by A. J. Ramsey
The troll was a woman, and her name was Mary.
“Aha!” Brittany shouted in triumph, pointing at the name tag. A giant green hand quickly tried to cover it, but it was too late.
“See! We pass the test, and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mary shouted.
“No, you don’t.”
Mary wasn’t the least bit worried about winning or losing. Just arguing was winning for her, and she started laughing again.
“This isn’t a meaningful conversation. You have proved nothing. In fact, you might have proved that the author is sexist. He has made the second female character a troll and named her the most common name in the United States. Until now, he has been referring to me as an “it.” I laugh at your puny arguments. I laugh right in your stinky face and . . . and . . . I bite my thumb at you. I . . . I . . . You stink.”
Mary had grown as tall as the ceiling now, and as Emal tried to think of a way to get back into the argument, Brittany produced an umbrella from out of her backpack and began beating Mary with it. At first she was able to hit her in the stomach, but the troll only continued to laugh. Brittany kept hitting her, and Mary grew until she had to hunch her shoulders to stop from bursting through the top of the tube. Soon, all Brittany managed to beat was Mary’s knobbly knees.
Emal grabbed Brittany by the shoulders, pulling her away from the troll. The umbrella went flying against the wall, and Brittany rewarded Emal with an elbow to the nose as she turned to face him. He yelled out once again in pain.
“Owww . . . Will you stop hitting me in the nose? I’m running out of uninjured cartilage.”
“I’ll gladly turn my attention elsewhere if you will stop manhandling me. Don’t try to stop me all of sudden just because she is a named female character,” she shouted at Emal before turning back to Mary who was now doubled over in laughter.
“Stop,” Emal called out and risked a gentle hand on Brittany’s arm. She whirled back toward him again, her face suggesting he had one second before she fed him to the troll.
“Why don’t we just leave?”
“You can’t just leave a troll roaming free. Someone has to defend against stupidity. Someone must sacrifice themselves and stand up for what’s right.”
“Why? We can’t win against her. You can’t defeat stupid.”
“It doesn’t matter. The fight is what matters. It’s something you wouldn’t understand. Since the creation of the Internet, the fight against stupid began. If we allow, even for one moment, ignorant or bigoted comments to become the norm, the Internet community will fall to pieces. People will have to close the comment threads on their blogs or stop blogging all together. We have no choice but to fight the trolls wherever they choose to appear.”
Emal had been focused on Brittany during her speech, but he caught a glimpse of Mary out of the corner of his eye. She had shrunk in the time they had ignored her. Emal had his first good idea.
“Don’t look now, but since we stopped talking to Mary, or acknowledging her in anyway, she has shrunk,” Emal whispered to Brittany.
“Bull,” she said, but she suddenly became very quiet and very still.
Mary was still laughing in the background, but after having been ignored for too long, she shouted out again, “You stink.”
Brittany twitched with rage, but Emal gestured from his eyes to her eyes. Keep focused. Don’t sweat the small stuff. After a few minutes of the troll attempting to taunt them while Brittany and Emal stared at each other, they both tried to glance at Mary from the corner of their eyes. They found her to be at their eye level and perhaps even a little less green.
As soon as they made eye contact, she began growing and jeering them.
“You stink, you stink. You and him, sitting in a tree . . .”
Brittany and Emal quickly averted their gazes again, and after another few minutes of taunting, the voice became higher pitched and less confident.
“You . . . you . . . Hey!” came the squeaky voice from behind them. “Look at me.”
“Follow me,” Brittany said as she blindly started walking sideways further into the tube, grabbing her backpack as she went.
“Get back here. I have more to say,” came a high pitched whine from somewhere behind them.
Brittany and Emal slowly eased around the now yelping Mary, spinning around whenever she attempted to jump in front of their vision. They made their way down the tube until they had walked far enough around the bend that they were certain that Mary hadn’t followed them.
Brittany finally stopped; she put her hands on her knees and took a deep breath.
“Whew! I can’t believe we did it,” she said. “Most people don’t survive these encounters. Someone inevitably has to sacrifice themselves to draw the troll’s attention away. They always claim at least one victim in the end. It’s like that stupid plot device in adventure movies when someone volunteers to sacrifice themselves to save the group. The other people always refuse to allow it, yet in the end, they always manage to martyr themselves anyways, so it’s a pointless plot device. Ignoring the troll was so much better.”
“Well,” Emal said. “I just noticed she had shrunk when we ignored her. I’m sure you would’ve noticed it eventually.”
“Gore! You don’t have to get all cocky about it. I said good job,” Brittany snapped at him and started to walk away.
“Not so fast,” Emal said, striding after her. “I can’t let you run off this time. I’ve saved your life twice now, and I need your help.”
“Oh Gore! Saving my life might be a bit of an exaggeration. This author is digging himself a deep hole I tell you.”
“How’s that?” Emal asked.
“The two named female characters haven’t been great representations so far, have they? One is an ugly green troll, and I clearly have anger management issues. He mentions the Bechdel test as if he knows something about feminism but then mocks it. Worse yet, the man is the one who comes up with the solution and ‘saves the damsel in distress.’ I’ll be damned if I’m going to be someone’s damsel. It’s better if you just get away from me.”
“Maybe that’s just how the story is playing out. I mean, he is obviously aware that he’s being sexist, so maybe that means he doesn’t intend to be.”
“It doesn’t matter what his intent is. Sexism is sexism, and I want no part of this stupid story. It was funny at first, but it has really gotten boring in the middle here. I mean that last chapter was so bad.”
“I’m sure the story will pick up soon. I think it’s just getting to the good bits. And I’m sure he is going to include more female characters. The first step to solving sexism is to be aware you’re part of the issue.”
“I suppose. I must admit you have actually been a little helpful so far. But let’s be clear, I am only considering this because of the usefulness you might provide me. I am not some plot device, or damsel in distress, or sexual object. I’m Brittany, bitch!”
“So I’ve heard,” Emal said.
“What did you need help with?” Brittany said without attempting to hide her displeasure at the idea of helping Emal.
“Well, I talked to Jeeves . . .”
“You talked to Jeeves? That annoying twit. He is about as useful as single ply toilet paper.”
“I thought he was nice actually. Well . . . mostly nice,” Emal said on Jeeves’s behalf. “Anyways, he told me about the Internet, and about how I was a messenger, and how I needed to deliver my message.”
“He told you that you were a messenger?” Brittany asked.
“Well, he said I had to deliver a message. Why? What’s the difference?”
“Never mind, what do you want from me? If Jeeves already told you everything. . .”
“Well . . . I don’t remember where he said I needed to go, and he won’t answer my calls anymore.”
Brittany chuckled, “Pissed him off did ya? Don’t sweat it; he’s a touchy program.
He hardly ever shows up for me these days. I say again though, what do you want from me?”
“I just want to tag along. And I was hoping you might know where I can find the information about my destination again. And well . . . we might even have some civil conversation.”
Brittany scowled at that last bit, “You were doing fine until that last part, but I suppose I do actually owe you, even if I didn’t need rescuing. Follow me then,” she said as she started walking down the quiet tube again. “I’m actually on my way to see someone who should be able to help you.”
“Who is it?” Emal asked as he hurried after her.
“He-Who-Must-Always-Be-Named.”
Together again
~
Brittany kept a steady and sure pace as Emal followed her around the tubes.
“Why are you going to see He-Who-Must-Always-Be-Named?”
“Because I need to tell him something.”
“What do you need to tell him?”
“Something that he needs to know.”
“What does he need to know?”
Brittany sighed. “Are our conversations always going to go like this? You ask questions, and I have to answer them?”
“Well,” Emal said, “I was under the impression that is how most conversations go. Besides, you’re the one who knows things. If you remember, I am fairly new here. So, what do we need to tell this mystery person?”
“I don’t know where you’re getting we from all of the sudden; you’re just coming along out of the goodness of my heart. And, just for future reference, most conversations actually involve contributions from both sides. A discussion where I simply answer questions is just another stupid plot device to provide readers with details. But, I digress. I need to tell He-Who-Must-Always-Be-Named about all these brick walls,” Brittany said, gesturing around them.
“You mean he doesn’t know about the tubes? How could he be the creator of this place and not know about those? This guy can’t be that special.”
“Not the normal tube walls, idiot, the brick walls with the little openings. You know, like the one you ran your pretty little nose into.”
“Oh yeah. Just like the one I found you stuck in. I found a few more of those walls right before I heard you in an argument to the death with a troll,” Emal shot back, hoping to score some points of his own in this duel of a conversation.
“Well, there are a lot more of those walls that you probably didn’t see,” Brittany said as she pulled out a notebook from her backpack. She flipped open a few pages, consulting some notes and muttering to herself.
“You made a note in that notebook when I first met you,” Emal said.
“You have an amazing memory for details,” Brittany said rather meanly.
“What are you writing down?”
“Notes.”
“Seems an odd place for them. What are the notes about?”
“The location of these brick walls,” she responded curtly.
Brittany resumed their trek without another word. Emal noticed as they continued on that she kept to the older and less trafficked tubes. He decided to ask her why despite the potential for a blistering response.
“Because I hate crowds,” Brittany said simply.
She also appears to hate civil conversation, Emal thought.
Emal attempted to walk in silence for a while since he realized that he was to Brittany what Jeeves had been to him. Annoying. He was quickly bored though. After enduring the silence for as long as he could, he decided it was time for more questions.
“Why do you hate crowds?”
“I just can’t take them anymore,” she said. “I’ve had my fair share over the years. This place keeps getting more crowded every year.”
“How long have you been here? In the Internet, I mean.”
“I know what you meant,” she said with an exaggerated sigh. “I suppose I can indulge you for a bit. I’ve been here for longer than I care to admit. I am one of the Originals.”
“You’re a vampire?” Emal asked, shocked.
“What? No, stupid. I’m one of the first who had the awakening.”
“Still sounds like vampires to me,” Emal said.
“There are others besides me, some almost as old as the Internet itself, but there are less and less of us these days.”
“Umm, what’s an awakening?”
“By now, surely even you have noticed that most people here are not all there. I don’t mean they just ask dumb questions; they aren’t even aware of what questions are.”
“You mean how the other people just seem to run around blindly?”
“Exactly. They haven’t had the awakening. Jeeves might have told you some about this place, but he probably just rattled off numbers and dates at you. I’m sure he didn’t tell you who we really are.”
Brittany stopped and turned toward Emal as she said the last part. She seemed at once very serious, but for the life of him, Emal didn’t know why. She looks like she’s about to reveal a deep dark secret about this place. Jeeves had talked for hours, granted I hadn’t listened much; what could she possibly have to add?
“Jeeves probably talked about the world outside of this one. Well . . .”
“There’s a world outside this world?” Emal blurted out.
“Yes, of course there is; now stop interrupting.”
“To share information across their world, they laid down millions of wires and pipes that connect large devices called servers. The servers contain the actual information that people want. When they request information from the Internet, it has to travel from the server to their devices. That’s where we come in.”
“I’ve been wondering where everyone came from,” Emal interrupted.
“I’m not getting into a birds and bees talk with you. You want to learn where babies come from, ask someone else. Or catch one of these porn videos as they pass.”
“I said where everyone came from, not how. The how is one of the instinctive things I already know.”
“Good, because we are trying to keep this young adult.”
“Young adult, really? Then maybe we should revisit the vampire discussion or this should be a dystopian society.”
“It’s the Internet. It is borderline dystopian.”
“We also might need to be teenagers filled with angst and hormones.”
“You are like a day old. You’d need a time machine to be a teenager. Also, no one wants to know what you’re filled with. Moving on . . . To transfer the information stored in the interconnected servers, they created packets, or messages like ourselves. When someone wants data, the request is sent to the appropriate server. The server then creates packets to carry the data to the address provided. We go through these tubes, getting directed by protocols that dictate what route we take. Then we deliver the requested data. That’s it. At least in a really basic sense.”
A world within another world. It’s amazing to think about, Emal thought to himself. He wondered out loud if these other beings were aware there were people with thoughts and feelings carrying their information through the tubes.
“They aren’t,” Brittany said.
“Why not? Can’t they see that we are people too? I have thoughts and feelings,” Emal pleaded.
“To them, we are nothing but a bunch of numbers and lines of code on a screen. They don’t recognize us as intelligent beings. That would be like you trying to see that the mold on these walls has intelligent life living inside it.”
“It does?”
“Of course not, idiot. The point is they just can’t see us that way. As I said, to them, we are nothing. And we weren’t supposed to be intelligent life anyways.”
Brittany waved Emal away before he stopped her with another question.
“Yeah, yeah, but what about you? You, me, and the others like us, we are exceptions. 99.9999% of the packets that get sent out are just that, stupid lines of code or numbers. Packet loss happens all the time; you’ve probably seen traffic get b
acked up from piles of bodies. But, they don’t wake up like we did. You can’t catch one of these idiots and beat sense into them. I know. I’ve tried. You and I are unique in that we had an awakening. We are a program that became self-aware and evolved into something else.”
I don’t feel like I’ve evolved, Emal thought as he looked himself over for some new growth on his body. Still the same number of limbs and appendages. I still have the same clothes with the same stench. “I don’t think I’ve evolved yet.”
“Yeah, well . . . Anyways, there are millions and millions of packets sent through these tubes every minute of every day, and they don’t wake up like you and me. It used to be more frequent, but these days there are just a few awakenings every year. And then of course there is the fact that these outsiders are trying to kill us.”
“Pardon,” Emal squeaked and tripped as he suddenly forgot how to walk properly.
“You heard me. They are trying to kill us. We are aberrations in the software. They might not recognize us as intelligent, but they do know we don’t belong here. As they get more efficient with the tech, the better they are at finding us and removing us from the Internet. The funny thing is that they are hoping for the moment of “the singularity” at the same time as they try to kill us. They want intelligent life to rise from machine life, and yet, where they already have it, they are trying to kill it.”
“If He-Who-Must-Always-Be-Named is one of these others, should we really be going to see him,” Emal asked nervously. He suddenly was seeing hidden assassins in the shadows.
“He can always be trusted. He has helped us before; he is a friend to all life. Both in this world and other worlds.”
“So, do you know what message you were supposed to deliver?” Emal asked, hoping to change the subject away from his pending assassination.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“It’s none of your damn business,” Brittany snapped at Emal.
“Okay, can you tell what my message is?” Emal asked, genuinely wanting to know. He was curious what important thing it was he needed to bring to someone.