Story code: ST-000603
Part 2: The Audience
The face on the screen belonged to a young man in his early twenties, bathed in the synthetic purple glow of LED strip lights. He sat in a pristine, high-backed gaming chair, wearing a bulky headset equipped with a curved microphone. Behind him, a glass-fronted mini-fridge displayed perfectly aligned rows of colorful energy drinks. The room looked intensely air-conditioned, perfectly dry, and entirely untouched by the devastated world outside.
“Got him,” the young man said, though he was not looking at the camera. He was reading a secondary monitor off-screen, a smirk stretching across his face. “Told you guys the spoofing software would bypass his block list. Just use the mom’s landline. Too easy.”
Elias stood frozen in the ankle-deep muck. His chest tightened, a cold spike of adrenaline piercing through his utter exhaustion. “Where is my mother?”
“She’s probably counting her payout from the climate hoax fund,” the young man laughed, finally looking down at Elias on his screen. His expression shifted into exaggerated, theatrical mock-pity. “Look at you, bro. You got the whole costume on. The dirty shirt, the fake sweat. How much did the city pay you to trash your own bakery and cry about a flood that never happened?”
Elias did not scream. He did not have the oxygen for it. He stared at the pristine, white insulated cup the young man casually took a sip from, suddenly hyper-aware of his own parched throat and the toxic fumes burning his nostrils. The sheer, staggering absurdity of the accusation held him paralyzed. This stranger had weaponized his elderly mother’s identity just to accuse him of faking the end of his world.
Without a word, Elias tapped the icon to reverse his phone’s camera.
He held the device up, panning it slowly across the devastated bakery. He showed the six-foot high watermark etched in dried, brown filth across the white drywall. He walked forward, his boots dragging heavily through the thick sludge, and held the lens inches from the shattered main display case. He focused on the decomposing mass of what used to be artisan pastries, now a swollen, rotting island covered in a shimmering slick of diesel fuel.
“Look at it,” Elias rasped, his voice sounding like cracked gravel.
He plunged his free hand into the dark water, pulling up a heavy, dripping handful of the black, oily sediment that had coated his kitchen. He held his filthy hand right in front of the camera lens, letting the toxic sludge drip thickly down his wrist.
On the screen, the young man’s smirk faltered for a fraction of a second. The physical reality of the heavy mud, the rusted metal of the massive deck oven, and the utter, catastrophic destruction did not look like a soundstage. It looked like a tomb. But the hesitation vanished instantly as the young man leaned closer to his microphone, reading a rapidly scrolling chat Elias could not see.
“Nice prop mud,” the streamer scoffed, his voice pitching slightly higher, betraying a sudden defensive edge. “You guys really went all out for the green screen. Hope you enjoy the federal handouts, parasite.”
Elias ended the call. His hand shook so violently he almost dropped the device into the water.
He instantly dialed his mother’s actual number. The phone remained silent for ten agonizing seconds before emitting three flat, harsh beeps. The network failed to connect. The cell towers in her neighborhood, heavily damaged by the exact storm the internet claimed was a fabrication, were completely offline. He tried again. Call failed.
A sharp, mechanical whine cut through the heavy silence of the bakery.
Elias looked up. Hovering just outside the shattered frame of his front window was a small, white consumer drone. Its four fast-spinning rotors kicked up a localized breeze, rippling the oily surface of the floodwater resting on the sidewalk. A small, red light blinked steadily near the camera lens, which was pointed directly at his chest.
The digital mob had breached the physical world. Someone local, someone watching the livestream, had flown it here.
A fresh surge of rage-hot and blinding-overrode Elias’s exhaustion. He gripped the wooden handle of his shovel with both hands. He waded toward the window, his boots making loud, sucking noises as he fought the resistance of the muck.
“Get out!” Elias roared, raising the heavy, mud-caked shovel like a baseball bat.
The drone darted backward, smoothly retreating just out of reach, hovering effortlessly over the flooded street. Elias lunged, putting his entire body weight into a massive swing, intending to smash the plastic machine into fragments.
He misjudged the slippery tiles hidden beneath the sludge.
His front boot caught the edge of a submerged, broken floorboard. His feet flew out from under him. He went down hard, slamming chest-first into the toxic water.
The impact forced the foul, black liquid into his mouth and nose. The taste was unimaginable-a wretched, burning cocktail of raw sewage, industrial grease, and decaying organic matter. He gagged violently, scrambling to push himself up, but his hands slipped in the slime. He rolled onto his side, coughing up black water, his eyes stinging so fiercely he was temporarily blinded.
He dragged himself up to his knees, retching, spitting the toxic grit from his tongue. The smell of diesel fuel clung to his hair and skin, suffocating him. He wiped his burning eyes with the back of his wrist, blinking rapidly to clear his vision.
The drone had moved closer. It was hovering just inside the window frame again, its camera tilted downward, perfectly framing Elias as he kneeled in the raw sewage of his ruined life. The red light blinked in steady, indifferent intervals. They were recording his humiliation.
His phone, which he had tossed onto a relatively dry prep counter just before his fall, vibrated loudly against the stainless steel. It vibrated again, and again.
Elias stumbled toward the counter, his clothes now weighing twice as much, dripping toxic slime onto the floor. He picked up the phone. His mother’s number still showed no signal, but SMS messages were slipping through the jammed network via a faint Wi-Fi signal from the upper floor apartments.
He opened the most recent text, sent from a local, unmasked number.
*Drone footage looks hilarious. You really committed to the bit diving into the mud. Since you’re busy playing in the dirt, we sent a couple guys to your mom’s house to see if her basement is a movie set too. They’re pulling into her driveway now.*
Elias stared at the screen, the burning in his eyes completely forgotten. His mother was seventy-two, living alone in a neighborhood that still had no power, surrounded by dangerous debris. His bakery was dead. His insurance was gone. And now, the mob was at her doorstep.
He looked out the broken window. His delivery truck was parked on the corner, half-crushed by a fallen oak tree. The roads were completely impassable to vehicles. The only way to her house was three miles on foot, straight through the deepest, most treacherous sections of the disaster zone.
Elias dropped the shovel, grabbed his keys, and waded out into the ruined street.