Page 2 of Anti-Player

Cartoon-me holds up the box I'm holding in real life. The chat goes nuts as I slowly peel the tape off. “This,” I say, wiggling in my chair, “was sent to me by a company called Hause Industries. The product is the Secret Reader. Sounds pretty exciting, right?”

I show the label to the camera. I'm not worried anyone will see my address listed. I'm smart enough to use a P.O. Box. Notoriety is great—it means ad revenue, which means money, which means I can make videos as a full-time job. But it also creates the threat of stalkers and other crazies.

No one in the real world besides my friend Juliet knows Fawn of the Dead is actually me, 23 year old Paige Pixley. That's how I prefer it. I knew I'd made the right choice keeping it secret when I began to get weird gifts and letters from random people in my post office box.

They mean well. But I... do not want to end up as a breaking news story. Girl hacked to pieces in some fan's bathtub! No thank you.

“Count down time, Lads!” I cheer. When I pump my fist I also tap my keyboard. Stars animate and explode on the screen. Musical pings join the chat-chaos, they accompany giant treasure chest boxes stating what someone had tipped me. Five dollars, twenty, the occasional hundred; ad revenue is nice, direct money from my viewers is better. I have to make sure I give them the best performance possible. I have to do what they expect—I have to be honest.

Popping the box wide, I slip out the smooth, smaller box inside. It's white matte instead of glossy, the size of a laptop. I wiggle my brown eyebrows and Fawn wiggles her pink ones. “Here we go!” I chirp.

Making sure to turn the package to the camera so everyone can see each angle, I trace the hard corners with a finger. There's nothing on the surface but the name Secret Reader in dark green. I figure it's not the final packaging, this seems like a prototype or early release. Most of what I'm sent by companies is like this. Occasionally a well known product will show up in my mail, but I rarely bother to review those. I love feeling like the first. Not just another mouth-piece for a greedy corp to push sales.

Someone pings my chat—I glance up, see who it is, and gasp. “Hang on,” I say, clicking my mouse, “Cookie Crumbs wants to simul-stream.” That just meant when I accepted her invite, her video popped up next to mine. Now my viewers would see us both.

Cookie's avatar is slicker than mine. She's constantly updating her code to get better frame rates, less lag, smoother polygons. If my character is a flip phone, her's is the latest iPhone model.

Her video shows a virtual room full of purple stars and planets floating in the background around her chair. Cookie herself looks like something from a Pixar film directed by Tim Burton; a beautiful woman with green skin, white hair that flows like water, an angel halo, and pure black eyes that change color based on what her mood—or button press—is.

On her chest is a number that constantly updates, ticking higher and higher: her subscriber count. The current number is over a million.

“Fawn!” she squeals.

I wave excitedly. “Hey Cookie! How are you?”

“Great!” Her eyes flash pink as she smiles wider. My chat is flooding with messages and tips. I can't keep up. They love when we simul-stream. “Open that box and show us what you got, I can't wait to see!”

“Same,” I agree, tugging the item from the cardboard. It's dark green like the font on the box, the weight oddly heavy in my grip. “Is this a cement block? It weighs a ton! No—wait, is it a toaster?” I giggle, turning it around and noticing the horizontal slot. “What the hell, should I get some bread?”

Cookie leans into her camera and shrieks with exaggerated energy. The virtual planets behind her explode into super novas. “Do it! Do it!” she demands.

I laugh along with her, but inside, there's a flicker of shame. I'd never do something that ridiculous. Still... what the hell is this thing? Fishing in the box I find a slip of paper. “Oh,” I say as I read it. “Ooooh! Huh. It's some sort of word-reader.”

“Word-reader?” Cookie asks.

Setting the device on my desk where the video camera can still see it, I read the instructions one more time. “It's supposed to be able to read whatever I write by scanning it. Then it says those words out loud. Wow, if this works, that would be insanely cool.”

Snatching one of my pens from the cup full of random items, then a post-it note, I ask out loud, “What should I write?”

My chatroom is filling with too much text to read. I click a button, creating a poll that floats in the air near my character's head. There are plenty of joke answers, but soon enough my viewers lean towards one particular sentence that makes me roll my eyes.

“Fine, fine,” I laugh, scribbling the sentence 'Is this a toaster?' onto the paper. I flip the post-it up so everyone can see it, like I'm a magician about to do a magic trick. Then, slow and steady, I put the note into the device.

I can't lie—my heart is racing. I want the Secret Reader to work. The idea is fun, even if I can't really see the point of it. Cookie is doing a count down on her screen that looks like fireworks. Her subscriber number is accelerating, but so is mine; her viewers have come to watch me, trickling in, and they like what they see. A message pops up on my phone—it's from Cookie/Juliet.

:

Juliet: You're doingso well you've been put on the front page of the app!!!!

:

My heart is racingpainfully fast. I've never gone so viral that I've been front-page. No wonder so many new people are in my chat, subscribing like it's going out of style. Holy shit. Sweat sticks to my chest and makes my tight green bodysuit even tighter.

There's a sudden pressure not to let everyone down. I'm freaking out, but Fawn of the Dead shows no hint of it. My online avatar is perfection, as she always is.

The Secret Reader glows white as it scans my note. Then it pings as a microwave would. A robotic voice speaks in a stilted, awful tone, saying, “It thinned a tortoise?”

My heart sinks. Cookie squeals. My screen is crowded as almost every single person watching begins to type some variation of it thinned a tortoise or spamming turtle emojis.

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