Noble Causes

Chapter 4

It was after the conclusion of the first survey that everything started to change for me and for everyone else whether they realized it or not. Naturally, the way people see the world changes over time with the sum total of their life experiences but I don't know of anyone else who could put their finger on the exact moment that they knew that the world wasn't what they had always thought it was.

Kim and I sat in my office with our tea, late on the first morning after. I just stared out the window for the longest time.

"This is sick. All of it. These people are disgusting." Kim said at last, breaking the silence.

She didn't look up from her laptop. She just kept reading and shaking her head.

"They're talking about this like it's a television show." I agreed.

"These people are encouraging this. Every time someone votes in these surveys it just encourages those monsters to do...this." I could hear the frustration in her voice but I wasn't really paying attention all that closely.

From my office window I could see a crowd of people standing on the sidewalk opposite my flat. The crowd was larger than usual but that wasn't what caught my eye. That day, the people seemed more animated than usual. You can tell, by people's body language, when they're angry and I knew I wasn't watching a group of angry people. They were excited. They moved back and forth, concentration moving from one person to another to another in small groups inside the larger group. Their eyes went from one person's mobile screen to another's and then back. I didn't know if they were looking at posts, memes, videos, or the live feed and it didn't matter. That was the moment that I could almost feel the world change underneath my feet. Everything shifted for me.

"It's not real to them." I said to no one in particular.

"What?" Kim asked.

"It's not real to them. We're angry at them because they're talking about Edward like he's an actor in a movie because we love him but, really, that's all he is to them. He isn't a real person." I concluded.

Without looking at her, I could feel Kim's eyes leave the screen of her laptop.

"What are you talking about?" Kim asked, puzzled.

"He's real to us because we know him. We've sat in his kitchen for tea, we've laughed at his jokes, and we've gone on holiday together. They don't have any of that." I explained, never looking away from the window. "He's not Ed Miller. He's a pirate. He's a solider caught behind enemy lines in 1944. He's a spy. He's not a real person to them because they have nothing real to associate with him. It's all fiction."

"Come on Scout, I get what you're saying but think about it, they..." Kim started.

"No. That's the whole problem. The people voting, the people making jokes online...those people on the street down there, they're not thinking about it. Feelings are easy, thinking is hard. Feelings come to you whether you want them to or not. Thinking is...different. You have to make a choice to think things through and they're not doing that because they've never considered that there might be a reason to." I was aware of the words coming out of my mouth more so than I think I had ever been conscious of anything else I'd ever said before that or almost anything else since.

I turned to face Kim to find her staring at me in disbelief. I don't know what reaction I was expecting so I supposed that surprise was as good as any.

"What are you going to do?" Kim asked after a long while.

"I'm going to make them think. I'm going to take the mask off the player. I'm going to put the costumes away and make him real." I replied.