The Boy in the Bubble, or, In The Current Year

Insomnia was not the word for it. He slept, but fitfully. His mind had attuned itself to hear that insectile buzz of his phone on the bedside cabinet. He would awake from his nocturnal half-life slumber, blast himself with the lurid LCD lights on the tiny screen as he excitedly looked to see what reactions his latest hot takes had brought to him. Sometimes there would be likes, agreements, encouragement, all of which would give him a warm glowing feeling and allow him to drift off again in soothing hormonal bliss. At least until the next time the phone alerted him to a response. Other times he was not so lucky, someone might disagree or insult him or pour scorn on his thoughts and he would lie there furious, calculating how to respond, dreaming up the perfect savage retort, counter-argument or sneering dismissal. Sometimes he could not think of a response but either way he would be up all night then, bickering with and insulting random strangers or tortured by his own inability at one-upmanship.

Thus it was that Sullivan Reid, like so many of his generation, found himself in a constant state of tiredness due to what idiots called FOMO, a puerile acronym which stood for “fear of missing out”. He had not always suffered from this condition, in fact, it was as if the acronym itself was a spell that had conjured the pathology within him. He existed in a state of emotive hyper-stimulation where everything was indistinguishable from chronic anxiety, whether it be vicarious outrage or condescending approval, insane hatred or submissive acceptance. He’d become addicted to himself, to his place in the virtual world, to the persona he’d invented but was cultivated and pruned and cut into shape by others. It was all that mattered, the grey erosion of the real world was of little concern, at least until it was worthy of ascendency to the online realm, usually as a picture with himself in the severe foreground. He drowned the world out with music or podcasts, through the headphones clamped to his skull like some elegantly designed medieval torture device.

The real world only existed at the periphery of his sensorum, an inconvenient tunnel he had to traverse outside the agitated comfort of the screen-world. Things were much more vivid and important in the digital landscape. To Sullivan it was as if things were never really real until they’d been captured displayed and commented on. He would pass the hordes of filthy, homeless mentally-ill youths curled up in abandoned shop doorways, oblivious to them and their plight. Yet someone posting an image of one, half a world away, would allow him to commit to a performance of disgust, all for the sake of his own well-being. He’d write angry sentimental platitudes and watch the likes roll in, like it was some kind of neurotransmitter currency that he was banking on.

Gone was any sense of proportion or nuance, everything was binary, absolutely good or unalterably bad. He was good, those who did not agree with him were bad. It was a child-like, simplistic and comforting world-view that was only marred by, yet defined by, the existence of the ever widening group of “bad guys”.

Lately, the “bad guys” seemed to have taken over the world. Not that the real world would have seemed any different, had he taken off the headphones and stopped staring at the screens. But to the good folk, like him, the evidence was incontrovertible. Everything was terrible, because people like him said so and as such only a vicious monster would disagree. Still, while the “bad guys” might be in charge, it gave him no small comfort to realise he was a rebel, a warrior for good, a person who would stand up and be counted; or at least make his Milquetoast conformist opinions known to the circle of correspondents that constantly reinforced each others narrative of a world they had constructed like an exquisite corpse. For likes, of course.

Not that he wasn’t adventurous. No. From time to time the circle would grow stale, saying the same things over and over, liking the same things over and over, posting the same things to be instantly outraged at over and over. Still there were always a few who could be certain to give him a new perspective. Well, a broader understanding of his own perspective, which he would often purloin and pass off as his own. For likes, of course.

The constant state of cresting on dopamine highs, persistent tiredness and need to alter his performance based on the slightest negative cue led Sullivan into a state of susceptibility of which he was not fully aware. His outraged reactions to out of context clips, mendacious quotation editing and outright fabrications were not, as he saw it, evidence of a crumbling mind, but rather examples of what was real. Even when they were pointed out as such, he would shrug off his vitriolic stances claiming that such might not be real but were still models of the way “the bad guys” think and acted. Sullivan could never admit to being wrong, for to do so would be so overwhelmingly traumatic to his perception of himself that it would feel like an erasure of all the self.

Defensive, credulous, reactionary and in a state of constant exhausted anxiety, it was only a small step until he began to fall into catastrophism. This first manifested when he was given the wrong coffee at a shop. Rather than accepting that accidents happen, it became evidence of everything that was wrong with the world, and he wrote a long angry screed about how this simple mistake was a part of the systemic control of the “bad guys”.

Even by the histrionic standards of social media, his outburst was breathtaking and he found himself suddenly being supported in it by many people of whom he had never heard, it heartened him to find so many other good guys out there in the darkness of the world he’d made for himself, but there was a lot of criticism, much of it hostile, insulting, demeaning, which only proved just how much influence the “bad guys” had. Having gone viral, Sullivan suddenly found himself with four hundred percent more followers on his account, which did wonders for his self-regard but left him even more anxious. Now the public knew who he was. He worried that they might find something unwholesome in his history and worried that he now had to be extra-careful about what words he used. If a single person found anything he did “problematic”, he could be exposed as a fraud, ruined, deleted, cancelled. The power and the vulnerability were terrifying.

A sane mind might perhaps have taken a step back from this, but the time in which he lived was far from sane and so Sullivan began to expatiate his thoughts in a similar manner to his coffee rant. It did not occur to him he was chasing that glorious hormone surge in a way similar to a heroin user chasing after that womb-like opiate bliss. Nor did it occur to him that his increasingly verbose over-reactions were exacerbating his condition. His mask of arrogance completely covered his self-destructive neuroticism. Something had to give.

Three weeks after his viral coffee rant, there was a mass murder in a town not far from him. Before the bodies were recovered, while the blood of the victims was still cooling and congealing on the ground, Sullivan took the opportunity to once again blame “the bad guys”, covering everything from race, religion, mental health all the way to an ideological conspiracy within education to undermine and indoctrinate the good people with their dark malevolent world-view.

It was mostly well received though some thought it was a bit ill-timed and suggested that he should have waited until all the evidence was in. By this point it was his detractors that were his fuel. Even the mildest criticism was an attack against all that was good in the world and he would not stand for it. He would bombard these “servants of evil” with condescension, vitriolic invective, accusations, long finger-wagging moralistic preaching until they gave up, and they always gave up, much to his satisfaction. It did not occur to him he was being blocked or muted, only that he had won the argument.

During this phase was when he first heard of CJ41AL6. This was the user’s name, but people had all sorts of strange names on social media. CJ, as Sullivan came to know the user, tweeted only once in support, an aphorism that was familiar but Sullivan thought particularly pertinent to his own stance.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Of course, Sullivan liked that message. It bolstered his own view, that he was in a titanic struggle against the forces of darkness, a hero facing the “bad guys”.

He was pleased to find the next day that CJ followed his account and after going through CJ’s posts to make sure there was no opinions that were wrong, followed the account back. He actually liked the account, it was very positive, each one a little maxim, adage or precept that said a lot in precise and straightforward language. CJ’s account did not post frequently but Sullivan soon began to realise that each comment was perfectly timed. For example, after a terrorist attack on a major city, CJ posted “Only in the darkness can you see the stars”. After one of “the bad guys” won an election in a European Country, “It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”

Sullivan still enduring from self-induced psychological stress which he ignored considering it just the experience of living in a world run by “the bad guys”. His deterioration grew day after day while he was unaware that it festered inside him, like a boil, waiting to burst. It wasn’t long before that happened.

He woke one morning to watch footage of a gang of youths beat an elderly woman to death. It was doing the rounds as he semi-slumbered and he was late to the outrage but he was truly, deeply horrified by what he observed and could barely contain his rage. He roared on social media, a growl of fury filled with utter contempt for the evil thugs who’d not only killed the woman, but laughed as they did, and recorded the footage for their disgusting audience. It broke him and he found himself wishing all manner of brutalities upon the bad guys, while his tears blurred the screen. His unfiltered, scathing reaction in which he dehumanised the murderers as vermin and pleaded, no demanded, that they be eradicated was as popular as his coffee rant, with very few detractors.

CJ41AL6, who was always on top of things, merely said “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

This adage, which was actually nothing more than Isaac Newton’s third law of motion, struck Sullivan like a bolt of lightning. It seemed to paralyse him, seethe through his nerves, burn into his brain, scalding new neural pathways and he found himself upon the floor, sobbing and laughing at the same time. He shuddered uncontrollably, wailed and guffawed, unable to think, struggling to breathe, with a high-pitched ringing in his ears. His heart thumped in his chest, his body became slick with a cold sweat and he found he could not bear it. He began to feel like he was fading into nothing but the burning all-encompassing white sizzling light that drowned his vision.

When he came to, he was a changed man and knew exactly what he had to do. He stood up, looking at the shadow of dampness where he’d laid for hours, in some kind of unconscious hellish bliss. He imagined himself, lying there, a loathsome, impotent nobody. He felt disgust at his former self, that he’d allowed them, THEM!, to reduce him to such a squalid wretch. No more. He had been a weakling, less than a man, a vain creature that lacked the gumption to fight for his beliefs.

No more. No more. Sullivan stripped down and looked at his scrawny, pale body with disgust but even in that self-hatred he saw something else, potential. In this moment of clarity (which he was unaware was merely the lull before the oncoming storm) he saw himself as a weapon. He nodded at his reflection, found he was smiling and looked straight into the reflection of his own eyes, saw the burning steel inside him and Sullivan realised he had been reborn and, in that realisation, a plan formed. CJ had been telling him all along, pushing him forward inch by inch, step by step until finally he had become enlightened. Someone had to do something, why not Sullivan?

He had to be cautious, “the bad guys” had all types of snoops and snitches desperate to take note of any strange activity and report it to their shadowy evil overseers. Nevertheless, where there was a will, there was a way, and Sullivan had certainly proven to himself that he had enough willpower and intelligence to solve his issue.

He began to wander the town’s grey markets at the weekend, the sort of places where you could find knock-off jeans, hacked phones and old vinyl records. One of the stalls sold decommissioned weapons, swords, there was even a carbon fibre recurve bow and a crossbow hanging from the side of the stall. The chap who was selling these things was a dodgy looking individual, in his forties, balding, chubby and with huge lumpy dark sacks of flesh under his eyes. They got into a discussion and Sullivan bought a questionable looking hunting knife. He didn’t need it, it was a tactic to win the guy over. He’d be back the following week, that time he bought a decommissioned Webley Revolver, which was more of an antique than anything else. He’d spent some time the days before researching the weapon, so he could sound like he knew something about guns, which the guy behind the counter seemed to appreciate, being as he was an amateur aficionado. Both ended up complaining about the lack of shooting ranges, since guns were, like almost everything else, banned and eventually the old guy hinted that there were still a few, off the record, of course.

It took a couple more purchases and conversations before those hints became addresses and a recommendation. “Tell them Willie McAllister sent ye.” the old man said, with a friendly wink.

It took him a few days to pluck up the nerve, but soon Sullivan began to spend time at an illicit shooting range an hour from town. They only used small handguns .38’s mostly, though there was a single Ruger semi-automatic rifle, which was about 40 years but was still functional. He enjoyed using it and after a few sessions could hit the target most of the time. This gave him the confidence he needed for the next phase of his operation. It was time to take the war to the bad guys.

Despite his good intentions he found himself once more being sucked into the histrionics of social media but this time he felt more detached from it all, seeing the rantings and outrages as the cries of the desperate and impotent, of those who had not woken fully from the nightmare world “the bad guys” had created. They were not yet warriors who could act, but victims who could only react in symbolic fury. He would show them the way. Just as the genius CJ41AL6 had shown him.

One September morning he went to the shooting range. At this time it was very quiet and in fact the staff member seemed annoyed and surprised that anyone was there at that time of morning. Still, he took Sullivan’s money and allowed him entry. After half an hour of shooting targets with a .38. He stashed it into his sports bag and then asked if he could try the Ruger again. After paying for 300 rounds of ammo, he loaded the weapon and shot a few rounds into the paper target in the distance. He then walked out of the firing range into the hallway where the man who he’d seen earlier was half-heartedly mopping the hall, while smoking and listening to music on his headphones.

Sullivan opened fire on him. At that range he couldn’t miss and a cluster of bullets ripped into the man’s neck and up his face. His head burst, blood and brain bloomed out behind him and he collapsed before he even had a chance to understand what happened. Sullivan felt a surge of energy like he had never experienced. He felt giddy yet horrified, shocked yet elated, he held the power of death in his hands and he accepted it. Not that he did not feel sorry for his victim, far from it. He understood what he had done was wrong, but concluded it necessary, the man was collateral damage.

He stood over the corpse, watching its final spasms and twitches, burning the victim into his brain, so that he would never forget his face. An unwitting martyr in the cause of good. Sullivan reached down and took the keys to the large weapons locker. Quickly he raided it, taking three more pistols, including a Desert Eagle he never knew they had. He stuffed them in his bag along with hundreds of rounds of ammo. His heart thumped in his chest, there was ringing in his ears, he felt parched and itchy, his hands damp with sweat but he knew this was anxiety, he understood he had stepped over the line, went over the top, had left the safety of the trenches.

Rushing from the Shooting range, he stashed the bag of guns in the passenger seat of his car and started the engine. He took a pause then, to calm himself before his next mission, the big one. Pulling out his phone, he looked once again at twitter and sent a personal message to CJ41AL6, thanking the user for opening his eyes. On his own social media pages, he posted a link to his 9 page manifesto which encouraged others like him to rise up against the “bad guys”, to follow him on the path. He ended it all by saying “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. Pleased with it, he took a deep satisfied sigh and then started the car and headed towards the primary school.

He entered the building to no suspicion, no alarms, just the sounds of noisy kids being indoctrinated by the teachers in pay of “the bad guys”. He raised the Ruger as he kicked open the first door on the left and fired, riddling the teacher, a 27 year old woman who was heavily pregnant, with bullets. Her blood sprayed everywhere as she fell. She dropped while turning towards him with a hurt perplexed look. The gunfire was accompanied by screams from the class of tiny children all sitting behind their desks. Sullivan knew they’d be silent soon enough and began to spray gunfire at them. Small terrified heads grew wounds like poppies. Open mouths and wide terrified eyes were closed forever. Satisfied he made his way to the next room.

By this point the alarms were already ringing and the staff were already trying to block the door or evacuate through the back of the school. A janitor, a young man not much older than Sullivan came charging towards him, swearing and furious. Sullivan took one of the .38’s in his hand and aimed it at him and the man came to an abrupt halt. “This is not about you.” Sullivan said, quietly and calmly. “Don’t involve yourself, go, go now.”

The janitor looked at him with disgust but yet relief. He nodded and ran past Sullivan and out the main exit. Sullivan then attempted the door to the right of him but there was a heavy set middle aged woman leaning against it, while he saw the children scrambling out of the window behind her. All of them were in tears, all of them in abject fear. He used most of his body weight in the shove to open it, but she was much heavier, so he just took aim at the glass and fired into her head through it. She disappeared behind the red stained hole. The fractured glass reminded him of a spider’s web. He slammed the door again and managed to get into the room, opening fire with the Ruger again at the children fleeing outside. He caught maybe five or six of them, the others had escaped. It didn’t matter. He was the teacher today and he was teaching them a lesson they would never, ever forget. He marched out of the room and down the hall to the next class. Behind him he could already hear the sirens of police cars. He had time for one more assault before they’d get into the building, he took the opportunity. Booting the door of the next classroom, he found it all but empty, another young woman was squeezing herself out of the window, while he could see children streaming away from the school. He squeezed the trigger of the Ruger, aiming at her buttocks and she flopped down, stuck in the window-frame like a fish. At this point he took out a few frames of glass and started taking pot shots at the teachers and children fleeing across the playground. A little brown hair girl plummeted in a haze of pink mist. He caught another teacher in the leg and finished her off with the .38.

It was then that he heard the voices behind him demand that he put the gun down. He did as he was told. Slowly bent down, placed the Ruger and the .38 on the floor, then slid the bag off his shoulders and took a pace back put his hands behind his head and went into the kneeling position.

The police were not gentle with him as they arrested him, which he fully expected. He did not expect the militia of “the bad guys” to treat him well at all and was more than half expecting to be executed. That, however did not happen. He stayed silent through the whole thing, the beatings, being thrown into the van, the angry shouted questions and accusations. The sheer vile invective. He recognised it all too well. Impotence, fury. As they drove him to the station he wondered if in fact he should have attacked a police station.

Cuffed, with bruised ribs, black eyes and a busted jaw, he was questioned. He gave them what they asked, declaring that he considered himself a prisoner of war. When the investigator asked him “what war?” he answered “The one I declared today.”

Unapologetic, confident in his own cause and with cold sincerity he told them his motive, told them about the old man being beaten to death, about the indoctrination of the children by “the bad guys” explained in great detail how he had come to murder three teachers and seventeen little boys and girls, for the greater good. He told them what had sparked it, his great teacher, his muse and guru, CJ41AL6.

He was taken back to his cell to appear in front of a judge the following day. He sat there, on his knees against the cold concrete floor, only wondering occasionally what all his followers on social media would be saying, now many would condemn him, how many would say what he did was necessary. Hours passed as he sat in this calm meditative contemplation and he was only brought out of it by the solicitor sent to represent him.

He did not much care to make a phone call, or to plead guilty, he felt no guilt, he admitted, he did what any good soldier would do. The solicitor, a small thin man in his fifties tried to convince him that it was not in his best interests to plead not guilty but that they could try and get him a reduced sentence if he agreed that he had been radicalised to commit his atrocity by other actors, namely the account known as CJ41AL6.

While at first he was slightly defensive about this, the fact was that CJ41AL6 could be anyone, anywhere in the world, perhaps completely anonymous, and so he agreed, happy in the fact that he might be again sticking it to “the bad guys.”

He slept well that night, a dreamless comfortable sleep and woke the next morning as confident and certain as he was before he drifted off. That confidence began to wane as he saw the smirks of the police officers which seemed to have replaced the sheer disgust at his actions the day before. An hour prior to his first hearing with the judge, his solicitor came to see him, his face exasperated and angry. “Well,” he began. “I would still advise you to plead guilty but I’m afraid there will be no plea deal, or reduced sentence other than the leniency given for not contesting the case.”

Sullivan was not prepared for that and for the first time in weeks felt his certainty waver. “What?” was all he said.

“You weren’t radicalised online. I have looked at the evidence, all your angry rants on social media, your wishing others harm or death, your stupid manifesto. It was you all along, no one else did this. You’re just a fucking monster.”

“But,” Sullivan said now more uncertain than ever. “What about CJ41AL6?”

The solicitor gave a small sardonic laugh. “Mister Reid… We checked it out, the police gave us the details but we checked it out anyway, just to make sure it wasn’t a mistake.”

Fear began to creep up Sullivan’s spine, cold fingers of it caressing his neck. “What do you mean mistake?”

“Well Mister Reid, that account, CJ41AL6, it was a college project from three years ago, it was a bot that simply repeats quotes of famous people that it trawled the web to find and reprinted on social media. It just runs itself, no one ever switched it off.” The solicitor said, with a level of embarrassment and disappointment.

Sullivan felt the world collapse beneath him, as if he was dropping into a bottomless pit. “But...” he said but could find nothing else to say as it finally dawned on him the enormity of what he had done. “But...” he sobbed.

“Yes, Mister Reid, you are “the bad guy”, no one else. Just you.” The solicitor said.