“Once you hit the button, rip out the ethernet cable and trash the machine, yeah? Don’t want anyone shutting the process down.” The techie looked, improbably, like nothing so much as a football player. “I recall telling you to make that impossible.” Mr. Winter looked like nothing so much as a very well-dressed, balding scarecrow.

“Once you pull the cable and scrap the machine, it is.”

Winter was there to finalize his latest effort. Homemade nukes and control back doors secreted into every major satellite launch of the last decade. Activated, the satellites would plummet toward major cities across the world, detonating on proximity and simultaneously plunging the world into chaos and nuclear winter. Little of humanity would survive, and that in small, remote tribes across the world.

Vengeful gods, conceived and abandoned ages ago, would emerge from hiding and reclaim rulership over the humans who lived, and Mr. Winter would be their heirophant.

The techie lying finalized on the floor, Winter pushed the button, then left the room, cable and machine distinctly untouched. The last thing he wanted was to actually succeed. What a miserable thought.

The game was great fun, but winning would be very, very boring.