The bitter autumnal wind lapped the tears from the disheartened citizens of a small Italian town. The array of grand mountains capped with snow towered over the village, an icy foreboding of the cold night approaching. The village was composed normally for a small village on the Alps, with adorned wooden houses looking over vast green pastures. The houses and gardens were all neatly aligned along a rough road that lead beyond the mountains, a road rarely traveled on by the townsfolk. The composure of the town itself was quite normal indeed, however, the people of the village were not.
It was a village shaken by fear and hatred, shunned by hope. It was here something terrible beyond imagining had occurred, in the most unimaginable place. A glass shard lay on the silken grass, a shard belonging to a window from the town’s school, Sant'Augostino la Scuola Secondaria1. The school was blood red. It now contained no living thing except for a mortally wounded student lying on the ground on a hallway in the middle of a hallway in the left wing of the school in a pool of blood. A bomb squad from the SWAT crew that had responded to a plea from the local police station rushed into the school. They began to comb the school for any explosives left behind in the massacre. They didn’t go to the student in time, of course, as he had two bullet wounds, one in the shoulder and the other in the chest. The last thought that ever went through the doomed youth’s head was the dreadful thought that everyone in the town was thinking, but no one dared to say:
The war has come to Europe.
Outside of the school, a heavy troop of police officers and civilians alike were paying there respects to the children who had died at the hands of an eighteen year-old killer. A yellow police line was being wrapped around the school. News reporters flooded into the city, and the roar of helicopters was heard overhead.
“Today, the country of Italy mourns for the victims of yesterday’s attack. An 18 year old gunman, labeled as a psychopath by his local psychiatrists, entered the secondary of the small Italian village of Instintia with an illegally modified shotgun. In frenzy, he began shooting children and teachers alike, killing 13 children, 2 teachers, and the headmistress of the school. When police came into the building forty-five minutes after the shooting began, he began firing at the officers, injuring one, and was shot repeatedly. He is now hospitalized in Sain’Antonio, an Italian hospital approximately thirteen kilometers away from the school, though his condition is unknown at this time. There were also 24 students wounded in the attack, two in critical condition. A memorial is now being built to commemorate the victims, and an emergency response station is being put in place.” CBS’s Betty Smith bowed her head in respect, and then continued the report. “Investigators are still searching for clues to the reason of the attack, searching the house of the attacker, and interviewing all known associates of the culprit.” The news report abruptly ended with a flicker of the television screen.
Across the room, a man sat, intently focusing on a futile attempt to answer three telephone calls and, read a document, and finishing his cup of tea instantaneously. He failed miserably. He immediately hung up two of the phone calls, put the other on speakerphone, lost his place in his reading, but managed to empty his tea cup.
The voice on the phone sounded extremely ill-tempered, screaming “I don’t care how busy you are, every other detective in your commission is already working on a case! If you want an assistant go find one on your own!”
“And where,” The man at the desk answered calmly, “would you expect me to find someone capable of assisting me? At the police office? The community center? No, I need professional help.”
“Well then you’re out of luck! Good luck on the case, report any findings to me immediately. Is that understood, Mr. Hachette?”
“Yes, sir. Clear as crystal.”
“Very well, get working.” The man hung up.
“And that’s detective Hachette to you.” He slammed the phone on the rack.
He know continued reading the document, the suicide note of the perpetrator of the infamous Italian school shooting-the heading of every world newspaper he’d read since the attack had occurred, already translated into English-though he didn’t need it, he spoke Italian. He stared intently at the paper, and his face suddenly cramped up into a sign of horror. The heading read:
Long live the revolution!
That sentence sent shivers down even the spine of him, William Hachette. It was not the first time he had seen this sentence. He’d seen it twice before. The first time was the only non-released-to-public journal of one of the shooters from Columbine in 1999. The second time was from the tragedy at Virginia Tech, less than a year ago. This sentence, he thought, was the entire basis of his case- to find the connection between the killers. It was no coincidence that these three children, thousands of miles away from each other, wrote the exact same things after performing the same actions. They either had to be communicating by telephone-highly unlikely or by the internet, the thing spawning more killers forth into the world then any other thing in today’s world. That is, of course, besides the oh-so-appealing zest of the donuts at Dunkin Donuts, which has turned many a peaceful man to a power –and donut- hungry monster with immense portions of sugar and caffeine, thereby creating what is commonly referred in today’s world as a “Politian”.
He looked around, realizing how much of a mess his office had become while he was too preoccupied to realized that the people who were coming in to “pay him a visit” also dumped loads of documents and forms in his office. He sighed. His mind was numb phone calls he had received, the hundreds of people who had yelled at him today, and all the different documents he’d read earlier that day. He continued reading the note, which read:
Many of you may think I am crazy. This is because I your weak minds cannot comprehend my mission. You are even too dumb to understand that I am only one of hundreds who desire to “change the world”. We are the army of natural selection –extremists- you may say, but we are the cleansers of the weaker, stupid race of “homo-sapiens”. I have determined my goals, and I will not stop until I show the world who I am. I am a god compared you pathetic little failures of creation. I wish that we, the superior race on planet earth, the 2% of superior life forms, could rule you week-minded fools and make you our slaves. However, a human death or killing humans is nothing to be sad about. I am just putting natural selection back on course for humans, destroying the weak. Instead of the idiots who now rule the world, it should be me, and the other 2% of intelligent people ruling the world. Seeing as you now already slave and don’t mind it, you should thank me. I am the king of thunder. Humans are devolving, becoming weaker, and more stupid. I however, have evolved, for I am a mutation of the greatest kind. I will show you pathetic underlings what power I have! I AM AUTRIAN TARK! LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!!!
Great goodness. The inspector thought. This man has gone completely insane. Although, obviously, he is only a copycat of the Columbine Shootings. No… This is not normal. Two shootings with the same talk of ‘revolution’ within one year… It can’t be an ordinary copycat… Uh… My head hurts. I need some more tea. Since the case had begun, the inspector had drinking water like his life depended on it, as if it was the very essence of life itself. He had already drinking six cups of tea today, and now he was working on pure caffeine rush. He dropped the note on the table, and then walked over to the water machine, and pulled a Styrofoam cup from a rack poorly nailed on to the wall. He placed it under the water dispenser and watched the hot water slowly poor into the cup. Once the cup was full, he lifted it up to his nostrils. He sighed pleasantly. The steam cleared his nasal passages and soothing calmed his senses. The detective picked up a package filled with leaves of curious aromas, which read: Livingston Original Earl Grey Tea. He gently placed it in his water, and then walked over to the window, waiting for his tea to cool. He looked down at the roaring streets of Greater London. His office was on the 17th floor of the New Scotland Yard Building. He worked for the operation commission SO15, or the Counter Terrorism Command. As an experienced Detective Inspector for Scotland Yard, he had much experience dealing with terrorists. He had succeeded in many cases, although he had never actually been at gunshot, or ever shot a gun for that matter. His office was nicely painted, and had a nicely done hardwood floor, but was completely covered with filing cabinets and stacks of papers. In the middle of the office was a desk with a computer, handbooks, and stacks of forms that he had procrastinated to fill out, and that had been accumulating like fungi on a football player’s feet ever since the day he had been moved into the office –some three months ago. In the corner closest to him was a mini-fridge filled to the brim with his favorite food: chocolate croissants, or in French, Pain de Chocolate. The phone began to ring, which the detective of course ignored. With the caffeine from the tea powering his brain, he began to ponder where he should first make a foothold in the line of research… he finished his tea, took a deep satisfied breath, and walked over to his computer.
Hmm… How do I find out more information about a terrorist? He knew the answer was quite obvious, as terrorists loved to brag about how great and terrible they are everywhere they go. He knew the terrorist type, egocentric, always thinking they’re better than everybody else, and then shooting themselves in the head to show it. The last part he didn’t really understand…
He turned on his computer, a nice new, shiny old piece of junk that seemed as if it had been dropped from a thirty story building, into a time machine, landed 70 million years ago and then somehow brought back because the Brontosauruses held an organized meeting of complaints, wrote a letter to the producers of the product, who let it rust at the bottom of the ocean for a couple million years before finally fishing it out and donating it to Scotland Yard for some unlucky detective to use. The computer very slowly began startup, as Detective Hachette thought: Not even a supermodel could turn this piece of junk on… He frowned with a sense of disappointment that he had every time his computer turned on. He’d been waiting for over ten minutes’ time before the welcome screen finally powered on. Despite the poor attributes to the computer itself, the network it was wired on was lightning-fast, so he was able to use it for what he needed…
However, the previous year, one poor soul from the Department of Anti-Hacking and Electronic Protection, named Denvis Priche had been so fed up with his computer that he had been given by the same Company as Scotland Yards’ created a petition, and walked around to the ministries of London asking people to sign his petition. Although, seeing how it would have been much better of an idea to drive around- as time is not easily expendable in British Ministries- he decided to call a taxi to drive him around. The man didn’t have a car (he lived one block away from his workplace) so the taxi driver and he got together a lot and laughed, and drove around, and went to bars. One day, however, he had finally gotten enough petitions to bring to the Ministry, so he and his taxi driver took a drink at the bar, and then drove to the ministry. However, seeing how in all rights it is a very bad idea to drink and drive, Denvis got in a very bad car accident in which he was killed, and then charged an unreasonably high taxi fee.
He clicked on the Internet Explorer icon. His default homepage was set by Scotland Yard, and he was unable to change it. “WELCOME TO SCOTLAND YARD”, the large banner at the top of the screen blared out. He clicked on the star in the corner, labeled “Favorites”, and was brought to the Google search page. What would be the most obvious search to find out more about Autrian? I know… The inspector’s own brilliance made him smile with glee. He typed in “Autrian Tark”, looked at the results, and then scowled. The page read: Results 1-10 of about 4,270,154 (.07 seconds) He hastily clicked on the extraordinarily appealing button “advanced search”. He typed:
Exact Phrase: Autrian Tark
Including ALL words: Autrian Tark
Including SOME of the words: Autrian Tark
Including NONE of the words: eyeliner remover, Amazon.com, news, reporter, CNN, NBC, ABC, BBC, FOX Sports1
Formats: Any
Languages: Any
Results show per page: 100
Sort By: Best match
ENTER. Results 1-100 of about 179
Now that’s more like it. He grinned with excitement as the first match was: myspace.com/AustiranTark. “GREAT GOD!!!” He screamed out loud, and then looked around to make sure no atheists were in the vicinity. The entire webpage was a collection of pictures of guns, drugs, more guns, gun ammunition, and more guns. There were grotesque pictures of shooting, the nazi logo, and the words ARMY OF NATURAL SELECTION written all over the page. Hachette looked at the page like it was a blood-poodle that hadn’t been fed for nine months. Under the horrific images were captions describing the horrific events depicted in the photographs, including the Holocaust, other school shootings, and the one at the very top of the page: a picture of his school with a blood red lens effect. He looked at the date modified: October 25, 2007, over four days before the shooting. He scrolled down, passing by an essay written by the killer about how humanity was stupid and he was better than everybody else, and the usual things that terrorists like to say. How typical. He then scrolled down to the very bottom of the page, and found something that he didn’t expect to see: a visitor count meter, which said: 4,239. His mouth dropped open. He’d never seen that many visitors to a single MySpace webpage in his life. And he’s posted it months before he committed the crime. Why didn’t anyone warm the school? Or even if someone had reported suspicions of a potential terrorist, the event wouldn’t have happened. He scrolled up, and read what seemed to be an attack plan. He actually told the public he was going to attack the school? And nobody reported?!? If one of those 4,239 had cared, the terrorist could have been stopped. He punched the table, anger swelling up in his eyes. The kid obviously had mental problems, and the problem was that nobody cared. Nobody ever suspected a lone Italian kid of storming a school, massacring his teachers and fellow peers. Of course… That’s how it always is with terrorists. They always work their evil when and where people last expect it. He scrolled up the page, where there was a picture of the September 11, 2001 attack on America. The caption said “Long live Al Queda”. The detective spat out in disgust. If there was one thing he hated more than a terrorist, it was a terrorist who praised other terrorists… He clicked the back button on his browser. Result number two said YouToob-AutrianTuck’sMovies. He double clicked the link with interest, and was shocked at what had come up. In the middle of the screen, in a clear window was a picture of nothing other than Austrian holding up a gun at the screen, and a play icon. He hesitantly, cautiously, clicked the play button. The movie itself was quite typical in its own right, at least for terrorists. He had a shotgun in his hand (the same he had used in the massacre), and was taking a movie of him shooting different things, including fruits, trees, and cardboard cutouts in the shape of humans. The most surprising thing about the page was that it was on TOP DOWNLOADS. It had been downloaded by over 10,000 people. Of course, evidently, the label was “Sant'Augostino School Massacre”.
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