The Last Network - Chapter 40
Bump in the Night
Rabbit shouldn’t have poured those last two drinks.
He should have put the phone away an hour ago.
He should drag himself to bed before he got into any real trouble.
Instead he scrolled his feeds. Twitter, FriendZone, Insta, News. Everywhere he went he found an enemy. It was an endless loop of ever-shortening updates. He switched between them faster and faster. The Times had done a trend piece on teleportation. Highbrow clickbait designed to stir the socials up.
The story was about Rizon Brocations. Dudes were hiring Hands overseas and spending the entire day as them. They’d do this as a pack, seven or eight guys all connecting to Chiang Mai, Beruit, Odessa. They’d tear up the town from the comfort of their flop house. All the partying with none of the hangovers. All the cheap sex with none of the STDs. This was Rizon’s latest innovation—build an overseas posse, get your bros together, and fuck shit up.
Albie Hammel got the kid gloves treatment throughout the article. Instead of calling it exploitation and appropriation, the Times called Brocations an exciting collision of culture with the potential for opening the eyes and ears of a usually unreceptive demographic. Hiring sex workers to cruise for tourists was described as an enlightening window into our barest desires.
To Rabbit it sounded like getting fucked twice.
They published this for the hate reads. Well done NYT.
Why else would Rizon get a pass for digital slavery? If this was Rabbit, he’d be up on the cross. Peared strictly enforced a no solicitation policy. The internet was indeed dark and full of terror, and Rabbit was smart enough to steer clear of prostitution on his platform. That door only led to the feds. Yet it seemed that the anointed of Sand Hill lived by different rules.
He decided to look at this another way. Albie was setting himself up to fall from such great heights. It had been a dozen years since the Uber scandals. Albie was fourteen when Travis turned from tech god to albatross. While Kleiner remembered, Albie would not. The play here was separating Albie from his herd. Once he was out on his own, he’d just need to have his buttons pushed and a camera on him. That little shit would seed his own demise. Rabbit was sure of it.
He had once been a little shit himself.
Rabbit could see it clearly now. Together needed to rot from the bottom up. Turn the friendly service into a cesspool of anxiety and shit pairing. Rizon was well on its way to creating its own problems. Let them think they are crushing it, then a well-timed headshot would bring it all down.
He swiped his apps closed. One by one, his half-formed rants disappeared into the ether. Finally, there was his messenger app. His ex, Diana was up. It had been ninety days since he last broke down and asked to see the dog. That had gotten nasty fast. Tonight, he had almost asked again, but he was too tired for the accompanying fight. He’d get the dog in a month when she went to Tahoe.
He backed out of that conversation and pulled up Omar. He wanted to share his brilliant revelation with him. He started to type, but his spelling was so bad that auto correct didn’t know what he was saying.
Smarten up asshole.
Go to bed before you hurt yourself.
God knows you are trying your damnedest to.
Stop before you manage to aim the gun at your foot.
He plugged the phone in and locked it.
Rabbit staggered into his king bed. He reached for a dog that wasn’t there. Then there was just the darkness.