Don't Read the Comments

by Eric Smith

  Let’s dance.

  I send the message and hear his ship lock on to mine.

  INCOMING TRANSMISSION

  AARON: ARE YOU GOING TO PROM WITH HER—

  Oh my God, I can’t with Aaron’s little sister. They seem so cute together, so sweet. I wink at the screen, only to realize it’s not like he can actually see me doing any of that. Or that anyone can see me doing that. Oh well.

  I open the group channel back up, the chattering of voices filling my ears again.

  “Technical hiccup, sorry!” I exclaim into the mic. “Had a few stragglers. Let’s do this thing! Three...two...one...jump!”

  My little ship rockets into the black. A few bright blurs speed by me, either stars or passing ships, I can’t be sure. The colors move and swirl, and I turn from side to side, looking at them as they zip by, all curious and strangely beautiful and no doubt gorgeous in the video stream that Rebekah is recording on her side of things.

  In less than a minute, thankfully, my ship slows to a stop, and a large planet appears. It’s impossibly bright blue, the shimmering hue of a winter sky, complete with white wisps swirling over it.

  The stats load up in front of me:

  CLASS THREE PLANET [ESTIMATED]

  Status: Uncharted, Undiscovered

  Life Support Capability: Positive

  Detectable Resources: Gas, Ore

  Would you like to claim and name this planet?

  [YES] [NO]

  A quick wave of anxiousness sweeps over me as I read the description, thinking about what happened the last time. But there aren’t any red flags on this one. It hasn’t been charted yet or claimed. It’s empty. It’s mine.

  It’s mine?

  I load up the channel window and select Maggs. There’s a voice chat option, to talk to her live, instead of just sending a message.

  I tap it.

  “Oh my God,” a young girl’s voice breathes, and in that moment, I realize I’m probably older than this girl. Maybe way older. She sounds like she’s twelve or thirteen. “H-hi? Hello? Is this a mistake? I think you chatted me.”

  “It’s no mistake,” I say cheerfully, and then I press the broadcast button so the entire Armada can hear us. “My Armada! Meet Maggs. She’s the one who discovered this blue planet and shared it with me. With us! So it seems only fitting that she should lay claim to it.”

  “Oh my God,” I hear her whisper again, barely a squeak.

  “Go ahead, Maggs!” I tell her, a grin spreading across my face. I hear her typing through the headset, and after a few more keystrokes, the planet’s name pops up on the screen. A cheer erupts from the Armada at the sight.

  PLANET OMGWHATISMYLIFE

  Discovered by MAGGS

  “Descend, Armada!” I exclaim, trying to mask the laughter in my voice. “Go explore, and thank you, Maggs!”

  I push forward on the flight stick, and my ship speeds toward the planet’s surface, the bright blue glistening as it grows closer. I break through the atmosphere, the approaching clouds exploding around me, ships in the Armada at all sides, and I gasp at the immensity of the ocean. My eyes dart to the small plots of land that seem to dot the water like freckles. Seemingly tiny islands, but as we get closer, I realize they’re massive. Almost the entire Armada could fit on one with room to spare.

  And the islands are everywhere.

  I pick an arbitrary one out of the endless number of them and bring my ship in to land, settling on the soft soil. A few other ships follow me, two of which are Rebekah’s and Aaron’s. I wait as they both hop out and walk over to me, the sound of their footsteps, the roar of ships flying overhead, and the cooling of thrusters competing for my attention in my headset.

  I mute my microphone from the rest of the Armada, setting us up in a private party as they get closer.

  Rebekah hums next to Aaron. If she could look him up and down, I feel like she would. “He’s definitely not as cute as he is in the video.”

  “Hey, I don’t look like my avatar. Wait, you showed her the video?!” Aaron exclaims.

  “Um, I show her everything,” I tell him, feeling my cheeks flush a bit.

  “Everything?!” Aaron asks, a hitch in his voice.

  “Well, not our messages and stuff,” I say quickly.

  I hear Aaron audibly exhale.

  “I mean, you could show me those messages,” Rebekah says after a beat, chuckling. “They sound very interesting.”

  “No way,” I say with a laugh. “So what happened, Aaron? Why so late?”

  “Parents,” Aaron replies, sounding exasperated. “I actually don’t have much time. I need to help in the office a bit more, make things easier for my dad in the morning.”

  “What’s he do?” Rebekah asks.

  “He helps my mom run her practice. She’s a doctor,” Aaron explains, his tone sad. “They want me to take over someday. They keep trying to steal this summer away from me, I swear. ‘If we’re paying for college, you’re going to be a doctor!’ My mom loves to guilt me with—”

  “Oh wow, what a horrible problem to have,” Rebekah faux cries. “My student loans give me panic attacks at night, Dr. Aaron.”

  “I’m sorry. I know I’m luckier than most. It’s just... I really don’t want to be a doctor. I want to write, play video games...” Aaron trails off, and I hear Rebekah groan again. “What?”

  “Oh nothing,” she says. “I’m just already exhausted by your privilege.”

  “Hey, you don’t know anything about me or my fam—” Aaron starts to dig in.

  “Alright, alright!” I interrupt before they start really fighting. “Let’s cool it with all that and do some exploring.”

  The two of them grumble a bit more, but grow quiet as we walk over the terrain. The ground is some sort of weird soil-and-sand mixture that makes my feet slide a bit with each step. There are a few hardy-looking small green plants here and there, and a handful of treelike bits of green, but nothing towering or impressive. In fact, it’s easy to see right across to the far side of the island, and over to the other islands nearby, each of those with their own ships and crews exploring them.

  “Hmm.” I wave my hand, and a display opens up with data about what we’re walking on. The resources seem meager around us. Not a lot of wood or food, but apparently limitless water.

  Over the sounds of the game, I hear the familiar loud whine of the apartment door opening.

  “Divya?” My mom’s back early. “Are you home?”

  I mute the channel and call to her. “Streaming in my room, Mom. Just a second.”

  “I need...” She trails off, and I unmute the channel. Sounds like someone brought home groceries.

  “Hey streamers, I’ll be right back.” I remove my headset and shut off the VR, the stream routing back to my computer’s camera, the sound thundering back through my speakers. I wink and point at the camera. I get up to head out of my bedroom, ready to smile at my mom, show her what I’m working on, when the door swings open and she barrels in.

  “Oh shit!” Rebekah shouts. “Turn it off! Turn off the video!”

  I dart over and flick at the switch on my little HD camera, pulling it off the monitor just in case, and run over to my mom, who stumbles over to sit on my bed, her shoulders heaving with sobs. Her normally lustrous hair is a matted mess, caked with something that leaves a yellow tint in some places, clear in others. I wrap my arms around her while looking through her hair and at her clothes, finding bits of white everywhere.

  “What happened?!” I ask, holding her tightly. “What is all this?”

  She cries into my shoulder for several moments, then shudders and pulls away. The black eyeshadow and mascara that she likes to apply in thick lines is dripping down her cheeks, coloring in the wrinkle lines under her eyes and around her mouth.

  “These...these boys,” she
stammers. “They were waiting outside the library.”

  I pluck a piece of the white something off her outfit.

  It’s a shell.

  An eggshell.

  Some fucking assholes egged my mother.

  “They just came after me, throwing the eggs.” She wipes at the mascara and the tears on her face. “I tried to run, but I slipped and fell by the library gardens, and...and they just kept throwing them, laughing, until they ran out and took off.”

  “Oh my God, Mom, that’s awful!” I feel this heat bursting in my chest, this rage. It had to be some of those trolls. It just had to be. The ones who sent me that damn picture in the email.

  “I couldn’t get a cab. My phone broke when I fell, and then the bus—” she sniffles “—they wouldn’t let me on looking like this. I had to walk all the way back. Everyone kept staring at me.”

  Something chimes over by my desk, and she looks up at my computer, her eyes wide, horrified.

  “Divya, darling...is your game still on? Is that...recording?”

  I look back to the computer and see Rebekah in her little window, waving about frantically, her mouth open and shouting at me. My phone starts buzzing on my desk. A ton of chat requests and messages are pinging up on my screen, and I spot my little webcam.

  It’s on my desk, on an awkward angle, pointing at us.

  And it’s still on.

  I see us on the screen, in the upper left corner. We’re off to the side somewhat, but still clear as day.

  “Fuck!” I march over to the computer, bend down, and pull the plug out completely, the screen and tower going black quickly. I fight the rising urge to pick up the entire gaming rig and throw it out my window just to watch the machine shatter on the pavement below.

  Instead, I pick up my phone. There are a bunch of chat messages from Aaron and Rebekah, but I flick them away and open the call screen.

  “What...what are you doing?” my mom asks, leaning over to look at the phone.

  “Making a call I should have made a while ago,” I say, shaking my head, thinking about that damn email, the trolls with my address, who clearly went out of their way to find out that my mom works at the library. Did they follow her? Have they been following me?

  I search my room for Detective Watts’s business card and find it on my desk, right in the middle of all my hastily pushed aside stuff. I dial her number. My mind reels as I take a few deep breaths, trying to stay calm. Just how much did that camera capture—of my mom, of that discussion, of what happened? Did it make it to the stream? And if they figured out where my mom works, do they know where she’s going to school, too? I suppose once they knew where I lived, it couldn’t be that hard... But why target my mom instead of me? Why?

  My phone chimes, and I pull it away from my ear to look at the screen. It’s a text from Rebekah, a screenshot of an email. There’s no subject, but the email has a single sentence inside.

  Hi Rebekah. The Vox Populi send their regards.

  “Detective Watts,” a voice on the other end says, all professional. I fumble with my phone and bring it back up to my ear.

  “Hi. Detective?” I exhale, a sob lurking in my throat, and it’s taking everything in me to keep talking through it. “It’s Divya. Divya Sharma. My mother was attacked. They came after my family.”

  I think about that email and the photo.

  “And I need to show you something.”

  Reclaim the Sun: Chat Application

  AARON: Oh my God D1V.

  AARON: Are you okay? What happened?

  D1V: Can’t get into it right now.

  D1V: At the police station.

  D1V: Trolls figured out where my mom works, harassed her in person.

  AARON: Fuck.

  AARON: I’m so so sorry.

  D1V: Not your fault.

  AARON: I wish there was something I could do.

  AARON: You let me know if you need anything, okay? Anything.

  D1V: I took a screenshot of that.

  D1V: I’ll save it for when I want to buy a car or a new gaming rig.

  AARON: Can it be a remote-control car?

  D1V: Sure.

  AARON: And as for the gaming rig, will an old Game Boy Advance suffice?

  D1V: That would be excellent.

  AARON: Perfect.

  D1V: Aaron?

  AARON: Yes?

  D1V: Don’t stop talking to me. Tell me a story. Tell me something good.

  D1V: I hate being here. I hate the questions.

  AARON: When I was a kid, my dad was playing this video game with me.

  AARON: One of those games that took a photo of you and pasted your face on the body of your character.

  AARON: One day I played the game by myself, used his character. And the character died.

  AARON: I thought I killed him. Like the real him. I was in tears. He still makes fun of me.

  D1V: That is really sad and really hilarious. Tell me more.

  11

  AARON

  “Thank you, Aaron. Your father could really use a day off.”

  My mom is talking to me—I hear her, the words are there floating in the air, but I can’t bring myself to grab them. I’m behind the computer in the reception area, ignoring the patient records that desperately need updating while my eyes are fixated on the countless news articles that seem to be pouring out about D1V. I go back and forth from that over to the chat application on my phone I’ve been using to talk to her.

  “Aaron?” my mom presses.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say. “I got it.”

  “I’ll be in the back if you need anything,” she says and turns to walk into her office. The sound of her heels against the floor abruptly stop, and I glance up to see her fiddling with her ID badge, the door to her personal office still closed.

  “Mom?” I venture.

  “How’s the...” She looks up at me and clears her throat. “How’s the writing going?”

  She smiles, and I can’t help but wonder if this is a trap.

  “It’s okay,” I offer hesitantly. “Ryan likes everything I’m working on, but Jason...” I shrug. “He’s just difficult, is all. Doesn’t see the vision. Doesn’t—”

  “Pay you guys?” she asks, stepping back toward the desk.

  “He’s going to,” I tell her firmly, though I wish I felt as confident about this as I sound. He still hasn’t sent over those contracts for me and Ryan. “He will. He’s gearing up to present the game at a conference, and we’ll be set.”

  “Aaron,” she continues, clearing her throat again. “I know I give you a hard time, about your games, this...” She gestures at the computer, her eyebrows furrowed. “This world of yours that I don’t really understand. I just worry about Jason taking advantage of you. And of Ryan, too. I mean, he’s a bit tougher—”

  “Yeah, he is.” I can’t help but laugh, remembering how assertive he was at our meeting the other day.

  “But...when your father was working at all those restaurants, in the kitchens, even when he was managing a place, I would see it.” She shakes her head. “The long hours he wasn’t paid enough to work, the overtime he didn’t get... God, and when he ran deliveries, and people wouldn’t tip...” She sighs. “I just can’t bear watching you go through that. And neither can he, even if he won’t say it.”

  “I thought...” I’m not even sure what to say right now. She’s said before that she didn’t want Jason to take advantage of me, but I always thought that was just an excuse. I thought she hated the games because it got in the way of her dream for me, this doctor stuff, not because of what Dad had been through. “Sorry, I didn’t think of it like that.”

  “I just worry.” She fiddles with her ID tag again.

  “If he doesn’t pay me, he can’t use the work for the game,” I explain. “I w
on’t let him do that. Ryan wouldn’t, that’s for sure. He even asked Jason to draw up contracts for us.”

  “That was good thinking on his part.” She smiles. “I know you two will be careful. I love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  She heads into the back, leaving me alone up front with my thoughts. Thankfully, the waiting area is empty, and the appointment schedule is light, because now my head is swimming. With the presumptions I’ve made, and with everything going on with D1V.

  The schedule might be light, but my heart feels all kinds of heavy.

  Every blog seems to be listing the same stuff, with screenshots of social media updates from D1V that she’s long since deleted but are still being shared around.

  About her mother getting egged by some trolls who found out where she lived.

  About the video capturing the moment her mom came home.

  About those same monsters recording the livestream of it all and spreading it like wildfire in the darkest corners of the Internet, hailing it as some kind of “victory.” It seems like every time a video gets taken down off YouTube, another one pops up in its place, posted by another anonymous, nameless profile.

  The way these people are so organized, so determined, so calculated...

  It makes me want to throw up.

  I need to find a way to help her.

  If these monsters can figure out where D1V lives, where her mom works...all of these personal things about her just using...I don’t know, Google searches or whatever, then why can’t we find them? The people harassing her? The police who are trying to help, the support people who run the actual game where this is taking place—why are their searches coming up empty?

  All these people, who are hiding behind their fake avatar pictures on social media and posting under faux names in comments sections, spewing vile hate virtually and spawning that into real-life horror—why do they seem to get a free pass?

  There’s still an hour until Mom’s first patient is due to arrive, so I open the browser on the aging desktop computer and start searching. It’s ridiculous. I know. The best minds are supposedly looking into it already, so what the hell can I possibly do?