"Your weapons will be this copy of Norton Utilities, and this magnetic pulse-emitting cigarette lighter. Please don't destroy the first with the second. This chap is rapacious, 007. Go stop him."

Thirteen hours later, Bonf's jet touched down in Seattle. As he drove his rented car along Interstate 90, the steering wheel wrenched itself from his grip; the car crossed into the oncoming lanes. Bonf fired the EMP lighter. The car, its electronics fried, came to rest in an embankment.

At Pikes Place, he bought some fresh strawberries and met a luscious red-haired businesswoman. After a seafood dinner, they made love. When he awoke, she was gone. A white-bearded ferry captain emerged from the shadows, brandishing a harpoon. As he thrust, Bonf dodged, caught it, and struck him across the forehead.

In Redmond, Bonf showed a faked press ID, asking to see the marketing VP. They led him to a empty waiting room; a low coffee table had press releases for reading. As Bonf picked up a 1991 note about Windows for Pen Computing, the floor fell away and he slid down a long chute.

"Glad you could visit, Mr. Bonf." Gates' image was in a window on a large monitor. The video was jerky, the sound tinny. "In two hours, the real Microsoft Network comes into being. Every PC with Windows and a modem will be part of a living organism. People won't need to think. Windows and I will think for them."

The scene changed: a laboratory, with several computers, a rack of components, and a human head in a jar. Bonf gulped. "Yes, that's me," said Gates, giggling. "Flesh is irrelevant. Information is the new means of control. You, unfortunately, will die. In 90 minutes KILLBONF.DLL will get a WM_TIMER event and release toxic gas into your room. You can’t escape. You can't stop the program."

Using Norton Utilities, Bonf gained access to the host computer’s system resource table. He wrote a Visual Basic program that allocated GDI resources but did not release them. Soon he was getting repeated Windows errors.

When the timer expired, the monitor displayed an error message: "A general protection fault occurred in KILLBONF.DLL." There were buttons for Close and Ignore.

"Curse you!" Gates screamed, clicking on Ignore. The same error message popped up again. Gates clicked Ignore two, three, ten times. Using Norton Remote Mouse, Bonf clicked on Close. Gates’s head immediately went limp, his eyes glazed open. Windows had crashed and Gates was dead.

"You always did write lousy software," muttered Bonf.