Kill Process Read Online Free PDF

“We’ll double revenue for privacy customers. PrivacyGuard will cost $9.95 per year. We’ve already done user testing of the price point.”
    I glance around the room. Does anyone really believe this nonsense? No one trusts us. That’s the problem. Oy vey . Half the people in the room harbor dreamy eyes at the idea of increasing user revenue.
    “Our annual advertising revenue is currently eight bucks per user,” I say. “Double would be sixteen bucks, not ten.”
    “Well . . .” Carl gestures to his marketing flack, who chuckles.
    “Privacy lovers enjoy thirty percent more discretionary income. There’s a slew of companies wanting to advertise specifically to people who want more privacy.”
    My head pounds, and I experience phantom itches in my missing hand. “You said no personalized advertising. ‘Zero, zip, zilch’ were your exact words.”
    “Right. Well, there’s no personalized data. However, the lack of personalized data is data. Data indicating a user who values privacy.”
    Carl chuckles. “We win on both ends, Angie. It’s great. We’re going to make the company a fortune and make our users happy.”
    The other people in the room laugh along with Carl.
    I’m thinking an ice pick. Can’t they see how bad this idea is? Anyone who cares one iota about finding information will pick a web browser other than Tomo. The barrier to entry is as simple as installing an app.
    For a very brief moment my heart surged at the thought that Tomo was actually going to make a meaningful contribution to privacy.
    Now I shake my head and fight off the urge to vomit. Corporations are disgusting beasts.
    Believe me, the irony of my position is not lost on me. Here I am, complaining about how we’re treating people’s privacy, and yet I’m invading people’s privacy up the wazoo. But I do it to do good.
    *     *     *
    I wake up, sweating, my ears ringing and blood pounding. I’m twisted up in the sheets and my throat is sore, like I’ve been screaming, which I probably was.
    For a moment I’m too panicked to move, trying to remember exactly where I am. I’m in my condo. The bed next to me is empty, Thomas at his own place. I glance in the darkness at the walls, think about the people in neighboring units. Do they hear me scream in the middle of the night? How can they not?
    I walk to the bathroom, drink a glass of water, and return to lie down on the other side of the bed where it’s not so sweaty and damp.
    After my . . . accident, I spent six months in rehab, learning to write again, tie my shoes, and everything else I needed to do one-handed. Then I went back to work. It’s hard enough to walk into the same office, see the same coworkers, without an arm. Harder still when everyone looks at you and sees a woman who killed her husband.
    My old boss understood right away and offered me a job in the Portland office if I wanted it. I took the job, moved in the fall and immediately bought a house, a classic Four Square, the quintessential Portland home, with grassy yard and a huge maple tree. Two weeks after I moved in, the leaves fell, then it rained.
    You can rake leaves one-armed. You can do pretty much anything one-armed, even put a watch on if you use your teeth. You can cut a steak and cut your fingernails, because they’ve got great adaptive tools. However, some difficult things hold almost no reward. After eight hours hard labor and only a fraction of the wet, heavy leaves in bags, I went into the house and cried myself to sleep.
    The next morning, I briefly considered hiring a yard maintenance service. That’s what any of my old coworkers in the Bay Area would have done. Somehow I can’t stomach the idea of hiring someone to do what I can’t do. I don’t know why. Maybe because my mother believed you should do your maintenance and wasn’t above taking a wrench to the plumbing if the super didn’t show up when he was supposed to. Watching someone else mow my lawn and rake my leaves