“Are you 100% sure?”
“I can look over them a third time if you’d like—and a fourth, a fifth, a sixth—but it won’t change anything. I told you what I know, and that’s all there is to it.”
The man sighs, his shoulders slumping. He looks dejected. “All right,” he says, “I’ll tell them.”
Them? Who’s ‘them?’ Who else is here?
Stanley starts out of the room, his eyes peeled to the floor. Val’s stomach turns as she realizes that he isn’t bluffing. Something bad is coming.
He closes the door behind him. Val listens but doesn’t hear anything.
A minute later, Stanley returns with a laptop—Val’s. He sets it down on the desk and opens it for her. Then he takes out a knife and cuts the zip tie from her wrists.
“You’re gonna have to talk to my boss,” he says.
“Who? Dresden?”
“No.” He nods in the direction of the screen. A dialogue box has appeared with a message— “hello val” —from someone named frogger13. She looks at it incredulously for a moment. Another message pops up.
frogger13: arent u going to say hello?
frogger13: im really excited to talk to u
Val shakes her head. “frogger13?” It sounds like a handle one of her sons’ friends might use in a gaming forum.
frogger13: come on, hot lips, i dont have all day
frogger13: PUT YOUR FINGERS ON THE FUCKING KEYBOARD
Flushing at the language, Val takes a deep breath and raises her hands to the keys.
frogger13: TYPE SOMETHING
She types out “Hello” and presses the return key.
frogger13: excellent
Val: Who are you?
frogger13: <—
Val: What does that mean, ‘frogger13?’ Is that a reference to something?
frogger13: yeesh - ur an inquisitive bitch aintcha?
A chill goes up Val’s spine. That word—the word she’s told her sons never, ever to use. The word she’s told her daughter never to let anyone use in her presence, not even as a joke. The word her dad had used too freely—never about her or her mom—but about women he held in contempt. Even Val’s trusty ujayyi breathing—slowly in and out through the nose, a slight constriction in the throat, the sound of distant ocean waves—can barely keep the lid on her outrage at being called that word.
Val: Who taught you to address women like that?
frogger13: no one had to
frogger13: cums natural for me
Val grimaces at the lewd spelling of the verb, recalling the time a hardcore pornographic pop-up appeared on their family computer about eight years ago. She and John had to have an odious and awkward discussion with Matthew, saying they didn’t want to patronize him by putting parental controls on the browser, but he mustn’t visit those websites anymore. There’s nothing shameful or unnatural about his curiosity or urges, they told him, but material like this is demeaning to women. Matthew, blushing violently, insisted that “no, seriously, for real” it wasn’t him looking at those websites. Val wouldn’t have any of that—couldn’t, knowing that if it wasn’t Matthew, that would mean her younger son, Jacob, only eleven years old at the time, was eyeing those perversions. She wasn’t about to try folding that notion into her view of things. More than the images, it was the language—young “sluts” and “whores” begging men to “fuck that ass” and cum on their faces—that she could never wash clean from her mind.
This is the first time she’s ever seen that kind of language used outside of porn. Unless… the thought is literally sickening… unless this is some kind of pornography. This ‘frogger13’ guy might be getting off on all this. He might even have an audience tuning in.
frogger13: bet i could cum natural for u…
Val is quick to type: “I don’t respond to that kind of language.”
frogger13: what kind of language? english?
frogger13: you prefer me talky chinesy?
frogger13: 舔我的睾丸婊子!
frogger13: hahahahahahhahahahahhahahhahahahhahahahhahhhahahhahhahahhahahhaha!
frogger13: hahahhahahahahhahahahhahahhahahhahahahhaaahahahahhahhhahhahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
frogger13: what? u no find funny?
frogger13: what wrong with u lady? sirry. velly velly sirry.
Val’s head spins. What is happening? She’d be nauseated under any circumstances by such casual displays of racism and misogyny, but in a situation like this it’s nothing short of mind-blowing.
An idea begins to form in the back of Val’s mind, creeping through her confusion and indignation—a vision of the person on the other end of the chat. An idea, vague but insistent, about who he (or they) might be.
frogger13: still there?
Val: Yes.
frogger13: ‘kay
Val rallies her senses, shaking her head to give herself a little jolt. She’s got to get this guy to reveal himself. Then she might get at his real agenda.
frogger13: hello?
Val: I’m here.
frogger13: thought i mighta scared u off
Val: Do you often have that effect on women?
frogger13: oooo… zing
frogger13: yeah sure
frogger13: bitches can’t handle my overpowering virility
Val breathes in deeply.
Val: Perhaps it’s something else that overpowers them.
Val: Like your breath, maybe.
frogger13: hey now… thats not nice
Val: I’m sorry, I thought you liked ‘em naughty.
frogger13: long as they know their place
Val: What’s my place?
frogger13: hmmmmm….
frogger13: on ur knees
frogger13: hands behind your back
frogger13: mouth wide open
Val: Laughing?
frogger13: moaning.
Val: Why am I moaning?
frogger13: ur BEGGING me to GIVE IT to u
The idea is becoming more clear in Val’s mind, her suspicion taking shape. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s forming steadily nonetheless. She has to put it to the test.
Val: Give me what? Your retainer?
A pause. The longest so far in their chat.
frogger13: u think ur cute?
Val: Cuter than your pimply little butt.
frogger13: ur trying my patience
Val: ^ (said every girl you ever said two words to)
frogger13: im not impressed.
Val: Another one I’m sure you get a lot.
frogger13: you keep going. you just keep going and you see where it gets you.
Val: Anyplace it takes me would be better than this lame-ass conversation with a piss ant like you. Go talk to your mama, little boy, if you need attention so badly.
Something beeps elsewhere in the room. Stanley stirs and pulls a cell phone from his pocket. He opens it and reads a message on the screen. His eyes widen. He looks up plaintively at the surveillance camera in the corner of the room. The phone beeps again. He reads the message, his shoulders slumping.
frogger13: you shoulda quit while you were ahead.
frogger13: stupid cunt
Stanley walks toward her, taking heavy, anxious breaths.
frogger13: now youll see what u get
Stanley looms over Val. She is gripped by an urgent but impotent desire to get free of the chair, sensing that something ugly is about to happen.
For no apparent reason, Stanley pivots to his right, placing himself off to the side of Val’s left shoulder. It’s an odd position for him to be in. Then she sees—he’s put himself between her and the surveillance camera, shielding his face from it and obstructing the camera’s view of her body. He looks down at her, eyes wide and calling for her attention.
Slowly and deliberately, he mouths the words, “Make. This. Look. Good.”
He raises his right hand over his shoulder and swing
s, delivering what should be a crushing, open-handed blow to her face. Except that his hand only glances her cheek, his fingers barely making contact with her skin.
Channeling her brief stint in the college drama society, Val sells the attack, crying out and pitching her face and body in the direction of the blow, as if he had hit her square on the face. Her left hand flies to her cheek, pretending to comfort it. She breathes heavily, firing off a series of groaning aftershocks to cement her performance.
Stanley’s phone beeps. He looks at it, then at Val. He mouths another message to her— “Be. Careful.” Then he leaves the room.
Val sits, collecting herself—more stunned, she thinks, than if the blow had been real. The computer pings. She turns to the screen.
frogger13: next time i tell him to close his fist
frogger13: now if ur done being a brat can we have an adult conversation?
Val raises her right hand to the keyboard, her left hand pasted to her cheek, hiding the lack of a mark.
Val: what do you want to talk about?
frogger13: i want to talk about you val
frogger13: you and ur family
frogger13: specifically…
Val’s stomach drops to the floor. Her heart pounds a vicious tattoo against the bottom of her throat. Her hand shakes so hard that it’s all she can do to keep it pressed to her cheek. In the dialogue box, beside the ‘frogger13’ handle, there is a photograph of her daughter, Clara. It’s a picture she’s never seen before, a cellphone snapshot of Clara smiling politely, taken from no more than a few feet away. Judging by her hair and her outfit, it can’t be more than a few months old. Val can’t make out any distinguishing features in the background, but it looks like it’s in someone’s house—a bedroom or den.
She forces herself to type.
Val: whweredid you get that?
frogger13: whats with the typos val? nervous r we?
Val: where?
frogger13: where do you think i got it?
frogger13: ur wondering if i took it myself
frogger13: i could say yes but that wouldnt prove anything - would it?
frogger13: its so easy to get peoples photos online these days isnt it?
frogger13: could have just been a social media thing
frogger13: then again…
frogger13: … if it was on facebook u probs woulda seen it before - hmmmm…
frogger13: but you havent seen this before
frogger13: have u?
frogger13: HAVE U?
Val: no
frogger13: nope. so… hmm…
Val: what have you done with her
frogger13: val baby relax - ur acting a little paranoid
Val: what do you want?
frogger13: just a little information. thats all. no big thang.
frogger13: i want some information about u vis a vis clara
Val: what do you mean?
frogger13: its quite simple really
frogger13: i need something on u val
frogger13: something you wouldnt want anybody ever to know
frogger13: call it an insurance policy if u will
frogger13: and a little mouse told me there might be cheese down this tunnel
Val’s breath has gotten away from her. It’s no use now trying to rein in her nerves.
Val: i don’t know what you’re talking about.
frogger13: sure u do val. sure u do.
frogger13: ur sons are adopted right?
Val: yes.
frogger13: but not clara?
Val: no.
frogger13: she’s all urs?
Val: yes.
frogger13: urs and johns?
Val hesitates.
frogger13: thats what i thought
frogger13: i want the story
frogger13: the WHOLE story
frogger13: the TRUE story
frogger13: so start typing sugar shanks
frogger13: u might want to use both hands for this
Doing her best to keep her face angled away from the camera, Val brings her left hand away from her cheek, sets it on the keyboard, and begins to type.
CHAPTER EIGHT: Equilibrium
10:07 p.m.
Inside of five minutes, Shane has re-absorbed himself into the plot of Santok: The Maker (the latest volume in the current cycle of the Cosmic Wheel saga, of which two more volumes have been announced by its author—E. J. Rogan—with three more fully conceived and waiting to be written; the cycle itself being one spoke of that massive Wheel, the whole of which creator Rogan proposes to complete over the next thirty years or so, ultimately comprising, he boasts, no fewer than eighty complete works)—five minutes with the book, and already Shane’s nerves have leveled, anxieties attenuated, his pasty skin becoming warm and sanguine. He is back in his sanctum, his comfort zone, the place he’d most any time like to be, in spite of his father’s quiet groans and head shakes and the encouragement of his psychiatrist—a bearded man with hyper-thyroidal eyes who’s been trained by Dad to perceive something perverse, even pathological, in Shane’s natural inwardness (prototypical INTJ personality-type he’s pretty sure, though bug-eyes seems to have little interest in Shane’s self-diagnosis)—the psychiatrist’s repeated encouragement to get out of his head and try ‘interfacing’ more with other kids his age, which suggestions make Shane’s sphincter clamp up tighter than the fabled Andwylean Death Trap indigenous to several planets in the Dranox Vector. All the same, he forces himself to meet these suggestions with a placid affect, knowing that any outward expression of disdain will only make this hired gun with a questionable degree come back at him with redoubled efforts.
Shane has learned to brook their implicit or explicit attacks on his behavior with a degree of patience and aplomb. It isn’t easy, but if Arun’dh’aile Arun’dh’aile could withstand the Fardellian rains for two fortnights without complaint during his apprenticeship with the fellowship of Santok, then surely Shane can endure a little mild harassment from these two small-minded men until he goes away to college in five years (three if he pursues his high-school equivalency after the 10th grade, a prospect he’s already researched and which seems viable if he cuts back on his daily reading by roughly 15% and devotes the time and mental bandwidth this frees up to his studies). And once he is out of this house, no one will ever be able to bother him again.
The source of his distress this evening, from which he is steadily gearing down through the focused intake of dense speculative fiction, is not his father or his psychiatrist but his dumb-ass older brother, Jay, who had insisted earlier that Shane come observe some project that he and a gaggle of his similarly dumb-ass friends have been working up on-line.
“Trust me, you’re not gonna want to miss this,” Jay had said. “I’m telling you, dude, you’re fucking lucky to have an older brother like me to show you this shit. Most kids your age would give up their allowance ‘til they’re forty for the chance to watch what I’m about to show you.”
Shane had wondered if Jay actually expects to receive an allowance until the age of forty. (Then again, it’s possible that Jay will remain on the family dole for an extended period, given their father’s infatuation with his unremarkable first son and the pitiful job prospects Jay—who once declared his favorite subject in school to be ‘geolotry’—is likely to enjoy when he completes his lamentable education.)
“What we’re doing here is like nothing that’s been done before,” Jay had boasted as he arranged the windows on the two monitors hooked up to his iMac. What Shane would be witnessing, Jay explained, was going to be the most hyper-realistic web-based adventure game ever devised—kind of like a Hollywood thriller, but “totally interactive.” The whole thing had been orchestrated by Jay’s buddy, Rich, a local-legend computer prodigy with a penchant for hacking (school lore had it that Jay had an FBI file reaching back to when he was twelve). Shane could see Rich’s face in one of the windows on Jay’s monitor, which was divided into four webcam images o
f the players in the ‘game.’
“Now, remember,” said Jay, handing a set of Bluetooth headphones to Shane, “this is a serious privilege. You’ll listen through these. And I don’t want to see or hear shit from you. You’ll sit back on the Papasan and observe. Silently. And stay out of the line of the webcam—the other guys don’t know I’m letting you watch. And remember, if I hear even a peep out of you, you’re out of here. Nobody wants some little spaz messing this thing up.”
Shane looks up from his book, distracted for a moment by the thought that it’s surprising he lasted as long as he did in his brother’s room once the events got into gear. To begin with, it hadn’t looked like a game at all. The people he saw on the screen were real, he was pretty sure, a man and woman he’d seen around their neighborhood. Plus, the camera angles weren’t set up very artfully and the quality wasn’t very good. They looked like the surveillance videos he’d sometimes seen in news reports about robberies and shootings.
Then the people on the screen were getting hurt, and Jay and Rich and their two other friends were laughing, and Shane was very confused. He had felt a weird kind of blankness in his mind, a kind of dull disbelief in spite of, or perhaps because of, how real all of it looked. But underneath that, somewhere in his belly or maybe closer to his large intestine or his bladder or spleen, he felt something turning, telling him this wasn’t right. He was used to relying on his intellect, distrustful of the emotions that had flared up in punishment-provoking outbursts and meltdowns during his early childhood (before he had learned to discipline himself with breathing exercises adapted from Book Two of the First Cycle of the Cosmic Wheel).
But this feeling had been different. It had demanded that he listen up.
“Are they all right?” he had said, trying to whisper, but nonetheless incurring his brother’s swift, unblinking wrath. Jay had come over and whopped him on the head, whispering, “I told you to be quiet. One more sound. I swear to God, one more freaking sound…”
And then—when the feeling in his gut had conspired with his dry mouth and accelerating heart rate to elicit an involuntary cough from his throat—Jay had turned his webcam around, grabbed Shane by the collar, and thrown him out of the room, muttering, “You’re hopeless, dude. Totally hopeless.”
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