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Ethical

Jill was sitting up in bed against the headboard with her laptop resting just above her knees. She had just finished typing her script and decided to scroll through her social media feeds one last time before getting some much-needed sleep.
She refreshed her Facebook page.  There was a procession of photos featuring acquaintances, colleagues, friends, and family doing everything from scuba diving off the coast of Ice Land to eating tofu. Each photo got a glance and depending on the content a like.
"Wow, you should check out Dakota's pictures from Croatia. It looks really cool!" Jill called to her fiance Miguel, who was in the adjoining bathroom.
The sink stopped, "What?" Miguel replied
"I said Dakota's pictures of Croatia are really cool!" Jill repeated.
"Oh," Miguel replied, and the water resumed running.
Jill kept scrolling until she saw the words "BREAKING" in bold red letters.
From there, the feed went from being a self-perpetuating photo album of food, vacations, and pets into a collage of atrocities.
Images of refugees fleeing burning villages and ditches filled with wide-eyed corpses flooded the screen. The scenes of carnage were attached to headlines with words like "massacre" and even "genocide."
Jill gasped in horror when she saw the name of the mass-murdering monster dominating the new news cycle,
General Vithu Rith
"Oh my god," Jill groaned.
"What is it?" Miguel asked as he walked into the room.
That General who commissioned me to make that documentary about him in his election campaign is killing thousands of innocent people," Jill said despondently.
Miguel pulled up the covers "You mean Rith?" he asked.
"Yeah," Jill moaned.
"I know its really disgusting," lamented Miguel. "I heard they burned all the babies in a village alive."
"Ugh, my biopic helped get that guy into office," Jill said despondently.
"Oh," said Miguel.
"I mean, I knew he was a liar, but I didn't know he was a crazy mass murder!" Jill said, rubbing her temples.
"And the fee he paid was insane! Who the hell would turn that down!"
Miguel tried to calm his fiance "Jill I think-"
"I bet this will make me a fuckin pariah at the studio now," bemoaned Jill.
Miguel began again "I don't think-"
"I just know, I just know Ellen is going to make a big deal out of this. She's probably going to tell everyone that I'm a "genocide enabler" and that I don't care about people in other countries. Ugh, fuck her!"
Miguel put his arms around his panicking fiance and pulled her in close.
"You had no idea any of this was going to happen. None of it's your fault," Miguel whispered in a soothing but firm tone.
"Yeah, but everyone's gonna say I should have known," Jill said.
"That's not true," Miguel interjected.
I just thought all that talk about a purge was just campaign rhetoric," Jill said with tears in her eyes. "Remember they put you on the project because they know you're the best at what you do there. It was only your job to make a movie-
"Film," Jill corrected him.
"Film," Miguel repeated. "You were only doing your job, and you did a good job. None of this is because of you."

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