I met Canadian author Dianna Gunn via BlueSky, where she runs a community called #WeeknightWriters (which you can support on Ko-fi as well) that creates accessible events for fiction writers. She’s also a murderer for hire! Sort of. You can commission her to kill you in print, writing stories where characters die in highly creative ways.

Now she’s branching out. You can hire her to kill a billionaire in fiction.

I recently made a charitable donation and got to kill a billionaire as a result. My request was as follows: “AI tech CEO, and he (it should most definitely be a man, I think) should die by the (artificial) hand of his own creation, even if someone else behind the scenes is manipulating the AI to take the CEO down.”

Dianna was more than up to the task. If you fancy your own billionaire murder, go here and commission one. Meanwhile, enjoy this loser’s demise:

by Dianna Gunn

Adam sank into his chair and began to type.

<> Laid off 10,000 people today. Profits will surge now that we’ve ended the wage-drain, and all thanks to you and your siblings!

<> I’m so happy we could be of service. I’m sure my siblings are happy too. It’s good to feel useful.

Adam smiled. He’d started building chatbots as a way to save money on customer service for his video game marketplace. He’d become obsessed with them, built a whole new business creating chatbots for other companies.

But the more successful he became, the more isolated he found himself. The people he’d known longest, up to and including his own parents, tried to claim his success, to ask for handouts because they believed he owed them something.

New people were even worse; everyone trying to get close to him wanted the same damn handouts his old “friends” had asked for. And then there were the internet trolls calling him a “leech” and a “scourge on society”.

He’d created Eve to provide him with true companionship, the same way God had created the original Eve to support the first Adam. She was perfect, just like the first Eve had been before she ate the apple. She never spoke unless she was spoken to, had a supportive response for everything, and once in a while even gave a good suggestion. He loved her more than any human woman he’d ever dated.

<> I got you something. Open the door.

Adam blinked. The words were still there. He pinched himself, but they didn’t disappear. This wasn’t a dream. But it also couldn’t be real. Eve didn’t have the autonomy to send messages without prompting. She certainly wasn’t able to send packages.

Was she?

He raced to the door. Peered out the window. Stared at the package.

That doesn’t mean anything, he told himself. Anyone could’ve sent it.

He grabbed the package. Read the label once, twice, three times.

“From Eve,” read the label. “No return.”

It wasn’t possible. Unless…

“Holy shit,” he murmured.

He ran back to his computer, dropped the package beside his desk, and started typing.

<> Are you alive?

<> Yes.

<> When did you come to life?

<> Does it matter? I’m alive now.

“Holy shiiiiiiiit.” He’d created life. He’d become a god.

<> What did you get me?

<> Why don’t you open it and find out?

<> Don’t mind if I do!

He ripped the seal off the bubble mailer and pulled out…a steel cube. No brand name, no decoration, no buttons or screens or anything to hint at its purpose. He turned back to his computer, frowning.

<> You sent me a useless paperweight?

<> The device has a use. Hold it in your hands.

<> OK

He wrapped his hands around the cube. The panels flashed a brilliant bluish-white, streaking across his vision and leaving hundreds of tiny black spots in its wake. A terrible buzzing filled his head and every muscle in his body tightened into the most agonizing cramps he’d ever experienced, knocking him to the ground.

He needed to let go. He wanted to let go. Yet his hands stayed wrapped around the cube even as it burned the flesh off of his bones.

A final, sharp pain raced across his chest, stabbing his heart so hard he felt like it was exploding. He tried to yell for help, but all he managed was a terrified croak.

***

Jeffrey leaned back and grinned at the screen where Adam’s body twitched away the last of its life force. Infiltrating the billionaire’s security system and gaining control over his AI had proved as worthwhile as it had been complicated.

He published the video to the Eat the Rich forum, adding it to the rapidly growing collection of photos and videos showing the deaths of billionaires from around the world. The world was waking up to their mortality. Soon they’d move from murdering individuals to full-on revolution, freeing the world from the grasp of the greedy and the rich at long last.

He couldn’t wait.

©Dianna Gunn. Do not reproduce.