EASIER SAID THAN DONE

Ginger sat at her computer station and just let the rage continue to wash over her after she had finally gotten Ted out of her life. Try as she might, she just could not get his sneering face out of her mind. Ted lied and cheated and stole her money for just one day too many. When he came home smelling of his usual mixture of sweat, stale cigarette smoke and cheap perfume, he was welcomed to the sight of packed luggage on the doorstep and a changed lock. He simply stepped over the luggage, kicked in the door and came in anyway. Ginger was still shaking from the encounter, but he was gone now and the shaking fear changed to shaking rage.


Hand poised on her keyboard, she tried to think where she wanted to begin. Ginger always took her rage to her keyboard. As a skilled hacker, the elimination of data was a piece of cake for her. She just wanted to eliminate all evidence that the piece of crap ever existed. So, with her rage, she went into countless entities and eliminated him. She began with the Dept of Human Services, birth records…delete. Moving on to his school and military records…delete, delete, delete. She paused in consideration as she located records of his countless bad debts. Nope…resolve took over and she deleted all. Again, her fingers paused on the keyboard when she located his criminal records…thinking….let this be the one thing to stand. But, after considering all, she deleted. After all, she could not stop her rage until all traces of him were gone from the Internet.



Ginger pounded her keyboard late into the night - deleting every piece of evidence that he ever existed. Every time she thought she had it all, she would find another piece of data - maybe from credit card use or a comment to someone somewhere on the Internet. But, try as she might, she finally realized that she might never be able to eliminate all evidence he ever existed. She began to understand that it was easier said than done….




In her intent to destroy him, she forgot about her MySpace account. Ginger logged into her MySpace page to locate a blog she had written about Ted….actually a rant about his cheating, lying and thieving ways. It must be eliminated… But, just before she hit the delete button, she realized that she had just spent a whole night in denial. There are literally millions of data bytes on the Internet pertaining to the average person. Every transaction creates a record in data bytes. Slowly, the realization settled in her mind….there is just no way to eliminate all of those data bytes. Her shaking rage began to recede into the shaking fear again.




Thinking very hard, considering all, she came to realize that it was no use. So, instead of hitting her delete button, Ginger hit her edit button. Near the end of her blog, she changed one entry from “I could just kill him“ to ”Please pray for me because I fear this man. I fear that one day he will kill me.”




Satisfied that she had planted the seed she would need to secure her future, she logged off her computer and called the police to report to them that she killed Ted.



The defense team took the position that Ginger killed Ted in self-defense. The prosecution team had all of Ginger’s computer records….every data byte.



It was easier said than done….


A work of fiction by:
Darlene Cirinna
Copyright October 29, 2009
All rights reserved
Do not copy or use without permission of author