Ghost Stories - Lorna Bradbury [15]
Lake highlighted some text. it read: ‘in da Veitchmobile w Emz n Madz. Gonna PaRTY 2nite!!!’
He clicked back to the friends list and highlighted the next profiles.
Emily Beaumont, Eau Claire, wisconsin.
Madison Moritz, Eau Claire, wisconsin.
Andrew Veitch, Eau Claire, wisconsin.
‘Look, man,’ I said – the others would kill me for this – ‘a bunch of us go down the Palms most evenings after work. why don’t you come along some time? Get a change of scene?’
As though not hearing me, he said: ‘Let me show you one more.’
Caitlin Sanders, thirteen. ‘oMG so I met my moms new bf 2nite. hes a hunk!’
‘I don’t want to see this,’ I said.
‘It’s all here,’ he replied, dully. ‘The mother’s boyfriend didn’t stick around long. But he made contact with Caitlin again, through our site. wanted to stay friends. Suggested they meet. Don’t tell your mom, though. our little secret.’
I felt my pity turn to anger and disgust. ‘what are you, sick? Do you get off on this stuff?’
‘These kids,’ he hissed, ‘they open up their lives on our site. i’m bored, i’m happy, i’m sad. I hate school, I hate my folks, I hate my life. hey! Look at me! Everyone! Someone! See my pictures! See my status! Be my friend! Desperate, desperate – for someone to notice. Just to validate their existence. and then, suddenly …’
His fingers mimed a bubble popping in the air.
‘They’re gone,’ I said.
‘Oh, they’re not gone,’ he giggled. ‘You can’t take all those experiences, emotions, plug them into a worldwide network with a hundred trillion more receptors than a human brain, and just expect them to disappear. You think after all that input, when the status updates suddenly stop, they’re not going to ask: where am i? what’s happening?’
I looked at his flabby white face, aghast. ‘You’ve been down here too long,’ I said.
‘Look,’ he said. he clicked on Latest. ‘Can’t sleep – just updated a moment ago.’
He clicked on a profile. Brown mop of hair, pale face. Brian McKay, eleven. Sweetwaters, illinois.
In a new tab, he called up the Sweetwaters Sun-Shopper, three days old. Boy dies in fire. Same photo.
I shrugged. ‘Could be his mother. Grief makes people do weird things.’
‘No,’ replied Lake. ‘The account is frozen. Can’t be a hacker, either.’
‘A glitch, then. Computers aren’t infallible. an iP error. Maybe he wrote it weeks ago, it’s been floating around in cyberspace all this time.’
‘Floating around in cyberspace? Uh-huh. what if we reply?’
I felt reluctant, uneasy. what could possibly be wrong with replying? Yet it felt like hollering into the mouth of a crypt. Lake rattled his fat fingers across the keyboard. ‘what’s up?’ he typed. I stared at the screen until the pixels blurred. But nothing came back. Lake put a small USB drive into his PC and started dragging and dropping files across the screen.
‘This week’s latest additions,’ he said. ‘i’m gonna take them to join the multitudes.’
As he finished and reached to take out the drive again, I glanced back at the screen, at the unclosed tab, with the words ‘Just can’t sleep’.
I looked again. This was a reply. Someone had replied to our message.
Can’t sleep.
What’s up?
Just can’t sleep.
Lake had got up and was already disappearing into the maze of servers. I wanted to call out, but my dry throat barely managed a croak. I dashed after him.
He moved swiftly to the very farthest corner of the mausoleum. There, one tower stood alone.’This is where my friends live,’ he said. ‘not just their profiles from our site. I download their whole online existence. Blogs, music, videos, browsing history. Their entire personality.’
‘That’s illegal!’
‘one day,’ he spat, ‘it’ll be illegal not to do what i’m doing. once, people thought they could delete the deformed, the retarded, the so-called lower