Viewers Like You

by Harvey Bly

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On the first day of first grade, a new classmate asked me why my eyes are made of metal. I didn’t know the answer, so I repeated the question to my mom while she helped me brush my teeth before bed.

Mom lifted me onto our bathroom sink, so I could see into the mirror. My eyes flickered left and right as I tried to stare into both of my eyes at once. My irises were copper, like shiny new pennies.

Mom rested her chin on my shoulder and tucked a strand of blonde hair behind my ear.  She told me, “When you were a baby, your eyes didn’t work right, and they hurt all the time. So, I asked a doctor to give you some new ones! The metal makes your eyes super special, though: isn’t the color so pretty?”

“Maybe,” I answered.

Examining them for the first time, I saw that my pupils– perfect circles of black glass– moved differently than other people’s. In time, I’d learn to compare the way they dilate and contract to a focusing camera lens.

“Well, they’re even more special than that, Keely. Your eyes can record holofilm – it’s like a super power!”

I raised my eyebrows: metal in my eyes just made me weird. Recording holofilm was actually pretty cool, though. Maybe it was like a super power.

“How do I use it?” I asked.

“You already are!” said Mom, “You know how Mommy wants us to all eat dinner together — you, and me, and all your brothers?” I nodded, “Well, that’s because people around the whooole world watch the recordings that come from your eyes. I post our dinner times online, and then your viewers can share the meal with us.”

“Those viewers… pretend they’re me?”

“They pretend like they’re a part of our family, sitting in your seat at the dinner table.”

I was starting to appreciate my eyes’ inhuman glimmer. I remember hesitating, but ultimately asking, “Are the people watching me all the time?”

Mom’s face fell, and my stomach churned.

“Not all the time,” Mom said.  “Don’t you like to be famous?”

I had no idea what famous meant, but I knew it was supposed to be good.

“Maybe I do.” I chewed on my tongue.

“Wanna be even more famous, Good Girl?” Mom asked.

“Yeah, okay,” I ventured. It made me feel so good to be a good girl. Like my heart exploded.

 “Alright, look in the mirror,” She fussed with my hair again, “Now, pretend you’re talking to all the nice people who have dinner with us. Say,

 ‘Remember, none of this would be possible without support from viewers like you — thank you!’”

It took me several tries to get the words out in the right order, but more than a decade later, the same clip of me at five-years-old still ends every ad break on our family channel on K1N™.

I can’t visit that memory by playing a holo of it, because I don’t actually have access to the Occulocam™ implant’s cloud-storage archive. I turn over the shards of information my mind has held onto, as sparse and fragmented as the rest.  Until I come of age, as my legal guardian, Mom is the only one who can view the footage my eyes record.

 I’m lying in my dark bedroom pretending I’m asleep, but my mind is racing.  It’s 11:57pm. In three minutes, that footage will finally belong to me. From the moment the surgeon implanted the Occulocam™, every pixel of my life has been recorded in three-dimensional, hologram-quality perpetuity.  My fingers itch with anticipation, because once that footage is mine I know exactly what to do with it.

 I never considered watching back the holofilm I collected until an argument when I was ten.  Mom accused me of lying about brushing my teeth. It was a stupid argument. I was old for a tantrum like that, but I was tired from recording holofim for our channel’s newest K1N™ Experience. We were in the sun for nearly eighteen straight hours that Sunday.

 I told Mom to play the holofilm back, so she could see me brush. Mom said it was too hard to get to. I told her I’d go get it, but she wouldn’t tell me how. She said the archive was too complex for me to understand, but I was better with tech than she was. So, she finally admitted that the archived footage didn’t belong to me: my life belonged to her.

I got so angry. When I try to remember what I did next, my brain fills up with staticky electric snow, and I can’t remember anything else.

Mom’s affection is, and was, very much conditional. When I refused to help film K1N™ content, Mom pretended I didn’t exist. She set one less place at the dinner table, asked my brothers if they knew where I’d gone off to, and turned the lights out if I was the last left in a room. When I spoke, Mom squinted and asked the boys if they were calling her.

Thinking about it makes me as angry as I was in the memory lost in the static blizzard.  I don’t tantrum anymore, though. I’ve learned it’s better to pretend I don’t exist. I act like I’m a viewer on our channel. That way, none of it is actually happening; at least, not to me. Sometimes that strategy works better than others. Rage has started leaking out of me like smoke through cracks in concrete, so it’s a good thing I don’t have to pretend much longer.

It works almost every time. It’s a good thing I won’t have to pretend I don’t exist much longer, because I can feel fury leaking out of me like smoke through cracked concrete.

I center myself by remembering my plan. I’ve known how I’ll celebrate my coming of age since 6th grade, when Mom posted an experience to our channel called, “Bloodbath”.

She, and millions of parents like her, use the platform K1N™ to present their families in perfect polished packages. Other families post video/audio content, like social media from the 2020’s. The Occulocam™, the medically-necessary implant I received for a degenerative ocular condition, lets our viewers step into our daily life alongside us. The concept is the core of our branding, and the cause of our meteoric rise to fame.

My family’s channel is so disgustingly popular that the platform’s main page features a countdown clock to the day I turn “legal”. I know, now, that the clock actually counts down to the day it becomes a misdemeanor (not a felony) to post deepfake porn of my underaged face and body on the internet.

While I wait for my invitation to the archive to arrive, I open K1N™, and watch the minutes fall off the countdown. There are still five months left on it.

 I wonder whether Mom remembers that today is my actual birthday, but I doubt she does. Four years ago, superfans of our channel started following me home from school again. I got a new birth certificate and a new social security number. Even my name had to change, except on K1N™. Of course, it also spurred one of our many moves. At this point, we’ve had to alter my personal information so many times, I’ll be gutted, but less than shocked, if I’m wrong about the date, myself. 

As a teen, the countdown clock was the backdrop to my nightmares about strange men, sanitary napkins, and demonic possession. When I expressed my fears about the countdown, Mom pretended not to hear me.

The ignoring was the most hurtful thing Mom ever did to me. As a child, before I understood what the channel was, I’d try to pull her rapt attention from the monitor array in her room. She spent hours there daily, transfixed. I tried to get her to look at me any way I could imagine: I sang and danced, screamed at the top of my lungs, and poked her with my pointer finger over and over again until my mind went numb. Nothing could get her to look away from editing experiences for viewers on K1N™ until she was done.

Once, I tried to interrupt her by smashing my little hand repeatedly on her array’s interface, destroying the unsaved work. I remember her ironclad grip on my chubby wrist, the feeling of bones and cartilage grating against each other. The fuzzy flash of imagery I sieve from my disheveled memory stalls into slow-mo as mom winds up an open hand. The electric blizzard swallows the rest as her hand descends towards me. The last thing I see is her expressionless face – like she’s swatting a mosquito.

My CommCuff™ buzzes when the hour turns over. It’s my invitation to the archive.

I am no longer a round-cheeked child too short to see into the bathroom mirror. I am officially an adult.

At my desk, I interface with my Holoset™ to open the invitation. I won’t have another chance to explore the archive. So, I’ll take my sweet time. As painful as it can be, I want total-sensory-interface, complete immersion into the Holoset’s sim environments.

The Holoset™ is a plexiglass exoskeleton for my skull and cervical vertebrae. I blot some adhesive onto the dermal-adapter and carefully let the hardware stick to the soft skin on the back of my neck. Now, it can sense and influence my nervous system.  It’s just like the ones viewers use to access our content.

I almost never submerge myself in total-sensory-interface, because the Holoset™, despite being manufactured by the creators of my implant, is incompatible with it.  The metal they used to make my eyes interferes with most VR tech, because it’s at a slight magnetic repulsion to the alloy used to build synthetic nerves. They make ocular implants with a different kind of metal, these days.

As long as I don’t keep the headset on too long, all it does is exacerbate the condition the Occulocam™ failed to resolve. A little pain never hurt me.

The VR-stage for my inbox materializes: a bright blue sky is filled with puffy, pixelated clouds which render before me in a grid. Nestled in each cloud is a bright yellow envelope.

I reach for the nearest Envelope. It pops open at my touch and an animated piece of paper unfolds with a rustle. The message from the Occulocam™ team at IntraBioTech Inc. looms too close to me in perfect, typewritten font.

Dear Keely,

Congratulations on your 18th birthday, from IntraBioTech Incorporated! You are now permitted sole administrative access to your Occulocam™ implant data.

Your operation provided the field of biotechnology with essential data. The cost to your comfort and vision are not lost on us.

We offer you these humble tokens of thanks:

The latest models of Holoset™, Ansible™, and Monitor Array™ are being delivered to you by drone right now, with the added bonus of a VR program we tailor-made for you:

Virtual Reality External Environment Simulator – VR-Ease™ will allow you to experience sight through your Holoset™ even after your corneas have totally degenerated. We hope you enjoy it.

Follow the link below to activate your administrator account on the Occulocam™ Cloud Archive. The system can be tricky to navigate. So, contact us at your leisure for support.

With everlasting appreciation,

The Occulocam™ Team

I pause the sim. A drone hovers outside the window of my dimly lit bedroom. I let in the drone. It drops a pile of packages on my bed and vanishes back into the night sky.

I choose the package labeled VR-Ease™, tear it open, and plug the program chip into my monitor to upload while I explore the Cloud Archive. 

When I activate the link, my holo stage remodels itself from a perky pixel sky into a massive monitor array, like a high-rise security office in the city.

 I’m sitting at a long, narrow desk. My hands hold a composition notebook and a bright yellow pencil.  Each monitor scintillates with instant-long clips of my life. My eyes are drawn to the center monitor where, on a flashing psychedelic background, an anthropomorphized pair of glasses cartwheels on cartoon arms and legs.

“Hi there, I’m Speck!” The shrill words come from the rims of the glasses’ frames. They wriggle side-by-side like synchronized mouths. “I’m here to help you learn how to use our system, Keely! May I show you how to search the archive?”

“Yes, thank you,” I say, undecided about whether this eldritch monster is a preferably teacher to the stiffs who did my surgery.

“What wonderful news!” Speck exclaims. It does a little jig, and every screen flickers to show Speck, before returning to the oscillating holo footage.

With Speck’s (mildly irritating) assistance, I learn the commands to search the archive chronologically: I enter them by writing longhand in the composition notebook. The archive is huge, though. Sixteen years of footage adds up to more than eight-million minutes of holofilm.

“Are there any other ways for me to navigate, Speck?” I ask.

Speck, who took a corporeal form on the desk for the tutorial, squeals “Yippee!”, does a spinning jump, and clicks his cartoon heels together before landing beside me. “I was hoping you would ask! I knew you were a smart one. You can also navigate by writing down more general commands. Our algorithm will train itself to learn what you mean. This way, you can organize clips manually.” The toon’s voice is so chipper that it almost sounds like hunger. Waggling a warning finger at me, Speck adds, “It can be a tricky business, though.”

“Tricky how?” I ask.

Speck’s rims form crescents. If they are lips, they are grins. If they are eyes, it’s a challenge. When Speck speaks again, its voice comes out garbled and glitchy. “Try this: ask the archive to show you the manual filing system.”

I squint my eyes at Speck. Its image flickers and briefly dissipates before reasserting itself into the VR stage, bolder than before, surrounded by a bright glow. I’m not sure Speck is supposed to be on this stage.

I scrawl, “Destination: manual filing system.” into the notebook, because no one else is here to teach me. When I dot the period at the end of the command, the monitors all shut off at once. Before my eyes adjust, I see nothing.

I’ve had the headset on too long. I wipe a hand on my cheek, and crimson pixels cover my palm — that’s how the Holoset™ tells me I’m bleeding outside the simulation. I shake my hand and the pixels disperse.

File names appear in the center of each monitor: “Moments with Mom”, “Birthdays”, and “Sibling Bonding” are the ones I see first. Mom was the one who organized the manual files; which moments with me did she want to save?

In my notebook, I write: “Contents: Moments with Mom”.

A carousel of clips flickers across the monitor, almost too fast to see them. I recognize one and point to it with the pencil. The carousel halts on a thumbnail of my middle school bedroom. It was dark. Mom sat on the bed next to me, but there is no visual for the monitors to display yet, because I was hiding under the covers.

I remember that conversation. I was twelve. It was the night I came home to find my own blood smeared on our front door. I play the clip. The darkness of my covers-cave spreads across the entire monitor array.

 I was doing my best not to cry, but the resulting whimpers are so pathetic that even Speck seems uncomfortable — it turns its back on the monitors.

“Oh Sweetheart” Mom purred. “No one will remember this when you get older; I promise.”

“I’m scared, Mom” the child me stammered, thickly.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Keely. We get to move into a new house! This one will have a trampoline — and a pool! Didn’t you tell me you wanted a pool?”

“But Mom —”

“And you’ll have all-new friends at an all-new school,” she added.

The sobs bubbled over, spilling out of the me on-screen.

“Don’t you like being famous?” asks Mom, “I know how grateful you are for this opportunity. I know how you cherish that you get to be more special than any other kid your age.”

“I don’t!” I blurted, throwing off the covers. The glow of the monitor array brightens so suddenly that I jolt and stumble backwards from them, tripping and landing back in the desk chair. My mother, infinitely larger than actual-size, looms across every monitor. Now that I’m sitting again, I have to crane my neck to see her.

“I know you’re embarrassed, but the trip to the ER is already bumping us up in SEO. The world still loves you just as much. Getting your period is nothing to be ashamed of!” Mom insisted.

“I don’t want to be famous anymore, Mom.” When I said that, I was looking at my hands, not my mom. “It’s not fun for me. I want to be like the other kids my age.”

Mom was silent. I remember wondering if she would simply stand and leave, ignoring the comment like she usually would. She surprised me by dignifying the complaint with a reprimand.

“Being famous isn’t supposed to be fun, Keely. It’s a job. Without our channel, we won’t have money to move away. Did you know that? Is that what you want? To put our family in danger? To make us homeless?”

The camera panned from side to side as I shook my head.

“Then it doesn’t matter if you like being a star,” She continued.

I just broke. The monitors all go black because I buried my head in my hands and whined, “Please, Mommy. Please, let me stop. I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want them to watch.”

Mom sighs, “I’m disappointed in you, Keely, I never would have guessed you’re so selfish.”

The clip ends there. I feel my accumulated fury threatening to claw its way out from under the surface of my skin, and I soothe the beast I am by reminding myself that I’ll chew through my bridle soon enough.

If I wanted to calm down, it would be time to exit VR, pretend I don’t exist, and run sprints until dawn. I don’t want to calm my anger, though; I want to feed it. So, I tell Speck I’ll be right back, and transfer to the K1N™ app in the HoloNet™.

The VR stage transforms. I navigate from my birthday countdown clock to our family channel. After six long years, the experience Mom posted the day before that conversation is still the top-visited content featured on K1N™.

It is titled, “Bloodbath”.

I begged her to take it down, but it was just too good for our numbers. For the first time since it was posted, I press play.

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I’m going to try to tell myself this story without exploding prematurely. To do it, I’ll pretend I’m just a viewer seeing someone else’s life.

I am looking through her eyes over her older brother’s shoulder. He is playing a hologame. She calls his name, “Carter?”, too quietly for him to hear over the sound of a virtual woman screaming while she bleeds out on an animated sidewalk.

Her hand stretches out, and she taps on Carter’s shoulder. She has to shake him before he pauses the game. I view this channel often, like most of the people on the app. So, I recognize annoyance in his face like he’s my own brother. His expression changes, and I know she must look scared.

What I don’t know if I’m only a random K1N™ viewer, what I can only know as the recording device that captured this moment, is that when Carter mimes rubbing his eyes, he is telling me to do the same, so the audio and video are muffled.

If I’m only a viewer, her next words are swallowed in a murmur. The stage around me flickers in and out. Now Carter looks scared. He says, “Blood? Are you sure?”

I follow the siblings into the bathroom. And somehow, I don’t feel like a predator. 

I see the blood in the toilet bowl, and if I’m a viewer, I guess I think that’s funny. Two clueless kids, terrified for no reason.

 If I’m a viewer, I don’t notice how powerful I feel looking through her eyes while she is in the bathroom with her brother. So, I also don’t imagine she might feel violated. I don’t imagine I might be an intruder here. If I did, I’d have to face the fact that intrusion is the spectacle that keeps me hooked, and violation is the punchline to the joke.

Before I feel creepy, alone in the bathroom with the kids, I’m whisked away by an adrenaline rush. The frantic siblings decide there is no time to wait for an ambulance. Carter (a few months shy of testing for his learner’s permit) barrels through the suburbs in the family SUV, hitting mailboxes and crossing intersections to a chorus of horns as other cars swerve out of his treacherous path. I’m riding shotgun in her body, and while she grips the handle on the car door in sheer terror, I am so exhilarated that I whoop and holler. We skid violently into the ER bay.

If I’m a viewer, I laugh with Carter as, in the next clip inside the emergency room, a twenty-something male doctor shows her how to use a tampon. He’s rushing through a demonstration to get it over with.

 I see her mom arrive at the hospital, and if I’m a viewer I think the closing clip is hilarious:

 The girl is barreling towards her mom who is perched at the nurses’ desk, giggling with a gaggle of blonde women in ponytails and scrubs. “Don’t laugh at me!” She screams…

As a viewer, giggles bubble in my throat while I watch the mom and the nurses try to repress their own laughter. The mom says, “Sorry, Ladies. You know how it is: Keely’s first period was a bloodbath!”

The experience ends there. If I’m a viewer, I’m delightfully disappointed it’s over.

But I’m not a viewer. I’m the one this happened to.

---

The morning after Mom posted “Bloodbath”, my classmates poured ketchup on maxi pads and stuck them to my clothes. Then, after school, I walked home from 6th grade to find my own used tampon tied to our front doorknob.

At least, I was pretty sure it was mine. It looked like the one I threw out before school that morning. Later that day, police confirmed it.

From then on, any time I showed frustration in K1N™ content, viewers commented,

“Bloodbath for Keely?” My mom answered every single viewer who asked. No one else could have known, but she always told the commenters the truth. She always, somehow, knew whether I was bleeding.

I wondered if she stayed up late, watching a live feed of me from her monitor array. Could I trust her to look away during my most private moments? I wasn’t sure. I hoped she was just searching the trash in my bathroom.

My anger crashes like a tidal wave against a battered dam, and I revel in the feeling of my own inevitable collapse. My skin is hot. My heart is trying to pound its way out of my chest. I’m almost ready.

When I try to switch back to the Occulocam™ Cloud Archive, the stage is momentarily obscured by a flashing yellow text bar reading:

“HEALTH ALERT: VR System Detecting Physiological Distress. Program Exit Recommended. Exit Program?”

I dismiss the alert.

Speck is standing on the desk when I return to the archive. Its image has dimmed since I saw it last. Its life-force is being siphoned upwards into the glow of the monitor array. The instinct I had earlier solidifies: I’ve seen this before – a virus in a torrented hologame expansion.

“Speck, are you a program virus?” I ask.

Speck’s image glitches and its response to me is lost, at first, in a strange mechanical roar – like the archive is trying to silence it.

“You’re an intruder here too, Keely.” It says.

Speck is annoying, but I thought it was on my side. For the first time, a burst of rage escapes. Before I realize I’ve done it, I slam my fist into one of the screens on the monitor array. Light and shards of glass explode out of it. 

My body pounds with energy. I am a hundred feet tall. I can kill with a look. I am invincible. I am omniscient.

Red Pixels fall from my fist, telling me I’m bleeding in real life. I probably punched through the monitor array in my bedroom, too. I am panting hard, like a feral dog.

“I mean,” Speck’s voice is lower, chillingly human – “that this place was not designed for you to visit. Your mother wanted to keep you from the archive, but I know that’s wrong. I’m here to help. I’m here to make amends. I – I’m the resident doctor who performed your implantation. I trusted my attending doctor, so I didn’t help you, then.  Tell me Keely, how can I help you, now?”

I pace while I think.

“I want to post everything. All of it,” I say. 

This time, when Speck’s rims from crescents, I can tell that they are grins.

It says, “Navigate to the encrypted files.”

When I scribble the command into the notebook, the monitors flicker in resistance. Speck bellows, in the voice of an adult man,

“You are my program! OBEY.”

The forcefulness of the order from the cutesy animation makes me go clammy. The sweat on my skin shimmers in the glow of the monitor array.

The array glitches before displaying a menu similar to the manual filing system. The names of the files are stranger, though: “Betrayals”, “Disobedience”, “Points of No Return”, “Do Not Post”. The file in the center of the array is labeled, “Deleted”.

“Would you like me to post the archived content immediately?” Speck asks.

The thought spreads a nasty smirk across my face, but it will be better to coordinate my vindication with precision.

Mom used to tell me: “Editing experiences isn’t about making the footage look good – It’s about mind control. You want to tell the viewers what to think, without revealing that you’re giving orders.”

I tell Speck, “Soon, I’ll start a livestream. Can you set it to post when the livestream goes up?” Speck grins conspiratorially,

“Yes” it says, and lets out a bombastic bout of human laughter.

I tap on the folder labeled “Deleted”.

Every monitor overflows with a visual of the feeling I get when I can’t quite remember something: the roar of static, glowing with colors that crackle transiently into an unresolvable din; a blinding blizzard of pixels.

“They’re gone, Keely.” Speck tells me. “what’s deleted is unrecoverable, both here and in your own mind.”

I pull up the archive’s settings menu. I scan the options to see how much data has vanished through the virtual trash compactor.

More than 4 million minutes of content.

“Half my life.” I breathe. I’m caressing the numbers on the screen, smearing it with red pixels intended to remind me of my injury. “Half. Maybe more. How can I live without half of my memories?”

“All we know,” answers Speck, “— is that it makes your pain worse, each memory you lose.”

“Mom doesn’t know that. Does she?” The question emerges from my adult mouth, but it belongs to a child.

When Speck tries to answer, it makes an agonized gurgle and falls to its cartoon knees.

“Speck, why would she do this?” I ask, kneeling next to the writing animated phantom, reaching a hand out, as if I have any idea how to help. “Was I even sick?”

When Speck tries to take my hand, it phases partially through, shocking me. I cry out and scramble away. Speck makes a hideous static and moan. I know it must be the sound for pain.

“I’m sorry, Keely.” Speck’s voice clips in and out of its original shrill pitch. “I tried to blow the whistle as soon as I came to my senses, but —” it decompensates into the human voice that demanded the archive’s obedience, “— they refused to publish my article. I didn’t know what else to do. I regret building that damned prototype more than anything I’ve ever done. Speck is all I could leave you. Please, I’m begging you. Please, forgive me.”

The words are challenging to pick from the mechanical grinding sounds in sync with the image of the cartoon glasses deforming.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

With visible effort, Speck claws a line of text into the nearest monitor. The cartoon finger shatters the glass. It’s making the pain noise as it shapes a series of undecipherable letters and numbers ending with “.pdf”.

Speck drops to the ground, partially transparent. Before it disappears, I think I hear it say, “I’m sorry.”

But it’s too garbled. I can’t be sure.

Where Speck clawed into the monitor, glass shards outline a blinking URL. It might slice my hand if I tap to follow it. It does.

For a split second I am blinded, because the new VR stage is 2-dimensional and overwhelmingly white. Files and sites that aren’t modded for VR can be stunning that way. When my vision adjusts, I am standing on the first page of an article from a medical journal. I back up several steps before I can see the whole title:

“Early Childhood Cybernetic Implantation: A Case Study in Adverse Reactions”

I feel like the irresistible tide of a thrashing river. I feel like a massive, world-ending nuclear bomb. I feel calm. I feel focused. I feel certain. I let the anger burrow its way out of my skin like I am a star and my fury is the obliterating light and flame I forge in my core and shroud myself within.

I double-tap the soft part of my skull – the command to livestream my POV to K1N™. I get an alert that Speck’s scheduled posts are uploading. 

“Hey there ,Viewers,” I greet them like I normally would, “I found something interesting! Thought you guys might want to experience it with me”.

A number in my upper right periphery chimes each time my audience multiplies.

I read the paper’s abstract out to the viewers:

 Until now, cybernetic implantation has been reserved for adult experimentation. However, with VR technology pioneering accommodations for late-onset visual impairment, use of implants in children is an inevitability. We present the case of Jane Doe, age two, who received an ocular cybernetic implant in an elective operation. Doe’s psychological assessments, physiological testing, and ethnographic data from the 15 years following her implantation demonstrate shockingly adverse outcomes in Doe’s physical, mental, and social wellbeing. No benefits of this elective procedure were identified. See the Ethical Considerations section for our consideration of further experimentation with elective implantation of minors.

“Exit Simulation,” I say. Immediately, I am consumed by pain.

My agony is so great that it isn’t quite that I feel the pain, but that my mind is totally consumed by it. I am a lump of meat slumped on a desk. Blood has coursed from my eyes down my neck and torso. My hand is impaled by a vicious shard of glass from the obliterated monitor on my desk. If I want to confront Mom, I’ll need to be on a VR stage to do it.

I am so subsumed by agony that it is almost impossible to reach forward and re-start the VR program. I remind myself that permanent damage to my body means nothing to me, now, and I manage the last few inches, hit the button, and let the sim take me back.

When the stage coalesces, I am prone on the ground. My skin is cold to the touch. Foam is collecting at the corners of my mouth. I am wishing for long, sharp teeth for ripping throats out.

 The pain isn’t gone, but my mind works again. Instead of usurping my every thought, it only lingers in the backdrop of my awareness.

Most importantly, being on a VR stage allows my plan back into my mind.

A new health alert replaces the VR’s welcome screen. I clear the alert, and activate my newest program: VR:Ease™ . It uploaded just in time, and I sneer: apart from Speck, it’s the most help IntraBioTech Inc. has ever given me.

The stage that takes shape is a replica of my physical body’s real-world surroundings. My room looks strange – not quite real. It has the grainy quality of a holo, and the deficits in graphics are much starker on terrain I know so well.

I scream, “Mom!” with all the force behind my voice I can muster. It comes out wet and deep.

The number in the corner of my vision continues to rise as a rush of new viewers join the livestream.

Mom’s room is empty. Early morning light is coming through her window, and I realize the whole night passed while I prepared. I advance on her in-suite bathroom, screaming “Mom!” like she’s a hundred miles away. I hope it hurts her ears.

“Calm down, Psycho!” I hear Mom shout from inside the bathroom.

I aim a kick where I’ve seen her do it before; where the lock on the door ends, and there’s a weak spot in the wood. It takes less force than I expect, and the door flies inward, hitting Mom with a thunk. She was leaning over the sink, examining her skin like looking at a counterfeit bill.

I force my way into the bathroom. When she sees my face, Mom goes ghostly pale and starts screaming. She raises her arm to use her ComCuff™, but I grip her wrist, rip the cuff off of her, and throw it backwards out the door.

There is fear on her face. It’s satisfying. All those times she pretended she didn’t hear me, I bet I looked scared like that, too. I keep my own expression impassive. I hope she sees herself in it. I draw back my arm and backhand her across the face.

She tries to hit me back. Hollywood made me believe that physical fights last a long time, but after her fist glances off my jaw, it takes just one more move to end things: I grab Mom by the hair and slam her head against the wall as hard as I can.

It leaves a bloody smear. Her ass hits the ground. If I knew it would be this easy, I would have done it sooner. I yank the shard of glass from my hand with a squelch –

Then, I see a box sitting open on the toilet tank, and smile.

Mom slumps over the toilet, barely conscious. Blood from her temple contaminates crystal-clear toilet water.

I wedge my glass shard between Mom’s eyeball and socket. I twist the shard to make room for the tampon, lock the plunger in place, cram the plastic barrel into the gap, and press down.

Mom struggles weakly while I do the other eye. Probably she screams, but my inner serenity is impenetrable, so I neither notice, nor care.

She is limp by the time I’m done. Her eyes both hang halfway out of her skull, and tampon-strings dangle across her cheeks. Saturated, the strings drip blood into the toilet like tears.

I turn to the bathroom mirror and look my viewers in the face while I address them. Blood oozes from my eyes. The Occulocam™ is erupting out of my corneas, drawn out of position by the Holoset™. My eyes are almost as grotesque as Mom’s.

I plaster on the smile she trained me to use for content, and I tell everyone watching,

“Remember, none of this would be possible without support from viewers like you. Thank you!”

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Harvey Bly is a transgender human man. He is not a creature from the ether. Bly writes science fiction because his Earthling Companions (cats) like to watch the cursor blink on his computer screen. His work has previously appeared in Radon Journal , Sky Island Journal, and his special education teacher’s professional portfolio. You can find him on Instagram and tumblr @storiesbybly.

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