It should have been no surprise that Ryuji would be trolled. You can only stay under the radar for so long until some operator notices your faint blip on the screen. One such operator was Bill McGregor, a member of the same cohort to which George belonged. He was one of the ‘local boys’ George and Julian met when they participated in Rick’s troll workshop. He was also the owner of a hunting shop called, “DuckBill Hunting.” A day or two after Ryuji’s appearance at the Dogs’ concert in St. Louis, Bill was tidying up the shop before a hunting group would arrive to slaughter ducks in one of his blinds. He noticed there was very little space left on the wall to display photographs of happy customers holding their prey, so wondered where he could put pictures of the dozen hunters who were coming today. While scanning the wall, he spotted a picture of an Asian man who looked a little like Ryuji. He walked closer to get a better look and realized that it was a picture of Ryuji standing with a man Bill did not know and two that he did.
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered when he realized the Trinket’s bassist was with George and Julian, trolls who no doubt were working on the current project as well. Since he had so many hunters use his facilities, he could not recall much about the specific day Ryuji had visited. Oh shit, there’s another one. A little to the right was another picture with Ryuji that had been taken several days later. This one he did remember since one of the prettiest women he had ever met was in it; his eyes having a tendency to search it out occasionally. It also contained George. Bill now remembered that Ryuji worked as a photographer and he agreed to take some pictures of the pretty woman with her husband to use for the cover of a book written by George’s wife. He also remembered that Ryuji told George his photography studio was in Muncie, which was no more than a couple of hours drive from Centerville.
After a few minutes of searching online, Bill was able to locate the name and address of the studio. The hunters weren’t scheduled to arrive for another half hour, so Bill decided to send Rick an encrypted email about the situation. A few minutes later, Rick sent back a note saying he would drop by around noon.
Rick, a balding, white male with a metabolic-syndrome gut, looked through his wire-rimmed glasses at Bill; a man of similar form. “A duck-hunting faggot, hmm, no surprise there.”
“You better watch yourself, or you may end up being in one of those pictures yourself – as the prey.”
“I’m just calling it the way I see it,” Rick said, grinning like a little boy who enjoyed dropping four-letter words around his mother.
“All I can say is you’ve been warned,” Bill replied, a little like a mother would respond. “So, to get back to the subject at hand, what’s the next step?”
Rick lowered himself into a wooden-folding chair alongside a picnic table laden with various brochures related to ducking-hunting and camping equipment. He picked up one of the brochures. “I’d be great if someone could snap a couple paparazzi shots of the Jap poop-shooter in his digs.”
“Patti’s sister lives in Muncie. Maybe a music-crazed daughter or niece could stalk the studio for a while.”
Little did Bill realize how easy that was to arrange. He asked Patti if she could contact her younger sister in Muncie, but expected he would have to drive up there and take pictures himself. It turned out that her sister knew the studio since it was contracted to photograph the high-school seniors the year her daughter graduated. She promised she could arrange to get a couple of shots for Bill to put in his shop alongside the ones taken when Ryuji had gone duck hunting in Centerville.
“My nephew Jimmy couldn’t believe it,” she told Patti the following day. “He just loves that group, so promised to hang out in front of the studio with some friends and try to get a couple of shots.”
When Patti told Bill, he said, “Have her get Jimmy to post them on his SNS page. I can print them from there.” Her sister emailed the link for the SNS page once he put them on it. Within a few days, not only were there a few pictures but a short video of Ryuji and his boyfriend that the nephew was able to record on his smart phone. Now, the trolls could go to work.
George read several comments written by other trolls in his cohort, sighed and said to Mavis: “Don’t blame me; he did it to himself. That’s what you get when you play with Dogs.”
Mavis noticed a smile on his face. “What’s so funny?”
“I don’t know. That was just one of the comments written under the posting of the pictures.”
Mavis watched the video shot of Ryuji and Malcolm leaving their house / studio. “Who’s Jimmy Wales?”
“The kid who took the pictures and video, I guess; this is his SNS page. From his comments it appears that he’s very excited to post this since he’s a big fan.” In one of the pictures, Mavis noticed Ryuji’s pickup truck in the driveway. Behind it was a camping rig sitting on supports. It looked like the same one Ryuji and Malcolm used when they were parked next to them in that RV camp in Indiana.
“I bet poor Jimmy’ll regret posting those pictures,” George said, pointing at the screen. “Look at how many times they’ve been shared and look at how many comments there are.”
“Wow, 862 shares so far. I guess that means they’re starting to fly around cyberspace.”
“Yep, on their way to going viral,” George agreed.
Brad rubbed the brown, spotted marijuana leaves with his fingers. “At least, it wasn’t Phytophthora infestans, just brown blight that’s …”
“Caused by both Alternaria and Stemphylium species, I think he said,” replied Peter Pan, a thin Caucasian woman dressed in the Marden Nursery uniform of green overalls with matching T-shirt.
“On the internet, you can see some pictures of browning leaves that look very much like your dreaded potato blight, but it’s not caused by using guano,” Tinkerbell, a tall Pakistani man, dressed in the same green uniform, explained to Brad.
“Both are caused by fungi, right?” Brad asked from his wheelchair.
“Yes, but there’re many kinds,” Peter said. “A large-scale greenhouse tomato farmer wrote in a forum on a horticulture website that he has lost far more crop from fungi than from insects and viruses put together.”
Tinkerbell nodded his balding, black-haired head in agreement and added, “In addition to leaf and stem rot, you have to be aware that many root rot diseases are caused by fungus. Fusarium solani is a big problem in Europe and a variant of it destroyed the majority of marijuana plants in Northern India.”
“Are you sure that Pakistan wasn’t involved?” Peter asked, looking at Tinker and smiling.
He frowned and shook his head slowly. “No, they weren’t, but there was talk by the U.S. government in the late 70s to use Fusarium oxysporum to eliminate the growing of illegal marijuana.”
“That’s exactly what Brad is worried about,” Chelsea said, standing behind Brad’s wheelchair.
Brad shook his wrinkled bald head in agreement. “That’s my fear with bat guano. I’m sure the DEA or some such agency has been promoting this big hype over how great it is …”
Peter Pan closed her blue eyes and slowly waved her wispy blonde hair back and forth as though she were going into a trance. “The majority of growers are convinced it’s great …”
“Then it’s spiked with a fungus that wipes out all the domestic growers,” Tinkerbell completed the scenario they had heard from Brad, ad infinitum.
Chelsea looked up at the clear greenhouse panels above them. “The sky is falling, the sky …”
“You won’t be laughing when it does,” Brad said, interrupting her. Just then Brad’s cell phone started playing the TRinket hit, Sensibowl, which he set up as its ringtone. Brad took it out of a pocket designed for it in the padding under the right armrest of his chair. “Oh Ryuji. Yeah, we heard from Diamond that it was sold out.”
“No surprise there since all the shows have sold out so far. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I’d like to back out of the Chicago show. I might do Cincinnati, but it depends,” Ryuji said, speaking into the speaker of his laptop as Malcolm sat next to him and scrolled through the comments on Jimmy’s SNS page.
Brad turned to Chelsea behind him. “You’ve got to do Chicago; a number of radio stations picked up on the rumor and have been pushing it pretty extensively. If you don’t appear, there’d be a lot of pissed-off people.”
“Do you know Jimmy Wales? No, I don’t mean the founder of Wikipedia,” Ryuji said, while Malcolm rolled his eyes at the Wikipedia reference. “Well, it just so happens that Jimmy did a Trink and Sophie on me,” he paused, which was convenient since it allowed Brad time to switch his machine to its speaker-phone mode. “Yes, that’s right; he posted pictures of Malcolm and me; even a video of us outside our place. So far, the pictures and video have been shared over a thousand times.”
“Ryuji, this is Chelsea.”
“Great, glad you can share in the fun,” Ryuji said.
“Have you noticed any pattern in the comments?” she asked.
“As in most are negative as hell and written by no more than a few people?”
“Something like that,” Brad said. Tinker made eye contact with Peter and motioned for them to leave this pow-wow and get back to work.
“Also, I’ve found a couple of them writing about something I didn’t expect.”
“Like what?” Chelsea asked, expecting to hear something about sex.
“Ducks.”
“Huh?” Brad grunted.
“Yeah, somebody out there – ah, his user name is ‘Patriot’s Sun’ – wrote that Malcolm and I love to slaughter ducks.”
“So?” Chelsea said, looking down at Brad in his chair.
“That’s what I thought at first; well hell, you go to the site yourself and check it out. It’s bizarre. I guess, the person is trying to demonstrate that I’m not eco-friendly or something; that I’m not worthy of promoting the fight for legalization of pot. Where did this come from?”
“Okay, okay, let’s get back to the subject at hand,” Brad interrupted. “Why don’t you want to do Chicago?”
“It’s getting freaky. Really, check out Jimmy’s site. It’s the SNS site with the blue logo; you know Facefuck or whatever. Just search his name, there’s not too many with that name. Read for a while and you’ll see where I’m coming from.”
“I guess you heard what happened to Sophie?” Chelsea asked.
“If you mean the pictures, yeah, I saw them.”
“She lost her job, too,” Brad said.
“I’m glad you pointed that out, Brad. It reminds me about expenses and such. Not only don’t I want to go to Chicago because it might be dangerous, but I’m a man of meager means. I had to pay to get to St. Louis on my own dime; when the fuck is there going to be some money?”
“You know how delayed royalty payments …”
Ryuji interrupted, “That bloody video is raking in the dough. Malcolm and I are practically broke. The drive’s about four hours, one way. It was almost five to St. Louis. It takes both time and money.”
Chelsea said, “You’re about a month away from the first payment, but we could help out, I guess.”
“Are you doing the same for Sophie and Trink? I guess the only members making money are the Dogs. Hell, I should’ve gotten some from them when I was in St. Louis.”
“Actually, Summit handles that money as well. They do have a stipend or expense account like you probably did when the TRinkets used to tour.”
“So you’re saying: I might be able to suck off the same teat if I go to Chicago?”
“As a registered user, I can’t write a comment since it’ll be linked back to me,” Malcolm explained. “Why don’t you get someone at Summit to open a new account and try to weasel that information from the troll?”
Ryuji watched Malcom checking the FAQ page of the SNS site. “Can’t you just open a new account?”
“Sure, but it’ll be linked to my original account since that’s my persona.”
“So, that’s what’s meant when people say this site requires your real information. You can open an account with an alias, but you end up being that alias; any other account you open will be connected to that alias,” Ryuji said. “Well, I can’t open one since the studio’s account is in my name.”
“The studio account …” Malcolm said in a sing-song way, like he was reminiscing about some fond memory. “Speaking of which, have you checked it recently?” Malcolm slid the laptop over to Ryuji sitting next to him at the desk in their studio. Since Malcolm was already signed in to the SNS page, Ryuji started typing his username and password.
“I’m surprised that you never ‘liked’ our Studio page with your personal account,” Ryuji said as he typed in his password.
“I guess, I never thought about it,” Malcolm said smiling, but that facial expression disappeared when he noticed what covered the webpage. “Oh shit! Look at all of that.” A quick glance made it clear Jimmy wasn’t the only one being deluged by the troll brigade.
“You think anyone will want to utilize our studio after reading all of this pudding–pounding bullshit?” Ryuji asked then noticed the anger on Malcolm’s face; this brought a smile to his own. “No doubt, it’s time to close the studio for a while, huh?”
Malcolm looked at Ryuji. “What 're you smiling at?”
Ryuji put an arm around Malcolm’s shoulder, squeezed his body close to him, and then pushed him away with an open hand. “Let’s just say it’s of little consequence when you consider how much that first royalty check will be.”
“Yeah, I guess the studio can slide for a while, huh?”
“After all, you’ll be too busy working as our photographer to worry about whether the lighting is perfect for strawberries,” Ryuji said through a grin. “I’ll give Brad a quick call and let him know you’ll be covering the Chicago show.”
Thirty minutes later, as they were getting dressed, Malcolm asked: “Do you think the studio’s page has any comments about duck hunting?” Ryuji looked at his lover, once again fully clothed in jeans and a red flannel shirt, walk out of the small storage room (in which they kept a mattress for naps and breaks) towards the desk in a corner of their modest but adequate studio.
“You know, since this page is a valid place from which to write a comment, if I find one about ducks, I’m going to deny it and see what reaction that gets,” Malcolm said. After ten minutes of reading some pretty horrible tirades, ducks were indeed mentioned.
“Hell, isn’t that the same dude who wrote on Jimmy’s page?” Ryuji asked, once again seated beside Malcolm as they searched the page together.
Malcolm looked at him strangely and said, “Ya know, I hate to say it but you should get your teeth checked since your breath could be fresher.”
“You can bite me, Malcolm.”
Malcolm smiled and said, “I already did more than that.”
Ryuji frowned at that. “Anyway, Patriot’s Sun is definitely one of the fuckers on Jimmy’s site, right?”
“Yep, I think so; let me respond to him,” Malcolm said as he typed. Ryuji loved the way Malcolm looked so serious when he got to work on something. He approached this rather simple task of writing a comment as he did getting the lighting just right for a shot. “What the f__k do we care about ducks?” he wrote.
There was no immediate response, so both Malcolm and Ryuji got bored waiting; eventually, they went back to reading the other negative comments, which made them angrier. They took turns writing negative responses until they finally turned off the laptop in disgust. The next morning, Malcolm couldn’t resist checking what had happened on Jimmy’s site since the evening before. A small photo of a dead duck was posted by Patriot’s Sun. It looked to be cropped from somewhere. Nothing else was in the image. What did that duck prove?
Links to the previous chapters of Book Three
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-1)
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-2)
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-3)
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-4)
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-5)
Copyright (©) by Kenneth Wayne
