The web, woven from millions of thoughts and plans, conspiracies and revelations, is so beautiful that mirages of bygone times, even the cruel and unclean Middle Ages, sometimes appear in its webs.
Of course, people have long noticed this peculiarity of the internet and invented a special device that allows anyone to experience these vague but pleasant feelings of déjà vu, déjà entendu, and déjà lu for free. The invention resembles a mind-reading device that constantly malfunctions and spits out a mountain of nonsense instead of the desired answer. Sometimes the internet says “yes,” sometimes it says “no,” but most often it remains painfully silent.
Search engines are used by almost everyone who explores virtual space with mouse clicks. Of course, it's not easy for a machine to read the minds of the entire world, let alone listen to your desires, but the desires of many online wanderers are so simple that the internet always welcomes them, imperceptibly wrapping them, the chosen few, in a dense cocoon, only to transform the unfortunate into mayflies who will cause so much trouble in the real world that they'll hardly want to live afterward.
These people are victims of the internet. And internet addiction, which has already become a noble mental illness akin to arachnophobia, has nothing to do with it.
The World Wide Web teaches how to kill. It turns out that the search query “how to kill a man” returns over 49 million hits on many search engines—with what to kill, how to kill, where to drown, and how to cover your tracks—all of which can be learned without leaving your computer, while your victim reads Shakespeare in the next room.
That's exactly what American James Petrick from Carolina did. The 51-year-old computer specialist smothered his wife with a pillow. A true maniac, with the distorted face of a psychopath foreseeing his life sentence, planned the murder for a month.
The police found an entire encyclopedia on his computer's hard drive, complete with links to “22 Ways to Kill a Person with Your Bare Hands.” The search bar was still active, and his browser had saved queries like “break neck,” “strangle,” and so on. There was no point in watching the internet consume him—Petrik finally settled on a pillow.
The body of Petrik's wife, a cellist with a local symphony orchestra, was found by police on the shore of Falls Lake, several miles from the killer's home. It turned out Petrik had spent a long time choosing a place to hide the body, considering a dozen bodies of water. In desperation, the maniac began downloading photographs of American lakes. One day, while out for bread, he suddenly saw Falls Lake, and the dark waters drew him in. He returned home and murdered the innocent cellist.
It's also worth noting that the computer expert was a member of an occult sect and, in accordance with its diabolical rules, regularly engaged in intimate relations with other heretics. He shamelessly invited them to his home, shared his murderous plans, and together they looked at photos of cozy tourist spots, then began the ritual. One day, Petrik's wife caught him performing the “ritual,” and investigators believe this was the final straw for the first e-killer.
