by Al K. Line
Ven was pleased she had taken the time to do things right for her sister. It was too late, she knew that, but Cassie deserved some respect, as did all kind-hearted people.
Ven and Kyle buried Cassie that afternoon, next to Mike as she had requested — an ornamental cherry tree planted right there on top of her. They found it when searching the many pots full of plants that made up part of a nursery section in the large walled garden. It was pot-bound and obviously eagerly awaiting the chance to spread its roots and share its short lived flowering beauty with the world. Ven cried just thinking about the comparison.
The mood was subdued, the whole occasion seeming like such a waste. It could have been avoided if Cassie had merely turned to them for help. Or if they had really taken the time to notice quite how affected Cassie had been by all the recent events leading up to Mike's death — the leaving of Al being the final straw in her fragile mental condition.
Ven and Kyle hardly spoke to each other, they simply gave Cassie what she had wanted. Both were lost in their own thoughts. Tomas gurgled away happily the whole time, unaware of what had happened. Bos Bos knew that it was Cassie under the soil though, and he sat by the mound of earth for the remainder of the day, whining and occasionally pawing at the loose earth; as if it could bring her back to become part of the family that was now one person smaller.
After the burial Ven and Kyle retired to the kitchen, soaking in the heat from the Aga and nursing warm cups of coffee — waiting for each other to break the silence that was deafening in its intensity.
Kyle was the first to speak. "I'm sorry Ven, I don't know what came over me. I guess I am just so damn angry with her for leaving us, and angry at myself too for not realizing just how sad and alone she felt. I should have been able to do something. I can't believe it ended like this and I am honestly really pissed at her for leaving, but also for putting this on your shoulders too. Whatever she said in her note I know that you will feel responsible. And that's her fault."
"I understand Kyle, I really do. And you are right, I do blame myself. How could I not?"
"That's why I'm pissed, and angry. How could she do such a thing, I know she was hit hard by Mike's dying, but still..." Kyle trailed off, not knowing what else to say.
Ven shook her head. "I guess we are all simply different Kyle, she couldn't take it. Even when we were younger, when our parents died, she fell apart. She couldn't cope with any arrangements, none of it really. I had to take control. Cassie was just a gentle soul I guess, and this world isn't one she could cope with. Fuck, look at me. I just go off into some fucked up coma zone if I can't handle things, neither of us are, were, good at this kind of thing."
"Yeah, okay, but taking your own life? It seems so cowardly," said Kyle.
"Does it though? Does it really? Personally I think it is probably one of the bravest things that you could do. I can't imagine having the guts to do it, could you?"
"Guess not, no. But let's face it, we are hardcore motherfuckers," said Kyle, smiling and trying to lift their spirits somewhat.
"Too right amigo, we be gangstas innit," Ven countered, using slang she had picked up listening to the kids that hung around her local newsagents. "Kyle, I wish I could get to the bottom of all of this. It's driving me nuts not knowing what was actually shown to people. Something obviously went very wrong, and I can't rest until I find out what."
"I know, I know," said Kyle. "Look, maybe we will find out, let's just get over the worst of this first, then we can try to figure out how to do it. I know you have firewalls on your laptop, but I don't know about you but I wouldn't trust any of it any more, would you?"
"No bloody chance, I know I nearly cracked and tried to take a peek, but I bottled it in the end, I couldn't even face turning the laptop on — just in case. I really don't think we will ever know what really happened now, but it really is driving me mental not knowing. It's the most important thing that has ever happened to humanity, and I caused it and I don't know how."
"And Ven?" said Kyle.
"Hmm?"
"What happened to Cassie? It really isn't your fault, and I don't blame her either. I was just angry, and the truth is that we should have both been there for her, we are both responsible. But the final choice was hers. If she couldn't cope with us, Tomas, and Bos Bos here to support her then I don't see how she would ever have coped. I think it was losing Mike more than anything else that sent her over the edge, not just the infected peeps we now have to deal with."
"I wish I could say I was hundred percent with you on that one buddy, but I just don't know. All I know is that I miss my sister. Something I never thought I would say," Ven croaked, starting to cry once again, as she wiped her face on the sleeve of her violet Boggiano tunic. Not her favorite, but practical enough for Ven when digging graves and attending funerals all one after the other.
Who's The Daddy?
"You are," said Ven, "I just told you."
"I'm the daddy? To Tomas? This Tomas?" asked Kyle incredulously for the umpteenth time.
"Yes," said Ven, "This Tomas. How many other bloody babies called Tomas do you know?"
"None, but still. It's a bit of a shock like, especially since I didn't, um, well you know." Kyle had gone beetroot red, he wasn't good talking about 'S.E.X', especially with his best friend. Even if he had seen her naked. Just the once.
"Ven, how could you not have told me? How could you let Paul think Tomas was his when he wasn't?"
This conversation, or variations on it, had been going on for some time — none of the answers were going to change from multiple repeating. Ven was getting exasperated.
"What was I supposed to do? Tell him when I found out when Tomas was two months old that he wasn't Paul's? You think that's fair 'big boy'?" Ven said wickedly.
Kyle was going to explode if he got any more embarrassed.
"Stop it Ven, you know I don't like that kind of talk. Be ladylike please. It's bad enough having to deal with the language you use, I don't want smutty talk from you as well. It's not becoming in the slightest." Kyle was very conservative about some things, and he was very old fashioned and respectful of women, so expected a proper sense of decorum. He merely wished the behavior that he exhibited to be returned. He was a man who had been raised to respect women and treat them with all due courtesy. Although he was secretly delighted to be called 'big boy' if truth be told. Who wouldn't be?
"Okay, I'm sorry. But seriously Kyle what should I have done? I assumed that Tomas was Paul's just like you did. It was only when he had to have a blood test at two months old because of a bit of the case of the runs that I realized something was wrong. The results meant that there was no way he could have been Paul's, so there was only one other option. Unless I wanted to include an immaculate conception!"
"I don't know Ven, I guess it was best he didn't know really. Yeah, it wouldn't have been a nice thing to find out, that's for sure."
"Exactly, and sorry to say this buddy, but I still classed Paul as the daddy even after I found out, and that's why I didn't tell either of you the truth. Do you understand that?"
"Of course I do," said Kyle. "Look, I'm not exactly going mental at you am I? I get the reasoning, sure, and a man who wears a shirt and tie and has a proper job is a much better role model than a skinny 21 year old who lives with his parents and listens to punk bands anyway."
Kyle felt a sharp 'thwack' across the back of his head.
"Ow! Bloody hell Ven, what was that for?" gasped Kyle.
"Don't ever sell yourself short Kyle, and don't ever assume anyone else is better than you. It's a fucked up brainwashed world that makes smart guys like you believe that being an office drone is the best way to live your life. It isn't."
"Ha, yeah, I know, only trying to make you feel better. I'm fucking brilliant I am, you knows it baby," said Kyle, smiling broadly and trying once again to take in the fact that the little dude in the basket was actually his very own flesh and blood.
Could he call him son? Wou
ld Tomas call him daddy? Would Ven let either of them? She could be a hard woman at times.
Truth be told Ven was merely very relieved she wasn't having pins stuck in her by Kyle — maybe being thrown to the zombie hordes too. It was a hell of a surprise to spring on a young fellow. She was expecting a much harder time of it from him, so she was extremely relieved, and very happy, that he was so delighted about the situation — accepting his role so readily. One thing was for sure, they would never be repeating the 'bedroom incident' again.
She shuddered at the thought.
###
Not very long after they had met Ven and Kyle did a very bad thing. They drank a whole bottle of tequila at 11:AM and got absolutely hammered. The next thing they knew they were naked on the office floor and Bos Bos was licking Kyle's big toe.
Sexy it was not.
They never did repeat the dirty deed.
There was no sexual chemistry between the two as such, and ever since they met each other, after Ven stalked Kyle and decided they would be friends, any hanky panky had not even been considered by either of them. The simple fact is that the unfortunate fumble was fueled by the power of booze and what they had been looking at on the computer monitor.
Ven had crunched the numbers but couldn't face what she had to do without some back-up. Pornography was the best way to infect people with the botnet after social media. Those were the two biggies when it came to how people spent their time Online. They either posted pictures of cats in glass jars or they watched manufactured people having manufactured sex in ways they would never experience personally, as people didn't actually look like that, or perform like that, in real life.
What was very eye-opening were the statistics Ven uncovered. She knew that social media was huge, and a lot of programming had gone towards ensuring this was the number one way to get her botnet going viral and people watching the subliminal message. But she hadn't understood quite what a phenomenon Internet pornography was.
The usage numbers were truly mind blowing in their scale. It seemed to Ven that everyone in the world apart from her must be glued to their screens watching people go at it 24/7.
Every second 30,000 people were watching Online pornography, and spending $3000. Ven was slightly wrong about one thing though, more people were involved in Online pornography viewing than with social networking. It was hard to really believe, but true. With almost 30 million pornographic sites, taking up over 12% of total Online Web real estate, this was truly staggering.
What were all these people doing? Didn't they ever do it in real life? With millions upon millions of search queries daily Ven was very surprised to discover that over 25% of them were porn related, well over 70 million searches a day. And one in three of those searches, and subsequent viewing of the adult material, was performed by a woman.
What was very disturbing was the darker side of it all that she couldn't help coming across. There were hundreds of thousands of searches daily for terms close to 'child pornography'.
What was also a shock, although it meant her botnet would infiltrate the globe a lot quicker than she thought, was the data showing 20% of people accessed these adult Websites while at work.
More people were looking at these sites daily than the total that accessed Twitter, Amazon and Online TV streaming sites combined! It was a world she knew nothing about, but she realized that she had better learn pretty quick, this was simply going to be on a par with social media for spreading her botnet as fast as possible.
So she cajoled Kyle to come help her understand how it all worked. So they could formulate the best approach for unleashing the botnet in the fastest way possible, via the many millions of adult sites that seemed to be a bigger part of the Web than she could have ever imagined.
Kyle knew all about Ven by this time; she had been so open about just who she was, admitting that she was the creator of the infamous 'no name botnet' that she surprised even herself. Kyle, as a hacker, had obviously heard of it, everyone in the game had, and was delighted to discover he was actually friends with this infamous botnet herder.
That morning they had been running through some tweaks to the botnet, getting ready for Ven's ultimate coup in a few months time. It was still early days but there was a lot to be done.
Kyle discovered some surprising stats himself. One in five searches from a mobile device were porn related, and a quarter of all owners of such devices had porn of one kind or another actually saved onto them. Kyle was very uncomfortable talking about this with Ven — even more so actually clicking through the numerous sites to help finalize the game-plan. So the Tequila went down quickly, and liberally.
They watched a lot of different kinds of porn as they developed the tweaks needed to access the accounts, and to then deliver the subliminal message via the hacked sites. It was also to be used to forward links for free passes to others, everyone loves a bit of free porn these days. What continued to be staggering to both Ven and Kyle was the sheer volume of sites, and the extremely manipulative ways that a lot of the sites sucked in members via promises of all kinds of weird bonuses and freebies. These were some serious marketing geniuses.
Thinking that porn was just, well, porn, their eyes were opened to an incredible variety of fetishes and popular sites that showed things they never even knew were fetishes. If you could think of it there was a site about it you pay to be a member of and view content until you could view no more.
A few tweaks to the powerful botnet allowed the devices of those that accessed such sites to be infected with the zombie botnet when it went live. At the same time passing on a free password to others of the same sex in their circle of friends on social media sites. A simple link with a message was sent out to them, and many took up on the offer. Or at least clicked out of interest. That was all it took, a few seconds later they were infected and eating the brains of their nearest and dearest. Not that this was the plan, but it was the result.
The eventual outcome of this pornographic overload was a pair of frisky hackers in an office, while Ven's husband was at work. The booze had been taken as Kyle would get embarrassed at the mere mention of the 'P' word in female company — there was no way he was going to be able to go through such graphic sites with Ven present unless he had some liquid courage. Rather than let him drink alone Ven had joined him, so while they tweaked their programming and finalized the code for this part of the botnet they got well and truly hammered — and horny.
So there they were, naked and on the floor, drunken fumbling sex in mid session, Bos Bos licking Kyle's toe.
And then they both came to their senses, at, lets not say the height of passion, but close to it for our young man with not a great deal of experience.
"Um, Ven, this is weird," said Kyle, stopping what he was doing and beginning to realize that this was feeling very uncomfortable and very unimpassioned.
Ven grabbed her blouse and covered herself, Kyle moving off Ven and quickly putting his jeans on.
A long silence ensued and then they both blurted out at the same time:
"That was like sleeping with a brother."
"That was like sleeping with a sister."
They both laughed, and they both realized that sex was definitely off the agenda. They were like brother and sister, they had deep feelings for each other that had got confused with lust because of the newness of their relationship. What was really going on was simply a closeness that neither of them had experienced before without a sexual dimension. Ven was as close as this to her husband, and it had all got muddled up with Tequila and pornography.
They finished dressing, Kyle hopping about on one leg as he tried to get his socks on, Ven managing to dress in a much more dignified manner.
"Well," said Ven, "I don't think that was a very good idea, do you?"
"Absolutely not, that was all way too weird. No offense."
"None taken," said Ven, grinning at her friend trying to get his black sock onto his foot, hopping around the office as he lost hi
s balance. She couldn't help but notice he had a hole where the big toe was.
"Promise we won't talk about this again?" said Kyle, realizing exactly how idiotic it was to risk a friendship by doing what they had just done.
"Promise, big boy," said Ven, Kyle reddening now that the passion had subsided.
"Um, I think you should finish this bit of coding off on your own, don't you?" said Kyle.
"Abso-fucking-lutely," said Ven, nodding vigorously.
And that was the end of that.
The only problem being that unawares to either of them the seed that was in Ven was slowly making its way to an egg, and within seventeen hours Ven was pregnant even though Kyle had not exactly finished what they had started, so to speak.
It happens, a lot, and it still [cough] comes as a great surprise to a lot of people. It only takes the one little good swimming fella to escape early to make an ickle baby boy named Tomas.
Al: alone
Al's face was swollen like an over-ripe plum. Purple blotches stood proud around his eyes and forehead, blood caked his mouth and nose. A nose that was bent at an angle making it obviously broken. He wasn't infected by the botnet though, he had been beaten. Repeatedly and hard.
He was tied tightly to a simple metal chair — no chance of the big guy breaking it into splinters and making a dashing escape. Strong rope was tied around his torso and legs, his hands held fast behind his back with zapstraps — plastic ties used for tying cables, but now also used by the Police force. Al and the chair were then further secured by more rope to a large cast iron Victorian radiator. As far as his captors were concerned Al was going nowhere, but they didn't know just how clever the man-mountain was.
