July 15, 2009.
Skipped heartbeats or not, the decision not to get more coffee was a bad one. Despite his best intentions to complete his work, the lack of company and the many sleepless nights proved too worthy an adversary. After an hour, Stephen gave up trying to work and decided to call it a night. He stumbled home in a daze, his body still jittery from the fading caffeine, and his head defiantly drooping low, ready for sleep. With each step, his feet fumbled as they found every pebble that had made its way onto the sidewalk.
When he finally walked through the door of the apartment, Molly was wide awake. She was seated where she always was, at her computer, oblivious to the world around her. He could tell by the way she was sitting, with one hand cupping her chin and the other poised ready to click the mouse, that she was doing what she did for far too many hours each day—repeatedly hitting refresh on her browser, waiting for the next message to be posted to one of EasternDiscussions message forums.
As he came closer, she started telling him excitedly about a message that had been posted earlier in the day. Andrew’s changes to the ranking hadn’t taken effect yet, so each message posted was still an exciting event. She stopped talking in mid-sentence when she saw Stephen’s already wobbly stance giving way under the weight of his own body. “Come on, sleepy, let’s get you to bed.”
“I can’t sleep yet, Molly. I have so much to do for tomorrow. One of Atiq’s friends is calling me tomorrow for some project I was supposed to have already done. I haven’t even started it yet.”
“Can’t you ask Kohan to do it for you tonight?”
“He’s out tonight. I’ll tell you about it later. That’s a whole other mess with Kohan and Andrew . . .”
“Why don’t you get a few hours sleep? I’ll wake you in a couple of hours when I come to bed. Come on, I’ll lay with you for a while.”
He wrapped his hands clumsily around her head and pulled her toward him. “Thank you,” he said, with his eyes and head already sinking.
“Alright, alright. Come here.” With that, she led him to the bedroom. There, they laid in the dark, curled tightly into each other.
And in the haze that sometimes precedes sleep and passes like an eternity between the final brief moments of awareness and the oblivious comfort of rest, deep and peaceful, he watched idly as his thoughts interweaved with his days, and took shape as dreams.
Stephen’s eyes blinked open to unfamiliar sounds from outside the bedroom. Molly was still with him, he could still feel her rhythmic breathing softly on the back of his neck. “Wake up, Molly.” He put his hand on her bare leg, gently trying to shake her awake. “There’s someone in here.”
Skipped heartbeat. “Molly, wake up. I think someone is in our apartment.” She didn’t move.
Under the closed door of their bedroom, a flickering blue light made its way into his wide open eyes. The voices from outside grew louder. Just the TV. Nothing to worry about.
Out of bed. To the door. He pulled it open and stepped into the next room.
He fumbled for a light switch he couldn’t find. The white flash of a camera. Molly? Another flash. Molly draped with a thin blanket, in a bed, awake, terrified. “What are you doing, Molly? I thought you were asleep in the other room.”
She didn’t turn her gaze to face him. Another flash of a camera.
“That’s perfect.” A voice called from the darkness. “Now take off the blanket.” She did as she was told. Hot white skin on cool white sheets. “Molly, stop being so shy.” The voice was familiar. “Come on, Molly, you look great.” She did look great. The voice—it was Andrew’s.
“Ready,” a voice yelled out. Flash. Flash. “Perfect. Now that is something beautiful,” Yuri was saying.
“What are you doing?” Stephen thought, or maybe said aloud.
“Shhh. Stephen.” Molly called to him from the bed. “Come lay with me.” No. No. Another flash. “Yuri is going to turn on the video camera. Come here, with me.”
Stephen sunk further back into the corner. His hands feeling the empty wall. Where was the light switch?
“Don’t be afraid,” Molly called soothingly. “They promised not to show them to anyone. These are just for you and me. I thought you’d like them.”
“Just for you two,” Andrew affirmed. Flash. Teeth gleaming. Damaged grin.
Four imperfect crescents welled with red in his palm; nails piercing through the skin. “That’s enough,” Stephen ordered in a burst of confidence. The flashes stopped.
Around him, three LCD panels glowed a dim grey. “Try searching for the pictures, Stephen. Let’s make sure this works.” He found the letters on a keyboard, M-O-L-L-Y. Total: 10,522 results returned in 0.0003 seconds. The center LCD scrolled through message forums probing Molly in depth. Users posting, chatting, and sharing—all about Yuri’s pictures. With a loud click of a mouse, the photographs revealed themselves on the second LCD. Click, videos sputtered to life on the third.
“The video cameras work well at night,” Yuri exclaimed. The grainy shaky images, taken with an inexperienced yet all-too-willing hand, conveyed their message clearly enough.
“Stephen. These are your friends. Take the pictures down. Make them stop,” Molly pleaded as she hid beneath the blanket.
The last few steps flew beneath him as he found Andrew. “Take them down. Delete them all. Right now.”
“Of course.” Andrew pressed a few buttons on the keyboard. The LCDs turned off. The room went black. “All gone.”
Molly fell back into her pillow.
“I think you should look at this.” It was Yuri talking.
A map of the JENNY system, centered on their apartment, slowly appeared on the center LCD. It was black, there was no activity happening online. “It looks good,” Stephen called out. “Thank you.”
Yuri pulled the mouse back toward him, zooming the map out. The two LCDs on either side of the first, presented the adjacent neighborhoods. With tiny, barely audible clicks, one by one, each house turned from black, green, blue, and any other color—to pink. A narrator with a quirky voice and uneven tone, kindly explained, “Molly found her way to the hearts and homes of all her neighbors.”
Yuri pulled his mouse back further. Dozens of LCDs covered the walls, extending the map in every direction. Snakes of pink, like flowing water, emanated from each encountered house, branched and divided, until all of the LCDs shone brightly with only one color. The bright pink from the LCDs exposed Molly—still covered only with a thin diaphanous blanket, staring intently at the screens all around; exposed Andrew’s face, inspecting Molly; exposed Yuri, with camera in hand.
The narrator continued as this episode faded, but the words were lost in the light.
Andrew motioned to Yuri. Yuri tossed the camera to Andrew.
“One more picture, just for me,” Andrew explained. Flash. A room filled with harsh white light. The blanket did nothing to hide the body underneath.
Stephen fell into a quiet, unadorned, sleep. He held on a bit too tightly to Molly, so that when it came time for her to get up and press reload, she didn’t bother to move. It could wait.
His breathing had finally calmed down, and she didn’t want to wake him. They both could use the sleep. Just like every other night, she would face her own set of dreams in a few minutes, and it would be good to know that someone was there with her. They slept for a full five hours, the longest they had been with each other in days, holding on to each other through a pall of altogether too vivid dreams, nightmares, and complete and utter exhaustion.