[TTally]

“Bing bing, Bing bing!” I ignored my phone and kept at the task at hand, teaching Riz all the in’s and out’s of sex (no pun intended). He has started innocently, asking how he can make sure his First Time would be good for not only him, but the girl also. Myself along with about ten people flooded the Feed at the same time explaining it wouldn’t be like he pictured, he would be a ten second wonder like the rest of us.
“Bing, bing, Bing bing!” Now he moved on to techniques of the ‘art’ of cumming. I had to sit back and giggle a little bit, the lol’s flowing across my feed instantly. He’s a younger kid, half way across the world asking people how to add an arch to his. “Bing bing, BING BING!” One thing about the Room is we can’t see each other directly, so they had no idea I’m a woman, or perhaps they simply forgot. I took of my Set and suddenly reality hit. I blinked a few times and rotated around in my chair to fetch the annoying hand held.
“Bing bing Bing BING!” It chimed as I picked it up. It was the RL calling. Real Life. Geh. I clicked to open the small text file to see what it wanted. “Sorry I ran late, dinner took longer than expected. Want to come over to my house or should I go to yours?” I read it and grimaced. I had just got rid of a visitor and wanted to be absorbed in the Feed all night, drinking. Not see a Real person. I closed the file and threw it back on top of my bed slightly annoyed.
Back on went the headphones and goggles, like an oversized salon hairdryer. I was back into the Room, with all its blinding white walls and active Feeds walls. Riz had left without a goodbye and the rest of the Users changed to the topic of videogames. I watched the text fly by my eyes like credits in a movie. They were about as interesting as them too. I switched my display to a website and the nanobots inside my visor flickered like light on water for a second then resolved to show the page.
I was checking to see when my deadline for a side project was due. “Zoom.” The page zoomed up to my eyes and I scrolled looking for the information I wanted. Creating /k files wasn’t so hard as it was time consuming. I wanted a night of Mayhem, drinking, gaming, meeting new people. Everything the Sender had just offered me through my phone, but without having the obligations to entertain me and another person. If I got bored on the Feed, I would go to another site and find something to do that way.
“Fuck, only two more weeks, eh? NinjaCloud that’s not nice to do to me….” I muttered as I scanned the page more. Sighing I went back to The Room and sat down deep in my chair. The conversation had now drifted to food and drinks. “Ha I forgot I opened you!” I took a swig of my now slightly warm beer and wiped off the condensation on my sweat pants.
<zilla> wine + seafood
<zilla> cook it up, and it's awesome
<Cj_> i havent tried wine
<Cj_> too young me thinks
<`nii> nice sweat white wine would go fine with that
<zilla> Best part is, it's not alcoholic.
<zilla> Tastes the same, minus the you get drunk
What’s the point of drinking then if your not going to get drunk, I wondered.
<Cj_> LOL
<Succabus> FOOD FOOD FOOD
<Cj_> whoa
<Cj_> hi there Succabus
All the talk about wine, I had to jump in. I held my beer close to my body and called up my text box. “Open text input. Drink drink drink. Hit send.”
<TTally> Drink drink drink.
<Cj_> alcohol is baddddd
“Autofix previous post, Cj- correction.” I waited for the curser to get positioned. “Insert before ‘is bad’”. The cursor jumped to the middle of his/her sentence and blinked impatiently. “Being gone . Click send.”
<TTally> <Cj_> alcohol being gone is baddddd
<TTally> That’s what u meant.
<Cj_> uh, sure
<Cj_> well im too young to drink
<Cj_> so i wouldnt know
<TTally> Never too young.
<TTally> Babies know how to drink
<TTally> All you need is to not get CAUGHT with it.
<Cj_> :|
<TTally> But the ability is always there.
<zilla> Exactly
<Cj_> geez
<zilla> Hell, you could drink it while you're in your mom's womb
<TTally> My baby will.
<goozilla> Rofl
You could always tell who used a Set and who didn’t- was their grammar perfect? If they had typo’s, no punctuation, still used “Lol”, then they didn’t. It’s like same as the divide between Fiber Optic cable and Dial Up in the early 2000’s. Didn’t make you better, but made you feel better. I switched screens back to the task at hand and brought up my side job- provide data to an anonyms benefactor who was leaking their information. I always did jobs this way, not knowing who the Contractor was, to avoid any conflict of difference. I take my time, but I always deliver.
And if I can hack and shift through data on someone else, someone could trace it back to me. Don’t want that to happen. A good firewall and early detection will only slow someone down, and before you know it they could get anything they wanted. Came close to that once, not eager to revisit. I had called someone a name (Buttman) then my screen went blue after he told me “goodbye”. If I hadn’t panicked and pulled the cord out who knows what would have happened.
Still weirds me out to this day. I always walk around now in the grocery store, at school, at work, in the movies- wondering if that person is there. You don’t know who someone is on the internet, your neighbor could be that troll in the Room last night. Sexykitty69420 could be your baby cousin. Your boss might be that newb on the forums that you moderate for and banned. Your best friend could be hacking you for finical data. Like me.
Isaiah Pacey, age 24. Lives in a third floor apartment, live in girl friend, and prefers cats over dogs. A picture popped up when I asked the page to open his file and the face starring out at me made me shell shocked for a moment. This was my old classmate, my vacuum sales men, my drinking buddy, my HoN nemesis. All 210 lbs, curly brown hair and blue eyes of him. I knew he worked in a debt collecting office, he would let me know when my name popped up and shove me down the list to avoid collections. He would only do that so often for me but it kept me off the radar for awhile. Now apparently, he was cutting other people deals.
Crediting their account without collecting anything in return. I pulled the visor up and looked at my phone I had thrown over on the bed. Do I let him know, blow my only Ace in the sleeve? Or do I turn him in, loose a fringe benefit of friendship with him and drink alone forever? I pulled the visor back down and looked at the sum he had cheated the System out of. $16,184.90 US dollars. “Geh- PACEY what the fuck dude!” I yelled to myself. The nanobots flickered from minuet specks of spittle that hit them like a lake in a rainstorm. I went back into the Room to inquire a friend of mine.
<Sam> hey T what’s up?
<TTally> Got a question for you.
I opened a door in the Room and closed it behind us. This way no one can see/hear what we’re talking about.
<Sam> k wut
<TTally> What is more important, real life friends or your safety on the Net?
<Sam> worlds collided finally huh
<TTally> You can say that yes. Do I turn a friend in for giving out a lot of free money and keep my hobby open, or risk it all and set him free?
<Sam> i say let him go but for all I know you might have stabbed me in the back before for the torrent thing.
<TTally> So people are only deserving of a second chance if you have seen their face and liked them, versus just liking them without the face? That doesn’t seem fair.
<Sam> babe I just smoked two bowels don’t get all deep on me. Did u think he was maybe doing this to help a friend out of a jam anyway? I wouldn’t fucking do it for no one.
I took off the Set again and picked up my once annoying phone. “Izzy” The phone pulled up his number and dialed it for me, and I counted the rings. On the fourth he picked up.
“Heeeey!”
“75-2997362.” I said with a flat tone, reading the Set’s screen on it’s side.
“…What?” I repeated myself for him and heard whispered curses. “That’s- what… how did you get my employee number?”
“I also have your Social and the amount you cheated your company out of.”
“FUCK- I thought I covered it!”
“Listen, you didn’t hear this from me though OK? If I didn’t know you- you would be in cuffs right now. Get your things- grab your woman- and leave. Don’t tell me where, just GO. You have five minutes.” I clicked the phone off and sat down heavily.
You don’t know who someone is on the internet, your neighbor could be that troll in the Room last night. Sexykitty69420 could be your baby cousin. Your boss might be that newb on the forums that you moderate for and banned. Your best friend could be hacking you for finical data, or could be the only reason you haven’t been caught for some risky things.


* Mexopacey(~Mexopacey@2B6576478.7378229.64795ABB.C6 21D39A.IP) Quit
<Sam> huh wonder where Mex went?
<Niki> who cares the fucking tool bag
I read the posts with a grain of salt, trying to place a picture with each face. Then, taking a deep contented sigh I typed:
<TTally> I know, right?