Ike was just about to flip the switches when Captain Fringbird ran in, her laser pistol drawn and probably not intentionally pointed between his eyes. She looked as homicidally furious as a Valkyrie with PMS.

"Step away from the terminal!" she barked, "Relinquish the hostages and I won't report you all to the authorities for illegal ownership of deletory technology!"

"Captain..." began Ike, but he was silenced by a bolt of laser fire. It wouldn't have hit him even if it was particularly aimed at him. It was deflected off some invisible barrier halfway across the room. The small boys stepped forward, their eyes still devoid of emotion, and raised their hands. There was a sound like a sudden rush of wind as another unseen force lifted Fringbird off her feet and threw her out of the room with enough strength that Ike could see she was in pain.

"Don't fight in the medical room!" they said in unison, "You'll hit the machine!"

Fringbird spat blood, "Was that a PSYCHIC attack? Operator, what the hell's going on? I've been forcibly teleported to planets I've never heard of... attacked by cultists... there's a bulk deletion machine on the twelfth floor!"

Oh, so that's what the noise was, thought Ike, I thought I'd heard it before.

"That's not for fighting with!" said one of the boys sternly, "That's for people who fail their exams!"

"I don't care what you use it for, its illegal!" she snapped, "Any single thing you do in this building could get you deleted! And why the hell are you keeping someone alive in that condition? Put the poor thing out of its misery!"

"Zalure doesn't like you." said the other boy. Fringbird opened her mouth to form a retort. Before she could complete the first syllable, she vanished.

"Where'd the Captain go?" demanded the Operator.

"Back to her ship, I suppose." he said, shrugging, "Don't worry, we'll send you where you want to go. But would you mind finishing the job?"

The Operator sighed and focussed his attention back to the two switches. On and off. 1 and 0. Life and death. I've not long left the Academy, he thought, I'm not even a very good Operator, I only barely passed. This shouldn't be my responsibility.

But then, who else would be insane enough to go along with this?

Twenty seconds later, the woman known as Zalure passed away, leaving behind no trace of her existence. As even her life-support machines were powered by her own mind, she generated no medical or fuel bills. Her body was thrown into the bulk deletion machine out of respect for her hatred of flesh. Seconds later, the next person to log into the Order of Zalure Domain found her wandering through the garden quite happily. Five minutes later, she had a prophetic vision. It was a vision of Armageddon. The hand of deletion would pass over Dusty Erias.

Thirty minutes later, Operator Ike, who had been relaxing on the Operator's Forums, saw a server-wide announcement by the Interplanetary Government. Due to reports of gross illegal activity on a deletory scale, the society known as the Order of Zalure was to be completely and irrevocably deleted down to the last member.

Five days later, the firing mechanisms for the gauss cannons on board every Government ship in the solar system critically malfunctioned without warning. As soon as they were replaced and aimed again at the planet that housed the town of Dusty Erias, the same thing happened. The third time this happened, the operation was aborted on the grounds that gauss cannon firing mechanisms were expensive and it would cost less to buy every single inhabitant of the galaxy thirty thousand Continues.

Besides, to get rid of the leader of the cult, they would have to bring down the Net, an act that would probably halt half the Universe to a standstill. It wasn't that big an emergency. Not yet.