AARON: I thought I killed him. Like the real him. I was in tears. He still makes fun of me.
D1V: That is really sad and really hilarious. Tell me more.
11
AARON
“Thank you, Aaron. Your father could really use a day off.”
My mom is talking to me—I hear her, the words are there floating in the air, but I can’t bring myself to grab them. I’m behind the computer in the reception area, ignoring the patient records that desperately need updating while my eyes are fixated on the countless news articles that seem to be pouring out about D1V. I go back and forth from that over to the chat application on my phone I’ve been using to talk to her.
“Aaron?” my mom presses.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “I got it.”
“I’ll be in the back if you need anything,” she says and turns to walk into her office. The sound of her heels against the floor abruptly stop, and I glance up to see her fiddling with her ID badge, the door to her personal office still closed.
“Mom?” I venture.
“How’s the...” She looks up at me and clears her throat. “How’s the writing going?”
She smiles, and I can’t help but wonder if this is a trap.
“It’s okay,” I offer hesitantly. “Ryan likes everything I’m working on, but Jason...” I shrug. “He’s just difficult, is all. Doesn’t see the vision. Doesn’t—”
“Pay you guys?” she asks, stepping back toward the desk.
“He’s going to,” I tell her firmly, though I wish I felt as confident about this as I sound. He still hasn’t sent over those contracts for me and Ryan. “He will. He’s gearing up to present the game at a conference, and we’ll be set.”
“Aaron,” she continues, clearing her throat again. “I know I give you a hard time, about your games, this...” She gestures at the computer, her eyebrows furrowed. “This world of yours that I don’t really understand. I just worry about Jason taking advantage of you. And of Ryan, too. I mean, he’s a bit tougher—”
“Yeah, he is.” I can’t help but laugh, remembering how assertive he was at our meeting the other day.
“But...when your father was working at all those restaurants, in the kitchens, even when he was managing a place, I would see it.” She shakes her head. “The long hours he wasn’t paid enough to work, the overtime he didn’t get... God, and when he ran deliveries, and people wouldn’t tip...” She sighs. “I just can’t bear watching you go through that. And neither can he, even if he won’t say it.”
“I thought...” I’m not even sure what to say right now. She’s said before that she didn’t want Jason to take advantage of me, but I always thought that was just an excuse. I thought she hated the games because it got in the way of her dream for me, this doctor stuff, not because of what Dad had been through. “Sorry, I didn’t think of it like that.”
“I just worry.” She fiddles with her ID tag again.
“If he doesn’t pay me, he can’t use the work for the game,” I explain. “I won’t let him do that. Ryan wouldn’t, that’s for sure. He even asked Jason to draw up contracts for us.”
“That was good thinking on his part.” She smiles. “I know you two will be careful. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
She heads into the back, leaving me alone up front with my thoughts. Thankfully, the waiting area is empty, and the appointment schedule is light, because now my head is swimming. With the presumptions I’ve made, and with everything going on with D1V.
The schedule might be light, but my heart feels all kinds of heavy.
Every blog seems to be listing the same stuff, with screenshots of social media updates from D1V that she’s long since deleted but are still being shared around.
About her mother getting egged by some trolls who found out where she lived.
About the video capturing the moment her mom came home.
About those same monsters recording the livestream of it all and spreading it like wildfire in the darkest corners of the Internet, hailing it as some kind of “victory.” It seems like every time a video gets taken down off YouTube, another one pops up in its place, posted by another anonymous, nameless profile.
The way these people are so organized, so determined, so calculated...
It makes me want to throw up.
I need to find a way to help her.
If these monsters can figure out where D1V lives, where her mom works...all of these personal things about her just using...I don’t know, Google searches or whatever, then why can’t we find them? The people harassing her? The police who are trying to help, the support people who run the actual game where this is taking place—why are their searches coming up empty?
All these people, who are hiding behind their fake avatar pictures on social media and posting under faux names in comments sections, spewing vile hate virtually and spawning that into real-life horror—why do they seem to get a free pass?
There’s still an hour until Mom’s first patient is due to arrive, so I open the browser on the aging desktop computer and start searching. It’s ridiculous. I know. The best minds are supposedly looking into it already, so what the hell can I possibly do?
Still. It feels good to try.
I go to all the blogs covering what happened and scour through the comments sections, which are just a collection of human garbage. Usernames that are one word followed by a bundle of numbers, with no other posts beyond the one here or there. No profile photos. No information about who they are. Some of the comments are labeled as “marked for deletion” or “pending” on a few of the outlets, and when I click to see their full contents, I feel sick to my stomach. They’re either full of the vilest of the comments section or have photos of D1V. Some are screenshots of her and her mom, or animated GIFs from the Quarter Slice Crisis incident. The worst are photoshopped images of her doing unspeakable things, or having horrible things done to her.
It’s mind-boggling. Where does this hate even come from? And who has the time to create these kinds of intricate animated pictures and photoshops?
Link-sharing sites don’t provide much else, either. I scour through Reddit, looking at the forums sharing the posts about D1V. There’s a subforum encouraging people to keep pressing her, a place that looks like it’s made just for trolls, but even here, where these people congregate, I’m finding nothing. Profiles that post a ton of stuff but are anonymous, focused on one spot, one place.
The organization of it all is terrifying.