Frazer Lee - Panic Button

“If you all care about it that much then go ahead,” Jo sighed. She fixed her gaze on the window and the distant storm clouds gathering outside.

Gwen sensed Jo’s discomfort at the personal aspect of Alligator’s games and shared it, even. In the back of her head, however, her father’s voice echoed, warning her to do this and not to do that. His well-meaning control had stymied her personal growth all her life and she’d often found herself wishing she could have upped and left like Emily did. But now she was partaking in something that even her wild-child sister could only dream of. Her first flight, and she was aboard a private jet, destined for a champagne reception in New York — the halcyon heart of the fashion industry she was so eager to break in to. For Gwen, playing on in Alligator’s games meant something more than just the chance to win prizes. It meant she was finally taking risks. Being on this plane was all the rollercoaster rides she had been denied as a child rolled into one. And there was an element of danger to Alligator’s strange games that she found disturbing, yes, but also kind of liberating. She was usually a dab hand at online tests. She could ace this one — perform better than she had in the first Round.

Alligator’s voice boomed, rousing her from her thoughts. “Gwen?”

“Yes?”

“Do you recognise this?”

A garish web application popped up on the screens — the salacious text and imagery of an online ‘sex personality’ test.

“You recently completed this, another in a long line of online tests.”

“Yes, so?” Gwen’s voice was steely, indignant.

“The test was entitled ‘what kind of lover are you?’ So — what kind of lover are you?”

Dave’s eyes lit up. “Oh yes, do tell…”

“I’ll repeat the question…” Alligator prompted.

“Okay, okay. I think the test said I was a ‘kinky lover’.”

“Knew it! Always the quiet ones,” Dave smirked at Max, who made a whiplash sound, and mimed the crack of a whip.

“It was just a silly test Dave, something to pass the time,” Gwen protested.

“The test was wrong though… wasn’t it?” Alligator said.

“Well, I’m not that… kinky if that’s what you mean?”

“Your answers gave you that result. But you lied on part of the test, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t taking it that seriously.”

“It was question four. Do you remember question four?

“Of course I don’t.”

“Question four was: ‘How many people have you slept with?’“

“That’s none of your business.”

“None of my business? Yet you filled out on online test with this information and posted it on your public profile.”

Gwen cleared her throat, looking uncomfortably around the cabin.

“You are happy to have people think you are a ‘kinky lover’ but you are ashamed of telling the truth.” Alligator paused. “How many people have you slept with, Gwen?

“I said that’s none of your business!” Gwen replied, anger seeping into her voice.

“Tenner says she’s had loads,” Dave mock-whispered.

Gwen threw him a threatening look. His comment was almost too much to bear and Alligator’s question was proving too personal. Maybe her bravado about the game had been misguided after all. She would much rather talk publicly about anything other than sex. Even her teenage eating problems would have been preferable to this line of questioning, at least she had conquered and compartmentalised those. If nothing else, her experiences with body image had made her a better counsellor. But discussing her sexual self was a different matter. It was hers and hers only — she enjoyed the ability the online world gave her to create a persona and keep people guessing about the ‘real’ Gwen Rhys.

“Gwen?” Alligator pressed.

She felt compelled to answer, to show them all she wasn’t ashamed, but the words dried up in her mouth and she fell silent.

“Okay Gwen, let me help you out,” Alligator said, “You post in a lot of forums, but this one you post on an average of five to fifteen times per week.”

The screens lit up with a clean, white Internet forum page. The page was framed with an austere logo, which read ‘VIRTUE REALITY’.

Dave’s eyes darted across the page, scanning the text, amazed. “Virtue Reality? ‘Abstinence is next to Godliness…’ Ha!”

Gwen was fuming.

“Your avatar depicts a white rose and your username is ‘Cherrybomb’,” Alligator continued, “so, ‘Cherrybomb’ — how many people have you slept with?”

Gwen was now too embarrassed to even look the others in the eye, especially Dave, who was smirking from behind his monitor screen.

“None,” Gwen said, quietly.

A sobering silence descended over the winners and the smirk fell from Dave’s face.

“How do they know all this?” Gwen whispered to Max.

“We all hide behind usernames, behind our avatars,” Alligator said, as if in answer to her question, “But everywhere you go, everything you watch, download, upload, do and say online is logged and stored.”

The winners exchanged uneasy looks, a tense hush descending inside the cabin.

“A trail of information, freely available to those who want it,” their host continued, “In fact, I’m looking at read-outs of every single webpage you have all visited over the last few months. It makes for surprising reading…”

Dave squirmed in his seat, locking both hands around one of his knees defensively. “That’s bollocks. You can’t see all that. Data Protection Act mate.”

The monitor screens flickered, as a data stream showing hundreds of web addresses scrolled across each of them.

“Really? Shall we see how well-protected it is?” Alligator asked. “Dave, just two days ago, you visited a site hosted in Japan. The contents of the streaming videos were depraved and despicable. Some of your favourite titles include ‘Two Girls and a Horse’…”

At this, Max looked highly amused — then quickly stifled his laughter as Alligator went on, thinking better of making a joke about it.

“‘Too Young to Run’, ‘Bukkake Prom 4’…”

Dave looked aghast as Jo shook her head in disgust and Gwen lowered her eyes.

“Shall I go on?” Alligator asked.

Dave shook his head silently.

“Please answer the question verbally. Shall I go on?”

“No,” Dave said, subdued. He looked at the others, “I didn’t…”

Dave’s voice faltered. Guilt was etched in his expression and he knew it. There was no point in denying it; he’d watched those videos. But only because he’d stumbled across them while surfing for the kind of thing Sarah would never do for him. Any real man would admit to being bored of the ‘traditional’ stuff and anyway, his teammates watched far worse than he did. It didn’t make them criminals; it just made them honest in his eyes. And didn’t a healthy appetite for online porn keep men satisfied and on the straight-and-narrow in real life? Dave certainly thought so. The Internet offered him all of the pleasures he could indulge in, with none of the guilt.

“Did you consider the ages of the girls in the videos, Dave?” Alligator’s tone was accusatory, a quiet assault echoing the transgressions of Dave’s videos. “Did you think about that at all? Or did you watch them because of that? Would you care to tell us the title of the video you watched a total of four times that very same evening?”

“I don’t remember.”

Dave leaned forward, perched on the edge of his seat, looking up into the ceiling as though the Alligator was perched upon the roof of the plane above them.

“This is the world wide web you’re talking about mate! I don’t put that stuff out there; anyone can stumble across it… Listen, I pay my taxes, I pay for my Internet connection. And in the privacy of my own home I can watch whatever the hell I like!”