Requiem for a Pirate
The official memorial service had a few, somewhat estranged, relatives around that only eyed us with a mixture of misunderstanding and malevolence. They feared our usual piratical trappings amidst the abysmally formal surroundings. They couldnât understand why we refused to call their odd uncle or weird brother, one John Taylor, by his name and instead insisted on variations of âThe Captainâ, or âTaddie, me buckoâ, or âMcRavenâ. We didnât even try to eulogize him in their presence. We couldnât help but chuckle at their insistence on an open casket presentation. It had taken the help of the Captainâs attorney to get the funeral home to agree to release his body to us without the knowledge of his rather strict family.
We held a true buccaneerâs service at the edge of the Waterfrontâs Great Lawn. The weather was appropriately gray with storms on the horizon and so we had the copious green space to ourselves. A fine, strongly tempered wench of a grog was passed amongst us. We told tales of the Captain and his mistress that deep dark sea of data that haunted his sleeping moments.
We all knew that everything was going to be different. Already we heard the tremulous pattering of people seeking our heads on a platter for our actions, from a number of Tribes including âour ownâ. On the one hand, no one could prove that the anonymous data drop box, whose address was blasted unto the sky, was one of ours. On the other hand few other groups had the data skills that we had to get the booty in the first place, much less the fact that people were slowly tracing the money trail of the bombes, those brilliant and powerful hologrammatic projectors of ...
