Once Lia finished watching the broadcast, Rico moved over next to her. He hadn’t wanted to see it again.
‘Couldn’t it still be staged? Could it be fake and still look so real?’ Lia asked.
Rico knew a lot about making videos and manipulating images and sound.
‘If that was staged, the people who did it are some of the best in the world,’ he said.
Lia sensed the anxiety in Rico’s voice.
This video has us all shaken up. The people at Level, here at the Studio, everywhere.
Soon the whole world is going to know about it. What a revolting, sick thing. A visual virus.
They held the meeting in Mari’s office. Everyone from the Studio except Paddy Moore was present.
Their work on Craig Cole’s behalf had borne fruit. The TV stations had aired their shows about the Cole incident, attracting widespread attention. The newspapers wrote about the programmes before they aired, and the broadcasts themselves had high ratings. The Times even dedicated one of its lead stories to a discussion as to whether it was too easy to stigmatise a person in public without any basis in reality.
‘Then comes the best news,’ Maggie said.
Cole had received a job offer from Smooth Radio, one of the biggest independents in the country. The station was launching a new programme, and Cole would be one of the celebrity guest hosts who would work with the regular presenter and run the show himself once a week for the next month.
Berg whistled while Lia and Rico clapped. Mari nodded, looking satisfied, but she still had more information to add.
‘Unfortunately Craig doesn’t plan to take the job,’ she said.
Mari had just talked with Cole about it on the phone, and couldn’t convince him to change his mind.
‘Why on earth not?’ Lia asked.
This news was a disappointment since they had expended so much effort to get Cole back his reputation. That job would be that much easier if he returned to the work he was known for.
‘I think I understand where he’s coming from,’ Mari said.
Cole had several reasons for his decision. His reputation still wasn’t clean, and in such a visible position he would still be forced over and over again to defend himself. He had also already been working for twenty-six years – he would have to stop doing daily shows before long anyway, and he had started to get used to that idea.
‘That’s absurd,’ Maggie said. ‘We worked for weeks to patch up his reputation, and then right when it starts getting back a little shine, he doesn’t want it after all? Or at least not the same status he had before?’
‘This happens sometimes,’ Mari said. ‘But we’ll keep in touch with Craig. This isn’t over yet.’
Did Mari have some kind of plan for him? Lia asked.
‘Well, let’s just say I have some ideas brewing,’ Mari said. ‘But now we need to give him some space for a while. Falling from stardom was a big change. All of this takes time.’
‘I think we can be pretty satisfied,’ Lia said once the meeting ended.
Mari smiled. Berg gave a thumbs-up and hurried down the corridor to call Gro for her evening walk.
Rico didn’t say anything, and Lia could see that he wasn’t listening any more. Instead he was looking at news and commentary about the kicking videos on the Topo. More just kept coming.
7.
Mari glances at her computer screen and sees the front door of the Studio closing. The others have left, Rico last of all. Information from the Studio’s access control system is visible on Mari’s computer in real time – she doesn’t always watch the others’ movements, but it’s good to know that they go home to sleep sometimes.
The evening has been discouraging. Some were disappointed in Craig Cole’s decision not to return to the radio. And the gruesome video haunted everyone.
Mari isn’t disappointed in Cole. Quite the opposite. She knows he has reasons he couldn’t express out loud.
They have just saved Craig Cole’s life. Mari didn’t say that to the rest at the Studio, but they all sensed it in some way, at least Berg and Maggie did, mature adults who know how much sorrow in life gets hidden from others and borne alone. Perhaps Lia and Rico didn’t recognise it because their thoughts were too occupied with the video.
When Mari and Lia visited Cole together, Mari realised he was contemplating suicide. His thoughts about it had already reached the point of considering what method to use. Afterwards Mari asked him directly and in the resigned condition of a man bereft of hope he told her that he was considering using his car, either by means of the exhaust fumes or by driving himself into some ravine, not retaliating against anyone for his misfortunes.
But now Cole had a future, he just didn’t know what kind. They couldn’t rush him, no matter how good even more progress would have felt.
That is sometimes the hard thing about Mari’s work: the endings. You had to be able to take a breather and watch to see how far you’ve got, especially when you’re dealing with someone else’s life.
But then there is this video.
Mari has watched it three times during the course of the day. It has an almost hypnotic effect, exciting the viewer so that, despite the revulsion, you want to watch it again and try to work out if it is real. It shocks the viewer over and over with its incomprehensible composition; the raw power of the legs appearing almost as a dance.
Mari has stopped watching the video after realising that this is exactly what the people who made it want. They want people to watch, to make them all voyeurs of violence. They want to give the audience a new kind of viewing experience, to change the way people browse online for cat clips and music videos, and suck them into this work that will leave them all shell-shocked.
That was what the people who made it took pleasure in – perversion, twisting things into grotesque caricature. And their own skill and aggression – those were important to these people too, wanting to elevate them to something superhuman and impress others with them.
The kicks had only been a tool the men who made the video used.
And they are men. The men who did the kicking and shot the video wanted everyone to witness their masculine power. That is integral, Mari can tell that just from seeing the images.
And just as integral are the previous videos, the black, mute ones. A collection of dark films whose purpose is to arouse confusion and fear. Although you couldn’t see anything in them, they nudged open the door to some frightening place.
And although the videos were completely soundless, there was noise that went with them. It welled up from the confusion of the viewers, from all the astonishment and conversation the videos spurred. The sounds of disbelieving revulsion and shock uttered when you watched a video of someone being kicked.
Mari didn’t want to watch the kicking any more because she understood more about the people who made it than she wanted to. And if she knew one thing, it was that this would not end here.
This wasn’t staged. They have all witnessed the beginning of something that will grow larger. Into something very evil.
8.
‘Not a bad number. But too average, just good writing that doesn’t really stick with you after you’re done flipping through the mag. We can do better,’ Lia said.
The staff of Level listened quietly, and as Lia wrapped up her remarks, the editors and reporters gathered in the conference room gave appropriately brief applause.
Every two weeks the magazine evaluated the previous edition, and this time Lia had done the assessment. Previously the assignment had made her a little nervous but not any more. Although the Studio was taking up an ever increasing portion of her life, she had noticed that her day job at Level wasn’t necessarily suffering. If anything, she had become more purposeful.
And that was a big help with the goal she had recently realised was within reach: becoming the magazine’s next AD, art director, when her boss, Martyn Taylor, retired in a few years’ time. Level was a smart combination of culture and
politics, and, despite its limited circulation, it held considerable prestige in the industry. The AD job at Level was a sought-after position. How close Lia was to that goal was difficult to determine. But she knew she was taking a more active role in editorial discussions and voicing opinions about the overall performance of the magazine.
Level and the Studio. Lia’s life was full of work, although the Studio’s business was so interesting that you couldn’t really compare it to wage labour. It all took time though: all that was left of Lia’s leisure-time activities was running. She didn’t do the rounds of the bars as she used to. Or meet men. That had been one of her longest-lasting pastimes after moving to London seven years before. Now she had a hard time remembering the last time she was in one of those bars.
In her parents’ eyes, a twenty-nine-year-old woman living alone was in serious danger of becoming an old maid, which was precisely one of the reasons her contact with them was so infrequent. But that image of the future had started popping into Lia’s mind recently too.
It was just impossible to start worrying about something like that when she didn’t feel alone at all. With her colleagues at the Studio, Lia had found a feeling that went beyond friendship. She had never felt such camaraderie before. Beyond ideas related to work, Lia only shared superficial things with the people at Level. But she could tell her Studio colleagues anything.
Lia was setting an article about the rise of three new prescription medications as the latest recreational drugs of choice in Britain when editor-in-chief Timothy Phelps’ voice rang through the office.
‘Channel Four! Turn it on, now!’
Quickly a group gathered around the large television screen on the wall to gape at the startling news. Another kicking video was spreading online.
‘We won’t show the video in its entirety because the goal of the people who made it is obviously to garner as much public attention as possible. But the copy of the video obtained by our office demonstrates that it bears a striking similarity to the previous example,’ said the Channel Four newsreader.
A disbelieving stir went through the office when a clip from the video started running on the television screen.
The kicking looked the same as in the previous video, Lia thought before the excerpt ended. But this time the victim looked like a woman. It was hard to tell but it seemed that the victim’s hair and clothes were those of a woman, and the lips appeared painted judging by the way they stood out so vividly from the rest of the face. This was probably a woman being kicked.
Horrendous. Poor thing.
The newsreader said that the video had been on YouTube for less than an hour before the admins took it down. There was no word on the authenticity of it yet, nor had the final word come in on the previous one. The police had no record of any victims of violence who had been abused like that.
This time, the video had been uploaded using the account of a man living in London. The police were currently interviewing him, the newsreader said.
A Channel Four reporter interviewed a police detective live over the phone.
‘How does the new video change the situation?’ the reporter asked.
‘At this early stage, it’s impossible to say how this changes things,’ the detective replied. ‘But it does.’
‘Is the victim in the new video a woman, as it appears from the images?’
‘We can’t comment on that.’
As she watched the shock the second video caused in her office, Lia realised that the same emotion must be spreading across all of the UK and the world.
Several people in the office tried to find the video online to watch the whole thing. Lia didn’t.
Soon avoiding images from the video became impossible. Various websites spread them online, and the video became the main topic of conversation in the media.
A little before the end of the day, Mari rang. ‘Can you come over?’ she asked.
‘I’d be half an hour, maybe a little more,’ Lia said.
‘Come as soon as you can.’
‘What’s the rush?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.’
She could hear the agitation in Mari’s voice. Lia waited for her to continue nonetheless.
‘You’ve seen the news about the second video?’ Mari asked.
‘Of course.’
‘There are really three of them. They just haven’t made the third public.’
Lia made it to the Studio in just over fifteen minutes. The fastest way was by foot, taking the footbridge over the Thames. Public transport at this time of day would have taken at least half an hour.
A serious meeting was in progress in Rico’s office. This time, Paddy was there.
On the Topo’s remote screen, a video was running which Lia hadn’t seen before. The sight was familiar though: a figure lying on a floor was being kicked.
Paddy was the only one who kept his eyes on the video. All the others had to turn away occasionally. The victim looked like a man, Lia thought.
Two men and one woman. Does that mean anything?
‘As bad as this feels, this is just part of something larger for whoever is doing it,’ Mari said. ‘They want to get people used to watching videos of actual murders as if they were music videos.’
‘How do we know the victims died?’ Maggie asked quietly. ‘Or how recent the images are?’
‘All three videos were filmed the same way, and I think the footage had to be made specifically for this,’ Mari said. ‘And if the victims were alive, they probably would have been found and taken to hospital somewhere. I think it’s highly unlikely they would still be alive.’
The end of the video was particularly gruesome. Even though the body was covered in blood, the abuse continued.
When Paddy started showing the video to Lia again, Rico bounced out of his chair and tried to say something. He couldn’t get his voice to work though and had to leave the room.
Paddy leaned over to stop the video and close the whole window.
‘People put snuff films online sometimes,’ he said.
As Paddy continued his explanation, Lia wished she could follow Rico and escape.
‘That’s what they call videos like this of actual killings,’ Paddy said.
Most videos going by that title were actually counterfeits. But civil authorities around the world knew that occasionally they were real. Paddy had served as a police officer years before, and although he hadn’t specialised in murder, he knew plenty about the subject. The police always carefully investigated snuff films whether they were bogus or real because in either case the imagination behind them was sick. The participation of the makers of the films in actual violent acts was always a high probability.
‘I’ve never heard of anything like this before though,’ Paddy said. ‘Making a snuff film this artistically. Usually just shooting the attack is shocking enough.’
‘These people want to give their viewers an experience of extreme weakness and subordination,’ Mari said. ‘No matter how insane they are, they planned all of this. There are things here they’re aiming at we don’t have a clue about yet.’
‘How did you find the video?’ Lia asked.
Mari related the chain of events: Rico had found the video. When the other video appeared on YouTube earlier in the day, the one with the female victim, they knew they weren’t dealing with an individual random event. And Rico had a place to start.
Hacking into YouTube, he searched the database of all videos removed by the server administrators over the previous weeks. Their number was considerable, but he had good search criteria: he set his image recognition program to pick out all the ones with lots of pictures of moving feet.
There were only a few dozen of those. This had been one of them.
It had been removed from YouTube quickly, less than an hour after upload. The video was originally uploaded using the account of a teenage girl from London, a couple of days before the other kicking videos. The girl’s frie
nds had discovered and reported it.
‘Do the police know about this?’ Lia asked.
‘They must,’ Paddy said. ‘YouTube must have informed them.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ Rico said.
He stood at the door, pale and still out of sorts.
YouTube and the other similar Internet services weren’t nearly as public-service minded as one might imagine, Rico said. Because they couldn’t censor in advance what was uploaded onto their servers, they mostly trusted in notifications from their users to weed out anything illegal. Any user could make a complaint about questionable content, which the administrators then investigated.
In theory the services had many ways they could screen content themselves too, Rico pointed out. The administrators could track which videos gained views abnormally quickly and which ones elicited the most comments. Software programs existed that could sift through the words used in comments or the videos themselves and sound the alarm if things got too vicious or references to weapons or hate groups started showing up.
‘But they don’t use them. YouTube and the others are focused on making money and attracting users. They aren’t interested in the content,’ Rico said.
The editing and camera angles in all three videos pointed to a professional job.
‘The people who did this have made videos before,’ Rico said thoughtfully.
He listed the things that revealed the creators’ previous experience. The focus of attention was always selected carefully. The pauses always came in just the right spot, making the viewer wait for the next image, subconsciously watching more than they would otherwise. You didn’t notice the cuts, meaning they had been made just the way they were supposed to be. Still it appeared the videos were all filmed with one camera, which didn’t seem particularly high quality.
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