Panic Button

Seven

“Please take your seats. It is time for Round Two.” Alligator’s voice echoed around the jet.

“Any fucking food on this boat?” Dave said, stomach gurgling in concert with his needs, hunger churning the lake of champagne and spirits in his tummy.

The monitor screens flickered to life once more, the Alligator regarding them with his black-slitted eyes.

“Dinner, and desserts, will be served upon arrival at your destination,” Alligator said.

“What about a bag of peanuts while we’re waiting, eh? I’m bloody starving.”

Dave rubbed his ample beer belly and licked his lips.

“I’m famished too mate,” Max said.

“Me too,” Jo said, “I skipped breakfast I was so excited about the flight.”

Dave looked over at Gwen, who clearly did not want to discuss food.

“What about some pretzels then?” Dave ventured.

Only the throb of the jet engines replied.

“Tight bastards.”

The Alligator’s face faded from view, replaced by ‘ROUND 2: KISS AND TELL’ displayed in large pink letters against a lurid backdrop of cascading love hearts.

Dave grinned at Jo, licking his lips. “That’s more like it! Kiss and tell. Nice.”

“I guess we aren’t getting off the hook that easily,” Jo said, frowning.

The display dissolved to a rapid montage of webcam video clips. Dozens of faces appeared one after the other on the screens.

“Millions of All2gethr users are online twenty-four-seven,” Alligator continued, “They share their interests, their passions, their ambitions and dreams…”

People of all ages, races and sexes were shown on-screen, peering into their webcams in offices, bedrooms and lounges the world over.

“For some, it is a place to wear disguises, for others it is the only place they can truly reveal themselves…”

The montage drew to a close, holding on the image of a pretty teenage girl. She stared sullenly into her webcam, teenage Emo band idols on the bedroom wall behind her. Tears had made her black kohl eyeliner run in dark rivers down her cheeks.

Jo peered closer at her screen. The image seemed familiar somehow, but she couldn’t quite place it. Where had she seen that girl before? Jo got the feeling it had been in a music video somewhere. Then the image cut off abruptly, replaced by the Alligator’s rictus grin.

“In this round we are going to find out what you are all like — behind closed doors,” he said.

Dave returned his seat to its upright position. He looked worse for wear, still slugging whiskey from the tumbler. Something resembling apprehension moved across his face. Gwen stretched her arms and ruffled her hair, listening intently to the Alligator’s voice.

A pop-up video window replaced their host’s grinning green face. Grainy hand-held footage was now playing out along with a distorted, echoing audio track.

A figure in torn dirty clothes was on his knees in a dingy cell. A plastic sandbag had been pulled over his head, obscuring his face completely. The terrible whimpering, pleading sounds coming from within the bag were testament to just how terrified he was. The camera tilted and moved, revealing a group of men standing around him, dressed in combat fatigues and balaclavas. They were taking turns to brutally punch and kick the man, some of them gesturing into the camera lens with devil horns and gang signs. As the men goaded their terrified captor, another of their number approached carrying a large gun. Cocking the weapon, he pushed the barrel against the hostage’s forehead.

BANG.

Blood and brain matter exploded from the ruptured sandbag, splashing against the cell wall. The men roared, triumphant, as their victim slumped like a broken doll to the hard stone floor, a dark pool spilling from his head all around him.

“What the actual fuck?” Max said, glancing around at the others.

They looked as shocked as he was and yet, like him, could not tear their eyes away from the footage.

“Jo. You recognise this video.” Alligator’s voice was smooth as silk, heavy as a brick. He was not asking her a question, merely making a statement of fact.

Jo shook her head slightly, mouth shut tight.

“Please answer verbally.”

He can see me, thought Jo, bastard is watching us.

“No, I…”

“That’s not altogether true is it?”

“I… don’t remember.”

The video window snapped closed, the display changing to a list of data. Hundreds of web addresses scrolled up the screen.

“I find that hard to believe,” Alligator countered.

The scrolling stopped and an address, a series of numbers with a secure ‘https://’ prefix, was highlighted.

“You watched this video two months ago. On Tuesday the fifteenth at 22:17 hours, to be precise.”

The list of web data began to scroll again, then stopped abruptly. Another secure web address line was highlighted on the screens.

“You watched it again the following morning at 11:53 hours. You then sent the link to five of your friends in a personal message.”

Jo glanced at the others, incensed at the intrusion into her privacy.

They all looked as disturbed as she did that a stranger could access her web history like this, so easily. But there was something else in their eyes — something accusatory.

“Look, I don’t remember okay? I see a lot of crap online…”

She knew how feeble her words sounded, how hollow an excuse for her voyeurism. Her mouth was bone dry again. The bottle of whiskey was still on Dave’s table, inches away.

“What did your message say? When you forwarded it to your friends?”

Jo fell silent, eyelids blinking rapidly, tongue licking at her dry lips.

“I’ll repeat the question.”

“I don’t remember, Jesus!”

Gwen smacked her teeth at Jo’s careless invocation of the Lord’s name.

Jo glared at her, eyes daring her to say something.

Just then, an email window popped up on their screens.

“Well then, let’s take a look.”

Jo and the others peered at the email header, reading the words.

‘OMG THIS IS SOOO NASTY — WATCH TIL THE END!!’

“I didn’t send that,” Jo said in a low voice.

“Then who did?” Alligator asked.

Dave, Gwen and Max all looked at Jo. She lowered her eyes, falling silent again.

“Why did you send the video Jo? Why did you watch it? Was it enjoyable, seeing a man killed before your eyes?”

Alligator’s voice had become clipped, carnivorous.

“No. No, of course it wasn’t.”

“But you watched it again and again, didn’t you? Again and again…”

Jo balled her hand into a fist and slammed it into the armrest of her chair.

“I was just curious, alright!? I thought it was fake!”

The others looked back at her uncomfortably. Gwen raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t you all look at me like you haven’t watched stuff like that as well. People do it all the time,” Jo spat. She’d had enough of Alligator’s ‘games’.

“It’s okay,” Max, his voice a soothing balm by comparison with the Alligator’s.

“I’m sorry, but it’s nothing new. People were turning up to watch executions thousands of years before the web existed.”

Dave opened his mouth to speak. Jo stood up, cutting him off.

“What kind of game is this anyway?” she said.

Dave tapped at his monitor grimly, the display showing the words ‘KISS AND TELL’.

“This is getting too unpleasant mate, we’re not playing along anymore,” Max said to the Alligator.

“If you opt out, you forfeit the prizes. Forfeit — or prizes, the choice is yours,” the creature replied.

The passengers exchanged glances. Jo’s face was still flushed with anger. Screw the prizes, thought Jo, I just want off this plane. Wish I’d never come. Should’ve stayed with Sophie… She watched the others. Dave and Max looked at each other, then Gwen, who pursed her lips. In Jo’s eyes, they all looked like they wanted to play along, no matter what came out in the process.

“If you all care about it that much then go ahead,” Jo sighed. She fixed her gaze on the window and the distant storm clouds gathering outside.

Gwen sensed Jo’s discomfort at the personal aspect of Alligator’s games and shared it, even. In the back of her head, however, her father’s voice echoed, warning her to do this and not to do that. His well-meaning control had stymied her personal growth all her life and she’d often found herself wishing she could have upped and left like Emily did. But now she was partaking in something that even her wild-child sister could only dream of. Her first flight, and she was aboard a private jet, destined for a champagne reception in New York — the halcyon heart of the fashion industry she was so eager to break in to. For Gwen, playing on in Alligator’s games meant something more than just the chance to win prizes. It meant she was finally taking risks. Being on this plane was all the rollercoaster rides she had been denied as a child rolled into one. And there was an element of danger to Alligator’s strange games that she found disturbing, yes, but also kind of liberating. She was usually a dab hand at online tests. She could ace this one — perform better than she had in the first Round.

Alligator’s voice boomed, rousing her from her thoughts. “Gwen?”

“Yes?”

“Do you recognise this?”

A garish web application popped up on the screens — the salacious text and imagery of an online ‘sex personality’ test.

“You recently completed this, another in a long line of online tests.”

“Yes, so?” Gwen’s voice was steely, indignant.

“The test was entitled ‘what kind of lover are you?’ So — what kind of lover are you?”

Dave’s eyes lit up. “Oh yes, do tell…”

“I’ll repeat the question…” Alligator prompted.

“Okay, okay. I think the test said I was a ‘kinky lover’.”

“Knew it! Always the quiet ones,” Dave smirked at Max, who made a whiplash sound, and mimed the crack of a whip.

“It was just a silly test Dave, something to pass the time,” Gwen protested.

“The test was wrong though… wasn’t it?” Alligator said.

“Well, I’m not that… kinky if that’s what you mean?”

“Your answers gave you that result. But you lied on part of the test, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t taking it that seriously.”

“It was question four. Do you remember question four?

“Of course I don’t.”

“Question four was: ‘How many people have you slept with?’“

“That’s none of your business.”

“None of my business? Yet you filled out on online test with this information and posted it on your public profile.”

Gwen cleared her throat, looking uncomfortably around the cabin.

“You are happy to have people think you are a ‘kinky lover’ but you are ashamed of telling the truth.” Alligator paused. “How many people have you slept with, Gwen?

“I said that’s none of your business!” Gwen replied, anger seeping into her voice.

“Tenner says she’s had loads,” Dave mock-whispered.

Gwen threw him a threatening look. His comment was almost too much to bear and Alligator’s question was proving too personal. Maybe her bravado about the game had been misguided after all. She would much rather talk publicly about anything other than sex. Even her teenage eating problems would have been preferable to this line of questioning, at least she had conquered and compartmentalised those. If nothing else, her experiences with body image had made her a better counsellor. But discussing her sexual self was a different matter. It was hers and hers only — she enjoyed the ability the online world gave her to create a persona and keep people guessing about the ‘real’ Gwen Rhys.

“Gwen?” Alligator pressed.

She felt compelled to answer, to show them all she wasn’t ashamed, but the words dried up in her mouth and she fell silent.

“Okay Gwen, let me help you out,” Alligator said, “You post in a lot of forums, but this one you post on an average of five to fifteen times per week.”

The screens lit up with a clean, white Internet forum page. The page was framed with an austere logo, which read ‘VIRTUE REALITY’.

Dave’s eyes darted across the page, scanning the text, amazed. “Virtue Reality? ‘Abstinence is next to Godliness…’ Ha!”

Gwen was fuming.

“Your avatar depicts a white rose and your username is ‘Cherrybomb’,” Alligator continued, “so, ‘Cherrybomb’ — how many people have you slept with?”

Gwen was now too embarrassed to even look the others in the eye, especially Dave, who was smirking from behind his monitor screen.

“None,” Gwen said, quietly.

A sobering silence descended over the winners and the smirk fell from Dave’s face.

“How do they know all this?” Gwen whispered to Max.

“We all hide behind usernames, behind our avatars,” Alligator said, as if in answer to her question, “But everywhere you go, everything you watch, download, upload, do and say online is logged and stored.”

The winners exchanged uneasy looks, a tense hush descending inside the cabin.

“A trail of information, freely available to those who want it,” their host continued, “In fact, I’m looking at read-outs of every single webpage you have all visited over the last few months. It makes for surprising reading…”

Dave squirmed in his seat, locking both hands around one of his knees defensively. “That’s bollocks. You can’t see all that. Data Protection Act mate.”

The monitor screens flickered, as a data stream showing hundreds of web addresses scrolled across each of them.

“Really? Shall we see how well-protected it is?” Alligator asked. “Dave, just two days ago, you visited a site hosted in Japan. The contents of the streaming videos were depraved and despicable. Some of your favourite titles include ‘Two Girls and a Horse’…”

At this, Max looked highly amused — then quickly stifled his laughter as Alligator went on, thinking better of making a joke about it.

“‘Too Young to Run’, ‘Bukkake Prom 4’…”

Dave looked aghast as Jo shook her head in disgust and Gwen lowered her eyes.

“Shall I go on?” Alligator asked.

Dave shook his head silently.

“Please answer the question verbally. Shall I go on?”

“No,” Dave said, subdued. He looked at the others, “I didn’t…”

Dave’s voice faltered. Guilt was etched in his expression and he knew it. There was no point in denying it; he’d watched those videos. But only because he’d stumbled across them while surfing for the kind of thing Sarah would never do for him. Any real man would admit to being bored of the ‘traditional’ stuff and anyway, his teammates watched far worse than he did. It didn’t make them criminals; it just made them honest in his eyes. And didn’t a healthy appetite for online porn keep men satisfied and on the straight-and-narrow in real life? Dave certainly thought so. The Internet offered him all of the pleasures he could indulge in, with none of the guilt.

“Did you consider the ages of the girls in the videos, Dave?” Alligator’s tone was accusatory, a quiet assault echoing the transgressions of Dave’s videos. “Did you think about that at all? Or did you watch them because of that? Would you care to tell us the title of the video you watched a total of four times that very same evening?”

“I don’t remember.”

Dave leaned forward, perched on the edge of his seat, looking up into the ceiling as though the Alligator was perched upon the roof of the plane above them.

“This is the world wide web you’re talking about mate! I don’t put that stuff out there; anyone can stumble across it… Listen, I pay my taxes, I pay for my Internet connection. And in the privacy of my own home I can watch whatever the hell I like!”

Jo shook her head, moved to the rear of the cabin again, distancing herself from Dave’s presence.

“I’m not a fucking pervert, alright? I didn’t…”

Dave’s voice trailed off. He changed tack, looking to Max for support.

“Max, you look at porn, right?”

“Do not bring me into this mate,” Max countered.

“Oh cheers! You’re a Saint now are you? You definitely do…”

“You don’t even know me.”

“Bollocks, everyone here has looked at something they shouldn’t have in the past. What about you Jo? That execution video?”

Jo glared at him. “Don’t bring me into this either.”

“We all bloody well saw it,” Dave countered, “Anyone who says they haven’t looked at dodgy stuff is a fucking liar!”

He fidgeted in his seat, his agitation palpable.

“Am I right, or am I right?”

No one answered him. No one’s disagreeing with me either, thought Dave, not even Cherry bloody Bomb over there. So why am I the bad guy here all of a sudden?

He unclipped his safety belt. “Fuck this for a game of soldiers.”

“What are you doing?” Jo asked, as Dave stormed to the front of the plane.

He paused at the curtain.

“I want to speak to the pilot,” Dave said, before striding through to the cockpit door.