[3 of 3]

  I was clicking dropdown boxes on Reddit to reveal a preview of some shitposts when Facebook dinged for my attention.

  There were three new notifications. Lucky me. I hadn’t checked it since the night before, and I felt so popular.

  I ignored the birthday post, checked Friend19’s comment notice as read, and expanded the photo I had been tagged in. Friend64 was a close friend from High school. He posted an inspiration quote over a pretty mountain. He had tagged me, Friend19, Friend20, and Friend40.

  “Ugh.” I clicked the blue “F” to go back to the front of Facebook. As usual, I overlooked the first post as I started scrolling down. Then went back to see what I missed before continuing to scroll down to the bottom of eternity.

  Everything the same as always: baby photos. Cute animals. Random posts that my parents’ friends think are funny with little yellow banana men on them. The occasional link to a very reputable sources of news. etc.

  Friend32’s post reappear, the one she shared a few days ago that showed the likelihood of getting murdered in different parts of the USA.

  A lot of people were paying attention to Random-News-Blogging-Page’s “article” about crime rates. It occurred to me that I hadn’t actually read what the page said, only looked at the map.

  I looked down at the time. It was a little later than I expected, and I needed to get to the bank.

  From what I’ve told you about the previous two days, you’ve likely assumed that I am a hermit who never sees sunlight. That is fair. But on this day, I had to emerge for my weekly adulting. I’d put off cashing a paycheck that I picked up on Friday because the lines were always long on weekends. I had no reason to suspect that the line would be shorter now, but I decided to go anyway.

  Since banks always close at really weird times, I figured I should aim to arrive at the bank by two o’clock on the dot. That way they couldn’t still be on lunch, and they couldn’t have closed for the day.

  My phone was dead, and without it, the real world felt alien. Silent, almost. The Internet and everything on it followed me out of the house, but now it was confined in a corner of my mind now.

  I awkwardly glanced at all the people in front of me. They held their smartphones at the proper distance from their pockets for easy put-away. The bank smelled like old-building. The walls were covered in brown wallpaper and the ceiling had cheap, decorative moldings. The golden chandelier was directly above my head. I craned my neck backward to look at it, wondering if it would fall and kill me.

  I looked at the bullet proof glass retrofitted over the 19th century oak counter. A camera shrouded in a black ball kept an eye on the tellers.

  I imagined what it would look like if a bank robber would bust through the door with a dark mask and a shotgun. Everyone would scream. They’d all be holding their phones in their hand, high in the air so the robber could take them all away and make sure we didn’t snitch to the fuzz (or whatever kids call it now)

  “Maybe I would try to be a hero,” I thought. “I can see myself dying for something stupid like that.”

  “I wonder, if I don’t get killed, do I still get to deposit my pay check? Or do I have to wait until the cops are done with their crime scene.”

  The person who left the teller was wearing a trench coat. Of course he was. He didn’t take very long to do his banking. That was suspicious too. And when he walked away he went up to this guy who was standing by the door. Door-guy was on his phone. The guy who left the line leaned to his open ear and whispered something.

  Then he looked back at me.

  I imagined the bank robbers busting in again. This time they were all wearing trench coats. Not that I can attest to the fact that they weren’t before. The guy I saw walking out had to have been their scout, checking the position of the cameras and the density of the people. I tried to remember his face for the police asked me for a description.

  A whole group of people walked away to my right. They were probably bank robbers too, trying to make the line look longer.

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  I shook the mouse and woke my computer. It showed me my perpetually-opened Facebook window. I briefly gave thought to posting something about how I thought the bank was going to be robbed, but decided against it. My friends, and family, and family friends didn’t need to know how paranoid I was.

  Instead, I opened YouTube to see if the wonderful people I’d been playing with had responded to the argument thread yet. Before I could reload the page to update the notification field, though, I found myself looking at the recommended section.

  I stopped the video from playing when it loaded and looked in the description for the date the video was uploaded. The title said, “tomorrow” if the video was uploaded yesterday, then “tomorrow” meant “today.” And, wouldn’t you know it, that was the case exactly.

  I had heard good things about Champion Commanders. It was a relatively new game, a first-person shooter made by a big company. I thought it looked like a lot of other shooters, but supposedly this one had a lot of personality.

  The live stream was still just starting. I saw it over in the recommended bar with a red “Live” on the thumbnail. It was only about 7:10. The game had only been on for a few minutes. “Sorry, Falcon,” I thought. “I ain’t about that life.”

  I clicked the YouTube logo at the top left and went to the front page of YouTube. It refreshed my recommended results and I browsed around. Mostly, it recommended videos I had already seen (because I’ve been at this so long that I may have watched the entire Internet by now.)

  “Fine,” I said to myself. I minimized Chrome and saw my cluttered desktop for the first time in a while. My eyes scanned around the mess to find the WarRope program. The developers of the game force you to download it through their online store rather than their more-popular competitor’s, PiPeLiNe.

  WarRope opened and immediately prompted me to buy Champion Commanders.

  I thought about the money I had just deposited into the bank. This purchase would eat up just about all of it. But my boredom was begging me to try it, and I didn’t know now much longer the live stream would go.

  While the game was downloading I reopened YouTube. I found FalconWings’s Live Stream and clicked on it. 31 other people were watching at that moment. The video began playing immediately. She was speaking in a monotone voice, the game sounds were quiet behind her. There were long pauses of silence between her comments. These moments would normally have been cut out of her videos to make them more interesting, but I thought it made things more relaxed. Special. Like seeing the behind the scenes on your favorite movie.

  She was on the blue team, playing as a man in some giant mech-suit. I didn’t understand the gameplay very well, but shooters aren’t hard to figure out. There were other people on her team whose voices were gargled from going through so many sets of microphones and speakers. They must have been the 31 other people who had already joined the game. I went to the description of the video and let her game play in the background while I read.

  That sounded a little roundabout way to get someone into the same game. I wondered how many of the 31 viewers were actually in the game with her.

  Back on YouTube the video was getting louder. There were apparently some incredible kills that I missed. FalconWings was screaming. All the gargled voices were talking at the same time. But there was on guy whose voice was a little clearer than the rest.

  The people in the video kept going on. They were having fun, but I stopped to ask myself if I really wanted to join this game full of random people I didn’t know. It would only be awkward. Really, was I really doing?

  The game finished opening, and I started to go through the process of joining FalconWings. I looked up her gamertag and figured out how to send a friend request. I couldn’t remember the last time I sent a friend request to a random person though WarRope. It had to have been years ago when I was still playing Planet of Pain. I was about to press “Send” when decided to look back at the YouTube page again.

  FalconWings was still talking to the first random guy, the one with a little clearer voice. They were saying something about the last time they had played together. At first, I thought it might have just been in reference to the first live stream. But then they talked about another time they played together. I felt like I needed to know who this person was before I went in and tried to play the same game as him.

  Rather than going back to WarRope and pressing “Send,” I rewound the live video to the beginning. It glitched a little bit before loading. When it started FalconWings was on the screen, and she took a second to orient herself before she started talking.

  They got started playing the game right after that. It wasn’t long before the first person watching the Live Stream sent FalconWings a friend request. She stopped playing for a second to accept the request and invite the person to the game. In the process of doing so she was killed in the game. Her friends in the group chat went nuts.

  It was even stranger now that I had context for the voices. Lurking had never felt so much like eavesdropping.

  The movie Review channel I watched—you know, the one that hosted the Spectral Slammers argument—had just reviewed the trailer for Obligatory-End-of-Year-Superhero-Movie. It looked good. But don’t all the superhero movies look good in the trailers?

  I didn’t feel like getting involved for some reason. I checked for notifications from the Spectral Slammers Argument.

  “That was a disappointing end to the argument. What could any of us say to keep it going?” I thought.