Get Out Your Damn Umbrellas

Chapter 19

"That was, 'Starboy' by the Weekend," Phil said as the last lines of the song faded. "You know, sometimes I wonder if that one might be based on me a little bit."

Dan grinned at him and gave a little shrug. "I dunno, Phil, maybe it could be. You do really like space."

At this point they were over halfway through the hour, and it looked like they might make it to the end without any major catastrophes. Well, Phil had told a rather uncomfortable story about his grandad getting stung by a wasp that flew up his shorts while he was on safari, but that was the most unsettling thing that had happened so far. Still, it was a useful segway to introducing this week's internet hashtag, "holiday fails," where people could tweet them stories about disastrous events that they experienced while on holiday.

Phil read out the twitter username "WeirdKidsCorner" and then fell into a fit of laughter when he read the story. Leaning closer to the screen, Dan laughed as well and winced in sympathy as he read it out loud.

"She spent an entire day on a holiday trapped inside her caravan because there was an evil seagull outside that she was afraid would attack her."

"An evil seagull."

"Oh my gosh," Dan muttered "Like, if you saw a seagull that was clearly..."

"Evil?"

"...well, maybe not objectively evil..."

"Did it have a black cape?"

"... but clearly angry, would you leave the caravan? I'd stay inside for the weekend."

"No. I mean, if you look at them in the eyes they've got dead eyes," Phil said earnestly while Dan huffed a quiet chuckle. "Dead, vampiric eyes."

"Wow, you're really going after seagulls there, Phil, aren't you?"

"Sorry if there's any seagulls listening," Phil quipped, delighting in his ability to make Dan shake his head in fond amusement. "Anyways, keep those coming in with the hashtag 'holiday fails.'"

A few more responses from twitter queued up on the screen. Before they had the chance to read any more of them, however, the computer screen suddenly turned blue.

"Oh goodness," Dan murmured nervously. "Has the program crashed again?"

Phil looked up and stared through the glass window separating their booth from the rest of the studio at the show managers and technicians on the other side. A few of them just scratched their heads and shrugged, apparently not seeing a problem on their end.

Trying not to get too flustered or panicked, Phil fixed his gaze intensely on the landscape of buttons, switches, and knobs and in front of him. A blinking light on one of the switchboards told him that they had an incoming call. He pressed the small green button on the right to accept it, but for a minute there only seemed to be silence on the other end.

"Hello?" Phil said uncertainly. "Is this tech support?"

"I suppose you could say that," an oddly chipper voice answered on the other end. "Though I'm not sure there's much I can do to help you boys at the moment. It seems like your computer systems have been hacked."

The hairs on the back of Phil's neck stood up as a cold surge of terror flooded his stomach. Something in that stranger's voice sounded horribly familiar. Phil turned to look at Dan. The boy was staring blankly ahead like a deer in the headlights, and he was beginning to tremble all over.

Gripping the headphones tightly over his ears, Phil growled into the microphone, "Who is this?"

"Just your friendly neighborhood tech guy," the stranger said in the same light, casual tone. "Huge fan, by the way. Love the show." A hint of something sinister crept into his voice. "Not sure if the audience is still watching now, though. They've probably gone over to YouTube to watch the new video on Dan's channel. Here, have a listen."