A rumor floated around school about an organization known as the Erasers: people who eased the suffering of the friends and family of those who had committed suicide by “erasing” all traces of the deceased's existence, from possessions, government records, to even people's memory's. When the rumor found its way to the ear of Colleen Little, though she thought it was a wishful fantasy, it intrigued her, for their services sounded perfect.
When she returned home, she conducted an internet search and found nothing related to the rumor but a few forum posts. They offered up no additional information at first, but one post shared a link to a website with a peculiar URL; one that was, Colleen thought, more akin to a line of code. Of course, she thought it was someone phishing for saved passwords, so she browsed through the latter posts to see if any guinea pigs confirmed that the link was legitimate. Several did, so Colleen clicked on the link.
What she found looked like the work of an amateur programmer or a boy whose voice had yet to crack—a black background and an Enter button beneath two lines of text: The Erasers in moderately sized letters center-top and its slogan, The Selfless Way to Die. There was no more of the page to scroll, so she clicked the lone button, and the next page loaded in an instant.
It was little more than an About page, detailing the mission statement of the Erasers, and it was brief, as though the website really was programmed by some high school student who overheard the rumor and sought to play a prank on the world. Colleen clicked the Next button below the short passage and found herself on a page with roughly the same quantity of text, a single-line text box, and two buttons this time: Skeptical? and Hire.
The page asked for the full name of the client inside the text box and handed out the details of the contract, which explained that within 24 hours, everything that was proof of existence of the client would be erased; the client was to commit suicide within this 24 hour period, but should they still be alive once their timer had showed four zeroes, they would be killed by the Erasers themselves—this deal applied to even those who weren't suicidal but entered their name anyway.
Colleen clicked the Skeptical? button to see what sort of argument the next page would make. This new page resembled the last one, though it was reduced back to one button labeled Forget. The text box was larger, with enough space for an essay paragraph, and above it was instructions to type in one thing that could easily be remembered; it suggested the name of a family member, friend, or pet. Within 24 hours, it promised, this one thing would be forgotten, and the browser's cookie settings would remember this text for the next time the page was visited after the 24 hours was up.
With the suggestion as her anchoring point, she typed up the first name that came to mind and hovered her cursor over the button. She contemplated this decision for a long moment, a list in her head of the pros and cons, before deciding there was no harm in this little experiment.
ns3.23.100.174da2
