Cozy Glow, Health Insurance CEO (Hard Target)
Not Just a River in Egypt
Behind her large mahogany desk Cozy Glow read health insurance care claims, at a rate of more than ten per second.
No unaided creature could read that rapidly, of course. But Cozy Glow used many cybernetic enhancements. She hadn't even needed to get her skull cut open! The neuronic impulse crown resting upon her head fed data directly into her brain and read her replies, at speeds that made gigabit internet look like a sleepwalking tortoise.
One of Cozy's many administrative assistants walked into Cozy's office, carrying a paper form. "I need your signature, Miss Glow."
Through cameras mounted all around the room, Glow scanned the form in nanoseconds. For the next quarter minute, while the assistant walked towards Cozy's desk across a broad and priceless Haynatolian rug, Cozy ignored the young stallion. She used the time to process over a hundred more claims, read and analyze several dozen personnel reviews, and personally fire three employees through the company's computerized HR systems.
Even while Cozy performed more such work, the young CEO also guided a remote controlled drone to lift a pen from a pen holder, hover above the form now laid upon Cozy's desk, and sign with Cozy's trademark scribble.
"Thank you," the assistant said. "If you don't want anything else, I'll just be going now."
Through the room's professionally designed and installed stereophonic sound system, a high pitched voice said, "Have a nice day, Rupert."
"Thank you, Miss Glow. You have a nice day too." Rupert Inkshade carried the form back out of the room, not noticing when he stepped directly upon one of the eight holy symbols of the ancient temple from which the rug had been looted.
(In the rug's native land, within the temple where the rug had once belonged, Rupert would have been beheaded for that.)
Cozy's interior decorator was simply the absolute best! SO well connected, with a worldwide network of suppliers who sourced the most rare and exotic goods! At least, that was Cozy's opinion, so far as she bothered to care at all. Decor only interested Cozy to the extent that, on occasions when fellow executives of high worldly rank entered her office, the visitors were fully impressed in proportion to their understanding of what they beheld.
Cozy wanted to soothe herself by personally reading and denying some more claims, but she knew she had to attend to her more important duties too. So she turned her attention to composing a memo, which would instruct a task force of lawyers and accountants to slightly edit the corporation's eligibility guidelines for life saving care. When your firm is responsible for tens of millions of clients, even a tiny change can really add up to millions of dollars of increased profits!
Somepony ran into the room, wearing a hoodie and jeans. The hood covered the pony's head, shadowing their masked face. "Deny, defend, depose!" the stallion shouted, pulling a knife from inside his hoodie. He lunged at Cozy Glow, thrusting towards her heart.
The ceramic blade's tip failed to enter her. It only skittered off Cozy's stonelike chest.
The would be assassin tried again, with similar results. Again and again he stabbed.
From speakers all around the room, a high pitched voice asked, "Gosh, Mister, what are you doing? Don't you like me?"
The assassin shook his head. He punched Cozy in the face, and screamed with pain as he broke at least one of the smaller bones in his forefoot.
"I'm not so easy to kill as all that, Mister Would Be Murderer. I am a VERY hardened target."
Uniformed guards rushed into the room, stunned the attacker with shock batons, and dragged him away.
***
Cozy didn't really need to go home at night. She didn't need to eat, and she could sleep behind her desk as well as in any other place.
When she wanted to unwind and relax, denying health care claims served her quite as well as any other hobby.
Really, she had the absolute best job of anyone in the whole world! That assassin might have thought he was clever for getting into her office with a knife...until his murder attempt failed.
But Cozy herself? She enjoyed personally killing tens of thousands of insured ponies every year, and sickening millions more by denying necessary care. The only real brake on her ambitions was that if she killed off the entire world's population faster than her corporate empire could acquire responsibility for more insured ponies, there would be no one left for her to enjoy tormenting.
Cozy received an electronic memo from her interior decorator. Workponies would arrive soon, to change out some of her office's furniture and art for items now even more in style.
Cozy barely bothered to read the memo before approving it. She trusted Plunder Heart implicitly.
When the office door started to open, Cozy Glow gave it only a small fraction of her attention.
But milliseconds later, Cozy felt something like all four of her limbs going numb. Her cybervision went mostly dark, her connections with corporate systems cut.
The network had been hacked!
A high pitched voice screeched the beginning of a word from all the room's speakers, then went silent.
The workponies wheeled a dolly into the room. One workpony tilted Cozy up slightly. Another pushed the dolly's forks in beneath Cozy.
The first worker let Cozy fall onto the forks, and buckled Cozy tightly into the dolly.
As Cozy was wheeled across the rug (incidentally incurring three different sentences of death, had this been a different jurisdiction half a world away) she shouted inside her head.
One workpony reached up with gloved forehoof to pluck the corporate control crown from Cozy's head, and toss it onto the rug.
When the dolly crushed one corner of Cozy's tiara, the intricate neural interface was too far from Cozy's head for the young CEO to even feel pain from the sudden signal discontinuity.
***
Somepony pulled a canvas cover from Cozy's head, letting her see her surroundings.
Cozy couldn't swivel her head to look around, of course. Under her normal circumstances, Cozy would have used her neural interfaces to look through cameras far outnumbering any normal pony's eyes. She would see not only the room she was in, but farther places also.
Now, though, Cozy could barely see through her own stone-hard corneas.
An old stallion knelt down in front of Cozy, inspecting her closely. "Excellent work," he said. "In different light, if I didn't know any better, I might think you were a real filly.
"But I've been commissioned to change your style to something newer, a bit more abstract. And I never disappoint a client."
He lifted a chisel to her face, and tapped it with a hammer.
Cozy's mind was filled with her own screaming.
***
In a lawn and garden store's outdoor furniture section, Cozy listened to fountains burbling. During business hours, water was her constant companion, a one way conversationalist that never left her alone.
Sometimes other sounds let her infer more about her surroundings: a heavy object being wheeled past with squeaks and rumbles, or customers chatting about which kind of chair to buy.
Nights, when the store was closed, left Cozy in silence.
Most days, the only direct interaction Cozy had with another creature was a stray pigeon or two perching upon her head. She didn't know where they came from. Maybe the birds invaded the store to peck at poorly sealed bags of birdseed.
The birds sometimes pooped, but Cozy hardly minded.
It was better than having no one at all.
