I couldn’t wait to try it out. I reprogrammed the Raspberry Pi to link to the FTP addresses, up came Street View once more and I levelled the space-gun.

Z-zapp!

Next day it was on breakfast TV and even in some of the papers. Me, I’d simply squeezed the trigger and gone to bed. Roughly two hours later — two earth-orbits — a block of ice under GPS guidance had fallen to earth and found its mark.

Yuko’s house was devastated. “I thought it was an earthquake,” complained one of her neighbors on TV. “I said to the wife, what’s the world coming to?”

You may well ask, I chuckled to myself.

The ice dart had vaporized on impact, leaving no evidence. Yuko’s toy-boy must have perished instantly. They never found a body, although his DNA was all over the rubble.

But Yuko wasn’t at home when the ice bomb fell. They interviewed her too. She’d been wandering the empty streets in the dark after she and her beau had had a hissy-do.

Hollow-eyed, she said how hard it was to go on living after losing her home and her partner, all in one night. I wanted to phone-in and remind her that it made two partners she’d lost recently. But that would only have aroused suspicion. Maybe instead she’d appreciate an anonymous gift: a short sword to commit seppuku with? But once again discretion prevailed. I’m good like that.

This was godlike power! I could remedy galactic wrongs. Champion the poor and downtrodden. Leap tall buildings with a single bound — or, if I fancied, bring them crashing to the ground.

Superhero? Or super-villain? A bit of each, I told myself. It wasn’t in me to be Mister Nice Guy all the time. I thought I’d let a month go by before dropping another ice bomb. Too soon after the first — and someone might detect a pattern. The whole thing could unravel and the fuzz come knocking at my door.

Or, to be a little less figurative, smashing it in at dawn with a battering ram.

I had a lot of fun researching targets. If I told you who they’d been, you’d choke on your popcorn. But by-and-large I think most sensible people would approve of my selection.

I took a lot more time over it than I had in my first flush of excitement. No more drag-down-the-little-man-and-ZAP! I wore my best clothes for the occasion. It’s what they do in civilized countries having the death penalty, like China and Iran — plus the USA of course. I dined out beforehand at a smart restaurant, ordering a bottle of their best wine. Well, I ask you — how was I to offer the condemned man the last meal of his choice? So I ate it for him. And I’m certain I enjoyed it far more than he’d have done, if he’d have known what was coming.



All too soon I was down to my seventh and last ice bomb. Should I use it, or keep it in reserve? I decided to use it.

But when I came to drop it — nothing happened!

Had the link got broken? Or had the facility been intentionally withdrawn? The second possibility gave me an icy chill between my spine and my guts. Now I could only sit and wait.

…to be continued