“The Ones Who Walk Towards Acre”, 2010-12-21 (; backlinks):
Short story on assassination markets.
This story came to me suddenly one night as a few lines; unhappily did I labor to write the rest of it and make it worthy of the original. Only when it was done did I realize I had written part of Cloud Nine, akin to the earlier tale-within-a-tale, “The Palace of Wonders”, but the short can stand on its own.
To the extent that this story has a message, it is an examination of the assassination market concept, Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, and cognitive biases; see also the contemporary debate over drone strikes (“What if drone warfare had come first?”), & the dark utopia Friendship is Optimal. Discussion: LW, Reddit.