A Cyber Monday

Ashes. Swirling smoke fills my lungs as I gasp for air and fling open my eyes. I see a sky of gray as dirty crumbling snowflakes cover my face. Are these snowflakes? Where am I? No, these are ashes. I scramble to my feet, holding what seems to be a heart-shaped locket. Head throbbing, knees shaking, I try to make sense of my surroundings. Maybe I should sit down. I hear distant crying and sirens. Am I safe here? Where did my office building go? I realize I am sitting near where it once stood. I have a nagging feeling that there is something that I am supposed to do, and it has something to do with this locket. As I attempt to slow down the heart beating out of my chest, I remember a voice and a face, like a distant memory. "You must release this; it is the only way the destruction will end. I didn't mean for it to go this far," the woman sobbed to me as she desperately tossed me the locket, ripping it from her neck - the building rattling around us. I don't really know what I am supposed to release or how to do that with some old locket. I roll it around in my grimy fingers and manage to pry it open - with a series of clicks, a tiny zip drive flipped outward from inside the locket. Oh no, nothing good is ever on a zip drive. What am I about to unleash? I hate Mondays.

I stumble away, limping down the street for what seems like hours, jumping at every noise, every shadow I see, hoping that at the end of this road, my home will still be there. Finally, I make it to my apartment and turn on the news. My building was bombed by The Hackers. But why my building? Only major structures in large sites with influential people have been hit. We weren't important people, and we weren't in a big city. My stomach sinks as I remember I'm going to have to plug in this locket and find out. My boring Monday is turning into an action movie that I can't quite wrap my head around. I hesitantly pull out my crappy laptop and jam the zip drive in its slot. Page after page, file after file; voice messages, text messages, videos, personal information, Identification photos, social media profiles, popping up like a nasty virus before my eyes. I recognize these people - influencers, minor celebrities, social media stars that have recently disappeared from their respective pages.

Influencer culture is the whole reason the bombing began. I had heard rumors that a group of self-indulgent boys, tired of rejection and ready to get even, were silencing the stars, hacking their profiles, puffing up their chests in retaliation. I began reading a document written by my co-worker, a mousy girl named Chelsea that kept to herself and didn't bother anyone but wound up handing me the key to the most enormous mess in history. She explained that SHE had started this ring of hackers! Fed up with trying to look like other girls, being picked on by girls similar to these influencers, and wanting to show Instagram who is boss, she created The Hackers! This was supposed to be a joke until it got into the hands of the wrong group of men. After becoming high on the power of silencing the women they wish they had a chance with, silence quickly turned into violence as others anonymously joined and further perpetuated the storm. Pages were being taken down of anyone voicing their truths, displaying individuality; regular people were silenced. Free speech was being stripped away, and eventually, attacks began on individuals and then the masses. Hate and violence were unable to be tamed by law enforcement, and nobody knew who to look at. But I do; I'm looking at them. I can see their faces and names staring back at me chillingly through my monitor in glowing blue light. Chelsea had been compiling information and evidence to put an end to this, and they found out that's why we were hit. Now it's my job to bring individual voices back and to stop this group from further devastation. I knew I shouldn't have gone to work today.