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computer screen, he daydreamed that the site could potentially grow quickly. So quickly that the<br />
government would become petrified by its power. It could be living proof, Ross fantasized, that<br />
legalizing drugs was the best way to stop violence and oppression in the world. If it worked, it would<br />
change the very fabric of society forever.<br />
Sure, he wanted to make money. That was the libertarian way. But he wanted to free people too.<br />
There were millions of souls crammed into jails across the country because of drugs, mostly<br />
inconsequential drugs like weed and magic mushrooms. A vile and putrid prison system kept those<br />
people locked away; lives destroyed because the government wanted to tell people what they could<br />
and could not do with their own bodies.<br />
This new Web site he was working on could change that.<br />
Coming up with a name for his store was a challenge, but he finally settled on the Silk Road, a<br />
title borrowed from the ancient Chinese trade route of the Han dynasty.<br />
The biggest challenge now was finding the time to actually work on the project, given that he was<br />
still involved with Good Wagon Books and had even taken over most of the operation. Still, he had<br />
hired a couple of employees to do most of the book work, so Ross could hole up in his messy<br />
bedroom and toil away on the site, work that was difficult, even for someone as capable as Ross.<br />
He spent innumerable hours writing front-end code, back-end code, and code that helped sew<br />
those digital dialects together. Ross was teaching himself all of these programming languages on the<br />
fly. He was technically doing the equivalent of building eBay and Amazon on his own, without any<br />
help and without any knowledge. When he got stuck, he was truly baffled as to how to fix a<br />
programming problem. It wasn’t as if he could post a job listing online looking for someone to help<br />
him build a Web site that sold drugs and other illegal contraband.<br />
For now, though, he was determined to build the site on his own, even if it was slow going. His<br />
idea, which now seemed like the obvious path to push his liberation ideals, might actually turn into<br />
something.<br />
But there was one thing Ross hadn’t figured out yet. Where was he going to get drugs for his new<br />
drug-dealing Web site?
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