by Louisa Lo
Looked like Ginny Smith, like Kevin Bacon, was a human actor, but a little-known one at that. I might not have been a performing artist, but even I could tell that her acting credentials were heavily inflated. The resume listed credits from so-called feature film I’d never heard of before, and one of the two demo reels was really a homemade video of Ginny dressed up as a princess at a kid’s birthday party.
The second demo reel was a grainy video where the actress was an audience member of a daytime talk show, and her participation was being touted as being a co-host.
Then right at the bottom of the actress's resume, without so much as a page break, the narrative changed to that of a broken-hearted girl blogging about her breakup with some guy called Frank, bemoaning about how much she missed him, and how much she resented his new girlfriend. Huh, I guess that was the days before they encouraged people to have a unified theme for their online platform.
There was a ripple effect on the mirror, and Mel announced, “The calibration is now done.”
Gregory, Madeleine, Vera, and I looked at each other and nodded. We were as ready as we would ever be.
“Let's go before I run for the hills.” I took a deep breath, then hesitated. "Do I just step through the mirror?"
“No, your spirit has to go through it. The easiest way is to think of one of the seven deadly sins that could be applicable to this site,” Vera replied. “Then I’ll direct the mirror to pull you in.”
I rubbed my fingers under my chin, looking at the actress’s resume again. “There's a great deal of illusion of grandeur there. So I’ll say pride.”
“Pride it is.” Vera smiled. “Now keep thinking that word over and over again. It should go smoothly, unless you get caught in one of the system glitches and get trapped there forever.”
“What—” I couldn’t get more than that one single word out before a force pulled my spirit into the mirror. Great, the risk of being lost on top of the risk of being lost.
I was flying through a sea of ads in a dark background. It was like zooming by Las Vegas Strip while hanging onto a hover car by the fingernails, with banners for weight loss, college diplomas, hair loss, work-from-home-for-a-hundred-dollars-an-hour, and sexual enhancement drugs coming at me at a thousand miles an hour.
Observing the flashy ads as a flat image, from the comfort of Mel’s office, was bad enough. Going through them was migraine inducing.
Then a pixelated dragon lifted itself from its rectangular confines and started chasing after me.
It had a rudimental construct, with a red “S” for a body, orange triangles for wings, and a jaw that huffed out a tiny fireball whenever it opened. It seemed to have been programmed to detect motion, likely one of those annoying early ads that forced visitors to click on it whether they liked it or not.
I tried to get away, but I wasn’t in control of my forward motion.
As the dragon closed in, other ads joined in the chase. A pill bottle, either containing a supposed cure for weight loss or sexual malfunction, opened and closed its white lids like the dragon’s jaw, shooting missiles of pills at me. Then came the college diplomas, trying to wrap their parchments onto my feet like shackles. I had to balance between avoiding contact with them, and not looking at the highlighter-colored shapes too closely.
Then I crashed landed onto something.
I opened my eyes and found myself within one of the video clips on Ginny’s site, sprawling over the seat beside her in the audience section of a daytime talk show. The video wasn’t of the best quality, and my surroundings reflected that. The wall at the back of the studio was a little bit warped, and everything from the dated clothing of the audience members to the plastic chairs lack details, making them one dimensional and surreal.
The ads were nowhere to be found, and neither were Gregory, Madeleine, and Vera. Or did they land in a different area of the site altogether? How do I get out of here and find them?
“So, our question of today is—” The host, a blonde woman with her hair in a bun, smiled. “Would you sell a friend out for a box of chocolates?"
The host put her mic in front of Ginny, who said, “Yes, definitely, because—"
The host took the mic away and moved onto an audience member in the row in front of Ginny. “What about you, dear?"
With her mouth still gapping, Ginny tried to stick her head between people’s shoulders in a futile attempt to keep herself in the camera’s frame for as long as possible.
How was that for pathetic?
Gregory and Madeleine dropped from the sky, arms flailing as if trying to fend something off.
“I guess you guys had trouble with the ads, too, heh?” I asked, relieved at seeing them. The less time we had to spend finding each other, the faster we do what we had to do and get out of here. Being on the Internet, especially such an ancient part of it, was making me uneasy, like I was inside a building designated for demolition or something.
“It was horrible.” Madeleine adjusted her boots, one of which was half pulled off her foot. “The ads attacked us. Who did that just for a sale?”
“That’s why they call them spams,” I muttered.
Vera landed gracefully next to me, unfazed and looking right at home. "Ready for the main site?”
"Oh yeah," I said fervently. Who knew when the video would start getting choppy and freeze up altogether? Best to get out while we could. “But next time do give me some warning before—”
I shot up into the air and started flying again, landing right at the tiny empty space between the end of the actors resume—“principle musical lead” of a caroling troupe for a local mall—and the first heartbreak entry—“It’s over. Even after the restraining order, I really thought we still had a chance…”
Gregory, Madeleine, and Vera soon joined me.
Gregory looked around him. “Now that we’re in the main page, should we be able to see the blanket distortion? I can’t feel the spell.”
“Me, either.” Madeleine’s brow ceased.
Like them, I hadn’t detected the existence of any enchantment. How could we break a spell if we couldn’t tell if it was there in the first place?
“Right at the edges, where the white space of the site meets the black edge of the screen in the physical world.” Vera pointed. “See that thin strip of grey wrapping all over? That’s the blanket distortion. There’s one surrounding every site on the Internet, controlling how information is linked to one another.”
Talk about hidden in plain sight. I didn’t even recognize the border to the physical world for what it was until Vera pointed it out. Now I felt like a character inside a TV set.
After reading through the desperate breakup text, Gregory shook his head with the general horror males had over crazy ex-girlfriends.
Madeleine looked confused. “I don't understand. How does Ginny connect with so many of the wrongfully accused? She’s just an average, weepy human.”
“She’s more than that,” I pointed out. “Not every girl gets a restraining order from her ex.”
Madeleine huffed. “I could never understand the concept of a restraining order. If someone unwelcome gets too close, why not just zap off his balls? Why depend on a piece of paper for protection?”
I laughed. “Humans can’t exactly do that.”
It took me a moment to realize what was odd about Madeleine’s words. The old her would never use the word balls, as dignified as she was trying to be. This really was a brand-new Madeleine in front of me.
“Ginny connected to the wrongfully accused through a case of pure coincidence,” Vera answered. “Eventually she quit acting, got over Frank, and married a guy who runs a temp agency. One of the candidates in his database is a supernatural ex-con who was trying to go straight by blending in with humans. One of his buddies is currently serving in Hell. We could link to his info from here. Or, one of the girls Ginny worked with as an extra ended up supplementing her income with some stripping on the side. The girl’s friend at the club
is really a succubus, who got sent to Hell for killing a long-term customer whom she’d never had any problems with. There’s also a third connection involving Ginny’s old makeup artist and her troll boyfriend. Whichever way, Ginny is going to lead us to one of the wrongfully convicted we’re looking into.”
“And once we establish enough links, the distortion spell will just break?” Madeleine asked, hope presence in her voice.
“Yep,” Vera confirmed. “I suggest that we start with the temp agency. With any luck, there might be other supernatural ex-con connections there.”
Vera started “walking” down the page. It was more like the page scrolled down while she placed her feet one after the other on the same spot over and over again, and we moved down with her. At the bottom of the page she took out a small, portable keyboard.
I raised my eyebrow. “Really? Shouldn’t you be using something a bit more magical? This is like what any geek would use sitting in front of a monitor.”
“Sometimes the simplest method is the most effective one,” she said, her index finger pressing three keys on the keyboard.
And just like that, our surrounding changed to that of the landing page of a tradespeople’s temp agency, presumably the one run by Ginny’s husband. I could tell immediately that it was a modern site, with a professional layout, fast loading time, and clean fonts. There were no flashy ads, and the color theme was a soothing palette of cream and light brown. After the jarring train wreck that was Ginny’s website, my eyes and brain thanked me for the relief.
“How did you do that?” Madeleine asked Vera, struggling to keep the sense of awe from her voice. “It should’ve taken us just as much time getting into that arcane site as it is to get out of it, yet here we are.”
“Shift, number sign, and nine.” Vera smirked, waving her mini keyboard. “A lot of primitive sites have a built-in code for programmers to access the stuff behind the scene. Makes for a quick getaway or work around. Nobody use that standard code anymore, since everyone fancies themselves a hacker these days.”
Gregory pointed at a tab on the upper right corner labeled Meet Our Candidates. “Is that where we could find the supernatural ex-con?”
Vera nodded. “That’s where he is. All we have to do is link that tab to Ginny’s site.”
“Just the tab?” Madeleine asked, “We don’t have to get in there and view all the candidate profiles one by one and find the one belonging to the ex-con?”
Vera shook her head and took out a red silk scarf, ripped off a thread, and tied it over the tab like one would wrap trimming over a Christmas tree. A very thin trimming.
“Just the tab is fine. My silk threads are spun in the darkest corners of the Internet, and they are as tenacious as the deepest root system. The end that latched onto that tab will seek out all the online records of the ex-con and his buddy in Hell—every bit of information helps solidify the thread’s hold on the men’s identities. The thread could stretch to infinity in the virtual world, across all websites no matter the programming quality or encryption technology. We bring the other end back to Ginny’s site, and this piece of connection is complete. Solid information on the wrongfully accused is the antithesis of the distortion spell, and every connection would put extra stress on it.”
I was glad we didn’t have to go through the profile one by one—it saved us tons of time. We went back to Ginny’s website, the wide flashes of colors took some very painful re-adjustment after the serenity of the newer site. Vera used one of the letter “J”s in the overblown text as a hook, and tied the other end of the silk thread there.
Next, we went to the site of the strip club that Ginny’s fellow actor worked at. Once again Vera pulled out a silk thread and tagged the tab, which was called Meet the Girls. By the same logic, the thread would seek out information on the fellow actor’s succubus friend, weaving itself tightly into the fabric of her identity.
Then Vera did the same with Ginny’s old makeup artist and her troll boyfriend.
Through all that work, I came to realize my naivety in thinking that being in the Internet meant I would somehow miraculously run into Grandma or have a message from her delivering right to me. I had envisioned the digital world as a large lecture hall, when it was more like a series of interconnected classrooms. It would be a lot easier to spot someone in a lecture hall, but looking classroom by classroom was an entirely different story. No wonder it was taking Esme and her mom so long to search for Grandma or get anything close to a manner of communication from her.
We stood in front of the letter “J” in Ginny’s site, which by now had the ends of three threads tied to its curved lower section. Vera started pulling and releasing on the threads like one would to manipulate the movement of multiple kites.
“I’m commanding the thread to lose their elasticity,” Vera explained. “So the tension of pulling on them will break the distortion spell.”
The air thickened. Actually, I wasn’t sure if air would be the right word, since we were only here as spirits. Regardless of how it should be called, as Vera kept up with her pulling-and-releasing motion on the threads, pressure continued to build around us, pulling at the thin grey strip at the border of the site that was the blanket distortion, twisting and reshaping it.
I held a hand to my temple. Corporeal or not, the pressure was giving me a hell of a headache. Fear slammed into my heart, and I was convinced that any moment now the strain would become so intense that everything would collapse onto us.
Without a word Gregory took me into his arms and held me close. His support warmed my insides, making my headache lessened. I took a few deep breaths—or whatever gulping at vacuum air was called—and my panic receded.
Eventually, the grey strip got stretched and pulled to the breaking point and beyond. One moment it was there, the next it was gone. Utterly disintegrated. The distortion spell broke, and in its place was a sharp, contrasting divide between the black edge of the computer screen and the white space of the website.
Almost immediately, Vera threw her silk scarf into the air, and all of its threads broke free and shot out in all directions, until there was no more fabric left in her hands.
“What was that?” Madeleine asked.
“I’m sending the rest of my threads out into the Internet. Thousands of them,” Vera replied. “Seeking out as many wrongfully convicted as possible.”
“So they’re like, mini heat-guided missiles?” I looked up from Gregory’s arms, feeling loads better now that the pressure was gone.
“Yes, and your little monkey is already following up. Look.” Vera pointed at multiple strands of yellow light, with the power signature of scented bubblegum and orange-favored popsicles, entering the web from the physical world and rushing after the silk threads. That must be Candy trying to record all of Vera’s findings.
Suddenly, Vera started clawing at her throat as if an invisible hand was tightening around it. Then to my horror, the threads she sent out were coming back to her, their soft bodies turned rigid and straight.
Thousands of sharp arrows headed our way.
“Watch out!” Gregory cried out, conjuring a shield to block the incoming attack. I came up with a magically reinforced umbrella at the same time Madeleine pulled another shield out of thin air. We all ran toward Vera and covered her, seeing how she had fallen to the ground and was unable to fend for herself. Together we hunkered down and bore the brunt of the assault. The red threads bounced off our defenses and fell to the ground, becoming limp and harmless again.
Well, at least our magic still worked in this digital world. And who would’ve thought I’d be huddling down with Madeleine, of all people, in a bid to survive?
“What the hell was that?" I asked.
"Whoever…is behind the switcheroo plot…found out we’re here and shut us down.” Vera, struggling to catch her breath, pointed at the grey strip that had appeared once more. “The blanket distortion is back up."
I hoped against hope that in the bri
ef moment that it was down, Candy was able to download some names of the wrongfully convicted.
Just to prove that things could always get worse, Ginny’s site was growing dim, as if someone had adjusted the brightness setting on the screen.
"Flaming sunshine,” Vera cursed. “They’re shutting the site down. If we’re still here when that happens we’ll be stuck on this web page forever.”
“Then let’s get us out of here,” Gregory barked.
Vera concentrated, but nothing happened. “I…I can't.”
Her voice was full of disbelief and fear.
“What do you mean, you can’t? Didn’t you and Mel already work out the exit combination?” Madeleine demanded.
“Yes, we did, but it’s not working!”
At least the site was taking its time shutting down, dimming by what felt like one pixel at a time. Could the slowness be attributed to the site being so old? Was this an unexpected side benefit of the process being bogged down by redundant programming codes?
But there was no doubt that it was only a matter of time before the site got completely shut down, and a great sense of lethargy had already started to envelop me. It had happened so slowly, like boiling a frog in a pot, that I hardly recognized it for what it was at the start. But I could feel myself relaxing, and escape just seemed like such a big hassle.
Yet for some reason, those around me seem to have a lot more fight left in them. Madeleine started gathering her energy, trying to brighten up the site with the sheer power of her magic. Vera typed into her keyboard frantically, in a bid to counter the shut down, I assume. Gregory struck the blanket distortion with one attack spell after another, many I never even knew he could do, all to no avail.
Even in my stupor, I asked myself, why was this affecting me more so than those surrounding me? Why did I just want to lay down and let it all go?
Suddenly Vera narrowed her eyes on me, noticing my lethargy. She dropped her keyboard and stalked toward me. She yanked at my arm, turning the upper side around for all to see. Everyone gasped at the tip of a small red arrow protruding from my arm. I couldn't even work up the energy to be alarmed, though Gregory was doing the gasping for the both of us.