went up the stairs and there was a very narrow corridor

with dirty, dusty walls and a number of wooden doors all painted

white. The walls, it had seemed, are made all of plasterboard. There was the door that Mr. Humbert had told them about. Chloe

was interested. Almost excited already. Sheiny was slightly scared. They didn't know what could happen. They never seen the man.

They heard just the bare minimum about him. And even those could be lies. Sheiny knocked silently.

There was a rhythmic sound of some kind. Very numb. Very

silent. As soon as she knocked, the sound stopped. Steps now were heard. The door opened up and a smell of sweat, dirty socks

and fat food poured out of there. There was the man, slightly chubby, wearing a bathrobe. It was slightly open. He was in the

middle of closing it down. It seemed like the man is wearing nothing else but the bathrobe. "I was waiting for you" he started

mumbling "I thought it would never happen. I guess god loves me after all.". "Not so fast." Sheiny interrupted him "The fact that we

came, does not mean that you will be hired." Sheiny and Chloe went inside. Looking carefully at all directions. The man closed the

door and came with them forward. "You don't understand" he said in the undertone "The fact that you are here, in my house, is

already enough for me.". Something felt slightly wrong about this situation. Sheiny put her hand on her knee and started going up

the leg, reaching for the revolver in her panties. While her hand was slowly rising up, the skirt that she was wearing revealed more

of her leg. The man could not take his eyes away from it.

"Relax, dude. It's your home." said Chloe "Do what ever you

feel like doing and let's chat.". Chloe was more chill. She seemed

to not feel anything at all. For her it was almost like a normal, casual conversation. While Sheiny stood there with the hand near

the revolver. The man took Chloe's words probably a bit too literally, he opened his bathrobe slightly, revealing his body to

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them. Sheiny looked at Chloe with a face of disgust. "What..."

started Chloe "... I think it's not going to be any more awkward when we actually hire somebody. Let him do what he wants.". The

man was ashamed, but could not help himself and started touching his central organ with his hand. As it grew Chloe felt

more at home, while Sheiny felt more intimidated. At one point Sheiny thought to just shoot the man down and walk out.

Meanwhile Chloe was casually chatting with him while he was masturbating to them.

He didn't do anything. He was touching only himself. They

knew almost immediately that he would not be a part of the show. Only Chloe thought that denying him an ability to ejaculate was

somehow evil. Sheiny didn't think much of it. For her it was just a very unnerving event. She thought that she had to survive

through that evening. Nothing of joy she felt in it. She was already starting to doubt the whole idea. Mr. Hambleton was a way better

observer then this man. When he was allowed once on the set, he just sat there and did nothing. This man finished probably five or

six times. Never taking his eyes from Chloe and Sheiny.

It was a few days till Sheiny had enough courage to go to the

next one. This one should have been way nicer in terms of looks.

And even then, she didn't want to feel that dreadful feeling. She was drinking the sparkling juice on the way to him which

reminded her of the courage that she felt when shooting with Chloe for the first time. She thought that whatever happens, they

must get through it. Or the whole business idea will fail.

So this time the building was normal. It was one of the

buildings in the neighbourhood of Sheiny. It had no elevator. But

they could walk up stairs just fine. They knocked on the door. Chloe anticipated to see this man undress in front of them. Sheiny

tried to calm herself down. The door opened up. There was a woman in her 40s. Hair already grey, but looking still young. "Who

are you, girls?" she said. Sheiny and Chloe already thought that they knocked on the wrong door. When a voice somewhere from

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within screamed "The girls? They are for me.". "Have I told you

not to deal with little children?" she started screaming at the door "They can get you in trouble.". "Shut up, mom!" the voiced yelled

back "Let them in. It's not nice.". The woman made a way for the girls to come in. She looked displeased as if saying with her face

"Go away, please.", but her hand was pointing at a door for one of the rooms.

The girls entered the flat first and then the room. There was

the man. Looked like a boy roughly an age of 18 or 19. Never eating anything. So thin that it was almost frightening. His hair

was very long. He had pointed with his hand on the bed. That was the only place to sit in his room apart from the chair that he

already used to sit on. He didn't look at them when they came in. His eyes were glued to the screen of the computer. There was a

sense that this boy never comes out of his room. Even eating he does inside here. It was some sort of "important match" that he

was playing on the computer.

Sheiny observed the game that he was playing. Pretty

colourful, animated from all angles. Inducing a very strong sense

of visual satisfaction. But on the other hand the boy looked like a drug addict. It seemed like he didn't sleep the prior night. His desk

was filled with all kinds of rubbish. Including a monstrous amount of empty cans from energy drinks and other soda. He opened

another energy drink can and started drinking it. Sheiny for a moment felt that at some point they will see him die from a heart

attack.

They came there at 15:36 right after school. And sat there

until 18:15 waiting for him to finish playing. All this time he never

looked back at them. When the clock showed 18:15 the game was finished. Or that the boy felt tired of it. Or something happened.

He closed the game down. By that time he forgot that the girls were even present in the room. As he closed the game, a picture

of Windows 10 appeared on his computer. He navigated through folders and found a video-file with Sheiny and Chloe in it. It was

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the stuff. He took down his pants and started enjoying the show

on his screen. "Do you like it?" said Chloe. The boy's hand stopped moving. He didn't dare to look around. He was too frightened.

They caught him in the middle of something private. "Come on, I'll help you" said Chloe and started moving towards the boy. Sheiny

was shocked by her slightly. On the other hand it was almost expected from Chloe by this point.

Sheiny sat by the side on the bed and kept looking towards

the door. Just in case his mother would come in. Meanwhile Chloe "played" the boy. Chloe seemed to loose her mind every-time

somebody half decent looking was in-front of her. Sheiny didn't join. She didn't like what Chloe was doing. Chloe's vulgarity had

came back to Sheiny. This was the reason she didn't want to be her friend to begin with. But this time, this kind of behaviour paid

well. So, Sheiny thought, she could let her do what she wants. About five minutes into it he already finished and as if Chloe and

Sheiny never existed, he forgot about them and started playing again.

The boy was such an imbecile that he didn't even mind

putting his face into the stuff that they were filming. Chloe liked him. She thought that he would work very well. Sheiny thought a

bit deeper. What she didn't like about him was his complete carelessness. He used Windows. But there was another problem.

Would she speak to him about the operating system, he would disregard her. Arguing for windows not because of some high level

paranoia like in Mr. Hambleton. But because there was no other way to play the game that he was playing. He had a game

addiction. Real addiction to a piece of software designed to induce such an addiction. No other game could be a substitute. No

system but Windows could be used. And they only had about five minutes between games to even shoot something with him.

More then that, he was the kind of imbecile that would put

the video file with the stuff on the desktop. He would yell at his mom to stop telling him not to watch it. He would tell his mom

45

how well it felt to be with Chloe that day. And that Sheiny was not

interested. "What a boring girl Sheiny was" he would tell his mom. His whole existence. His last neurons of the brain were lost in that

game. Anything else was "simple" and "easy". He would be caught and put to prison tomorrow. But maybe no. He would not

be caught. He was too dumb to feel the presence of the police. And therefore the police would probably ignore him too.

Regardless of whether he would be caught. Sheiny wasn't going to work with him. Chloe liked him. But this was not enough.

As they were walking towards the third man, they entered a

shop to buy some more of the sparkling juice. Mendel was there. He was silently watching Sheiny. This time a small smile appeared

on her face. Like a bliss, her feelings were repaired. And she felt that in his presence she would always feel good. This time he got

out the store before her. Chloe looked on Sheiny that was observing how Mendel was leaving. One more glance he gave her,

being something like fifty meters away from the store. And then he went away. "Who's this?" asked Chloe. "I don't really know.

Some dude. Isn't he amazing?" was Sheiny's answer. They went on.

As they were passing through a dark alley, which was the

fastest way to get to the third man, Sheiny asked Chloe not to be such a pervert this time. "But why?" asked Chloe with at most

confusion. For Chloe there was no difference if they are doing casting or filming. And she felt rather nice herself while "playing"

for five minutes with the boy. Sheiny was not convinced. Sheiny started yelling "The problem, you see, is that I'm trying to make

money, here. It's not about fucking people. We are doing this rubbish crap just because all legal ways of making money are

closed to us. It's not about lust. It's not about perversion. I hate all of it. You are a fucking whore, Chloe. Like what the fuck! Why

should I need to watch you fuck somebody for five minutes straight, when we are not even recording? This was not even a

rehearsal. This is insanity! Please, Chloe... Just fucking stop it!"

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Chloe stood there looking at Sheiny, as Sheiny was breathing hard

from anger. "Why would you care, Shein'? Fuck it if I fuck 'em. I like it. This is why you hired me. I am a lustful whore. And I'm

proud of myself... " In a moment, Sheiny was already standing there with her hand extended towards Chloe and a revolver

loaded. "Shut the fuck up!" she yelled at Chloe. Chloe stopped talking and stood there anticipating a bullet at any moment.

Sheiny started crying. She started explaining. She knew that Chloe was a lustful whore. She didn't mind much, because of the

nature of the business she had to be one. It was merely uneasy for her to see her lust over the two previous men. This time

though, she thought something else could happen.

Sheiny remembered the address of Mendel. He did not tell

her the number of his flat, but the number of the building corresponded with the building of the third man. As she saw him in the shop, she realised that the last man could be Mendel himself. And Sheiny felt a strong envy towards Chloe's ability to be lustful. She was jealous already. Knowing that her inability to act will make it so Chloe will enjoy Mendel, while Sheiny would simply watch. She wanted the opposite to happen. It was not for sure that the last man was Mendel, but there was something inside Sheiny that told her that he was.

Chloe was slightly scared of Sheiny for the next few minutes.

But as she realized the depth of the situation, she became a bit

more thoughtful and forgetful about Sheiny. She hugged Sheiny just before they started entering the building. It was an act of

understanding. And act of sharing of the courage. An act of calming down before the storm. Chloe, for the first time in the last

year or so, got teared eyes. She realized it was love. Sheiny was in love with Mendel. Not the lustful kind of love. Not sexual, per

se. Not the kind that they wanted to sell to Mr. Humbert's customers. The real kind. Something that now Chloe realized, she

felt jealous about. She would fuck people left and right. Would film

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this stuff, then grow up and keep filming this stuff. But she would

never form a relationship longer then one scene. While Sheiny was capable of sustaining a family with Mendel.

The hug was over. The tears were wiped clean and the girls

entered the building. This building had an elevator. Not the best one. Not the most clean. But the one that worked, at least. They

went up to the needed floor and knocked at the needed door. Sheiny was trying very hard to contain her smile. Chloe took a

deep breath. Making sure Sheiny saw it. Sheiny took a deep breath as well. And the man opened the door.

It was not Mendel. It was some other dude. A wave of

disappointment went through Sheiny. But the job had to be done regardless. So she took herself together and went in. Sheiny

noticed, that as they entered, the man locked the door and took the key with him. Chloe didn't seem to care. Something seemed

to relieve Chloe a bit. Maybe now that it's not Mendel she can do with him whatever she wanted. She came closer to the man,

trying to make him excited.

This is when he threw her full force on the couch that stood

on the other end of the room. Chloe landed safely, but it seemed

like this was not the intention. The man didn't look like a nice man at all. His features were hard and his face was angry. He was

coming for Chloe, running at her full speed. He took Chloe up and restricted her movements with his large, strong arms, while

smiling at her evilly.

A loud noise pierced through the room. It felt as though an

explosion happened in the very close proximity to that place.

Sheiny stood there with the pointed revolver. She did not dare shooting the man. He was way to close to Chloe. She shot a

warning shot towards the kitchen. It seems like it penetrated the window's glass. A breeze of fresh air with an ominous sound was

walking through the room. "Get away from her, you bitch!" screamed Sheiny "Or I'll fucking kill you!". The man changed his

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attitude. He started walking backward away from Chloe and

Sheiny. The only problem is, he was walking towards the kitchen. Sheiny noticed a stand with knifes in the kitchen. It seems like the

man was walking towards it.

Another loud explosion happened. Sheiny just shot the light

fixture. And the small shards of glass spread through the now dark

room. The man got disoriented. Sheiny took Chloe's hand and dragged her as quickly as she could towards the exit. She

remembered that the man had locked the door. She pointed the revolver at a spot roughly where the lock was. She didn't shoot.

Those doors, she thought, are made in such a way, that there is more than one point where it's locked. If she damages the

mechanism of the door, they would never escape. There are steel beams inside of this door coming in all directions. Making it very

hard to break in. Or in their case, to break out. A revolver, or two revolvers would not be a sufficient enough weapon to penetrate a

door like this.

"Shoot the door!" screamed Chloe while Sheiny looked

around. The man with a knife in his hand was running towards

them full speed. Four more explosions happened almost back to back. Sheiny just emptied up the revolver pointing towards the

general direction of the man. He was down, the knife was still in his hand. But he couldn't move. It will be a minute or two before

the man was dead. Sheiny just killed somebody for the first time. While the shock wore off, the two girls were sitting there and

watching him die.

Sheiny quietly explained Chloe why shooting the door didn't

make any sense. And that she didn't want to kill the man. Just to

immobilise him until they escaped. But now, there was a problem. Somebody had to search for the key. It meant touching a dead

man's body. They were arguing for a few minutes who should do that job. Until Sheiny volunteered for that. She carefully put her

hand into all of his pockets. During this she glimpsed at his dead eyes. They were open, but expressionless. She thought that it was

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probably the biggest mistake in her life to come here. But how

could she not come here? Mendel lives in this house, she thought, this would be so much better if it was him. He wouldn’t do

something as stupid. She wouldn’t need to use the revolver.

She found the key and without looking at it went for the door.

When she came closer to the door, she realized something. The

key was penetrated by one of her bullets.

There was no use for the key. They could search through the

house. Maybe they would find another key. Who knows. On the

other hand, they could climb from the window into the near by flat. And hope that the people there would not call the police. But

the weapons had to be thrown away somewhere. It was not wise to leave them or keep them. And climbing into somebodies home

with a weapon would be a dead giveaway. But the most importantly, the police would come soon. It was an impossible

situation.

Sheiny decided to try and peek at the window beside the flat,

anyway. There was a huge window in the saloon that meant only

one thing. The next window right beside it was also huge, like this one. And peeking into it would not be a big deal. So she did. And

for her own amusement, she found that the other flat belonged to Mendel. He was sitting stunned. Looking at the wall. Perhaps he

just heard the shootings, and was not sure whether it was real or not.

Sheiny knocked on Mendel's window. He reacted with at most

horror. He saw her familiar face. But failed to believe it. He looked at her for a few seconds trying to decipher what it all meant. Had

he become crazy? Is it all hallucinations? Sheiny knocked again and started showing him a motion that he need to do to open the

window for them. He came closer and opened the window. "What the hell is happening?" he asked her. "No time to explain." started

Sheiny "Please let us in.". Sheiny and Chloe carefully climbed into Mendel's flat.

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They explained him what had just happened and that in a

few minutes police will show up in this place and will ask people

around. They had to tell him the whole story, so the context of it would be known. He was stunned to even hear about a concept of

children producing something like this. Let alone being armed and killing a man that was trying to rape them. But it was that kind of

story that was so ridiculous, it had to be true. They all knew that the police will not leave the house alone for maybe another few

days. And staying so long in Mendel's flat was not an option. They quickly packed the guns and went out. Sheiny realised that it was

not an ideal date that she had hoped for, but at least she had visited his home.

One customer less, did not mean much. The girls got rid of

the weapons and carried on. They explained to Mr. Humbert what had happened. And he was relieved that he did not forget to give

them the revolvers to begin with. The plan had failed once again. No actor suitable enough was found. Which made Sheiny start

thinking about closing the show. Or perhaps exiting it, so Chloe would do it herself. Sheiny wanted to pursuit Mendel. She wanted

him. She didn't want him in the show, but it was the only thing that could make sense to her. Would she tell him that she wants

him because she loves him, he might not believe her. But if it's something that will help her eat, maybe then he would agree. She

didn't know what to do, but she knew that from now on, all tries would go into trying to convince Mendel to join the show. There

was no way around that thought. So she and Chloe started thinking about possible ways to convince him. Few weeks had

passed. Nobody already remembered the killed man. And this was the time for the next plan.

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CHAPTER V

A Game Of Chess

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"I do not understand." said Chloe while a new board of chess

was sitting in front of them. They were about to start a blitz. It seemed like Sheiny had found a full set of chess in Mr. Hambleton's shed, even with a proper chess clock. It was a time between the scenes. No pieces were yet moved from their positions. White pieces were on Chloe's side.

"What would be harmful in making software that is not

useful, like games for example, to be not Free? It's a form of art after all." said Chloe while moving a pawn to E4. "Art has a different criteria, than software, yes..." said Sheiny, moving a knight to C6 "...all we want from art is it to be share-able.". Chloe thought for a while and moved a knight to F3 without uttering a word. "Take for example VLC..." Sheiny continued "...it's Free Software to play, usually, non free files." Sheiny responded with a pawn on D5, revealing the queen "It would be almost alright if, say, game data, textures and alike would be proprietary, but that the software would be free.". "The game engine?" asked Chloe while making her next move in chess. It was weird to her that Sheiny had revealed her queen. Anyway, Chloe moved a bishop to D3. "Not quite the game engine..." Sheiny told Chloe when moving her second knight to F6 "... a game engine is simply a collection of pre-made software to build games simpler. But the game developers always add more to it...". Chloe kept listening silently, taking Sheiny's pawn with her own at D5. Sheiny stopped talking. Chloe was the first who have taken a piece. This surprised Sheiny a little bit. "What was I saying?..." Sheiny mumbled deciding on the next move. As a form of vicious revenge Sheiny took Chloe's pawn, the one that took hers a step earlier on D5, with non other but her majesty's queen her self. "The idea of a game engine is borrowed from Free Software it self..." Sheiny continued "...the problem is that Games are considered new

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software.". "Not copylefted?" Chloe asked while moving a knight to C3 in hopes of taking the queen. "That's exactly what I'm talking about..." said Sheiny while moving her queen away from Chloe's knight to H5 "... Game Engines are almost like Free Software. Some game engines give you the four freedoms. Others don't, but the point is that you are using parts of it's object code to make more object code.". Chloe, in some kind of panic, castled with the rook on the right. Moving the king to G1 and the rook to F1 in one move. "In a game made with a game engine, the source code would be both, the source of the engine and of the logic built on-top of the engine." Sheiny continued "The game art, if not the part of the game binary and interchangeable with different art is not a part of the software of the game. You could substitute them with other images and still play the game.". Sheiny stopped talking and moved a bishop to G4. "But what would it change if the logic is free or not?" asked Chloe while moving pawn to H3 in a desperate attempt to take out the bishop "People want to play the games unchanged, like they watch movies, or read books. What is the point here?". "Nonsense." said Sheiny while moving her knight to E5. "Absolute, nonsense..." Chloe agreed, she saw a possibility of taking Sheiny's knight with her own at this spot. But she didn't. She took the bishop that she intended to take earlier on G4 with a pawn. "... I could've taken your knight." she said to Sheiny. Sheiny, instead of moving her knight out of there, added the second knight around it, on G4, taking the pawn that stood there. Chloe looked all confused. Why didn't Sheiny moved her knight away from there? She didn't think much and took Sheiny's knight at E5 with her own. "Nonsense!" started Sheiny again "People do mods. People do alternative cuts of films. People write fan-fiction stories about their favourite characters. This freedom should exist." Sheiny moved the queen to H2. Checkmate! Chloe has lost the battle.

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After a few pointless attempts at saving her king from the

checkmate, Chloe tried to argue further. "He didn't care." she said "He was completely in the game for several hours, while it was the unaltered original version.". "He was an addicted imbecile." stated Sheiny "The game had probably a lot to do with it. Perhaps it was built with a team of talented psychologists. The art, the animation, the music, the loot boxes where all designed for one thing and one thing only, to induce as much addiction as possible. With a Free Game it's possible to alter it, so it's not addicting as much. It's possible to change anything at all with your own copy. The original will always be there. If people want to play the addictive version, they could install the original. Or they could install your version if you choose to share it. Or the original developer could agree with you and alter the original to include your changes. With Free Software it's all possible and it should be possible.". "But then..." Chloe started her last attempt "the original will be overwritten and no longer existing.". "Well, if nobody keeps a copy of the original it could be the case" answered Sheiny without thinking much "... but for the most part all copies are stored somewhere. In git, for example, every change is recorded and back-traceable. No version and no version's source code is usually lost."

Chloe sat there, looking at the checkmate and thinking about

computer games and the boy with long hair. Sheiny was thinking of Mendel. It had to be a week since she last saw him. Or maybe even two weeks. From the constant cycle of work and school it was very hard to tell for certain. His gaze was haunting her memories. Not stalking per se, but probably just looking at her with an unsure question of whether he knew her before. Thoughts of quantum physics passed through her mind. Mendel said that his long gone girlfriend was looking somewhat similarly to Sheiny.

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Or was it that Mendel was just trying to piece her image from Sheiny's? It didn't matter. For an instance a ludicrous thought of Mendel being a man from the future came into her imagination. From times when she is his girlfriend. Suddenly, some inexplicable event had to have brought him back in time to current days. He was looking in the same neighbourhood for the same girl. Finding Sheiny. A little girl, only slightly resembling his future girlfriend.

But of course it was all nonsense. A sweet dream, induced by

inevitability that Mendel is somehow unchangeable in his love toward that mysterious woman. Sheiny thought to tell him that his girlfriend had died. Or that she stopped loving him. But she didn't even know who it was. And asking him this, or lying to him about her, was too cruel for her. She killed a man, she thought. How is there more cruel than that? She was trying to calm herself by thinking that it all was just a mistake. That she didn't really want to kill him. That he deserved it somehow. But what's done is done. She wanted to owe to never carry a weapon again. But what if the circumstances will require it? She wanted to forget about the deed, but the deed was too strong to forget it. And if not the killing of that man, just a few minutes prior she nearly killed her best friend for envy.

"Am I a cruel bitch?" asked Sheiny, half crying. Chloe

understood what Sheiny was referring to. She came closer and hugged her tight. "You saved my life." Chloe told her. "But I wanted to kill you prior." Sheiny said while crying already in full force. "You weren't." said Chloe "... you weren't able to pull that trigger on me. You were like you are now when you pointed that at me. All boo hoo, crying little girl. There was no way you could shoot me. Yes. It was scary. But since that day, I am sure that you are trustworthy. You are a kind soul.". "I wanted to kill you for

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envy!" said Sheiny. "For love." answered Chloe "It was love. Not envy.".

Sheiny seemed to have filled up with moral. They started

filming again. After that Sheiny went not home. She walked a bit further towards the area of Mendel's. The investigation at that place was over. It was rumoured that the police have accused some guy that was in frequent battles with that angry man. What happened with him is unknown. Probably he is walking free already. There was not a single evidence against him, she thought. But who knows for sure?

Sheiny was about to enter the building as her heart started

pounding very rapidly. This place didn't seem right. She remembered the courage she had when filming with Chloe of the first time. And she opened the door. But the heart didn't stop pounding. She could not handle this place. Something about it was too scary. And it wasn't Mendel. A few floors above the place where she is now, she took a life of a man. The trauma came back to her. He was running at her full speed with a knife, she thought. It was self-defence. It was okay, she thought. But nothing could stop the beating of her heart. So she left the building.

She remembered that Mendel told her his place of work,

when they walked together the first time. It was a wood-chopping little factory right outside the city. It was far away. But it was way better than the damned building. So the next day after school she didn't go to the shed. She took a bus to Mendel's work instead. When she arrived at the location she was slightly disoriented. It was a very silent place full of tiny factories producing all kinds of rubbish. Many of those factories were closed and abandoned. But a few worked still. A handful of people on each of them were doing some tasks. And after two or three working factories she

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saw that wooden-chopping little factory that Mendel had talked about. Her heart started pounding again. This time she liked it. She stepped in and there he was.

He saw her almost immediately and didn't know what to

think about it. An instance, he though, she was imaginary. Another man came towards her and asked "What are you doing here, child?". "It's my daughter" said Mendel. Sheiny was amazed by his wit. By his ability to lie so quickly and perfectly. "Dad..." she said "... I've lost the key from the flat. Mom isn't home. Can I sit here with you meanwhile?". "I finish in half an hour anyway, Sheiny." said Mendel "Are you hungry?".

The half an hour had passed and they went walking with two

sandwiches made by Mendel in the morning. They were still in the industrial zone, so to speak. It was still the place of closed down little factories and rubble or rubbish. Mendel kicked an open can of beans that was laying on the road in front of them. Sheiny had noticed the expiration date on it. It said: 1998-06-23. The can twice older than herself. "How old are you, Mendel?" she asked of him while searching frantically the answer in her own mind. "Twenty eight" was his answer.

She had told him that she went to his house but could not

enter. He smiled. He no longer lived in that house. A lot of people left that building since the incident. He gave her his new address and they entered a bus. "What happened to you and your girlfriend?" she asked "You have never told me that story.". He started talking.

When he was about 15 or so years old, he and his girlfriend

Cherish fell in love. He remembered her name was Cherish. She had a normal, formal name, but he didn't remember what it was.

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Everybody simply called her Cherish. They have been separated when he was eighteen years old. Sheiny did a quick math. It was before she was born. The reason for their separation was her father. Mendel was just a little bit older than Cherish. And when she was seventeen and he was already eighteen, her father called police on him. They were together before that for three years, he said. But her father could not get rid of him since there was no laws that were broken. Then that little period had arrived. So her father knew that this was an opportunity to get rid of Mendel. Mendel got a good trial. Instead of the usual twenty or so years, the judge gave him only ten. It was a way of saying that the judge understood the absurdity of the situation. Now he is looking for her. She was living somewhere in that neighbourhood. Maybe he gonna find her. But will he be able to recognize her? Maybe Mendel already seen her a couple of times and failed to know that it was Cherish. Maybe she is married, with kids, fat and ugly... But he still loves her.

They made it to their neighbourhood and exited the bus. Now

Sheiny wanted to convince him that Cherish is either dead or doesn't love him anymore. And that he must join her little illegal show. "Mendel" she started "... well... do you want to see our shed?". "What shed?" he asked. "The one where we film things." she answered nervously. Mendel didn't want to go. "Please..." begged him Sheiny. Mendel didn't want to go still. Mendel got sad and realized something. "Your dad..." he said "... could put me to jail again. And this time it would not be for ten years. It would be for the whole twenty. I will come out a very old man. I think what is right to do is to leave you alone and never speak to you again.". "My dad left us when I was small." she said with a tear in her eye "My mother is trying to sustain me alone. But she can't. And the only way to make money is currently - the shed. The only problem

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is, we need a male actor. Our sales are dropping. They all demand a male actor.". Sheiny started crying at Mendel. It was not a lie. Mendel listened to it and it brought a very deep thought in him. He was gone without uttering a word. Full in sadness. Full in regret. But he felt like this was the right thing to do.

Sheiny sat on the pavement where she was. She was not

about to give up. But she just couldn't figure out what to do with Mendel. Sometimes he was this nice dude, welcoming and everything. The other times he was this closed-in man, with a life long trauma about his lost girlfriend. She remembered the chess board from yesterday. She knew that she just needed to come up with a better move. Mendel was now her new game of "convincing". And Sheiny was now playing it.

She came to his new house that didn't induce any kind of

heart beat this time at all. She knocked on his door. He opened it and looked at her silently for about ten seconds. Then he shut the door. "Go away" he said from with in, while disappearing into the flat. Sheiny thought, okay, this didn't work. Next move. She sat outside of his house in thought of the next move, suddenly rain started. Sheiny came into the building to cover herself from the water. Suddenly something struck her.

She went back into the rain and stood there under the

pouring water for several minutes. Soaking herself to the core. Then, wet as a sponge, she climbed the stairs and knocked on his door again. He opened it, saw that it was her and shut it. She thought that it was the stupidest chess move she had ever done. Suddenly the door opened again. "Are you kidding me?" he said to her almost violently "Get in.". He was not in the good mood it had seemed. But from the other side, he was barely holding himself from smiling. He gave her a huge towel from the bath and told her

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to wait here until she is dry. Meanwhile he went into his room, trying to ignore her.

She sat the saloon drying up, waiting that he will come out of

the room and they could talk more. But then she heard him snore. He was sleeping. Perhaps, tired from work, she thought, under the influence of the rain, he couldn't help but to fall asleep. She sat for some while and then a stupid idea hit her. She took out her phone and saw a message from Chloe. "Where are you?" the message said. "I'm at Mendel's. I will probably stay here all night." Sheiny wrote "Please, if my mom calls, tell her that I will sleep in your house tonight.". She pressed "send". A few more dreadful minutes later she wrote to her mother. The message said "I'm going to sleep in Chloe's house today. Don't wait for me home.". She was unsure about what to do next. But she was sure that the wet clothes were very annoying. She removed them, covering herself only with the towel.

An hour or so passed as she was sitting stupidly in Mendel's

saloon. She did nothing but contemplate her next move. Then she got up and silently went into Mendel's room. Still naked, with only a towel on her. She looked at him stupidly for perhaps another minute or two, before gaining enough strength for what she was about to do next. She entered the bed, hugged Mendel tightly and thrown out the wet towel. After a few minutes of laying like this, she too had fallen asleep.

The morning was wonderful. "What the fuck!" were the words

that woke Sheiny up. Mendel was looking at her, still laying in bed and covered by the blanket. It was both frightening and somewhat relieving. Mendel didn't seem to be angry. He just was simply confused. He starred at her for a minute. This time, not searching his girlfriend in her features, but rather contemplating about what

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is happening. In some distant emotion, deep inside his head, he was extremely proud of himself. He took the blanket down which revealed Sheiny's naked body. Then he put the blanket back on and carefully escaped it to the side so to keep Sheiny covered. As he stood up, a bulge was visible in his trousers. This situation aroused him. He went out the room.

"Where are you clothes?" he asked her from outside. "On the

couch in the saloon." she said. "Will your mom be wondering where you were all night?" he said a bit angrily before appearing with her now dry clothes at the door. He thrown them at her and went out the room again. "Please, dress up." he said. "She thinks I'm at Chloe's." Sheiny told him "I asked Chloe to back it up, if she asks.". Sheiny went out the room and there was Mendel. He was not angry. More like a mixture of doomed and proud could be read on his face. It was evident that he did enjoy that surprise.

"Are you sure that she will not call Chloe's parents instead?"

he asked her in paranoia "I'm going to jail for this! This is definite! They are going to knock on my door any second! Or take me from my work. This is what is going to happen.". Sheiny thought for a second. It was a valid criticism for her plan. She didn't know what to answer immediately. "My mom is not going to be that smart." she said "She is against being smart.". Mendel looked at her with a bit of relieve. He was already familiar with such people. He sat down on the couch and looked at Sheiny with a face of doubt. Something was tormenting him.

"Are you okay?" she asked him. "You look like her." he said

"You like if they took her and made her tiny. It's weird. I love her. But there is no her here. She does not exist. Only you. A cheap substitute. A little girl.". "I love you" she said to him. Which immediately started an uncontrollable beating of her heart. "I

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guess..." he said "...I cannot argue with you about the nature of love. You sell that stuff. Maybe it's even true. Maybe indeed they took her and shrunk her down and you are Cherish. I do feel, don't get me wrong, a feeling similar to love towards you. I was angry at you yesterday, I'm sorry. But please understand, I do not want to risk being in prison for another period. I just got out.".

The face of the dead man appeared in front of Sheiny. Her

cruelty killed him. Her brain was not very kind to Mendel at this moment. She started explaining him how they planned to keep the identity of the male actor secret, totally understanding that it might not even work. She told him about the shaving of the hairs. About the average looks, that Mendel apparently has. He refused to remove his trousers, or to tell her whether he was cut or uncut. He felt ashamed sitting there and listening to it like it was something important. He felt ashamed wanting her. It was time for his job and for her school. And to avoid further suspicions both of them must part immediately. He agreed that she can come once in a while to him. Only that it must be not sexual. She took it as a small victory. As a rope that she can hold on to, while climbing up to him. She didn't except this rule to be forever. She knew that something could be done to break his strength. The question was, what exactly?

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CHAPTER VI

Can Chloe Break Him?

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Next day Sheiny and Chloe did not film much. They did went

to the shed and did film a small scene, but Sheiny had a bigger plan. Her envy for Chloe has returned to her, but in a different light. She thought that maybe Chloe is capable of breaking through to Mendel. Maybe she could ease up his inner security. Maybe she could excite him enough to break through his paranoia and then Sheiny could take advantage of it. She said to Chloe that it all was only for the quality of the show. But Chloe read between the lines. She knew what was really happening.

As they went towards Mendel they both were nervous. They

both were wearing nothing underneath the dresses. And it was awkward to walk like this down the street. Also Sheiny was obviously nervous about the fact that it might actually work. And then she might actually find courage to actually do it with him. Chloe was not very irritated with the absence of underwear. In her mind it was freedom. She was more afraid to make Sheiny sad. To make Mendel switch to her instead. She was already feeling a bit of shame in this. They both knew that it was a planned cheating of a kind. Similar to swinger parties, Sheiny thought, it might actually make him more in love with her. Of course she also was doubting the idea very much. It was lunacy.

They knocked and he opened the door. He was half expecting

to see both of them. He knew for certain that Sheiny would come. But he was not surprised to see Chloe there as well. Sheiny put her bag on the side of the couch. She took out a laptop and a projector. "Do you want to see a movie?" she asked. "What movie?" he asked her back. There was a big enough, wide white wall on one side of his saloon. When Sheiny sat at his house alone yesterday, she couldn't stop thinking about using this as a screen.

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She just needed to buy a projector. Fortunately, she had the money to do so.

Mr. Humbert recommended Lolita by Stanley Kubrick. Of

course he did. The main character's name is also Humbert in that film. He said it's better to show him the older film, since the newer film, shot in 1997, draws Humbert as a kind of psychopathic evil person. While in the Kubrick version he is just a fool. Mr. Hambleton recommended "1984" shot in 1984. It was, as he said, a movie that justifies sexual crimes, making all laws against them sound ridiculous. Chloe recommended Leon: The Professional by Luc Besson. She thought that it would make Mendel feel more. Sheiny didn't take any of their suggestions.

She thought that the film should be more subtle. She chose

School Of Rock by Richard Linklater, starring Jack Black. There was no sex references. Nothing that would make him realize what they were doing. It was a children's movie. But the idea of rebellion, of doing with kids something that one does not supposed to do, was communicated wonderfully. It's a story about a heavy metal, rock guitarist teaching kids, in secret, to be heavy metal, rock guitarists like himself. It was rebellious to it's core and in the same time, it was about making a show. She thought that it might inspire Mendel to start filming with them.

He agreed to watch the film. More though, he got pleasantly

surprised that they would not use the laptop's screen for it. But turn the whole saloon into a small cinema. She could've taken him to Mr. Humbert's, but she was afraid that he would deny. And plus, cinema is not in a comfort of one's home. It's not your privacy zone, where you could let go of all worries and feel excited. She needed him to feel like nothing is going to happen if he would do it with them.

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They sat down on the couch, the film started. A heavy rock

guitar riff, pleasantly played over the title sequence as the camera man walked through a bar. Both girl hugged Mendel from both sides, in an attempt to arouse him. He, Sheiny thought, could be seen fighting with his thoughts for a moment. It was a small victory. But he didn't act quite yet. He was sitting stiff, watching the screen. Trying as much as possible to ignore the girls.

By the time the main character was already in the school,

still not teaching, sitting on the chair like an imbecile, trying to get rid of his handover. A smart girl, from the class started yelling at him to teach them something. Mendel already hugged both girls too. They were sitting a lot freer. He had excepted to be in direct touch with them. Feeling his warm, large hand on her shoulder, letting herself to burrow her head into his stomach, Sheiny thought that they have reached a new milestone.

Chloe, perhaps in an attempt to start Mendel inner

mechanisms, put her leg in such a way, that he could see that she was not wearing underwear. He did catch a glimpse of it. His face stiffened again. He glued himself to the screen. He didn't stiffen his body. Perhaps he didn't want the girls to notice that he had stiffened. But he was very cautious not to look away from the screen.

A few scenes later the curiosity overcame him. Sheiny did

the same pose. It was evident that Sheiny had more control over his emotions than Chloe. Perhaps, Sheiny thought, he was indeed a kind of person that would be Mr. Humbert's customer. And he was in love with Sheiny. And that the entire story about Cherish, his lost girlfriend, was made up to conceal why he was starring at her so much.

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After a few minutes of looking back and forth, between the

screen, Sheiny's bottom and occasionally even Chloe's bottom, Mendel said "Please cover yourself girls, or I will give you my boxers.". The girls both smiled and readjusted themselves to comply with his request. Sheiny thought at this moment that Mendel was indeed unbreakable. She started doubting that he made up the story about Cherish.

Chloe made an interesting move. She pretended as thought

she cannot find a comfortable pose to sit in. This made her move about frantically and gave her an ability to touch Mendel's groin a few times. First time Mendel didn't even notice. The second time, he readjusted himself to help her find the comfortable spot. Third time, he readjusted something in his pants. He was wearing jeans. There was no way to see if he is aroused. But this gesture was a giveaway. Sheiny knew that they are moving in the right direction. But she didn't want to repeat it herself. He would notice.

Chloe had planned one thing. She told it to Sheiny before

hand. But Sheiny thought that it would not work. Chloe insisted, but Sheiny wasn't going to do it. It was too insane for Sheiny. This something had to be done toward the end of the film. During the climactic scene where kids make a huge rock show. That scene was coming up and Sheiny watched for Chloe, so that she would not attempt that hilarious lunacy. But then Chloe started sinking down. Moving her bottom towards the edge of the couch. She raised both of her legs. Revealing herself almost completely. Sheiny knew that Chloe was going to do it anyway.

Mendel noticed it and his face expressed the words "Oh

God". Sheiny thought that there is no way around it. She must act. "Oh my god!" Sheiny yelled "Not now! We must run!". She took Mendel's arm and pulled him away from Chloe. They went towards

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his room. Chloe acted as thought she lost her mind and started masturbating violently. "What the fuck!" said Mendel. "It's always like that..." started Sheiny "Chloe is a lustful whore. Let her sit near a man and she cannot help it but start doing this.". "Sheiny!" screamed Chloe from the saloon. Mendel didn't watch it. He was looking anywhere but at Chloe. "Sheiny!" Chloe screamed again "Help me! You must help me!". Sheiny acted like if she was doomed. And she was very convincing at that. She went back into the saloon.

"What the fuck... What the fuck... What the fuck..." was

saying Mendel on repeat. He was sitting in his room in shock, unable to comprehend what was happening. Curiosity took hold of him for a moment. He looked across the corner and saw both Sheiny and Chloe completely naked, helping each other. He went back into the room. Hiding in farthest corner of it. "Mendel!" he heard one of the girls scream "Mendel! Help us!". Mendel climbed under the bed. He wrapped himself in a blanket and shacked in fear. Sheiny, completely naked, appeared in front of him. She found him immediately. She was dragging him out as he was screaming "Leave me alone! I don't want to go to jail!". "You will not go to jail, Mendel" Sheiny told him in undertone "We just need to pretend.". Mendel revealed his face. It was crying. "Why me?" he asked Sheiny. "You have a dick." she answered.

A few moments later Sheiny appeared in front of Chloe with

Mendel that was covering his face. He was hoping to escape it. He was holding his face so tight, that it seemed like his hands would break through his skull. Sheiny started unbuttoning his pants. A squeaky sound, a cry for help that was trying to be unnoticed came out of Mendel's mouth. Sheiny removed the jeans successfully. Now the boxers. Sheiny waited for a little bit.

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Noticing that Mendel was not looking, Chloe gave Sheiny a serious face. A face that had a meaning of "Come on. Hurry up.". Sheiny carefully took his boxers down. The ding-dong was hard.

For a moment Mendel took his hands away from his face to

see what's happening. Sheiny was coming from the front. She was about to take it in her mouth. This is when Mendel snatched. He ran away as quickly as he could towards the door. Opened it and ran outside. Sheiny watched him go. For a few seconds she didn't know what to do. He ran outside with no pants on. She had to save him. Before he was out of the staircase, there was a chance to return him back. No time had to be wasted. She ran after him. Still naked. Chloe thought it would be fun to run as well. She took her time to lock the flat.

It was almost a blessing that nearly nobody was walking

down the street that evening. There goes Mendel. No pants on. Ding-dong flapping around. Running as quickly as he can, screaming "Help me!". There goes Sheiny. Fully naked, screaming "Come back!". And there goes Chloe as well. With a huge smile on her face. Absolutely naked. Carrying a key.

After a bit, Mendel got tired. He realized what a stupid thing

he had done. He had to take cover quickly. There was no time to think. He climbed over some bush into somebodies property. At least if somebody will pass by, they will not see his bottom. In the property, behind Mendel, stood a little building. A shed. Sheiny appeared. She took him by hand and dragged him towards that shed. "Do you see what you did?" he told her quietly. Chloe appeared as well. She stood there, fully embracing that any-who can see her. She was slightly surprised by the coincidence. It was not just some shed. It was the shed. It was where they filmed the stuff.

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It was a very interesting story to tell to Mr. Hambleton. "You

are a lucky man." he told to Mendel. Mendel calmed down and tried to explain them something. He did feel arousal. He even thought momentarily to do something about it. But he was loyal to Cherish. He would accept a physical loss. If they had raped him, it was not under his control per se. He didn't have anything against what they were doing in the shed. He didn't want to stop being their friend. Sheiny still resembled Cherish. It was very hard for him to give up talking to her. But he wouldn't do it. There was no way he would. Unless, of course, if Cherish herself was the other actor.

Sheiny was broken. Mendel was indeed unbreakable. It even

sparked another layer of love to Mendel inside her. They sat there in the shed, looking at all the equipment, when Mendel said "Have you though of making a small film?". Small film? Sheiny didn't understand what he was talking about. "Like a cinema movie, but not epic." he continued "Something that could be done having you two, maybe me, Mr. Hambleton. Maybe a few friends from school. Something that we can show in the Mr. Humbert's cinema. Not something expensive. Something done smartly.". Sheiny was put in a very deep thought by these words. She was inspired. She could use software, programs like Blender, perhaps, to create more things that would be impossible to shoot. They could get a green screen. They could write a big movie. Just without reliance on large amount of actors. And perhaps the whole computer class in the school could be utilized. They could even probably get the principal of the school on board. This was when Sheiny thought that she has to write a script.

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CHAPTER VII

The Vigilantes

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Violence. A desire for violence. A perverse nature of the

human mind. Through out history people have looked for reasons to commit acts of violence. It was not necessary to commit murder, per se. To fight, humiliate, break bones and leave to die was enough. People were thrown to fight with predatory animals in coliseums for the amusement of the crowd. People were hanged for various imaginary crimes. Heretics that did not believe in imaginary things were burned to their cores. People moved on. Laws got stricter to contain the violence. Suddenly people found new urges.

Jews were tortured and murdered by Nazis because they

were more successful than Germans in making profit. It was the official reason. Thought it is understood that people just wanted to kill somebody. It was not important for people who would be tortured and murdered. It just had to be okay to do it. Adolf Hitler, as he rose to power, could say that it was okay to torture and murder Jews. Thus people ran to do this for their own entertainment.

Later sexual crimes were found as reasons to commit acts of

violence. Laws were there first. Making it okay to put gay people through hell. And later as these laws were abandoned and thrown away, people still wanted to get their violent entertainment. So attacking and burning gay clubs was considered justified. Through out the latest years, as gays were more accepted and violence against them became less "okay", people started to look forward to their new scapegoats. To somebody who they can attack, torture and leave to die without feeling a bit of guilt. They would feel as if they are the saviours. As if they are the vigilantes. While ultimately just looking for somebody to torture.

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Sheiny couldn't write the script for her movie yet. Customers

didn't want to buy her stuff. Mr. Humbert told her that their numbers were falling. And that stuff that he can find online was more successful. There was some new series from Ukraine where they did everything. And where they had a couple of male actors. Though the girls weren't as good as Sheiny and Chloe. It seemed evident that people wanted that stuff more.

Sheiny decided to do a mistake. She would go with Chloe's

idea and use the boy with the long hair. The imbecile that played games more then thought. The imbecile that would be caught already multiple times. But there was nothing else that could be done, she thought. So they decided to go that route anyway.

As they were walking towards his house, Sheiny was thinking

that it will not work. Yes, he didn't mind being on the show. He didn't even mind showing his face. But how would they take him out of his game for long enough to film a scene? But they moved onward. They had to try anyway.

Chloe knocked on the door as soon as they got there. She

was excited already. Sheiny thought, maybe Chloe is in love with him. It was not fair, she thought, Mendel is too loyal to that Cherish, who ever she is. And Chloe will get him as soon as he opens the door. Plus or minus a few hours of game. The door was opened. It was the boy's mom again.

"He is not home." she said "He went out some time this

morning.". This morning? Sheiny thought. It was already an evening time. How would he survive so long without his games? "Actually I'm beginning to be worried" the mother continued "he doesn't answer his phone. And he had never went outside for so long.". The girls started to fear. Maybe he was arrested? Maybe he

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was lost in the city? "Can I see something?" asked Sheiny "I maybe able to find him.". Woman let them in and Sheiny went to his computer.

It was still on. No password. It had three apps open. There

was the game launcher that was downloading an update. There was the web browser. And there was Telegram. Good, Sheiny thought, at least something he uses is not fully proprietary. She looked at Telegram. He was texting with a girl named Sarah. By the look, on her avatar, she was about their ages, nine maybe ten years old. The messages were about arranging a meeting of some kind, today in the morning. It was a red flag. Chloe pointed at the browser. Sheiny didn’t notice it at first, but it was Google Maps. With an instruction to get to a specific point. "I think we found him." said Sheiny "And I don't like it at all.".

Sheiny opened a new incognito tab and typed "little girl" in

the address bar. A Google search for that loaded up. Sheiny felt a bit of disgust. She thought that she would've preffered a better search engine. Perhaps DuckDuckGo or at least Searx. But not Google. Anyway... She had to test something. She clicked on the Images section and scrolled down a bit. There it is. Sarah. The same image that was used for the avatar. Somebody lured the poor boy to go to some place using an image he found online. Pretending to be a little girl. Perhaps it was a vigilante.

Police, she thought, would not be of use. They would put the

vigilante in prison, but then, they would also put the boy in prison. And she didn't want it. A thought appeared in her mind. She grabbed Chloe and ran with her outside, while setting up a profile of Telegram on her phone. She found a picture of middle aged, slightly pervy looking man on DuckDuckGo and used it as her avatar. And then she started a conversation with Sarah.

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They were walking not toward the point on the map. They

were walking toward Mr. Humbert's cinema. "What is on your mind?" asked Chloe. "We are going to save him." said Sheiny. They came to Mr. Humbert's and asked him for the revolvers. "I don't have any." he said "The ones I gave you, were the only ones I had.". Mr. Humbert didn't have firearms anymore. But he could give them knives. Not some kitchen knives. Good, military knives. He had a few laying around just in case. Sheiny didn't know where to get firearms. And there was no time. If they don't act quickly, the boy would be dead. For Chloe it was a bit more personal then for Sheiny. Sheiny wanted to save the flow of money. Maybe slightly, she wanted to save the boy. But not really. Chloe wanted to save the boy. It was evident that she was in love with this imbecile.

"Can you come? I'm wet." was a message that Sheiny

received from Sarah. It was scary. They had only knives. And there was a possibility that the vigilante is actually police and not some guys that have nothing else to do. It also could be that these guys were armed. And how many of them there were was not answerable. But they went anyway. The message that followed shown a different address then the one they saw earlier. It was another red flag. It was immensely dangerous.

They arrived to the place. It was a gas station. Perhaps the

vigilante planned to put the person into a car and drive to the place where they would torture that person. Good thing, the vigilante would not expect a couple of little girls to appear. So they could observe it more freely. There were a couple of people on the gas station. It was not sure which one of them is the vigilante.

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Sheiny took her phone out. Both girls got prepared. She was

about to hit "Call". And they needed to spot where would the call be heard from. They looked around. Sheiny knew that as soon as they find the person, they have to make him scared of them. She was about to hit "Call". "No, it's too dangerous" said Sheiny in an undertone. Chloe didn't want to leave the boy in the danger. So she pressed the "Call" button instead of Sheiny.

One man took a phone out of his pocket. It was him

unmistakably. They ran towards him. Sheiny pressed her knife against his groin. "Sarah, I gonna cut your balls if you do not show us where Ivan is!" she said quietly enough, so the man would hear, but not the rest of the people. He tried to get rig of her. Thinking that it would be easy. He had a grin on his face. Like if he was an unstoppable force against the two weak little girls. Suddenly his grin disappeared. Chloe just penetrated his waist with her knife. It was painful. The knife was military. It had many little teeth and patterns to make the insertion the most painful thing ever. "Alright alright..." he cried to them. He opened his car, holding his waist and they drove. Blood was still pouring.

As he drove, both girl held their knives near the man. Sheiny

was still pressing it against his groin. Chloe caressing his neck with it. "I need a bandage." he cried to them. "You don't deserve one!" answered Chloe, pressing the knife even closer to his neck. She even scraped it a little bit. A small red hole appeared on the neck's surface. "I don't understand!" he cried "Why are you saving him? He is a pedophile!". This made Chloe very angry. She pressed her knife even harder at his neck and said "I love him as he is.". Sheiny gestured Chloe to calm down. If Chloe would press a bit stronger, the man would die. "Are there any other people,

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beside Ivan?" asked Sheiny while pressing the knife stronger against his groin. "No, it's just me." he answered.

They arrived. It was the industrial zone. Small abandoned

factories still stood where they are. This building was farther away from the rest. It was far into the abandoned zone. There was not a single working factory near by. "Is he there?" asked Chloe. "Yes, right there." he said. Chloe thought that he is no use for them. So she pressed the knife so hard it penetrated his throat. The blood poured out in all directions. Especially making Sheiny dirty in it. "What the fuck!" screamed Sheiny. Chloe was enjoying it. She had now also killed a man. "This fucker deserved it" Chloe said, looking all pleased. Nearly getting an orgasm from an act of murder.

They went out of the car. Both stained in blood all over. They

entered the abandoned factory building and started looking for Ivan. There he was. Absolutely naked, beaten up. Tight with chains to a metal chair. Sitting and bleeding. That man, who is now rotting in the car, tortured Ivan quite a bit. Ivan heard the steps of the girl. He looked up and saw them. Two bloody figures with knifes. Ivan started screaming from the top of his lungs "Noo!! Help...!!! PLEASE!!!" as the girl were walking towards him. Chloe looked at him with a very sad face. She dropped the knife and hugged his bare body. "I killed that fucker. Don't worry." she told him. Ivan took time to realize what had happened. And later he calmed down.

Sheiny thought that Chloe was an imbecile as well. How the

hell would they return home? They have the car, but neither of them can drive. Ivan has no clothes. And all of them are dirty in blood. On the other hand, thought Sheiny, Chloe was a genius. Who knows what kind of a thing would the vigilante do when they

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arrived. Maybe all of them would be already murdered. Not just Ivan.

Walking from one abandoned factory to the next, they finally

found a working water supply. It was a pipe that could be turned on and off with a valve. The water was relatively clean. So they could wash off most of the blood. They took the clothes of the vigilante man and dressed Ivan in those clothes. It was not fitting, but they could get home like this. They body of the man was taken out of the car and hidden under the rubble to rot away.

Ivan didn't have a driver's license. He was playing the same

game almost non stop for a few years. He was not interested in moving about the city and he had no money to purchase a car anyway. All three of them had the same exact level of driving skills. Ivan, though, was the obvious choice for the driver. He was big enough to look normal while he was driving. Before going to the city, Ivan practised a bit in the abandoned area. He was terrible. But after an hour or so, he felt more confident. It was already night time when they decided to drive into the city.

Sheiny thought to use the situation to educate him about

Free Software somehow, but she knew that he would not take her seriously. He was using Telegram, a Free program, to get into this trouble. It would not work. But… "I understand you now..." he said "You are careful and I'm not. Would I see the car, I would just drive off and not think twice. You made me practice to look natural. If I was in the same situation I would not wash the clothes. I would just go as is and will be caught." Sheiny listened to it and couldn't believe herself. The imbecile stopped being an imbecile. For a moment, she thought, she was thankful for the vigilante. It was like a revelation. Something bad could happen if you are not careful. "Do you understand that in your position..." Sheiny told

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him "... you cannot trust nobody.". "I do understand it now." he said.

When they came into his home, bringing him back, telling his

mother what had happened, he looked at his computer from a far. Almost afraid to get near it. He was a new man. Not the imbecile boy addicted with the game anymore. A free man. He asked Sheiny and Chloe to help him with software. It was yet another act of violence that brought all of them joy. Deleting Windows. Removing the games. Starting new, free life. Even his mom gained a bit of helpful paranoia from that story.

The next evening he appeared in the shed. He was shaven

from belt down. He was no longer going to show his face on camera. Wounds were still there on his body. But he wore them proudly. Sheiny thought that it's not good to get any of the wounds in frame. So they avoided it. It was weird. Sheiny directed an actual act of love. Chloe and Ivan were the actors this time. Sheiny joined a few times. But it was sad to her. It was not Mendel.

The sales grew up very quickly. It was something that the

customers were waiting for. So while the stream of income continued in a good pace, Sheiny could try and think about the movie script again. It was supposed to be a movie about their experience. But something film-able. Something that would be legal to show to a broader audience. So she started writing.

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CHAPTER VIII

The Film

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The Girl & The Alien

by Sheiny Goldberg

INT. HOUSE. NIGHT.

A place of a religious Jewish child. Not very rich. Everything looks rather cheap. A little girl about nine years old is walking from her room into a toilet. She opens the cabin and walks in.

In the cabin she reaches for a little ventilation hole. She opens a little gate protection thing. And reaches into the hole. It looks rather off- putting. The whole ventilation shaft is filled with spiderwebs and pigeon faeces. She reaches with her hand under the hole and pulls out of there something. It is revealed to us that this something is a magazine. A magazine with pictures of naked men.

Sheiny stopped writing for a moment. She thought that what

she imagined to go next would be illegal to shoot. It was not her usual films. This one should be able to be shown in a regular cinema and sold in a regular store. She needed a way to imply masturbation of a little girl without implying it. It was dangerous even to imply it.

She alt-tabbed from Emacs to GNU IceCat web browser. It

had a page about child pornography laws. She was reading them carefully. The rules didn't make sense at all. The story needed the

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girl to enjoy herself on the pictures of the men. This would be the catalyst for the next scene, where the girl would have a very dramatic argument with her mother, who believed that she shouldn't do that.

The rules were very strict. As Sheiny understood them, it was

not about child’s nudity. This was rather doable under certain circumstances. Some foreign films did exactly that and got away with it. The problem was, as she understood, the implication of child’s sexually in any way shape or form. She thought that some movies get away with it easily. If a child is above a certain age, the sensitivity to it lowers down. And people seem to not care. A good example would be Megan Fox appearance in Transformers. Or the whole character of Nicola Peltz in Transformers Age Of Extinction. Something like Natalie Portman in Leon was probably more the direction that she was looking for. But it seemed, something like this would create a huge scandal these days. Sheiny didn't know how to make the scene right.

Wait, she thought, she doesn't need to be masturbating. We

need to only show the magazine. It will not be hard to get away with that.

She opened it up and as soon she did it, a loud knock on the toilet's door started

FEMALE VOICE

Are you there? I need to pee...

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There is no need to show her do anything, Sheiny thought,

you just need the mom to come to the toilet at just at the exact moment, when it's most dangerous. But wait. How is it dangerous? She can just put the magazine carefully back in and come out undetected. Not good. She has to be detected.

As she thought about ways to make her mom detect that she

was hiding something. A question of the name of both the girl and mom came into Sheiny's mind. Maybe, perhaps, they don't have names. I mean, how often do people address other people with a name? She could write the girl as simply “the girl” and her mom as simply “the girl's mom”. This could potentially make it so the audience will assert their own names, or names of the people that they know, to those characters. Making the whole thing more personal.

The story that Sheiny had in mind was something along the

lines of this. The girl, probably played by Chloe, is a religious Jewish girl. Perhaps from Chabad. She, in secret, reads this magazine that she found some time ago. It excites her. But her mom, being a religious woman, forbids her not even just looking at things like this, but speaking to boys. It's not like the law is the problem for that girl. Simply being a friend to a boy is forbidden to her. The religion is the problem.

Then she finds a boy who in an alien, but looks normal. She

thought of Mark from Richie's gang for that role. The boy has a shape shifting quality. He can go between a boy and an alien by will, or maybe not by will. She was not sure yet. Somebody, more aliens, the government, the whole world is on that boy. And they all want to kill him for some weird ass reasons. He has a space

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ship that materializes anything you think about. Or maybe it's simply a holographic projection? She was not sure yet.

All the great effects stuff will be done using Blender. It's a

very powerful computer generated imagery creation tool. It has functions from drawing three-dimensional shapes, to physically based rendering, animation, visual effects stuff like: masking, chroma-keying and tracking: an ability to capture movement of objects within a frame of a given video-file. Sheiny already spoke with Mr. Hambleton about using the whole computer class in non- lesson time, for rendering. As a kind of tiny render farm. Since using a physically based rendering algorithm takes a lot longer to draw each frame, then using a standard algorithm used in games, but it gives a better looking image. Much more realistic then in games.

Sheiny knew that what ever they would write, they should be

able to film. They had money, but they didn't have Hollywood level kind of money. She had to think very carefully about everything. The alien creature should not be very hard. They could even try motion capture. Blender was not tested yet to have a full body motion capture ability using it's tracking. But maybe? Maybe with some tweaks to the software? Maybe with a cleverly designed system? If not, they could always animate the alien by hand.

There was a scene towards the middle of the movie that

Sheiny thought was almost possible. It was in a grey area. She was not sure whether it was legal. It was not sexual, per se. It didn't have nudity, per se. But it could be interpreted as if both were there. In alien abduction cases that people reported, there is

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one reoccurring theme that she wanted to explore. It's a container full of guts and slimy substances into which they put people. She wanted the girl to wake up in such a substance. She would be naked, but it's invisible. When the girl comes out of the substance, parts of the guns and all the slimy goo stays on her body. They could design it to fall just right, to be a kind of clothing. To cover up all the stuff that they need to cover up. But it will still look like a slimy dirt on a naked body. And since it is slime that's also presumably on a naked body, it may arouse some people. Sheiny didn't know if this was legal or not.

Some time had passed. Chloe and Sheiny were still shooting

the regular stuff, for the regular black market. Ivan was still coming. His wounds were healed. He never played that game anymore. Instead of playing games, Ivan pursued music. He was learning guitar and Free music-making software. Also he was trying to convince his friends to stop playing as well. And to start using Free Software. He stayed a rather dumb person in his ways of persuading. He didn't turn anybody. Presumably because he couldn't tell them the whole story. Or because those people were as imbeciles as he once was. But maybe just because he was not very smart to begin with.

Mendel was coming. Still unable to find Cherish. Maybe

because he was busy on the wood-chopping factory during the morning. And helping Sheiny with production during the evening. Yes. He did help them with production. Not as an actor. He was too loyal to Cherish. But as a person that works behind the scenes. He would operate the camera. He would think with Sheiny on the shots. He would write with her the movie that she was writing. He stopped being afraid to see them naked. It even stopped arousing

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him. He felt like if those girl were his children. And this filming was some kind of harmless playing.

Mendel didn't have a phone. He got out of jail not so long ago

and still didn't purchase one. The wood-chopping job was one offered to him by the police as he was coming out of prison. He never needed to make a call. Meeting with Sheiny, Chloe, Ivan and Mr. Hambleton he learned not to buy a phone to begin with. Sheiny followed him. She moved all of her chats over to her laptop. Mendel bought a laptop himself. He was smart not to buy one with Windows. It had some strange distro on it. Mr. Hambleton helped him to install Ubuntu GNU/Linux. Sheiny didn't like it, but Mendel was a fresh user, perhaps this was more suitable for Mendel.

The production of the movie started not long after that. Chloe

was cast as the girl and Mark was cast as the boy alien. He didn't feel that bad, being filmed for that kind of movie. Sheiny and Mark sparked a little intrigue. She still was in love with Mendel, but since he was taken, she didn't feel any moral problem to try out somebody else. Mark seemed to be in love with both of them. Chloe and Sheiny in the same time. He was the kind of boy who didn't care. Sometimes between the scenes they "played". Mendel returned to his complexes when Mark was a part of the "game".

It was the day of the premiere when Cherish was found. Mr.

Hambleton gladly gave his Cinerama, wide screen, curved, gorgeous place. It was cleaned up. A whole team of cleaners was hired for the job. Real advertising wasn't available to the girls. But they could print a bunch of posters and glue them everywhere they could. They changed the title of the movie from "The Girl &

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The Alien" to "Sinking in the Fire". It was both a little word play that Sheiny loved immensely. And it was referencing a scene towards the middle when the girl end's up in a fire, while the boy alien's place is filled with water. And that they kept loving each other through that. Watching each other through a little window in a door that was jammed. They accepted their fate. They touched each other's hands through the glass. Holding hands, perhaps for the last time. Their love for each other, the act of pressing the glass from both sides, fractured it. And the water escaped one room, to put out the fire in the other room.

The time of the premier came. Sheiny and Chloe were

already both ten years old. Mendel grew to twenty nine. Cherish was about to be found. The cinema was waiting for the people. Mr. Humbert was standing at the entrance, for the first time waiting for a crowd to fill up the once abandoned cinema. There was no crew. He alone would be the cashier and the ticker checker. The projectionist and the sound person. The producer and the shower. He would come back to his early days of the cinema. Mendel showed up first. He sat in the cinema and looked at the blank screen. Soon the movie would start.

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CHAPTER IX

Cherish

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Sheiny was all the fuss that day. She put on a ridiculous

dress. Her mom came with her. Also in a dress. Mother was very proud of Sheiny. Even thought she never went to the filming and was sceptical of the quality of the film. "Mom, hurry up." said Sheiny while looking at the clock. They were fifteen minutes away from the start and mom was still in the toilet. Sheiny took a moment to look at herself in the mirror. It was horrible. Mom painted her face with glitter.

Fourteen minutes left. "Mom, fourteen minutes!" Sheiny

screamed at the door. Suddenly a sound of flushing could be heard. The mom came out. Face also painted. Very thick glitter. They both came out of the door. Sheiny was dragging mom with her to speed her up.

"Where are we going?" said mom as they were on the street.

Sheiny pointed in a general direction of the cinema. "The Cinerama?" said mother "This place is all ugly now. Nobody even goes there. I thought it would show in the Cinema-house.". "Mom, you know very well that it's Cinerama. And you know very well the reasons for it. You've seen the posters. Stop pretending that you are dumb." said Sheiny dragging mom even faster.

When they arrived to the cinema, there was no time left.

Only to sit down as quickly as possible and watch the film. They came to the cinema one minute before the light was off. As soon as they both sat down the movie started. It was pleasing for Sheiny to see so many people in that place. It was not full. There still were some empty sits. But it was a definite success. Even thought, the film didn't start yet.

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The light was off and the film begun. Mother sat there, with a

face of a parent that has to say "Good job" while looking at stick figure drawings. Suddenly the picture appeared. It was Mendel's saloon. Dark at night. Chloe was walking very quietly toward the toilet. There was an atmosphere of "So what" in Sheiny's mom's eyes. She thought that this was not very hard to do. Chloe opened the ventilation and there were spiderwebs and pigeon faeces and other rubbish. It looks quite scary. And then Chloe starts to enter that crap with her hand. A wave of gasps came through the cinema. Even Sheiny's mom had a face of disgust. Sheiny felt a bit proud of her self.

Another huge wave of gasps happened when Chloe revealed

the images in the magazine. Sheiny's mom looked at Sheiny with a jaw dropped. It was a realization of how intense the whole thing is going to be. Sheiny felt a bit of shame. Her mom was watching and there was a pornographic image for an instance. People kept gasping through out the next scene. As the girl's mother started arguing with the girl about the magazine. It was a rather good performance of Mr. Hambleton's wife. Some dude in the first raw screamed "Fucking cunt!" at the screen. Sheiny's mother was sitting there with her eyes opened in a slight shock. She didn't expect Sheiny to do that good.

Then there was an alien with it's computer generated

imagery. This blew the mother away. Where did Sheiny find a real alien? Then the Sinking in the Fire scene started. And mom was fully invested. Laughing, gasping and crying with the rest of the cinema. When the end of the film came in, everybody was applauding. Sheiny thought that this was a time where her dreams came true. Perhaps Mendel will never be her family. But

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this moment of her work being appreciated was monumental for her.

Mr. Humbert came onto the stage under the screen and

addressed the audience "Today I was returned to where I was years ago. When I was still a young lad I was making films in Hollywood. Not very good ones. But some people had seen them. One day a little girl came into my cinema. This very cinema. And she was amazing. She had this insane project. A film project that she wanted to do. It was lunacy to put your faith into a little girl. But I could not say 'no' to her. She was just too cute. Welcome to the stage, the writer-director of Sinking in the Fire - Sheiny Goldberg.". Sheiny didn't know what to do. She looked at mom. Mom gestured her to go to the stage. Sheiny thought for a few seconds and went.

She took the microphone in an attempt to give a speech. But

she had not prepared any speech. She stood there and looked at the crowd of people that was still applauding her. She started speaking "On the journey of this film I made friends with a lot of people without whom this film would not be possible. I'm talking about my friends and family. Apart from Mr. Humbert that is already standing here, Chloe, come here, Mark, Ivan a wonderful music producer, Mendel a wonderful cinematographer, Mr. Hambleton a teacher from my school who had given me a lot of computers to make visual effects on and my mom. Come here mom.". Mom stood up and went to the stage with the rest of the people whom Sheiny called. All of them went up and stood facing the stage.

Suddenly something happened in Mendel's face. "Cherish?"

he said "Cherish! It's you...". Sheiny looked at Mendel. He was not watching the crowd. He was looking sideways. Sheiny traced the

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direction of his sight. It fell... No. It cannot be. Sheiny checked again. Mendel was looking at... No way. He was looking at...

Once upon the time there was a girl named Amanda. But she

didn't like that name. So as many kids do, she made up a name for herself. Cherish was her nickname. Mendel arrived at the school later. After everybody already knew Amanda as Cherish. They fell in love. Amanda's father didn't like Mendel. It was not Mendel's own fault. He was a nice kid. It's just Amanda's father was a paranoid freak. He would not let her date under any circumstances with nobody. Even, perhaps after she would turn eighteen. He always saw Amanda as a small child unable to think. But she was thinking. She had a brilliant mind. He killed it in her. Because of the constant shaming that he did to her, she started feeling that smart is not what she was. He would not allow Mendel to ever come in their house. He would threaten to kill Mendel. He would scream and yell about her stupidity and Mendel's unsuitability.

When Mendel was celebrating his eighteen's birthday,

Amanda's father called police on him. Amanda was still seventeen. And making up a story of how he saw them do things was not very hard. He exaggerated every claim and told lies, everything to put Mendel to jail for as long as possible. Amanda left her father from that point on. She would not see him or talk to him ever since.

It occurred to Amanda that she was pregnant from Mendel. It

was a girl. The girl that she named Sheiny. Her father learned about the granddaughter and started to feel a tremendous guilt. He could not let himself talk to Amanda. The trauma that he must've caused her was probably unbearable. So instead he sent her money every month. To which she grew accustom to. When he

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died, Amanda didn't go to his funeral. Neither did Sheiny. But since the money was gone, Sheiny needed a way to make money.

Sheiny loved Mendel so much from the first glance because

he was already her family. She felt this connection. She didn't know how to explain it, but as love. It was love. Non sexual. Real love. A love between a little girl and a father. When Mendel saw Sheiny for the first time he saw Amanda. He saw Cherish. He was starring at her because he was wondering. The girl was very similar to his Cherish. He didn't quite understand yet that it was his daughter. That it was Cherish's daughter. This is why she looked familiar. This is why she reminded him so much of her. And since it was his daughter he felt immense love toward her as well.

When Sheiny learned about it she understood that she was

infect Free now. She could choose whoever she wanted and go with him. Dad didn't tell Mom what they were doing all this time. He wasn't even that much against it. He felt like now he had more responsibility to keep her safe. Like a stunt coordinator is responsible to keep stuntmen safe. It doesn't mean that they cancel the stunts. Sheiny and Chloe kept doing their little films in preparation for another big film. This time Chloe would be the writer-director. Sheiny feared. What kind of crazy stuff would she come up with?

Ivan kept acting at their little show. Keeping it very safe,

because now he was very careful. He was better and better with music. The next film could probably even be nominated for the best score academy award. He felt like music was a great substitute for games. It required rhythm and precision that he learned on playing games. Ivan and Chloe would sometimes play together. They even thought to release an album. Mr. Hambleton

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found a new love for his wife. After helping with the production of the stuff for so long, he got desensitised to little girls.

Mr. Humbert, after the closing of the movie felt something

profound. He sat down at his little corner where he sells stuff to his lustful customers. The nostalgia of watching a movie that he had direct involvement with struck him. He was alone in that cinema. Suddenly nothing could help him. He started crying. He never believed that a couple of little nine year old girls could return that feeling in him. But they did. And now, he is fulfilled.

THE END

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