Chapter 35:

Betrayal

A Place between There and Now


Tetsuo offered me his help and I agreed. I was sure that I would give up on this project after a few weeks, like almost everything else I tried before, and I was almost as sure that he would lose interest quickly, but that was not the case. Two years passed, during which time we got to know each other better and although I would like to say that I began to understand him, this would have been a clear lie.

Most of the time we would just sit in voice calls or on servers for hours talking about stuff and not making any progress on our project, but we never gave up on it. Whenever a new game from SNF came out, we would play it for a fortnight and then go back to it. We had no plans for our project, we just tacked on stuff we liked. It grew over the years like a mountain on top of which people kept throwing their rubbish until we finally saw visible progress, we had added thousands of functions and split the <stat> function into three now actually working parts. they were called <stat>, a function to track certain object-related data. <connection> a complex system to build connections between <stat> functions. And last but not least, <combine>, this function was responsible for directly connecting and disconnecting objects, ensuring that when a stone is smashed, to use a metaphor, it shatters into small pieces that are all still made of stone.

We also switched to a 3D framework so that our functions would work consistently. in addition, we switched from a top-down to a bottom-up concept. To put it more simply, we moved from an empty input field where the user enters lines to create an object that simulates being a stone, to a system where you can make the stone as realistic as possible with the necessary compression to keep file sizes in check.

In the winter of our eighth year, we wanted to publish the first version, but we couldn't agree if we should charge and, if so, how much. I felt that it wouldn't do any good to charge money, no one would look at our creation, we first had to get a good name and become known, which we could only do by giving it away for free. Tetsuo, however, disagreed with me, he was of the firm opinion that we should sell it to a company, we should sell the rights to our project which had cost us two and a half years of our lives. After all, it seemed to be all about the money, a confirmation that it was worth the time, I didn't care about money, at least at that moment.

Our disagreement degenerated into a major argument that left us with no solution in the end. I didn't talk to him again, after a few days I realised that he had blocked me. two and a half years hadn't changed us, we pretended to be friends and I wished no, I wanted to believe that it was a friendship, and yet I wasn't sad when it broke up. It was more like a contract, I was angry that he didn't keep his part. But he wouldn't have control over our project, if he didn't stick to the contract he was out, there was only one problem, he still had access to the files. First, I removed him from the group we used for data sharing and data transfer. But he probably still had data on his computer, I had to make sure he didn't have any more, I couldn't let him have it, my pride wouldn't allow me to. I bricked his computer, but I knew he still had a hard drive with a backup.

I went to see him and apologised, I tried to convince him that I didn't want all this, and he seemed to believe it. I gave him my phone and asked him if he could get the cable out of my backpack and put it on the charger and strangely he didn’t tell me to do it myself. When he was gone, I looked in his room, he must have hidden them somewhere. I searched his cupboards, looked under his bed and went through every drawer of his desk but wasn’t able to find it. When he came back into the room, I could just about save myself with the excuse that I was looking at his set-up, which he unexpectedly seemed to believe.

I was determined, this had been going on long enough, and my patience was at an end, I decided to destroy the hard drive if I could find it.

The next day I arrived late at school but when I entered the classroom there was no one there. However, when I put my backpack at my desk, I noticed that I was not the only person who was already there. Tetsuo's backpack was leaning against his chair, but he wasn't in the room. I saw the blue flashing light and noticed that the whiteboard was turned on. A loose USB 4.0 cable was plugged into the computer. I went to the front of the teacher's desk and there was a closed notebook on it, I recognised it, it was Tetsuo's notebook. There was another USB to VCDI cable in it, but the VCDI connector was just lying around. At that moment I had an idea, his hard drive was not compatible with my pc because the port was outdated, it was a VCDI port. I went over to his backpack, it was open. Still on top of his books and everything else was a hard drive, jackpot! I had to act fast, he would notice if his hard drive was gone and if I destroyed it here and now, I would have to get rid of the remains. I decided to take today off and pretend I hadn't been to school all day, I just had to make it look real. I thought about the scenario in which someone could break the plate. I concluded that it had to be accidental. I searched in his backpack for a sharp object that could hit the plate and got lucky. By chance, he seemed to have a pocketknife with him. I put the knife in the connector and hit the back of the handle. After I was done, I put the hard drive back in the backpack and threw it into the middle of the aisle so that it looked like someone had stepped on it. Now all I had to do was run, but when I opened the window and threw my backpack out, the door opened. In came my English teacher and Tetsuo.

“Good morning, Yukio, how are you?”

At that moment the only thing that was going through my mind was that they were totally going to kill me for what I had just done, but I consoled myself that at least I had managed to destroy the hard drive.

I slowly turned around and greeted them

"Hello, I'm fine, where is everyone?"

He said something to the teacher, which I could not understand, who then left the room.

“Yukio, have you ever heard of forced behaviour?”

I froze, no, it couldn't be.

“Oh, what am I talking about, you as a master of manipulation know exactly what is one of the most effective ways to manipulate a person's decisions and how it works.”

No, he was not as good at manipulation as I was, he had no experience at all.

“You are probably thinking that I could never manipulate someone like you, but I should remind you that I choose not to manipulate anyone, that doesn't mean I can't do it. Do you know when an animal is most careless on the hunt, Yukio? It's when it thinks it has a firm grip on its prey, then it forgets its surroundings and starts acting irrationally."

Only now I realized it, it was not random it was precisely for this reason that…

“The Pocketknife, I mean why should I have it with me, should I start stabbing the teachers now? You didn't even look at what I did on the whiteboard.”

He clapped twice in a row and the screen turned on. In pure shock, I saw the red dot and the number 28:37 increasing by the second.

"Come on Yukio, why don't you say hello to the people responsible for your suspension?"

I lowered my head and looked down at the floor, it couldn't be true.

“What have you told the teachers?”

"The teachers? I didn't say anything to the teachers, you should really worry about what I said or showed our classmates."

he clicked a bit on his notebook and played back a recording:

…“That may be true, but I am the one who holds the class group together, they won't leave me alone because they would lose their link to the rest of the class.”

“Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?”

“Yes, of course, but just because it's rubbish doesn't mean they don't believe it.”

“To get back on topic, why do you spend time with them, or rather, why not today?”

“It has proven useful many times to have some control over the class as a structure, but the really practical thing is that you know everything that everyone knows about everyone which in turn allows you to manipulate people in a targeted way, for example, I haven't paid for my food once in the last 2 years.”

He stopped the recording.

“What do you want so you don't pass this around?”

“You misunderstand me, I'm not trying to bribe you. They have all already been sent the file.”

I started yelling.

“Why and where are they?”

“Well, getting you out of the way is easier if there isn't a whole class that wants you back.”

“Where are they?”

“They are all at home, we have the first two lessons off today, our history teacher is ill.”

“But-“

“You gave me your smartphone when you were visiting me, what do you expect?”

I sat down at my desk.

“The hard drive, it wasn't real, was it?”

“No, of course not.”

“So, what will happen to me now? No, I don't care, tell me, what are you going to do now?”

He walked over to me.

“I have received an offer from SNF after enquiring, I will sell it to them and give you a part, do not resist or object and everything will go smoothly. If you can't even do that, we'll see how much I can ruin your life.”