Comedy
With the lights in the room back on, the display that had seemed so blinding looked dull and depressing.
"Alice, dim the lights!" I growled, the anger I was feeling seeping into my voice.
I was fully aware that my voice becomes harsher when I get upset, but I wasn't inclined to care about that at the moment. Besides, Alice can understand my orders no matter how harsh my voice sounds.
There was no answer. Alice's usual, "Yes, Master," never came.
"Alice, are you even on?" I yelled, now even more upset.
Asking that question was pointless, of course. It was like asking a corpse if it was dead.
I figured she was probably experiencing difficulties due to the power failure. I needed to check my own situation first. Stock 5421A4381 was nowhere to be found. It hadn't even gone bankrupt and gotten removed from the market. No matter what I searched for, I could find no evidence that the company had ever even existed. It was the same in the dealing room. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure what kind of company it was. I felt like I'd read about it before I had started watching it, but I couldn't recall anything at that moment. Having trained myself not to remember useless information, recalling details was nearly impossible. Regardless, I had to remember something.
I logged out of the dealing room and moved over to the headliner. Without Alice, navigating all those pages of data felt troublesome. A few days before, I'd been watching a video that had a scene in which a character was using a "phone" from the previous century. This felt just as inefficient as that.
After finally arriving at the headliner, I could find no references from anyone regarding brand 5421A4381. The only topic being discussed was the sudden drop in the market. I figured that its cycle had just been cut extremely short, but any topic that had been that popular should surely have left some kind of traces behind.
"Alice, I need you to..." I began reflexively before realizing my mistake.
I had no choice but to do it myself. I began searching, but could find no signs of the company anywhere. What the hell was happening? There was no doubt that the company had existed. I had been trading its stocks. So why was nobody talking about it?
I even logged into some of the lower-rated boards just in case. Navigating the pages felt the same as when I had to use my own two feet to walk. Traversing the net was like trying to reach a star billions of light years away.
Opening link after link, I finally arrived at a board overflowing with gossip stories. It was no different than navigating the complicated streets of District N. There were a few main streets, but each had a countless number of side streets to choose from. And the sitemaps might as well have been written in Latin for all the good they did. No beginner would ever have been able to find anything in that mess. Even an experienced user would have to start from square one if they spent as few as three days away from there. For this very reason, however, there are certain topics that never make it up to the higher levels.
I began haphazardly clicking on any and all links that looked even remotely promising. Anything that related to stocks or message boards with information on the market needed checking. I had no other options. I didn't have a clue what had happened. Gathering data was my priority.
Eventually, I came across a message board titled, "Real Time Crash." It wasn't entirely intentional, but I had navigated to a link that read, "Click here to kill some time" that I had seen on a market-related board. I was three light years away from having time to kill, but my searches were getting me nowhere and I needed a break. I had been expecting to find a stupid video or something of the sort, but I found an enormous page history instead. There seemed to be an ongoing chat as well.
-He's about to blow a fuse! lol
-Oh, speak of the devil! He's here!
I obviously had no idea what they were talking about, but as soon as I accessed the page, the number of messages suddenly increased.
-Welcome!
-We've been found!
-That was faster than I thought! He certainly is a professional dealer! Haha
-The hero always arrives late :P
-I doubt he gets it yet, though!
There were so many comments that I couldn't read them all before they were pushed off the page. I thought I was going to be sick until I switched over to just scanning the lines of text instead of trying to follow the meaning of every single word. I quickly guessed that I was the topic of discussion. The page log I was seeing was the record of all the sites I had accessed before arriving there. It appeared as though I was being hacked. Not much I could do about that without Alice, though.
Eventually, the scrolling message began to slow and finally came to a complete stop. One last message appeared in the chat directed specifically at me.
-How does it feel? You thought you were the one in control, but it turns out you were actually the one being controlled. I'll bet you thought you were the one pulling the strings, about to have a big payout, but just who was really the puppetmaster after all?
Reading the message, I could almost hear the person's voice in my head. I half expected a hologram to spring to life in front of me, laughing. Could it be that I'd been had? When did they first get to me? Just how much was real and how much was a fabrication? I felt dizzy. I realized that I had made a huge mistake.
Where was Alice? I needed a cup of coffee.
Did this all start with Olive's announcement?
All I wanted to do was eat an omelette covered in ketchup.
I wanted to talk to Alice, but the only thing left in the room was a heavy silence.