by David Yoon
Still hanging with my B-school teacher and Shane and Akiko, todo bien
Ok, Dad simply replied.
Ok, and nothing else.
What did Max want? What else could Max expect? Could he write
Dad, did you see the Trollout hack on the news?
or
Dad, I’m Version Zero, what do you think of that?
Even if he could explain to Dad what he was doing, would Dad even understand? How would such a conversation go?
“I’m fixing the internet by exposing its inherent biases toward sociopathy.”
“Is that computers, Flaco?”
“We’ve exposed over thirty thousand toxic users so far.”
“Is this an app? How many did you sell?”
Max got dressed and left his room, walked the skywalk, and descended the curved staircase. He passed through the brass panel and the sound studio (giving the crystal drums a tap) and through the nexus. He opened the vending machine with an easy flip of a finger and entered the twisting black tunnel of wires.
When he reached the wall of screens, Akiko was already there with a mug of black coffee waiting for him.
“You’re up early,” said Max.
“I didn’t sleep much,” said Akiko. “I had to see how Trollout was doing.”
“Where’s Shane?”
“You know that boy can’t get up before ten.”
Max chuffed. “Oh yeah?”
“He’s so high school.” Akiko brought up some screens. “Come sit.”
Max sat. He took his coffee. It was hot.
“So this is—” Akiko began.
“Account deletions,” said Max. “Dang, it’s a lot.”
“And growing,” said Akiko. “At both Wren and Knowned, see?”
Max pushed up his glasses and glanced at all the charts. “News mentions up, social mentions up, hashtags multiplying, and oh shit, broadcast video mentions, too? TV?” He looked at her with a raised brow.
“We’re trending,” said Akiko. She smiled. This was, Max realized, some kind of perfect moment. A perfect version of the best night from their many late nights at Wren: their bodies close, their minds sprinting along in perfect sync on a flat beach that stretched to infinity.
She was staring at him. It was hard for Max when Akiko looked right at him, and normally he would have turned to his shoes for solace. But this time he held her gaze, and quietly thrilled inside.
She removed his Buddy Holly glasses and gently dug at his left eye with her pinky nail.
“You have an eye booger,” she said.
“Keep it,” said Max.
Akiko tucked the invisible speck into her shirt pocket and gave it a little pat. A thought seemed to occur to her; she blinked it away. She pinched his nose and shook it.
“We’re trending, duncie,” she said, and sipped her coffee.
Max’s nose tingled for a while after she released it. Shane could take his time sleeping. Everyone could take their time this morning. Above, a white-hot triangle of sunlight stretched down the wall of the oubliette.
Akiko typed and typed, bringing up more charts, and Max could feel her moving because their shoulders were touching and neither he nor she seemed to mind.
“What if,” Max said, “what if Version Zero works?”
Akiko paused. “What do you mean by works?”
“I don’t know,” said Max, and he meant it. It occurred to him that he had never really thought beyond their current hack. “Say Trollout or some other hack does the trick, and everyone is just, like, fuck Wren, fuck Knowned, and bails.”
“That would be amazing,” said Akiko.
“It would open the door for us to make something better,” said Max. He backslapped his open palm. “Better than what we have now.”
“Hm,” said Akiko. She glanced at each screen, one by one.
“We literally have unlimited resources,” said Max.
“Unlimited resources,” said Akiko with an odd smirk.
Max sweetly furrowed his brow. “What?”
“It’s just funny,” said Akiko. She took a sip of coffee and admired her mug. “Here is a mug. It’s made from this ingenious material called ceramic. Ceramic is easy to clean, durable, and can hold hot liquids. Ceramic solves a specific problem.”
Max clinked his mug to hers and waited for her to continue. He loved when she talked like this.
“It’s just funny, because the smartphone wasn’t invented to solve any existing problem,” said Akiko. “We just made it to see if we could, and it wound up creating all these new problems. TV didn’t solve any specific problem, either.”
“Or soda water,” said Max, right on time like he was lobbing a ball back to Akiko in a relaxing rhetorical rally. “Or cigarettes.”
“God, I wish cigarettes were good for you,” said Akiko.
On-screen, the numbers twitched higher.
Akiko turned to Max with a sudden intensity that made his heart shiver. “What would you do if you had unlimited resources?” she said.
“I mean, we do,” said Max. He nodded at the screen. “So I’d do what I’m doing right now.”
Akiko undid her question with a wave of her hand. “Say we fix the internet, yay for us. Then what would you want?”
Don’t ask me what I want, thought Max.
“Move on to the next problem,” said Max with a shrug. “Solve it, try not to create any new ones in the process.”
Max noticed he and Akiko had slightly different levels of coffee in their mugs, and took a sip to catch up.
“Why, what would you want?” said Max, avoiding her eyes.
He could hear Akiko think, begin to say something, then catch herself. Finally she spoke.
“I would get away from computers,” she said. “I think I would hide away from everything for a while. I would travel.”
“Where?” said Max.
“I would go in a straight line and keep following it until I crisscrossed every place on earth,” said Akiko. Her eyes glinted at the idea. “Yeah.”
Max pictured the planet as a big ball of red yarn being drawn by a tiny Akiko.
“Don’t forget to visit me,” said Max with a laugh.
“You’re welcome to come with,” said Akiko. “Or go your own way, or whatever, just catch me when we loop around.”
Blue yarn now laced in with the red to create a lovely knitwork.
“High five in midair,” said Max.
“Like hi-bye,” said Akiko, raising her hand. They slapped palms, spilling coffee in the process.
“Shit,” laughed Max.
There were footsteps, and Shane stepped into the oubliette disheveled from oversleep.
“Are we winning, babe?” said Shane.
Akiko palmed her forehead. “It depends on what you mean by winning.”
Shane dove onto the hissing leather couch. “Come here,” he said, stretching out his arms. “Honey bear needs some snuggle time.”
His words instantly softened Akiko like magic collapsing a curtain. She pushed away from the wall of screens and into Shane’s embrace, leaving Max staring.
1.16
As Shane and Akiko canoodled on the couch, Max sat. He checked his phone. No new messages from Dad. Why would there be?
Pilot now walked into the oubliette.
“Thirty thousand Wren users have deleted their accounts,” he said, and wrestled Max by his shoulders. “Up from twenty-eight in a single hour, Mister Max. Version Zero is working.”
What do you mean by working? Max wanted to ask. But the praise felt good, and this was tech legend Pilot Markham here with his hands on Max’s shoulders, and Max wanted to enjoy the moment.
If it were his dad, he would have to explain why thirty thousand account deletions was a good thing.
“Do you get their money, the people that quit Wren?”
“No, Dad, it’s a mass awakening.”
“Is this something to do with the biasing for sociopathy?”
With Pilot, Max did not need to explain biases toward sociopathy. Pilot already knew what Max was doing. Pilot hand-signaled a three and a zero with all the enthusiasm of a sports fan—thirty thousand—and Max felt it like high praise.
As far as Max knew, Pilot only ever had the one child: daughter Noelle. He never had a son. Max found himself wondering what it would have been like to have Pilot as a father.
Max shook off the thought.
Brayden entered, holding a basket of snacks.
“Go to NewsDay’s front page,” said Brayden.
They did, and there sat the immense golem head of Cal Peers, speaking in silent captions. We value your privacy this and We are hard at work to fix our systems that. He seemed to fight back vomit with each word. Max had never really studied Cal Peers’s face, and he noticed how his orbits had been carved simply from a column of pink wax as if with a spoon, leaving his forehead and nose on the same cylindrical plane like that of a totem.
“They brought out the CEO,” said Shane through Akiko’s hair. “Whenever there’s CEO airtime you know things are bad. Entrepreneurship 101.”
“Cal Peers is shitting bricks out of his ass hole,” said Pilot, pronouncing it as two words. “I bet we break fifty thousand account deletions by dinnertime.”
“Is it all trolls quitting?” said Brayden.
“It’s a good mix,” said Akiko. “Trolls, but also friends of trolls, and probably a bunch of people scared of being outed as trolls themselves.”
“Good,” said Max. “Let’s make a statement. Something along the lines of Version Zero is draining the swamp.”
Akiko winced. “Maybe not draining the swamp.”
“Right.”
“What’s wrong with draining the swamp?” said Shane.
“I’ll think of something else, something else,” said Max. “Is there a good place to shoot video?”
“How about right here?” said Pilot. He tapped around on his phone, and every screen in his wall of screens turned into digital snow. He aimed the phone’s camera lens at Max. Akiko and Shane backed out of the frame.
Max straightened. “Is the Black Halo mask up?”
Pilot tapped, and a mask appeared over Max’s face on the screen. “Mask is up. Rolling.”
Max cleared his throat.
“Yesterday we brought the trolls into the sunlight. They have been living right under your floorboards. They are your friends, your husbands, your boyfriends.”
As Max spoke he could see Akiko gazing at him, her face dazzled with light.
“The mirror world showed its false reflection. We have shattered it.”
Max saw Pilot nodding.
“There is only one way to be your true self,” said Max. “And that is to turn away from the mirror world to face the real. To—”
“Hold up,” said Brayden. “I’m sorry, guys.”
Pilot stopped recording and lowered his phone. “What is it?”
Brayden held up his phone. “Is this bad? This seems bad.”
Max squinted. He read the headline.
MATH TEACHER SUICIDE: “VERSION ZERO KILLED ME”
1.17
What’s the rest of the article say?” said Max.
“I never read the articles,” said Brayden.
Max read the article.
Fred Mould, a high school math teacher in Virginia, was found hanging in a closet in his apartment. He was discovered when he failed to show up to teach his class. He was beloved by his students. He was divorced. He had one grown son.
Max wondered what math class would have been like had Fred Mould shown up. He scrolled the dead man’s feed. Surely Fred Mould’s students must have seen what he had been posting. Surely they would have hit him with questions, starting with a few timid inquiries, then a steady pelting, then a sideways torrent.
Max frowned. Max pictured Fred Mould’s face growing pink, then red, then shiny with sweat. Maybe it was this inquisition Fred Mould had been scared of. Why else would he hang himself?
But this was just detective cop stuff. Max frowned for a different reason.
“Did we just kill someone?” said Max.
The room froze. Brayden put down his phone as if it were suddenly hot.
“No,” said Akiko slowly.
Shane nodded. “No.”
“Mister Max,” said Pilot. “Are you okay?”
Max took off his glasses, and the room went gray. He spoke to the fog.
“Trolls dox their victims. Is that what we just did? Did we just dox someone to death?”
“Are you saying we’re trolls?” said Brayden.
“No,” said Akiko.
“We should think about this,” said Max. “We should really think about what we’re really doing here.”
Pilot pointed at the screens. “Thirty thousand people have left Wren because of Trollout. That is what we are really doing. Fred Mould was just chickens coming home to roost.”
“Yeah, but the dude didn’t have to die,” said Shane.
Brayden lit a joint out of exasperation. “I kinda agree, guys. Trolls are bad and all, but most of them are dudes just pulling jokes to get a rise out of people.”
He offered Pilot the joint. Pilot doused it in Max’s coffee cup, now gone cold.
“Jokes?” said Pilot. “To get a rise out of people?”
Brayden began to shrink. “Yeah, like ha ha, a joke? So what if this Fred Mould was secretly a Holocaust denier? It’s not like the dude was a child molester. He wasn’t actually physically hurting anyone. Trolling is, like, this internet free speech release valve for all the bad shit you think but are afraid to say.”
Max hung his head while Brayden dug himself deeper.
“Me and my friends troll all the time,” said the boy. “One time we changed the high school sign to say graduating ass.”
Shane laughed, but Akiko stopped him.
“We’re all trolls to some degree,” said Brayden.
“I hope you die, Mister Brayden,” said Pilot, aiming his lower jaw.
Brayden blinked.
“I hope your parents get their throats slit while you watch,” said Pilot. “I hope all the rich little Whitemen like you get rounded up and shot in the back of the head.”
The words back of the head floated up and out of the oubliette, and the room fell silent. Brayden frowned small and trembling with growing bewilderment, as if everyone in the room had suddenly changed faces and became strangers.
“Mister Pilot,” said Max.
Pilot exploded with a smile. “Just a joke! Just a joke.” He slammed Brayden’s shoulder with a fist.
Pilot’s smile turned to stone. “I am just trolling you.”
“That’s fucked up, man,” said Brayden. He lit another joint and hid behind the glow of his phone. “That’s fucked up.”
“Trolls drive people to fear and depression and even suicide,” said Pilot. “State-run troll farms incite citizens, right in their Wren feeds, to kill whole ethnic groups. And Wren does nothing to stop it.”
“I get it,” said Brayden, exhaling. “God.”
“We troll the trolls,” said Pilot. “That is how you purge the system.”
“I don’t know,” said Max. “Maybe we should kill the Trollout script. Lay low. We made our point, but a dead body is a dead body.”
“Frankly, I am surprised there is only one dead troll,” said Pilot, all cool blue. “I was expecting dozens of dead trolls. Hundreds.”
“Expecting or hoping for?” said Brayden.
“You are in my house, boy,” said Pilot.
“Ease up,” said Sha
ne.
“Max is right, we should kill the script,” said Akiko.
“Let it run, please, Miz Akiko,” said Pilot. “Let the system be purged.”
This was turning into a goddamn Greek chorus, and Max hated Greek choruses. Max clapped hard one time to reset the room.
“Hey, team,” said Max. “I say we kill the script. Okay? We lay low.”
Pilot bored his gaze into Max’s mind. The triangle of sunlight caught his pate and turned him ghostly white.
It occurred to Max that he had only known Pilot for three days, including today.
“You have an opportunity here to do what is right,” said Pilot, almost pleading. “I once had that opportunity. I missed it. I lost my daughter as a result.”
“What happened to you?” wondered Max.
Max stared at Pilot. Pilot stared at Max. Pilot could outstare the centuries.
“Story for another time,” said Pilot quietly.
Max opened his mouth to speak, but Pilot stopped him with his mind. This was not a business venture for Pilot, thought Max. It was atonement.
Max remembered Noelle’s room. A time capsule with an old landline phone and no computers in sight. A shrine to the past, and Pilot’s forlorn desire to recapture it.
Brayden clutched his crazy blond anime hair. Shane sat next to him, one knee bouncing, watching the two men. Akiko sat ready to strike her keyboard.
“What is going on with you two?” she said slowly.
“We’re killing the script,” said Max. “At best, Trollout is gonna bring a backlash. At best. I just know it. Don’t get me wrong—personally, I think the Fred Moulds of the world are responsible for their own suicides. But Trollout might lose us hearts and minds, is what I’m saying.”
“If you believe that is the right thing to do, then so do I,” said Pilot.
The triangle of light had drifted away, and Pilot looked normal again.
“I take back what I said about hundreds of dead trolls,” said Pilot. “That was crass. From now on, no more dead bodies.”
“Ugh, stop talking about dead bodies,” said Max.
“I am sorry, Max. You are right. I hear you. Kill the script.”
Pilot placed a warm, dry hand on Max’s shoulder, and Max found himself thinking of Dad. Dad, whom he loved, but with whom he spoke usually in parallel, with the lines rarely meeting. Dad was not the kind of dad to say things like I hear you, and Max realized he had been starved to hear those words for years.