We Are Watching Eliza Bright

by A. E. Osworth

  “No problem—You’re not feeling well” Our Suzanne replies

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  SChoy: Devonte, where are you?

  SChoy: you haven’t answered two days

  SChoy: im fucking dying in here

  SChoy: Eliza won’t leave the elevator

  SChoy: i need to talk to someone who doesn’t, like, want me to be their mother

  SChoy: or, like, someone who isn’t RIGHT FUCKING NEXT TO ME

  SChoy: it’s brutal, never leaving. i didn’t expect it to be this fucking crazy-making

  SChoy: devonte?

  SChoy: we have to move forward with some sort of plan

  SChoy: you’ve had days to think about it

  SChoy: i need help

  SChoy: are you okay?

  SChoy: devonte?

  SChoy: I need her to be able to leave the room

  SChoy: I need to be able to leave again

  SChoy: devonte, you are the only one who knows how to do this, you have to

  SChoy: devonte

  SChoy: devonte i swear to fucking god

  DAleb: i’m sorry suzanne

  DAleb: i cant

  SChoy: I CAN’T? what can’t you do?

  SChoy: you think you can’t more than i can’t?

  SChoy: she’s in my literal house

  SChoy: eating my literal food and keeping me a literal prisoner

  SChoy: and you can’t?

  SChoy: your life is fucking UNTOUCHED

  SChoy: devonte?

  SChoy: devonte, what the everliving fuckballs?

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  We can’t find her. We can’t find her and it’s frustrating. Or we can’t find her and it means we are winning. Or we can’t find her and we move on to the other women on whom we are tactically focusing for a time; we’ll come around to her again when she surfaces. We cackle with glee; she is cracking. She is cracking and we love it. We have found the weak places and tapped them with our sharpest hammers. Doesn’t she know that none of this is dangerous, that we will only hurt her if she doesn’t disappear? Or we desperately want her back. We want her to show any sign that she knows we’re still around. She is so much fun to consume. Her fear is a delicacy.

  What surprises us is that we also wish desperately for Suzanne to send up a flare, any flare at all. Even though she’s abrasive. Even though she’s the social justice warrior. We love to slurp her shock, surprise and horror off her bones as well. It’s not the same kind of love we’ve grown into with some of the others. Nothing like JP, for instance. Nothing close to that. But this sucks for her. It just fucking does. She could have nothing to do with this, and were it not for some overzealous volunteering, she would be relatively untouched—The Inspectre can’t find her, after all. She is no JP, who got whirlwinded into this; she is no Preston, tempted with a siren song, fallen victim to females. She just raised her hand at the wrong time, thinking she could be a superhero. We love to see it—someone masterminding their own downfall, out in the open.

  Eventually, we will come to know the outside of this freakshow building that they’re in. Eventually, we will know the view from the window on the first floor, in particular. And we will hear what the degenerates inside think about this, those faggots, those people pretending to be made-up genders, who are infiltrating our normal fucking game space. They will converge upon Suzanne as though she could fix the crazy girl, as though Eliza is her responsibility. And we know that is the worst feeling; we hate being responsible for others. Even being responsible for ourselves is exhausting.

  Or. Or. Suzanne is purely selfish. The Inspectre is targeting her too, after all. Perhaps she’s staying in, scared of her own accord.

  Or Suzanne was voluntold, she didn’t volunteer at all. Eliza guilted her into offering housing and now Suzanne is being kept prisoner. She feels like someone volunteered her to be a janitor without her consent; constantly cleaning up the spilled milk, those human-shaped puddles.

  But that is not now. For now, we can’t find them. We don’t know exactly what she does in meatspace after she is finished chatting with Devonte. What we do know is that moments after that chat is timestamped, Chimera the Protector appears in Windy City, and she appears alone. We also know that she is not visible for more than twenty-eight seconds. Then even her digital self is gone, gone, gone. Fuck this shit.

  Chapter Ninety

  Preston is on the third floor of Fancy Dog Games. It should be rife with debugging, but when he feels unprovoked panic begin to rise in his chest, he tells everyone to take lunch. “The whole team? All five of us at once?” Devonte asks.

  “Yep,” replies Preston. “You deserve it.” Preston squeezes his temples with his hands and Devonte knows that Preston needs some time, some privacy. So they all go to the taco place and we imagine Preston rekeys the elevator to let only his ID onto the third floor for an hour or so. He must need some privacy. Then he embarks on playing Guilds, for real, for the first time in—fuck, months? A year? We are not sure. He wants to forget about Eliza, about Dog and his sad stump where a tail used to be. He’s in a cone, and Preston has hired a fancy dog walker, armed with treats and vetted near to death to make double, triple sure she is not The Inspectre. But he thinks The Inspectre is likely a man, that women don’t generally do things like this.

  Preston spent enough time as Human Man in virtual reality only to declare it working, up to par. Now he really takes a look at himself, looking down at his hands. His lair, a simple cube room set apart from the rest of the world, doesn’t contain much. Certainly no reflective surfaces—mirrors didn’t seem important before the headset. Using his almost unlimited in-game power, the perk of being the CEO, he replaces one wall with mirrors. He need not pay—his money counter always reads an eight, lying on its side. Infinite credits. We are so jealous. He gets the woman; he gets the money; he gets the fame. And the world of Windy City is his bitch.

  He sets his eyes upon the default character he inhabits. Human Man. He moves his arms and Human Man’s arms move. He paces back and forth and he sees this amalgam of parts pace as well, slightly stiff. When more sensors come out, as hardware advancements march forward with time, that will be fixed. He isn’t worried. The cape flows out behind him and Preston smiles—the physics are spot-on. His team has made a world steeped in scientific laws for his heroes, his villains, to break with flight and teleportation and electricity shooting from their fingers. He is sad the second this thought materializes—likely he’ll never get to see Circuit Breaker like this. Or he is angry that Eliza has so thoroughly ruined the launch. Or he’s numb, still, from Dog’s tail being amputated, and touching this is like poking a surgical scar—it zaps through him in the not-feeling. Though Human Man’s head dips, looks to the floor, his face doesn’t change. It is chiseled; stoic. And not only is it devoid of emotion, it looks nothing like him.

  Preston doesn’t feel the same things his players report feeling—we’ve heard him say he does, but he doesn’t. He feels disconnected from this bag of options he chose almost at random. Yes, it was a lie, back when he called them his favorites. He doesn’t have favorite options. He chose efficiently. Or he was so overwhelmed at the time, he created the narrative that made him sound smooth on television. We think that’s a tragedy, like a wizard who can never revel in his own wondrous spells. Perhaps, he thinks, if it looked more like him, he’d feel at least a shadow of the magic he helped make. Unlike everyone else in the system, he and Brandon can both alter their features after selection. We watch as he creates his first self-portrait, as honest as he can make it. It’s from memory too. A life-size sculpture. Preston stands before himself, creating himself. Examining himself. He keeps the cape—he finds it actually is his favorite, no lie this time. Not a random choice.

  He’s been selecting, shaping, sculpting for but ten minutes when his alert goes off. When he’d realized he hadn’t coded any component of the game himself in the same amount of time he hadn’t played it, he refamiliarized himself by addi
ng in a few lines, just for him. So he knows, even though he is not friends with her, that Suzanne is online. He would know if Eliza signed on too, but he knows as well as we do that this won’t happen. And he knows his code has worked because he knows every time Devonte plays, even when he is not Runner Quick. He wants to be close to them, to those shut in Suzanne’s house (or apartment? He doesn’t really know. He has looked up the address but has not yet used Google Street View, which he will do soon), without actually being there. He wants to poke at his bruise without injuring himself further.

  We wonder why. He could move on. Out of sight, out of mind. And Eliza is definitely out of sight. Perhaps he feels a sense of responsibility. Eliza has convinced him he is partially to blame for events unfolding the way they are. Perhaps he is lonely—Eliza was his girlfriend, after all, or perhaps his whore, and he mistakenly thought her friends were actually his as well. Or perhaps he is operating within a moral code—people appear to be in trouble (even though we know they’re perfectly safe as long as they behave how we want them to), and so he feels protective. Or perhaps he is like us—curious. Watching. Entertained.

  Preston uses another one of his CEO powers. “Suzanne,” he says, and she hears his voice in her ear. She is startled—she appears where she last was, outside the city surrounded by trees that have, since she and Eliza split them and scorched them, grown back. She knows instantly who it is. She looks around, but no—he’s not there. She’s never considered he could do things others couldn’t, project his voice where his character isn’t, but she supposes it makes sense. Owning the world; that is a superpower. Omniscient. Godlike.

  “You’re not supposed to use real names in-game,” she whispers into the air with a voice still watered from crying.

  Preston can hear the recent tears. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m—I don’t know what I am.” It is the truth. He pauses, and Suzanne can hear him breathe. “Do you want to talk?”

  “Yes,” she says, and she is surprised at how quickly she answers. Or she says, “I don’t know. I don’t know what I am either.” Or she says, “Not like this. This is creepy.” Or perhaps all three, one after the other. We are learning quickly that many things can be one thing. As we are inventing this world, this story, we are learning that there are few absolutes. Few single options.

  “I’ll teleport you,” he replies. He is nervous. He isn’t sure where it is coming from, but we know. He’s about to show someone his new self for the first time. To unmask is vulnerable.

  Preston is surprised when Chimera materializes in his all-but-empty lair—he expects Suzanne’s avatar to look more like her. Instead, she is a sphinxlike creature with giant arms and wings. She is barely human, save for the elegant head.

  Suzanne is just as surprised—like everyone else, she knows what Human Man looks like. But standing before her is an approximation of Preston—the same swooped hair and symmetrical smile. She gasps—she’s never seen an avatar look so realistic. Partly, it is because this is her first time using Vive. But it’s also because Preston is the only person she’s ever met pretty enough to be replicated almost exactly by choices in a computer game.

  At the same time Preston says, “You’re not you,” Suzanne says, “You look like you.” They both smile and laugh behind their headsets, but Chimera and Human Man only stare at each other as though they are mesmerized.

  When they breathe the sighs of stopping, Preston is excited to have something driving thoughts of Eliza, of this crisis, out of his head. “So do you feel anything?”

  “What do you mean?” Suzanne asks, puzzled.

  “Like, your character doesn’t look like you. But people report Windy City as feeling like reality. Like their bodies are actually here.”

  Suzanne pauses to think, turns toward the mirror. “I don’t know. This is my first time playing this way.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. We’ve been busy.”

  “I guess that’s understandable. You should take some—alone time.” Preston doesn’t mean it to sound strange, sexual, and he winces. Luckily for him, Suzanne can’t see that. She sees only Human Man.

  Suzanne is elated. She feels recognized, understood. She does need time to herself. “I think you’re probably right.” She turns back to the mirror. “I don’t know, though. I don’t know that she has to look like me for me to feel—connected, I guess is the word.” She tosses her head side to side and sure enough, Chimera’s hair bounces and flows. It is so realistic. “I’ve played as her for so long. She’s part of me.”

  Preston bites his tongue—he almost says that she sounds crazy, like one of those stereotypical basement boys who are too hyped up on cyberspace. He stops himself because she is vulnerable right now. Or because he figures she might be right. Human Man, as he was originally designed, represented a part of him. Perhaps he hadn’t felt connected because Human Man was only the worst part, the grasping desire for more, for better, for optimization.

  Instead, he says, “So I ask this only based on my very recent experience and not because I think this is how, like, games should go, but if you haven’t played as yourself, how do you know if, relatively speaking, you wouldn’t feel more connected than you do now?”

  Suzanne laughs. “I guess I don’t.”

  “Wanna see?”

  “You mean make a new character?”

  “Sure. Why not. For the lulz.”

  They spend the rest of the hour whispering into each other’s ears, sculpting Suzanne, selecting every arch of eyebrow, every curve of hip from the eerily detailed character-creation menu. She is both subject and object in this moment. He pays such close attention to every part of her. We are both jealous or we are not; it is Suzanne, after all. Harsh warrior; shrewish ruiner of fun; melting snowflake. But. It is art; it is intimate.

  Chapter Ninety-One

  @theinspectre: I notice @HumanMan isn’t seeing you at all @BrightEliza. I’d know if he was.

  @theinspectre: Is that because @BrightEliza and @yrface are holed up like a couple of dykes?

  @theinspectre: Are you too busy fucking @yrface to notice everyone hates you, @BrightEliza?

  @theinspectre: Some politician said some girls rape easy, @BrightEliza. I can’t remember who it was.

  @theinspectre: But I bet he was talking about you, @BrightEliza.

  @theinspectre: I bet you fuck easy, @BrightEliza. I bet you rape easy

  @theinspectre: you’re a coward, @BrightEliza. You too, @yrface. Hiding from me, from this.

  @theinspectre: You’re just afraid to be wrong, @BrightEliza. You’re afraid of a healthy debate.

  @theinspectre: Come out and debate us, @BrightEliza. Come out and play.

  @theinspectre: .@BrightEliza, have you listened to your phone lately?

  @theinspectre: .@BrightEliza, they’re coming to take you away, ha ha.

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  Lewis dreams of severed tails. He dreams of a slow cutting, of watching the blood well around soft curling fur, of guiding the offending hand, of wielding the scalpel himself. He is remarkably clear-eyed about it. I know I am dreaming of Dog’s tail and it is my fault he writes in his Day One journal every single day since the incident occurred. In his dreams, he always winds up transparent, as though he has given something of his essence, and covered in blood. He looks down at his own hands—they are spotted too. “Out damn spot,” he says, and then he wakes, sweating, feeling like he is drowning. He does not cry out. But he does fall out of bed. His sheets are soaked and he thrashes against them. They cling. They pull. He slowly untangles himself.

  “Lewis? Lewis, are you okay?” Mrs. Fleishman walks into the room without knocking. “I heard a thump.”

  We have not zoomed in on Mrs. Fleishman in a while—on either Fleishman, if we’re honest—but she’s been gone the longest, a tertiary character as mothers often are. She is lying awake when she hears the thump and she comes running down the hall. She’s been listening for him. She’s barely slept herself. She is so confused,
and she is very worried. It makes her bite her cuticles. She’s made herself bleed so many times in the week since Lewis’s friend was fired. We pity her for what is to come. We blame her for what has happened. We know that Mrs. Fleishman can’t win. Mothers never can. Not in Disney movies, not in D&D games, not on the therapist’s couch.

  “God, Ma. It was just a dream,” he says. He climbs back into his bed and pretends to sleep. He hears his mother pad down the hall. He does not sleep after that—neither of them do. His phone counts up from 1:37 to 2:03 to 2:25. He stares at the ceiling, wired and fearing water, severed tails and blood. He thinks about his endless Steam library—he wants to play something, but nothing appeals. He selects Guilds out of habit, but when he sits in front of his computer, something keeps his hand from reaching out to turn it on. He doesn’t understand what.

  Understanding his whys and hows has never been Lewis’s strongest suit. In that way, we can’t trust his thoughts, his self-awareness, his Diary, which we have under our control, as clear-eyed as it might sound. His reactions are animal. We have to speculate so much more with him, even though we ostensibly have the most concrete replication of his inner monologue, the most of anyone we’re watching. He must be far more complex than what he writes; it doesn’t make sense if he isn’t. Funny, it’s not what we would’ve predicted. Most of us look so much more like Lewis, act so much more like Lewis, have experiences that are closest to Lewis’s. We would’ve predicted logic, order, in the way he sees the world and himself. Instead, the way he sees the world is clear, but the way he sees himself is muddy water. Is that us? Are we like that too?