Free Game Changer by Douglas E. Richards

him
to get to the heart of the matter. Jafari drew in a deep, exhilarating breath,
thrilled by the knowledge that his time had finally come, and began. “All of
you are here today because you share in our righteous purpose,” he said. “To
bring the Great Satan to its knees. After considerable thought and preparation—considerable
prayer and meditation—I have arrived at a plan I believe will do just this. A
plan that will create maximum panic and havoc, with minimal operational needs.”
He smiled serenely. “And minimal risk of failure.”
    Jafari cleared his throat and looked out over his flock, a
dense throng of humanity standing at attention before him, eager to learn what
part they would play in his grand plan. “I call my strategy, death by a thousand cuts . As the name
would imply, this isn’t about delivering a single killing blow to the organism.
This isn’t about sensational attacks, about spectacle. You don’t have to cut
off an elephant’s head to kill it. A thousand quick flicks with a razor blade will
do the trick. Each, alone, not nearly fatal, but the cumulative effect deadly, causing
far more trauma to the system than a single decisive blow ever could.”
    Jafari had arrived at the name for his
operation from the form of torture and execution made famous by the Chinese,
practiced from the beginning of the tenth century until 1905, when it had been banned
by authorities. The Chinese had called it ling
chi , which translated either as death by a thousand cuts , the lingering
death , or slow slicing .   
    In ling chi, an executioner would
use a knife to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period
of time, eventually resulting in death. According to lore, ling chi began when
the torturer, wielding an extremely sharp knife, put out the victim’s eyes,
rendering him incapable of seeing the remainder of the torture and ratcheting
up the psychological terror of the procedure.
    Successive cuts removed any small
body part that just happened to be sticking out, be it an ear, nose, finger,
toe, tongue, or even testicle, followed by the removal of large chunks of flesh
from thighs and shoulders. The entire process was said to last three days, and
to total three thousand six hundred cuts, after which the butchered carcasses
were paraded for the public to see.
    While this lore contained extreme exaggerations—exaggerations
historians and modern physicians had since corrected—there was no disagreement
over the basic idea behind the executions, nor the fact that they took place.
The debate centered on the question of how many mutilations, over what length
of time, a victim could endure and still remain alive.
    The idea of felling the Great Satan in this manner was
irresistible to Jafari, and he relished the idea that his hand would be holding the scalpel. Yes, ISIS and others had
continued to entice individuals, largely through social media, into acts of
violence against America, often to great effect, but this was haphazard. Jafari’s
strategy would be smarter. It would be comprehensive and coordinated. And it
would be infinitely more damaging.  
    “Once I seized upon the idea of slicing up the beast,”
continued Jafari, “of crippling it, forcing it to stagger around, not knowing when
or where the next slice would be delivered, I put considerable effort into
perfecting each and every cut. Into ordering the cuts for maximum effectiveness.
At every turn I asked myself, which acts will cause the most destruction, the
most terror? Which acts will push the economy toward collapse? What acts will bleed
the beast the most efficiently?”
    Jafari paused. “During our meeting this morning, I intend to
outline our first cut. Once this phase has been completed, I will outline the
next. And so on. In this way I can assess the success of each phase. I can
confirm that the next cuts I have planned will still be the most effective,
given the state of the beast.”
    This was also a security