No Freaking Thanks

Chapter 1

Wednesday, August 3, 2022; New London, Connecticut, U.S.A.

A beautiful scene of a butterfly crawling out of its chrysalis was violently interrupted by a man donning a red hat with the Stars and Stripes inappropriately upside down wanting to persuade the pseudo-patriots to vote for the Democratic governor's challenger. The video cuts to the user that presented the guy's act of violence calmly wanting their audience to reach out to TikTok for a permanent ban on the guy's account. Not only that; people on Twitter were already storming the comment section for recent posts belonging to a casual restaurant chain.

The incident reached the local news broadcast being displayed on a small TV in the kitchen that can display the 1080p format. Conveniently, it can be folded up to a closed position when anyone is done using it. The news story, with its graphic nature, left Hayden Darrell feeling glum. She is getting tired of people calling for acts of extremism over providing some quality-of-life improvements for the district. As a secretary with an associate's in office management along with vocational training, her inboxes have been colonized by many angry parents of the students that go to a school within that district, calling for an end to a health mandate or needing the topic of critical race theory to be removed (even if offered only as an elective rather than an alternative choice to American History). It is just another layer of sadness along with having to single-handedly raise her two children Terry and Joy after her husband passed away due to complications with pneumonia. Thankfully, the two siblings have their mother covered. For instance, Joy would walk down the stairs (like right now) to open up a streaming platform to engage escapism.

Joy is the type of person that would at times speak in Digispeak. In theory, people with the knowledge of that language would replace some words from the English language by collecting them into another meaning of an already-established word like canceled or fire. Alternatively, they would use acronyms such as BRB or OMG for in-person conversations. From the eyes of anyone who has been accustomed to reading formal English like her brother Terry, it is applying a similar effect of what the Newspeak language of George Orwell's 1984 would do, albeit with the purpose of peeling the paint off walls instead of being part of totalitarianism. Just like the way she speaks; her everyday attires are also lazy. Joy slumped on the couch in her gray sweatpants and a red shirt that would hang off one of her shoulders when not adjusted to the center. She had a good run working at a big box retailer as a digital shopper. Behind the scenes, she runs a self-proclaimed "OnlyFans empire" to find food and cosmetics. Joy would even host a live stream on Twitch to either chat with the audience, go Rambo in any first-person shooter game she has on her tower suited for high-end gaming, or go on a tour around any place she goes. When she gets hungry and no one in the house is present to provide food, Joy would order takeout. Usually, it is either from Red Lobster or Chipotle. Her fans want to see her get a pudgy belly that would [supposedly] go well with her deep bosom, but she would peacefully remind them that self-control exists. When out on break, Joy would watch something that is available on any streaming platform they could afford.

What makes the Darrells distinguishable from their neighbors is that they rely on streaming content instead of traditional cable. Remember the local broadcast on the kitchen's mini TV? It was viewable through NBCUniversial's Peacock service's ability to bring local programming. Right now, they are paying for five streaming services: Peacock, Netflix, and a bundle that includes Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+. When they want to watch something not found on those platforms, they would reach out to their friends for more content. Hayden's red-wine zombie posse is in the middle of a drama originally on Discovery+, Joy has a superficial basic friend that is paying for Paramount+, and Terry is able to watch content on Amazon Prime Video and HBO Max with the help of his friends Vince White and Jared Slovakia respectively.