Page 31 of Control

“I know,” I said, nodding my head. “I remember. I was…a complete mess then and you guys have every right to be concerned. I assure you though, I’m in far better shape now and seeing Reyna hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be. I mean…we’ve not really had a chance to talk but still.”

“You gonna be alright with all this?” Mustafa asked. “You know we got your back if you need it.”

“Thanks Mu,” I said. “All things considered it would appear I’m handling things pretty damn well. Wouldn’t you all agree?” They all looked at me and smiled, even Caster. “With that out of the way…Jazz. You said there were two reasons.”

“Indeed,” he said, continuing. “The amount of data that was taken from us is virtually the entire player database. Unfortunately, if they are able to crack the encryption on the files they stole it would expose everyone so I asked that the others take proper precautions. I do have a primary concern that I had not mentioned to all of you just yet.” With that statement, the others turned their focus back to the bouncing orb of light.

“What do you mean?” Caster asked, giving Jazz a peculiar look. “What more is there?” Jazz went on.

“All of you are at risk,” Jazz said. “I’ve already mentioned that. However, Ana here is of far greater concern.”

“Why?” I asked, suddenly becoming even more concerned.

“Because of who you are,” Jazz said back to me.

“A title holder?” I asked.

“That’s the first part of it,” Jazz said. “Ana, because of your title and because of the way you present yourself to the player base has led to an unforeseen consequence. Your consideration and compassion for others has made you, by far, the most popular player in the game. It’s not even close if I may be so forthcoming. You’ve spent so much of your time here helping others. You’ve helped people with their rooms and helped them through real life trauma. You’ve taken on their problems and worries as you own, knowing you weren’t getting anything out of it. People come to you and you offer to help share their pain so they could possibly overcome it. That reputation is the reason why not only are you the most popular player, but it has also led to you being the most searched for and discussed player across all media. The forums, the text chat rooms, the video rooms, and of course the various rooms throughout the world.”

“So what are you saying?” I asked Jazz. “I’m more at risk because…I’m nice to people? That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“But it does,” said Jazz. “A certain group of players in Aurora and even non players in the real world have had their doubts about you. They think that no one can possibly be that selfless. They think there has to be a catch, some sort of reason why you act the way you do. Some people think it’s because you’re aware of your popularity and crave the attention.”

“I don’t,” I said, interrupting him.

“We know,” Jazz said. I assumed when he said “we” he meant the development team and moderators. “But you have to consider the fact that there are some very jaded people out in the real world and some of them are players here. They watch you far more than you realize, picking at your every move and comment and looking for a chink in the armor so to speak. They have this idea that there’s something very wrong with you and they’ve made it their mission to try and find out what it is.”

“Chink in my armor?” I asked more as a rhetorical question. “Trolls will be trolls. I can’t help what the say or do about me.”

“That’s true,” Jazz replied. “The concern is this, Ana. What if even a few of those trolls found out your personal information. And what if even 1 or 2 of them went too far. What if they had become so obsessed with wanting the answer to their question. How far would they go to get it?” With each word Jazz spoke, I saw more and more what he was getting at. I closed my eyes and felt the sting of an old stalker going out of his way to find me in real life once before. He’d driven to my place in Texas when I lived there and came looking for me. The experience was so frightening for me that I ended up moving to a completely different part of the country.

“Shit,” I said, letting out an exasperated breath. I balled up my hands into fists and lightly pressed their heels to my eyes. After a moment, I looked back up to Jazz and the others, the expressions on their faces beginning to fill with worry, even Caster.

“Ana,” Jazz said to me. “We always keep an eye on the conversations that occur here in the world, but with so many players, the best moderation we can reasonably offer is to set up some key words or phrases that will trigger an alert for us if they are brought up. The sheer scale of such an undertaking is beyond even us. The amount of manpower needed to look for and catch everything is immeasurable. We often depend on players alerting us if someone breaks the rules. Once we see it, we can step in and stop it.”

“So why not ban the players talking about Ana?” Giff asked. “You know they’re talking about some underhanded stuff. Why not snuff it out?”

“They can’t,” Cris said, stepping in and answering for Jazz. “They can’t stop people from talking about Ana or any of us for that matter. That’s not against the rules. Simply talking about us isn’t any sort of crime here and it never should be.”

“But what about those you know are troublemakers?” Giff offered back. “You know there are people here that are only looking to start trouble. Surely the mods have them in their sights.”

“That won’t solve the problem,” Caster offered as he moved out from behind his chair and closer to me. He looked me over a moment and sighed. “Banning them might only make them assume they were suspended for talking about Ana which would only fuel their suspicions which could make them even more fanatical. Plus, you can’t ban people in the real world from talking about her or watching the live streams people do that sometimes focus on her and what she’s doing. If you start banning people in the forums from talking about her, you run into that same fanatical issue again. They’ll be that much more determined to find out what’s being kept from them.”

“Such things have been tried before,” Jazz said, jumping back in. “When we noticed certain conversations and even some in game plans that placed Ana in any sort of jeopardy, we suspended and warned those users, the reason for the suspension being conspiring against other players. As Caster said though, it didn’t have any sort of chilling effect. All it did was cause them to be far more cautious. For a time, they even gave her a code name: Queen.”

“Oh,” I said dropping my hands from my face and putting them on my hips. “Well, isn’t that nice! Now I know how that nickname really came to be. I thought it was from some interview I did a long time ago.”

“Probably did come from that,” Caster added. “If they’re that obsessed with you, chances are they found that interview and decided to use it.”

“That’s a reasonable assumption,” Jazz said. “We were only made aware of the ‘Queen’ code word after we began cross referencing Ana’s name and title with other frequently used words or phrases. By that time though, we’d seen that the suspensions weren’t working so rather than issuing more we decided to quietly monitor them. At this time, we’re aware of several hundred people, mostly men, who have shared at least a few negative opinions on Ana on a regular basis while here in Aurora.”

“Several hundred?” Mustafa said, raising his voice. “Are you shittin’ me? And you all ain’t gonna do nothing about that?”

“They can’t,” Caster said, continuing his logical approach to the situation. He was still standing in front of me, but had turned his eyes back to Jazz for the moment. “There really was no way to stop it all. It’s one of those things that once it starts spreading, there is very little you can do to stop it. Often times when you try to stamp out a problem, it only makes it worse. All you can do is try to manage it and hope it goes away on its’ own.”

“This is a fucking nightmare,” Cris stated, dropping down to the floor and siting with her legs folding under her, not caring that her dress was riding up.

“No shit,” Caster added, his own concerns for his privacy apparently hitting him just as hard.

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