Page 14 of Control

“I thought about my sister,” he said, taking the refilled tumbler up into his hand. “Her ex husband…this real peace of shit named Todd. He worked her over real good. Got her thinking she was going crazy. She ended up on a bunch of pills and seeing a therapist every week.” Dutch ran his index finger over the lip of the glass, his eyes still not on me. Was he feeling shame?

“I’m sorry about your sister,” I said, knowing full well what she may have gone through as I’d had a very similar experience in my life. “People can be real assholes at times.”

“That piece of garbage did the same shit to her that I was doing to people down here.” Dutch dropped the glass from his hand onto the bar, a spritz of whiskey finding its’ way out and onto the napkin. “Really made me think about what I as doing.” Dutch finally turned to me and continued. “You were right to be angry with me.”

“Finally hit home for you,” I said, holding his gaze until he broke away and looked back down to his drink. “I’ve come to realize a lot of people are like that. It’s easy to laugh when it’s someone else suffering, but when it happens to you or your family, suddenly it’s different. It’s a shame your sister having to be a victim of that was what it took to get you to see what you were doing was wrong.”

“Yeah,” Dutch offered back, taking the glass back into his hands and sipping. I could tell what had happened to his sister had really taken a toll on him and his world view.

“I won’t gloat,” I said. “I’m just glad you finally saw what was I seeing from you back then. You can’t do that to people. It’s just not right.”

“I know,” he said, nodding his head. “That’s why I knocked that shit off. That and things were catching up to me.”

“People talk,” I said, my eyes still squarely on him. “You can only do that sort of thing for so long. What goes around comes around.”

“And it came around.” Dutch set the glass back down and pushed it away from himself, as if he knew he was having too much to drink.

“Is your sister OK now?” I asked. He turned his head and looked back to me, the stubble from his unshaven face much more clear.

“She’s a lot better,” he said, turning his head and nodding to me. “Off most of the harder anti-psychotic stuff now. She’s working again, doing pretty well. I see her at least 3 times a week to make sure she’s alright. She’s smiling again.”

“That’s good, Dutch. You’re doing right by her by being there as much as you can.”

“She needs a rock right now and I wanna be it.”

“I’m sure you’ll do a great job.” Dutch turned to me again and offered a slight smile, possibly all he could muster given the dreary topic.

“Thanks, Ana.” He paused for a moment and looked me up and down, noticing I’d turned my title banner off. “You trying to be incognito or something?”

“Something like that,” I said as I quickly glanced back out to the room and then back to him again. “Seems to be working for the most part.”

“Change your name color to something really dark,” he suggested. “Makes it less noticeable.” He was right and so I immediately changed it from the cycling purple, red, and blue to a very dark green which almost looked black. I also turned off the outline so those other players that played with their Display Names option turned on might not even notice it at all. Players could choose to display all other players names, display names only within a certain distance from them, or turn them off completely. It was hard to say which players chose which option so his suggestion made sense.

“So why the subterfuge?” Dutch asked, his voice still low, respecting my indirect request to keep my presence hidden.

“I need to know what’s going on with this thing I am hearing about,” I said. “A hack or possible hack happening. I’m hearing murmurs that something like this is going to happen or has happened and player data along with real world information could be leaked. You hear anything about that?” Dutch looked back out to the tables and people behind us and then back to me.

“That’s already made it here,” he said as he leaned closer to me. “People have been talking about it in some circles and some of them are scared. They think they’ll be outed.” His words turned my somewhat light concern into something much heavier.

“So this is a real thing then,” I said. I could feel the expression on my face twisting. “I’d thought maybe this was just so dumb rumor that was making the rounds. You think something like this has actually happened?”

“The hack you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Hard to say. People trash talk about all sorts of stuff and you can never really tell what’s real and what’s made up bullshit. Somehow this place has managed to get a handful of very prolific online trolls in its player base. Even with all the checks the game publisher does some were bound to get through.”

“Like Ronnie,” I offered. “That guy is just a massive pain in the ass.”

“I can tell you,” Dutch said to me. “I know for a fact at least a dozen various rumors were started by him alone. That guy just feeds off negatively. He’s like that weird ooze from Ghostbusters II.”

“Never saw that movie,” I said with a smirk.

“He’s bad news,” Dutch said. “Guy needs a good ass kicking if you ask me.”

“You gotta remember though,” I said. “He’ll talk shit all day, but if it came to a real fight he’d find some reason to squirm out of it. People like him always do. He’s not like you and me.”

“Like you and me?” Dutch asked with sincere interest.

---