The cell was dark and cold. There were no windows. There wasn't even a toilet. Billy Masterbates stood in the center of the 10 by 10 cubicle, his arms chained to the ceiling. The place of his confinement wasn't a torture chamber. Peter the Great did not mean to be cruel. He had, however, vowed not to coddle criminals, and Billy Masterbates, owner of Microcrap Incorporated was Peter's star prisoner. Billy's crimes were of such magnitude and so spectacular that Peter wanted to deprive him of any possibility enjoying his confinement.

 A pile of excrement had built up at Billy's feet. Peter had the toilet taken out of Billy's cell, a measure he didn't take with the rest of his prisoners, for one reason only. Billy Masterbate's crimes against humanity were so smelly and had lingered for so long, that Peter decided Billy should pay for stinking up peoples' computers by subjecting him to the same treatment.

"An eye for an eye," Peter announced to God, as soon as word came in that Billy had been apprehended while posing as a priest to escape the world wide manhunt Peter unleashed after offering 10 million dollars to anyone giving information that would lead up to Billy's arrest. An Iowa farmer had found Billy cowering next to one of his tractors in his machine shed. The farmer had already received his check in the mail and was now busily planning which farms he was going to buy from his neighbors.

Peter the Great had Billy Masterbates strung up by his wrists to keep him from masturbating and had shut off the sun to deprive Billy of anything he might see that might excite him.

Not that Billy had involved himself in any form of bestiality that had been a matter of public knowledge. "But you never can tell," Peter had decided. "There's always a first time and Billy might have been doing it all along in his closet. I cannot risk his seeing two dogs going at it outside a prison window and have him get excited about it and having his right hand handy to play with." Peter had thought about having Billy's hands cut off. But God had interceded and Peter had decided to be kind.

*****

"What are you planning on doing to Billy Masterbate's followers?" asked God, who as Peter's Attorney General, used Robert Maximus for his stage name.

"Do with them? Why nearly everybody's a follower of Billy Masterbates," Peter replied. Everyone who has a computer that is. There's only a couple hundred million of them worldwide. And you are one of Billy's followers, yourself", Peter added.

"I guess I am. Although I've got a brain capable of performing thousands of calculations per second, the growth of the world's population has risen so astronomically that even I can't keep track of them all. I had thought about unleashing another worldwide epidemic or inciting World War III to control the population so I can keep track of everybody but the enormous strides Man has made with the P.C. made me have second thoughts. I had developed a bacterium called Bubonic Plague II which I would have used to kill half the world's population off and would have infected the rats with it just like I did during the Middle Ages but decided that would be unfair."

"Why's that?"

"Rats lurk predominately around poor folk. White trash trailer parks and ghettos in the inner city. So people living with the rats would have gotten Bubonic Plague II first. Then once the epidemic got really started, the richest people would simply isolate themselves from the rest of humanity. Too many of them would have survived. Billy Masterbates for instance. He would have just locked himself in a self supporting climate controlled cave and continued to control the world with his computers. So, like everybody else, I went to the P.C. and was able to get a lot more done faster than I ever did before."

"Ever get a virus?" Peter asked.

"Why hell yes, I have," replied God. Hasn't everybody? And I was using that goddamn Microcrap Outhouse Express too, another Billy Masterbates designed abomination. That fucker never did care about security or about how many of his customers' computers went down with viruses. And all the spam e-mail I've gotten? Real time consuming, not to mention all the crashes and self destructions pulled off by Billy Masterbate's Windoz programs. He's History, Peter. If you don't try him and publicly execute himself I swear I'll get him myself."

"Okay. I've decided to let most of Billy's followers go. After all, they cannot help what they do. They've been forced to use his shitty products because they've been given no other choices. But you've gotta help me with the others, God. I'm perplexed and confused on how I should punish them, or if I should punish them at all."

"What are you talking about, Peter?"

"I'm talking about all those Assholes Online People. AOL. All twenty-five million of them."

"I see what you mean. Look at it this way, Peter. Those twenty-five million nitwits have always had a choice."

"It's a huge question of almost theological proportions. They had a choice between getting real Internet Internet Service providers and AOL."

"There is no doubt that both Billy Masterbates and the people who ran AOL tried to control the world," God replied. But Billy Masterbates was smart. He was controlling the world. He nearly had me controlled. He owned the operating systems and he made sure everybody bought his application software since he had the market. Take nearly every web site development software program sold today. If a consumer wanted to use any other operating system besides Windoz it wouldn't run either Billy Masterbate's program, "Final Page" or even his competitor's products such as "Wet Dream Maker". So you had to keep using and buying his Windoz programs."

"Don't I know," Peter agreed empathetically. But AOL also tried to control the world. It bought Time Warner thinking it could dominate the news. It flooded the entire world with all its free AOL disks promising a thousand free hours online. And once it got 25 million subscribers, AOL tried to make it impossible for the Aolers to communicate with those who were not on AOL. I remember sending out my autobiography and my pictures to my publisher once I had taken over the U.S. My publisher was on AOL and AOL zipped all my picture files on him. He wasn't so hot with computers and didn't know what to do with the zipped files and he called me an idiot for doing it to him."

"Shit. It was such a pain in the ass dealing with my meeting rooms on AOL's Instant Messenger. I would have had an audience of hundreds at a time but since I was not on AOL, I couldn't invite the people who were on AOL into my fireside chats. So what AOL was doing was saying: "Look God. If you want our AOL people in on your chats you are going to have to join AOL and get everybody else to join AOL. Either that or you will have to convert everybody to drop AOL."

"Why didn't you simply convert them? God. "After all, you are a brilliant public speaker."

"I wouldn't have had a chance," God replied. "Not with AOL advertising on the radio and t.v and even having their ads announced in Blockbuster to all these morons renting movies."

"Fuck em," Peter replied. They chose to pay $21.95 a month to be on AOL when they could have gotten a lot better service with other companies for fifteen dollars a month."

"Not only were they being stupid for wasting their money on the shittiest service available, they were financing AOL's plot to take over the world," said God. "Well, I know what you need to do Peter, but I'm going to wait for you to say it first.'

"Well, we've got some problems in this country," said Peter, "and those Aol people are going to help me solve some of them."

"Go on. I am eagerly listening with bated breath."

"We've got a population explosion that's out of control in this country. In 1955 there were only 150 million Americans and in just a few years that figure is going to top 300 million. And even with my transcontinental railroad and mass transit project we won't be able to supply good jobs for everyone. You were on the right track, when you had planned to introduce Bubonic Plague II to Americans but as you said yourself that would have been so unfair since it would have punished the poor while letting most of the rich survive. I got another idea."

"I'm all ears."

"We need to develop a superior human being. Hitler tried it but it was unfair killing all those Jews. And most of them were smart. Hitler was an idiot. We need to let the process of natural selection take place which will greatly enrich the gene pool. I find myself in the same situation I was in back in the late 1500's when I became Csar. The Greek Orthodox Church was controlling Russia and the Tsar had little to say about it. First thing I did was to force the clergy to shave their beards. I humiliated all those conceited bearded fucks."

"You sure did. And I sat there in Heaven and laughed my ass off while I watched," God replied.

"Well....we are having to contend with two clergies here, Billy Masterbates Microcrap Corporation and AOL, both trying to control the hearts and minds of their followers," said Peter. "Anybody that falls prey to organized religion or follows Microcrap or AOL is a complete idiot, except we will absolve the Microcrappers because they had no freedom of choice. So they are not idiots after all."

"Yeah, I warned those saps when I had that Bible written not to worship false Gods or idols. And what did they do...they made idols of their priests and clergy. They weren't listening to me or following my guidance. All they were doing was allowing themselves to be milked by those who claimed to be spreading the word of God as they lined their own pockets and tried to impose their own concept of morality upon their followers."

"I have decided what we must do," said Peter. I am going to enslave everyone who has been paying AOL for more than six months. These people have proven they are like a bunch of lemmings all following each other as each of them jumps off the cliff to his own destruction. I am going to have all the males castrated so they can never reproduce and I'm going to have all the females get hysterectomies. When the rest of the nation fucks they aren't going to be able to and they will never be able to have children."

"But if you don't let the slaves reproduce, how are we going to get other slaves, the slaves of the future who will be able to continue to help this nation realize its greatness"

"I don't know. Fuck it. By the time all the AOL people die off our economy will be going great guns and we probably will be able to keep everyone else gainfully employed. And if we can't, we will simply find some other group of stupid people to transform into eunuchs. But that will be harder to do since we will have allowed all the stupidest people to die off. With the gene pool greatly enriched this is going to be hard. On the other hand, the people who are left as part of the reproductive process will be much more productive and thus able to justify their having jobs in the first place."

"I like it," said God. "I have to say, I couldn't do better myself."