by Yannick Hill
The part about being a black belt was true, the rest, well, let’s just say River was working on some things. He stood his ground a few moments longer. The seven vertically oriented screens behind him were giving off a pleasant heat, the warmth of an early morning summer sun on his back and neck. River breathed a sigh and turned to face into his workstation once again. The cascades of live social inter-actions, dynamic news sites with their ever-shifting narratives, animated new-message indicators and looped advertisements with the volume cranked, everything vying for his attention, his intervention, his volition. It was like a jungle chorus, all of it calling for him to step inside again, cross through into another world. He took his seat in the comfortable chair, grabbed an old cable mouse from his desk drawer and blink-blinked his way back in.
Deep Sky. The internet glittered like an open ocean, reflecting on the possibilities. #DeepSky. The words had con-tinued to gain currency on the social networks, but no one really knew what it meant. Satanic cult? Suicide cult? Some kind of cult. There was no concrete information anywhere on the internet. Only hearsay. Scary stories. Whoever these guys were, they sure knew how to keep a secret. And yet it was all scoutfan’s community wanted to talk about. ineedscissors’ post on the sunglasses thread had apparently started a shitstorm of rumor and speculation over Scout’s mentioning of the words Deep Sky, and there was nothing the moderators could do about it. To enforce the rules pertaining to Scout’s right to privacy would have meant banning the entire community. The forum raged like a child left at the supermarket.
River would have found it all very amusing were it not for the fact that his sister was missing and scoutfan was still his best lead. This ruhin character who uploaded the sword video had been an active member of the forum at one time, but there was no sign of him, online or in his bedroom! River had to assume he and unknown_user were the same person. But it could just as easily be two people, or a thousand. River had to think.
He took the thick rubber band from around his wrist and flicked it hard at his tin robot toy, knocking it to the ground where it smashed into several pieces. Nice shot, but also a little bit sad face. Oh, well. He spun round and round in his chair till he wanted to throw up. Then he got on his skateboard and tried to do a laser flip but totally bailed from being too dizzy and hit his head on the floor. He curled up like a baby for a minute. The pain was white sparks rising upwards as from an open fire. Deep Sky. Deep Disney motherfucking Sky. Scout’s mysterious disappearance. And now his sister. There had to be a connection. River got to his feet and back in front of his screens. He could hardly believe his luck when he refreshed the page and saw InnerFame’s new competition thread at the top of the list:
scoutfan > forum > scout > scout thoughts
New Competition
Started by InnerFame
InnerFame
I know it’s been too long a time since we ran a competition for you guys, so it gives me great pleasure to announce what will undoubtedly be our most popular contest to date. Why? Because we’ve never had a such an exciting 1st prize. Fasten your seatbelts, ladies, because one of you is going to be given the opportunity to chat with Scout one on one. That’s right. The winner of our biggest-ever competition will be allowed to spend a few precious moments with the star in an online chat hosted right here on scoutfan. But it gets better. The real prize is you will be allowed to ask Scout a question, any question, as personal as you would like, and she will have to answer it honestly. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ask one of your heroes anything you want, nothing off the table. DM. Personal. Your question, her answer, your secret. So that’s the prize. To enter just log onto our competition page and submit your email address along with a brief description of the last dream you remember. We’ll pick a winner out of a virtual hat this time tomorrow and post their name on this thread, along with our favorite dreams . . .
River remembered all his dreams. Last night he dreamed he was a black panther hunting a man wearing only a diamond tiara in a twilit jungle. He’d woken in the middle of the night so aroused he had to jerk off in the shower to calm down. But it didn’t matter what he dreamed about because River didn’t need to enter this competition to get to Scout. If scoutfan was hosting the chat themselves, hacking their server and gaining access to Scout’s profile was a piece of cake. Get to Scout and he could ask her what she knew about Deep Sky, and what they might want with his sister. On second thought he would enter the competition anyway. He had a feeling scoutfan wanted their dreams for a reason, that there was more to this than a chance to meet Scout over chat, something less random than a virtual hat. He opened the word processor application, glanced over at the tennis ball cannon, shook his head no. He’d go with his instincts on this one:
A girl is dancing in a desert with her eyes closed, gray mountains in the distance. The sword makes it ritual, a rite of passage, but she is dancing, enjoying herself, taking pride in her every move. There are other figures in the background. They are wearing plastic animal masks, but they are out of focus, their attention on the girl and her performance. I am one of them. Mine is the lion mask.
He clicked submit and leaned back in his chair. Twenty-four hours till they announced the winner. What the hell was he going to do till then? Sleep? That’d cut it down to around sixteen but still, time sucked ass sometimes. How could he relax or do anything with the thought of his sister missing? He couldn’t call the cops. This competition was his best hope. He just wished he could hit fast forward on this thing. He could go outside, he guessed, he could try leaving this room, but outside sucked even harder than time.
He could call Levon. Levon was River’s best friend but also a fuck-up. Last time he got together with Levon they both broke their noses failing at pretending to punch each other in the face. Levon was always trying to get River to come out, not just out of the house, but the city, go camping and surfing and shit like that. But River preferred indoors, their indoor activities, their nature documentary marathons and recording sessions together. River and Levon had recorded an entire hip hop album in whispers. They called it Hushed Bones. River selected Levon from the favorites on his phone. Levon had dated his sister and Missy was missing and that was a secret and River didn’t want to lie to his best friend. He switched his phone off. If he called Levon, Levon would want to get together and that meant maybe leaving the house.
Outside meant people and people meant talking and talking meant having something to say to people and he had nothing. To be more accurate, he had nothing to say to people as himself. For that matter he had nothing to say to people when they were being themselves. That’s why the internet was so perfect. On the internet you could be what-ever you wanted, and, more likely than not, you were talking to people thinking the same damn thing, meaning everybody’s fronting on everybody and who cares right because at the end of it all you still got to shut down your computer and go back to your real life. Nobody gets hurt. Anonymity. It was River’s drug of choice. Fuck it, it was his art.
River had one hero. He wasn’t a hero type of person but there was one kid he had to admire, someone who really knew how to play the internet, someone who inspired him in his art. Marchpane. Dude was a hoodlum. The ultimate troll. Dude was totally out of control but totally in control at the exact same time. Coming at the internet like a human meteorite, burning up across the sky. He was a troll, but not like the others. Trolls caused trouble, tried to upset people. Marchpane was different. His posts and comments were always fresh, always positive. Sure he was off-topic, but always in a way that seemed to make sense, if only in his world. If River had to have a role model it would be Marchpane. Dude had his shit locked tight, too. No one knew who he was, all this time. It was an unspoken thing amongst trolls on the internet. Unmask Marchpane and you become Marchpane, you take his crown.
But River wanted his own crown. An upside down crown with all different-colored gems. How to kill twenty-four hours. That’s another thing the internet was perfect for. Go online. Out o
f time. Off-topic. In the zone. But first, some-thing to get him there. There was one post by Marchpane that always got River flowing. He’d cut and pasted it from some random forum years ago, printed it out and stuck it up on his wall. He couldn’t remember the context of the thread, but it didn’t matter. Marchpane had blazed in from leftfield as always:
Marchpane
I want to wear a top hat, a black suit with tails, shoes so shiny you have to close your eyes. I want to stand atop a moving car, my chainsaw buzzing, buzzing at the sun. I want to climb skyscrapers like a spider and fly the flags of forgotten sons. I want to know a panther cat, teach it to hunt in a pack of four. I want two yellow motorcycles for sport, one reflected in each eye. For every man I meet to know my darkest secrets and to find no meaning. For everywhere I sit to be a golden throne, mined from mountains where the dragons lie, their serpent tails swishing slowly side to side like my volition. My motivations locked away like rocket codes. I want to lurk in cold channels in a private submarine, down periscope, no need to give the word just yet. I want to ride inside a wooden horse, thrice as large as it should be, roll into town and turn it upside down. I want my heart to beat strong, to last as long as you will have me. I want to be a one-man riot, for language to run out, for you to stop paying in gold coins, and for black on white to matter like it did before. I want to tell you stories told to me by giants, not all of them were tall. I want my father in the mirror where he belongs, for the things I choose to say to be forever, and for thoughtlessness to do for now. Bring me your doubts, forget what you tell yourself, we will make fire from all this, a bonfire unworthy of the guy, flames licking at the deepest sky. I want to land on Mars, travel north in a car encrusted with photovoltaic diamonds. I want the first interstellar spaceship to put people in mind of a dark curtain of rain off an urban coastline. And I should be the one to commandeer the craft, my satin-gloved hands passing without contact over controls that to the untrained are a shallow pool of water reflecting an alien sun. For this is the future, pull your sleeves down, make sure to cover your wrists, for appearances are everything, nothing to see here, everything to want, nothing in its place on my watch. Your musculature should be that of a career criminal, the sinew woven in a pattern known only to the worst of us. You will have received your combat training from none other than he who play-fights with polar bears. You will know when you are ready. You will know because I will be there to murder the idea in cold blood. For I am the contender, the original soldier with an industrial complex, ready to jump, lean forward and over the edge, your parachute, not mine.
29
Synthea threw herself against the one-way glass and screamed at the top of her lungs, but it made no difference, Leticia could not hear or see her inside the box. The former nanny was close enough that Synthea could see the holes in her lobes where earrings should be. But Synthea was trapped. Positioned in the middle of the room, her prison had the dimensions of the old pay phones, its walls constructed of a thick, utterly soundproof glass and you could only look out. Synthea let herself slide to the floor. She was half-naked, she was cold, her shoulder bruised.
How did she get here? That’s right: the ringing telephone. She was walking the corridors and heard a ringing. An old-fashioned ringing, and it was coming from somewhere inside Versailles. Ring-ring, ring-ring. It reminded her of a movie. A telephone sounding in an empty house, loud and drenched in silence. She had followed the ringing in her bare feet, feeling her way along the walls until she was right there, on the other side of a white door. This door. One of the locked rooms. She tried the handle and it opened. A sick feeling of doing something she shouldn’t, like when she was a little girl, stealing moments inside her father’s office when he wasn’t there. But the door opened and she had ventured in. Ring-ring, ring-ring. Three levels louder than it should be. A dark glass box, same dimensions as one of the old pay phones, but this wasn’t that. This was something quite different. She approached the glass and one side had opened to the slightest touch. It was a door, deathly quiet on its hinges. Ring-ring, ring-ring. She stepped inside, there was no phone but it was too late, the door slammed behind her like a coffin and she’d been there ever since.
Now she watched Leticia’s small feet as they circled the box. She was wearing new shoes. She’d never seen Leticia wear such nice shoes before, they had to be brand new, she must have bought them right after leaving Versailles, after she was fired. She was pleased for her friend, glad she was treating herself for once. She missed Leticia, missed having her around at the other end of the intercom. Leticia was her friend and confidante, like a sister, more like a beloved aunt. They were the same age but Leticia was the older soul, wise and unafraid to impart her wisdom. She watched Leticia’s shoes as they paused right by the box. Such pretty shoes, the kind a girl might wear on her first day of school, the bright gold buckles, patent black crocodile leather and natty white socks with the frills.
Synthea began to cry again. She had been such a good girl. Her first day of actual school, outside Versailles’ peri-meter fence, and Missy had been so brave, better than brave, her daughter had come home the very same day with a new friend. And the next day. As a matter of fact, by the end of that first week, Missy had her very own entourage. Her Missy was such a good girl, so kind and thoughtful and generous. Whatever could have happened? Such a sweet, happy girl, what could have driven her away like that? She blamed herself. Synthea blamed her husband. She knew something had happened, some unholy thing, she had felt it but did nothing, and now Missy was gone, and oh my God, he has his wife in a glass box, he has me in a glass box like an animal. This can’t be happening, this doesn’t happen in real life. She looked down at her bare arms, hands, her fingers, and they looked different somehow, still part of her, but different. She felt younger, not in a good way. She was frightened. The fear a child might feel at hearing her father on the stairs. The inevitable crash as the door swings open . . .
It was a bad dream, like a scene from a horror movie but this was real life, the smear of blood on the glass told her so, the pain in her shoulder from trying to break out, the goosebumps all over her body. Like a lizard. Leticia’s patent shoes. She was walking away from the box, toward the door. Synthea tried to scream but nothing came, the box closing in like sick magic, and then his voice. Casey’s voice, the fidelity was crystal, like he was right there with her, whispering in her ear under the covers.
‘Don’t cry, darling, I’m here.’
‘WHAT THE FUCK, CASEY, WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS, CASEY, HAVE YOU GONE TOTALLY INSANE?’
‘Don’t raise your voice, Synthea, there’s no need. Unlike the nanny, I can hear you perfectly well. Let’s talk about this like grown-up adults.’
Synthea breathed hard through her nose as she composed herself. ‘What did you do, Casey? What did you do to our daughter that’s so bad she had to run away? What did you do that’s so bad you have to keep your wife prisoner so she doesn’t call the goddamned cops for help. Tell me what you did, Casey. Tell me what you did to our daughter.’
There was silence for ten seconds before she heard his voice again. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, darling, you’re very upset. I need you to calm down and think about this. You really think I would ever do something to our daughter? Look into your heart and ask yourself that question. You know how much I love Missy, you know I would do anything for my daughter, that I’d do everything in my power to make her happy, and that counts for the rest of my family. I’m nothing without you guys. Look into your heart and ask yourself, Synthea. You know how much I love Missy, that I’d do anything to protect her and River. So how could you even say that to me? How could you think that I would do anything to hurt our daughter? She means everything to me, as do you.’
‘Then let me out of here.’
‘I can’t do that, Synthea. Not until you promise.’
‘Promise?’
‘I know about the pills, Synthea.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talkin
g about.’
‘I know you stopped taking the pills. And you’re out of control. I thought we were making progress. I thought we could put the past behind us. But you’re out of control, Synthea. It’s no wonder our daughter ran away.’
Synthea didn’t know her husband anymore, but she recognized the mode of discourse. His meaning was inexorable. There was no room for discussion. She knew Casey was manipulating her but there was no point arguing, it would lead nowhere. It was like telling a screaming infant to stop screaming, like holding up your hand to an articulated truck as it charged down the road towards you. It was this relentless determination that got him to where he was, the most influential man on the social internet, a man whose ideas about human interaction became the modus operandi before anyone had time to question their merit. No one to say no. Every day his hacker disciples at the network’s campus turned his word into code while society forgot how to opt out. Universal trust. Openness. Faith in each other. But really their faith was in Casey and his company. Openness was the grand illusion. A glass box.
Synthea knew the only way she was getting out was if she went along with everything her husband said, or at least gave the appearance of doing so. There was no safeword with Casey, only complicity. And she was a good actress, years of pretending she loved him. ‘You’re right, Casey,’ she said. ‘I’m out of control. Missy needs both her parents. Let me out of here and I give you my word. I promise to resume the medication. I promise I’ll find my feet again and step into the light.’ Synthea took a deep breath, as though she were about to go underwater. Her hate for him a perfect thing: for now, it acted as a diving bell, airtight, reflecting no light. ‘We want the same future,’ she said ‘we always have. To be a family. To change the world. We’ve always been a great team, you and I. There was a time we were invincible, the Queen and King of Silicon Valley, two beautiful children, a beautiful house. We were the blueprint. The American Dream.