2020-09-08 - Tech Strumpet Goes Global

Twitter.

The perfect place to get into arguments. To try to demonstrate your wit only to get piled on by someone who holds the opposite opinion and has three hundred more followers than you. Bad jokes. Bad one-liners. Bizarre hashtags.

Not Ravn Abildgaard's favourite pastime, social media. But he does remember expressing his excitement over having leased the Vagabond a few weeks back. A few friends and acquaintances back home commented on that, teasing him that apparently he's a pirate now. And then there was one commenter who was not a friend or acquaintance from back home. Shoe girl.

And shoe girl apparently ran Gray Harbor's one stop shop for gamers and digital things and other technological miracles before it burned to ground. Shoe girl -- what was her actual name, Mac? -- may not be available downtown but she can be reached online.

'Hey -- you still doing tech magic? 🙂 🙂'

As tweets go, it's pretty inane. Social media is not Ravn's thing.

In the break room of the police station, eying the swill the pigs called coffee, Mac's phone beeps with a new DM. She almost feels relieved from having to make the decision, pulling it out of her skirt pocket. She raises an eyebrow, contemplating the weird implication. Was the Swedish chef trying to slide into her DM's? That was a weird amount of non-emoji smilies. Phone held in both hands as she walks back to the IT lab she'd commandeered as her office, she types a response.

'Bro, if this is your version of game, you got problems.'

'Roosh V went born-again Christian, Jordan P is in a coma in Russia, and I never had game to begin with.'

'Working with someone on the identity mix-up stuff. People tell me you're the SoMe guru in town. Are you?'

At least those two comments are not accompanied by a string of old-school text smileys each. Small mercies.

It takes a moment for a response, because she was likely googling the two names and coming up blank.

’I mean, I guess? By default? There’s other people in town that are techies, but I swear I went from video game shop owner to police data analyst purely from lack of know-how around here.’

'I'm working with Jessica Flores, trying to find proof of the identity mix-ups. Could use someone who knows their SoMe stuff. Someone isn't me. Interested?'

It's a pick-up line even people like the two aforementioned game experts would be embarrassed about, no doubt. Ravn definitely does not have game.

Again, time. Probably finding out who Jessica Flores was. Ok, this actually sounded legit, she thinks.

’What do you mean by identity mix-ups?’

'People getting mixed up with people they're not. Memories going crazy. Like a twenty-year-old with two husbands and thirteen kids. Or me being a Swedish chef.'

'Russian spies. A tech strumpet making off with a man who nonetheless just married the woman he supposedly dumped for her.'

Ravn hits 'send' and thinks that there are two possible outcomes to that last message. No answer, in which case he guessed right about the tech strumpet in question and she's pissed off as hell, or yes answer, in which case he probably also guessed right and she's pissed off as hell about the rumour about herself and August Roen, and perhaps inclined to help.

And of course there's always the third option: Shoulda kept your mouth shut.

'😡🔪🔥 🤬'

Pause.

'😑'

'How can I help?'

The pause is on the other end this time. Started with hieroglyphs and now we've come full circle, Ravn thinks to himself and decides that the response of the tech strumpet in question probably means she's pretty pissed off about it all -- something for which he can indeed not fault her in the slightest.

'Do people in this town do selfies, all that SoMe stuff? If they do there has to be evidence. Pictures, posts. That stuff changed, I mean. I know I don't tweet much but I never tweeted a thing about food or cooking. Pretty sure Mother of Thirteen would at least mention giving birth once or twice out of thirteen? Gotta be something that proves this is all made up.'

’For the record: Sparrow does not have 13 kids. I live with her, and it’s FUCKING INFURIATING to hear a rumor like that about your friend. It’s like fucking next-level slut-shaming and I would set some fucks on fire for it.’

Pause. Breathe. Abitha considers her next text, and starts to pack up her laptop before responding.

’Yes, people post selfies, but I’ve not gone back to see if anything has changed. Where are you right now?’

'She'd have to have had sixtuplets twice -and- her husbandS would be in jail for bigamy. Even I can do that math.'

Ravn considers his options a moment before responding to the second message.

'On my boat but I can go somewhere public. If you don't want -more- funny rumours. I got my own camera crowd.'

’She’s not fucking married.’

Which she would know, since she knows what Sparrow claims on her taxes. Abitha pauses in putting things away at that last bit, though, considering. More rumors were fucking infuriating. Where could they go? Book store? No, some crazy lady thought she knew her. She’d heard enough from the marina to know more rumors were coming out of there. After a moment, she hits him back.

’Come down to the police precinct. Stop by Espresso Yourself first though. Ask for The Gamer. They’ll know what to make.’

'And I don't know how to cook an omelette, nevermind a Swedish meatball. I get you. On my way.'

Ravn tucks the phone into a pocket and abandons ship, figuratively speaking. He's not particularly surprised to find that the so-called tech strumpet has her own custom drink at the Espresso Yourself. He's also not about to ask what goes in it -- as long as all that goes into the cup he orders for himself is drip coffee, the barrista gets to live another day without being chewed out in mock Swedish.

The Police Precinct, though.

How many times have I visited a police station since I was seventeen? Twice, and once more to renew my driver's license? Oh well. The way things are around Gray Harbor I'll be on a first name basis with the receptionist in another month, I'm sure.

He does, though -- find his way in there, with two mugs, only to walk up to the receptionist and say, "So, this is probably going to sound like a bad joke about a very old piece of musical theatre, but I need to talk to someone who calls herself -- Mac the Knife?"

The bald headed officer behind the front counter fixes Ravn with a chin down, beneath brow look as soon as the folklorist even enters the building, and the skeptical nature of his expression only increases with the awkward question. He tosses a look back over his shoulder as if to ask, 'Is this dude off his rocker?', and one of the other cops nearby offers a noncommittal shrug. The desk sergeant looks back,

"You said some lady here has a knife or something."

"No, Sampson, he said Mac The Knife."

Small as she was, Abitha had approached soundlessly from an archway perpendicular to the desk, leaning against the jamb with an exasperated expression.

"Its my fucking game handle, like your shitty ex ex Thug Thumper sixty nine you stumble through Black Ops on."

"Hey, I just hit prestige four, lady!"

A suffering roll of her eyes brings Abitha's look to Ravn finally with a grin.

"Just give him a visitor's badge. He's working with me."
"Yeah, fine."

The desk sergeant flips a book around for Ravn to sign in on and would hand across a clip-on badge to identify him. Abitha, clad in simple business casual, had her own photo ID badge clipped and hanging near her waist, titling her a department data analyst.

On the sidewalk, oh Sunday morning don't you know
Lies a body oozing life
Someone's sneaking round the corner
Could that be our boy Mack the knife?

Ravn can't help hum the iconic piece from the Beggar's Opera to himself as he clips on the name badge and follows Shoe Girl's lead into the building.

Only, don't call her that. Not unless you want to find out why she's called Mac the Knife.

"Thank you for seeing me," he says instead. "After hearing what Flores had to say about the Gazette's archives, practically anything you can do can only be better."

“I mean, we’re gonna see.” Abitha talks over her shoulder and leads the way through the station and back to the little IT office. There were a few chairs at different computer stations around the room, but she seemed to have the place to herself, likely having driven off whatever poor soul they had been employing to run the IT here. He’d been woefully under qualified anyways. Abitha had her own LED lit laptop set on one of the desks, eschewing the poor government grade boxes and hire-wiring in her own hardware to the mounted monitors so she could multi-screen. She sits down at this setup and waves a hand for Ravn to pull up a chair... After she puts her hands out to politely take her intended cup from him. It had likely even been labeled ’GAM3R’ in sharpie.

“So you think we should just look back at people’s social media to see if it’s different from the current memories people are having?”

"It's an idea we were tossing around, at least," Ravn agrees, holding his own hazelnut roast. It says BORK BORK for a name. "I know the Veil doesn't work -- according to union standards. It doesn't exactly clock in from nine to five and gets as much done as it can in the given time, but even so, rewriting all of reality of eighteen thousand people at least three or four decades back is a hell of a lot of work. People will have memories -- one of the first places I would look would be in the kind of Facebook groups where old coots gather to talk about the time before the world went crazy. But that's my angle as a folklorist, and I am definitely not going to tell someone who is actually computer savvy how to do her job."

From the looks he throws around the room his technological stade is probably on par with the poor fellow Mac exiled when taking over. Possibly lower. Some people have an aura about them that says don't let this guy into the server room ever. Ravn is definitely one of those guys.

"And look, I know that Phil doesn't have thirteen kids," he adds quietly. "That's -- why this is important. This whole celebrity stuff? It annoys me, but it's not hurting me. It is hurting her, and a few other people."

“Why do you think I had you pick up coffee?” Abitha intones wryly as she brings up a few platforms, starting out from her own logins into her social media presence. She had a reasonable footprint, if only because it was sort of required with her streaming to maintain visibility. It’s an easy jump over to Sparrow’s info, who she knew grew up Gray Harbor, so it’d be a pretty likely target if it was modified, with how wild the info was.

“August also proposed at some point looking outside the town, seeing if this had a wider impact, or it it was mostly localized, we can look at that?”

"Røn generally seems to have as good a handle on this as anyone can," Ravn agrees. "He pointed out to me a few days back that no one knows how all of this really works, but from what I've seen, he's somewhat the local guru in the field."

He wanders around, coffee in one hand, looking at things -- but mercifully, not touching them. "I'm not -- social media savvy. But I did look back at my own timeline, and I have never made a tweet, not a single one, that alleges to cooking. Surely a celebrity chef would have? I don't even have an Instagram account, or whatever people use these days. But I do have a Facebook account even if I rarely post anything, and I am in half a dozen groups pertaining to my own little home town and region. People there talk about old things all the time -- because half of them are seniors who have nothing else to do and too much time. Rewriting all of that for Gray Harbor, I can't imagine how much effort it would take."

Abitha is quick to scroll back, through her own social media, which she suspected might be tampered with, but found no traces, and Sparrow’s as well. For that matter, she also runs through Ravn’s, all of it is how she remembered, and there was nothing that seemed to lend itself to the wild memories people were having about them. “Everything seems like it’s in order, honestly. That’s the thing, the Veil doesn’t really do shit with technology. Sure, it’ll corrupt or wipe memory if it pertains to it specifically, but normally it can just leave tech alone because people around here aren’t big into that sort of thing.”

Abitha tabs her space bar in a thoughtful and slightly frustrated manner, trying to think of another angle beyond just the social media. “I know my mother has had some weird slips.” She starts, but there’s a weird inflection on the part about her mother, like it was simply a title, and had very little to do with familiarity, the same tone one would assign a doctor or lawyer. “What about back where you grew up? Do people there know you as the Swedish Chef?”

"They absolutely do not. For one, I grew up in Denmark, not Sweden. And anyone who actually knows me knows a lot better than to let me loose in a kitchen." Ravn quirks a copper eyebrow. "I don't think I'm a topic of regular conversation there though -- it's been some years since I was home last, and I wasn't exactly the big man in town back then, either. Where would you look, my old Facebook posts?"

“I mean, I’d probably take someone who engaged with you from back then...” Abitha starts to dig through his social media, clicking around his contacts and old posts. Some of the particularly angst/edgy ones get a pursing of her lips that looks suspiciously like the effort not to smirk judgementally. She was looking for old connections that knew him at least circuitously, then literally just sending out a few DM’s that said, “Hey, do you know this guy? What’s he like/do?”

Fantastic, Ravn thinks to himself.

If Gray Harbor had been in Australia, maybe, answers would trickle in slower. Alas, it's not that late -- just late enough that in Scandinavia, a lot of people are indeed sitting around doing little and relaxing in the evening, and thus within easy reach. Cell phones on the other side of the planet go ping with that familiar Messenger sound.

Not all of them respond. A few do, though.

Who's this? one returns.

Heh, Ravn? Last I heard he was bumming across the US, another replies.

Oh god, not that guy. I had him for a few lectures, five years ago. He's the most boring lecturer on the fucking planet. The third response is perhaps not the best review.

"Can't you just ask them if I ever talked about food or being a chef or something like that?" Ravn's voice is a strange mix of curious and pained; it's possibly not the most flattering moment in his life.

’I’m doing a fluff piece on our local news about a new folklorist in town.’
’Yeah? What’s he do to earn money? It’s not cheap over here.’
’Lecture? What was he teaching?’

Ravn’s suggestions mostly fall on deaf ears as Abitha sinks into that typical techie trance of ignoring the outside world for paying more attention to text and internet. But she does notice the other human in the room made a noise though, and politeness dictated she at least attempt to understand what it was.

“Hmm, what?” Her green eyes are peeled away from the screen for a moment.

"Nothing," Ravn murmurs. He may not enjoy this one bit but it serves a very specific purpose, and his best option at the moment is to let Mac work. She is doing exactly what he asked her to do, after all -- trying to establish the extent of this whole misère.

'Heh, okay? What do you need to know?'

'Money? Guy's in real estate, something. Renting out the family estate, don't think he needs to do anything if he doesn't want to? He does some kind of TV show now but I don't think he's in it for the money.'

'Uh, the history of cooking, something? It's been five years. I don't remember? I just remember sleeping through his classes because he kept going on about the same stuff FOREVER'

'What was he like as a kid?'
'From Real Estate to a cooking show. So weird, right?'
'What made him go from teacher to TV Chef?'

Mac jumps between conversations like a fish swimming between currents, her flawlessly painted green nails flying across the keyboard. She reaches and sips her coffee and sits back, holding it to her chest and turning gently in her chair, watching Ravn as she tries to think of more things to consider for this issue. "This is related to the Pourhouse and Grizzly renaming as well, right? Cause that actually did update their pages as if nothing had changed as well. I checked the logs on that. Strangely non-congruent..."

'Pretty quiet kid, kinda nerdy. Went goth for a while, I think? Always seemed kind of shut-in, someone you know is going to end up with thirty cats some day. I don't remember all that much about him, he went to some fancy private school. He has a lot of presence on TV but he's pretty quiet in real life.'

'Gotta look like this!''No, srsly dude, I heard that, cracked me up, guy couldn't cook for shit when I knew him. People don't watch that show for the cooking, they want to see him go all Swedish apeshit on the contestants.'

'Fuck me if I know. He was shit in bed.'

"I think it is," Ravn nods and sips his coffee, looking slightly floored; it's obvious that he did not expect this bizarre alternate reality to be canonically accepted on the other side of the planet. "I remember walking in on the couple who run the Pour... Poor... That place. They were arguing about the name. Leon pointed out that the papers and the sign say Poorhouse. So if that did change, it changed all the way down to the paperwork at least. Must be possible to look up records onli--"

He stares blankly at the last DM.

Then he shakes his head. "Okay, she is definitely not a reliable witness. There are laws against sleeping with your bloody students. I wonder if I failed her."

One laugh, two laughs, three laughs, four. Abitha humor did adore... The wit of Ravn's old acquaintances. She aide-eyes Ravn over the following denial to the last bit, "Definitely sounds like you failed her. Gross!" then launches into hysterical laughter again. She sighs amusedly and dabs very carefully at the edge of a winged eye.

"Heh, ok, so I guess were assuming it stretches as far as Denmark then, it's likely some weird global thing? Maybe it's somehow warping reality around us, and the world sort of has to... change around us?" Abitha turns back on her keyboard and clicks open a file, starting a new set of notes alongside the other two files labeled 'Shop' and 'Murders'. She titles this one 'Names', and starts taking notes of things she discovers, wording things in a way that was vague enough it could be taken a couple different ways, and therefore the Veil would leave it alone, normies likely to assume it meant mundane things.

Ravn makes a chagrined face. He's not really a boastful nature but come on, won't somebody think of his poor, dented, fragile masculinity?

Then he shakes his head and gives up, laughing softly as well. "I hope I bloody well ruined her academic career. She can't have made much of an impression, I don't even remember the name. Must have talked to her, obviously, if I've got her as a contact. Probably tutoring."

"Right." Back to business -- a business that doesn't involve quite so personal information. "It seems to really have gone all around the world, yes. And I'm starting to think -- maybe you're right and it's not really changed anything at all in the physical world. Maybe the sign still says Pourhouse or Grizzly Bear, but we perceive it wrong. There is no way -- I cannot imagine that the Veil has the power to do this on a global scale. It has to be our minds it screws with. Not that the idea of mind fuckery on a global scale isn't terrifying enough as it is."

“Everyone who I know that knows has no idea how this works, so I’m not even gonna act like I could figure it out.” Abitha comments, she trails off each conversation with a hilarious and appropriate gif or meme, one a sincere thank you, and two hysterical gifs of a person laughing. People generally take those kinds of messages as closers. She turns her attention back to Ravn.

“I’ve seen Maggi break a table in half, then reform it like nothing happened with her power. Things being physically changed are in the world of possibility, I would think. The terrifying bit is the change of people’s memory. The rest of the world doesn’t totally understand how memories work, and I can show people my own memories via telepathy if I wanted to. We’re so outside what’s understood, I don’t even know where to begin on going against that grain.”

Ravn manages to stop glowering in the direction of that somewhat embarrassing last DM and looks at Mac instead. "I think we may be barking up the wrong tree, yes. Or rather, it's the right tree but it's a very big tree and we're very small dogs. I thought I was being frightfully clever here, just find some old posts that clearly prove that this is all manure but... It's not going to work. So I guess I wasted your time after all. Except maybe not entirely because now at least we know that this angle is closed off so we can focus on other things. Using evidence is off the table. Other side is very much not playing fair, if it ever actually did."

There’s a noncommittal shrug, Abitha’s shoulders rising and falling as her attention invariable slides back screenward, as the technologically social do. Her fingers briefly tap through her notes, then check a few more things, the related bits of murder and crime about town from other cases she was working on.

“It’s not really that you wasted my time. All data needs analysis.” Was she really leaning that hard into her new title? “And plus...” she reaches and taps her coffee cup, “You brought coffee. The best assistant.” Did that mean the coffee was or Ravn was?

“And let’s be real...” Her eyes slide sideways to Ravn for a final bit of foreboding, a look taking in Ravn’s typically black outfit, knowing certain hang-ups always required her own set of fashion choices, “If They played fair, would we have as many problems as we do?”

"Coffee is a small price to learn that even people who claim to know me so well they'll discuss my sex life with strangers on the internet think I'm from another country," Ravn grouses. "So now we know that it's not just the Gazette's so-called archives that are a mess. I'm no expert on all matters Veil but I am starting to think that Grant Baxter is right. The answer is on the other side -- because we're not getting anywhere on this side."

He sighs lightly. "Anyhow. Thanks for -- you know. Taking a call from some stranger with a hunch, even if it turned out to be a bad hunch. At least we did indeed get coffee."