Hatred Network

The office should have felt more comfortable than the rest of his home, but as John entered the room and looked at the familiar accolades and photos which adorned the walls, nothing about the room he was in felt like home. Perhaps it was the silence, because even on the quietest of days his wife and son would be making some sort of noise, assuming they were home to begin with. The office he entered, however, was deafeningly quiet, not a footstep but his own to be heard. Even on the days his family weren’t there, he could be comforted – motivated, in an odd sort of way – by the knowledge that they were out doing something while he remained at home working on something or other.

He turned on the light and his computer in a singular motion, one he continued by sliding his body into the chair he kept in front of the large monitor which may as well have been his portal into the rest of the world. Staring into the portal for hours on end well after everyone else had fallen asleep for the sake of his work was an all too familiar habit of his, but even staring at it in front of him in its inactive state felt almost alien compared to what it had been before. His hand trembled as he reached behind the screen to turn it on. He couldn’t help but wonder what it was that made his hand tremble so. Was it fear? Anger? Regret? He couldn’t linger on his emotions. All that remained was to sail the seas of the world wide web in search of the information that would help calm his psyche.

His fingers moved like lightning, first to type the password to log into his personal computer, and then, after he had opened his browser and moved to his email provider, to type the password of his work email. In his search, he always began at his work email, since it usually was where he’d get some sort of information that would help make his search that much easier.

If he’d wanted to feel better about himself, he’d instead found material that would make him feel the opposite: email after email threatening him with certain death that had somehow managed to get past the spam filter, too numerous to count. He was quite surprised at how many there were, especially considering how he had prided himself on both thoroughly filtering his emails and on making sure that he ended each day with an inbox that contained no unread messages. When he’d opened his inbox, however, it contained well over a thousand. As he briefly perused the messages, he estimated that the vast majority of them were such death threats. He began to slowly sift through them all, marking each one by one for deletion.

Those that remained didn’t do much more to uplift his spirits, though they did provide new information. The problem John had with them was that the information he was given was news he wanted to wish out of existence. Such things were simply not possible, as much as he yearned that they were. Many emails coming from employers, both former and current, letting him know that they appreciated his time working with them and the revenue which they had brought to them (so they were honest in that regard, at least), but they would not be accepting any new submissions from him for the foreseeable future. At least one former employer threatened legal action in the event he ever attempted to contact them or speak of their cutting ties with him.

He exhaled too loudly for someone who was home alone and leaned back in his chair. Assuming he could survive the remainder of Gallagher’s so-called “game,” then he’d be able to also endure the “fun” of no longer having a stable income. Given his current status, he’d be lucky if he could work in fast food, let alone anything related to the written word. He officially felt worse than when he’d started and didn’t have any useful information that could help him survive.

“Okay,” he mumbled to himself, “let’s check the personal email.” Doing just that, he found a similar string of death threats (though these somewhat impressed him given the fact that he didn’t use his personal email very often beyond very close friends and family members) and nothing else. After deleting those, he uttered, “Never mind, then.”

A cursory search on the subject found that major news outlets had only reported the basics on the subject. Nothing the public – or at least the media – knew seemed to exceed what he, having been at the “tutorial” of Gallagher’s game, knew. On social media, the most he found was a mixture of people arguing over whether the news was real or not and cries against the authorities for not doing more just yet – cries that John found himself agreeing with. He wouldn’t mind police custody right now if it meant the lives of him and his family were kept safe from danger. No matter how much he searched, he couldn’t actually find the terabytes worth of files that had supposedly been leaked.

With yet another sigh, he decided to turn to the place he always gone when he was out of answers on a story: 2Kun. 2Kun was an old internet forum that had remained incredibly popular even through the modern age. The users who used it were the type of people who often knew more than even the most secure data agencies, even if at times whether or not they could be seen as a reliable source was up for debate due to their tendency to make a cocktail blend of meme, truth, and hyperbole as often as most people breathed. Still, they were dedicated, the type of independent detectives who had died out alongside the hardboiled detective story. If anyone was likely to know something he didn’t, it was them.

Just about immediately, he hit paydirt. People all over the subforums dedicated to politics and news were talking about Gallagher, many praising him for this idea and lauding him as a hero. John wasn’t surprised; it was to be expected of the internet. Death and violence were celebrated on the net, even when there were better solutions than either of those methods.

A question hit him, then, interrupting his search: was there a better solution in this case? People like Gomez had been dodging the law for years. Without this information leaking, the authorities wouldn’t have been able to do anything. There were many others at the event which he had suspected had done terrible things which could have them in prison for life if only they weren’t so untouchable in the eyes of the law.

Was there a better solution?

John shook his head. Lives were in danger. His, his wife’s, his son’s, and who knows how many other innocent people could be killed. He continued to scroll down as the horror of what had just happened hit him like a truck. Gallagher had wanted that sort of doubt to seep its way into his skin, for him to consider that perhaps he and all the others deserved this twisted form of justice. The death penalty as carried out by a jury of their peers, assuming that they couldn’t survive the game, at least.

He shelved that line of thinking, particularly the part that contained any contemplation as to why Gallagher had started this whole ordeal in the first place, when he found a subthread with his name on it. Lo and behold, it discussed the information related to him. As it had turned out, the data had been sent as a giant series of ZIP files to everyone except for those directly involved in the game (and their immediate families).

The first few posts expressed surprise that he was involved in the game and drug his name through the mud, talking about how people like him were less than human. He wasn’t entirely surprised. He knew that the general public didn’t hold him in the highest regard. The fact that his reputation wouldn’t exactly be shining was something he had accepted when he’d pursued a degree in journalism.

He scrolled further and found that users on 2Kun had found that his home address (and thankfully only his home address) were contained amongst his personal files. Users began discussing the possibility of visiting the address just to raid the house because they fully expected John to have abandoned the address for a relative’s place. The more he read, the more he wished that he had. However, things took a turn as people discussed the idea of visiting purely for the possibility of “turning him in,” accusing any who questioned why they’d even think of doing such a thing of being a government agent in disguise.

The discussion amongst the various users of 2Kun had engrossed him to such an extent that he nearly missed the sound of glass breaking elsewhere in the house.