Issue #132
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note : while this is a stand-alone story, it is part of a four part series so if you haven’t already, I would encourage you to start from the beginning. Click here to go back to the first installment. Thanks for your interest and support!
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Tristan opened up his browser and immediately began searching for products to ambush. Nothing reverberated, down to a person’s core more than a one star review and watching all the other users scrambling around like ants to come to the defense of a product they had never used was the highest form of entertainment he had ever found. And it cost nothing.
The key was finding products without very many reviews. It was harder to get anyone to pay attention to a one-star-atom-bomb, when it was just one of many bad reviews, hidden among the four, and five star sheep. Products put out by small companies that were relying on their good reviews, that was where the magic happened.
It took several minutes but he finally found it. One product, released just a month ago. Four reviews, all five stars, probably all their friends. One three star review. This was perfect. Tristan clicked on the link, chose his rating and began to type.
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He cracked open the soda and sat back, already watching the responses that were filing in from the ether. Sometimes he would engage with the idiots, responding to their offended sensibilities, but tonight he was in more of a hit-and-run kind of a mood, so he clicked away, going off in search of new victims.
The explosion of new authors out there, promoting their work, had turned the Internet into Christmas, every day of the week. He had to be careful not indulge in this too often, and risk being exposed, but every now and again, he couldn’t resist the urge to lean in and take a huge bite. The parameters were pretty much the same. Look for authors he had never heard of, covers that looked like they had slapped it together on some freeware art program, without very many reviews.
There were so many easy targets out there, but he had to pick just the right one. After all, it wasn’t like he could do this whenever he wanted, he had to make what shots he took count for as much as possible. He scanned the author pages, until the perfect candidate scrolled past. That had to be one of the most pathetic looking pictures he had ever seen. One desperate author, looking like he couldn’t even afford nice clothes for the picture. He had probably done the best he could, getting his mother to clean those rags up, but there was only so much you could do to polish shit.
Sometimes, it was too easy.
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That was going to be hard to top. He minimized the browser and turned back to his room, starting to think about dinner when he heard the sound coming from his closet. It sounded mechanical, but there was nothing in there that could have caused it. The sound raised in pitch, almost like a motor, increasing in speed or power.
“What the fuck?” he whispered as he approached the closet, reaching out to take hold of the cool doorknob. He started to turn it but paused, not sure if he actually wanted to see what was behind there. The door bumped out towards him, as if something had pushed at it from the other side, and he jumped, inadvertently pulling the door open in one panicked move and stumbled back, yelling out as he saw what emerged.
An electric drill hovered in the doorway, the motor on, and the drill bit spinning wildly in search of something to bite in to. It bobbed up and down, hovering as if at the end of a fishing line, but there was nothing that he could see holding it aloft. He took another step back, sure that he had fallen asleep in front of the computer. The drill had a digitized look to it, as if it was an image from a website that had jumped out of the computer and come to life in front of him.
In a flash, he suddenly realized where he had seen the drill before. It was one of the one-stars he had handed out just a week earlier. But there was no way the company could have found him here. Besides, how could they even do something like this? He looked at the power cord, dangling from the drill, not plugged in anywhere. Still, the drill roared, with life it clearly shouldn’t have had in the first place, jabbing at him through the air as if in accusation.
He went to take another step back, when the drill shot forward. In his panic, he tripped and fell back, grabbing around to save himself, so much that he barely felt the drill enter into his forehead. He wasn’t even aware of the sensation of hitting the floor.
Hundreds of miles away, Brett Campor took in a deep breath as the digitized version of himself reformed in his apartment. He looked at the image of Tristan’s room on his computer screen, and reached down to sever the connection. One more troll, taken out of commission. It was going to get harder to continue getting away with this, but the work was essential. He would have to continue this as long as possible, doing what needed to be done for the betterment of society.
The Internet was broken.
He had to fix it.
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