Си Бокс - Dark Sky

“Earl found out about it because Sophia didn’t want to go to school anymore and she just stayed in her room. Totally withdrew. She was being hounded to death and there was nothing she could do about it.

“Earl tried to save her,” Boedecker said, “but he’s ignorant about social media, like most of us old guys. He sent emails to Price here with no response, and he couldn’t get a human being out there in Silicon Valley to talk to him. He didn’t know what to do. I think at one point he went to see the new sheriff, but no one there could help him. He told me he must have called ConFab a hundred times and no one would speak to him. Sophia’s photos showed up everywhere: Facebook, Instagram, even in some stupid magazines. And this guy,” Boedecker said, reaching over to slap the back of Price’s head before Joe could intervene, “didn’t do a damn thing to stop it. So Sophia Thomas hanged herself rather than take it anymore.”

Price didn’t react to the blow except to hunch his head into his shoulders a little more.

“Take it easy,” Joe said to Boedecker.

“I’m sorry it happened,” Price said. “I didn’t know, but obviously Tim did. We can’t control what our users put up, you know? We can’t do a fact-check of tens of millions of posts every day.”

“Let me ask you something,” Boedecker said to Price. “And try to answer honestly for once.”

“What?”

“You claim ConFab is just some innocent bulletin board, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you let white supremacists or Nazis put up posts on ConFab?”

“No, of course not.”

“Do you let antiabortion groups post on your site?”

“That’s too divisive,” Price said.

“What about terrorists? Do you let them recruit for their ranks?”

“We shut them down.”

“The Catholic Church?”

“No, because of church and state.”

“What about right-wing gun nuts like me?” Boedecker asked. “Do you let us defend the Second Amendment on ConFab?”

Price didn’t answer.

Boedecker answered for him. “Fuck no, you don’t allow those things. All that crap you said about free speech is a lie. You and the ignorant pack of millennials that work for you shut down anything that isn’t politically correct according to you .”

Price sighed. He said, “I’ll admit that most of our team members have their built-in biases, but we’re working on that. We’ve got working groups in place to develop internal processes.”

“So you finally admit it,” Boedecker said. “You let Sophia get harassed to death.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You won’t take any responsibility at all,” Boedecker said, leaning close to Price and shouting. “You’re not a bulletin board. You’re a publisher . You create this online thing that’s worth billions of dollars to you that allows anonymous people to go after little girls until they kill themselves. But you won’t apologize, and you won’t accept your guilt. You killed Sophia, you asshole. Earl just wants the justice he deserves.”

“I don’t have to listen to any more of this,” Price said, standing up so abruptly his chair toppled over backward. He turned and strode across the floorboards and slammed the door behind him.

Joe glared at Boedecker, who smiled back.

“He’s not used to hearing from the likes of me,” Boedecker said. “He lives in his own little bubble like the rest of those Silicon Valley punks.”

“You were pretty tough on him,” Joe said.

“Oh well.”

“It may not be as clear as you think.”

“Really?” Boedecker said. “What if this happened to your daughter Lucy? Or April? Or Sheridan?”

Joe thought, Then I’d want to kill him myself . But he didn’t say it out loud.

Boedecker went back to reassembling the speargun in the light of the propane burner. Joe watched the man as he fitted the greasy O-ring into the receiver.

Boedecker looked up and their eyes met. “Think about what I said earlier, Joe. Price is our ticket out of here. We can turn him over to Earl and his boys and never tell a single soul what happened. As far as anyone else will ever know, you and me met up together and came down the mountain after Steve-2 had a bad hunting accident and the horses ran off.”

Joe rubbed his face with his hands.

“What do you think?” Boedecker asked.

“I think I better go out and find him and bring him back before he freezes to death.”

Boedecker grunted his disgust at that and turned his attention back to the speargun.

—

Joe clamped his hat on tight, zipped up his parka to the throat, and went out into the night with his hands stuffed into his pockets to keep them warm. It was still and very cold, and the snow crunched under his boots. Price was easy to follow because he’d left fresh tracks around the lean-to and into the lodgepole stand where they’d come.

He almost walked past Price, who was sitting on a downed log at the edge of a small clearing. He was leaning back, gazing at the creamy wash of stars overhead. The starlight was so bright Joe could see his face glowing with it.

“This is better than I thought,” Price said. “There are more stars even than in Tibet. Is that possible?”

“Probably a different set of stars,” Joe said, sitting next to him.

“Did you come out to find me?”

“Yup.”

They sat in silence. Price stared at the sky and Joe looked out across the meadow. Condensation from their breath hung around their heads and filled up with diffused starlight.

“This is the biggest and darkest sky I’ve ever seen,” Price said. “It makes me feel really small. I feel like a single human heartbeat in the middle of the wilderness.”

Joe didn’t point out that he had a heartbeat as well. So did Boedecker.

“I keep reaching for my phone,” Price said. “I want to share this. I want to share my thoughts. But it isn’t there when I pat myself down. I’ve never felt so alone before.”

“Maybe everything doesn’t need to be shared,” Joe said.

“What he said inside, it makes me think,” Price said. “He’s a prick, but not everything he says is shit. The fact is, I don’t know the solution. We create this technology thinking it will do great things, but we can’t predict what people will do with it. He has to understand that.”

Joe grunted a nonresponse.

“There might be a lot of people out there who hate me and what I represent,” Price said. “If I listen to them and let them go on and on, I won’t be able to create. I have to think big, without distractions. Would great men like Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs have been able to do what they did if they listened to all the disgruntled people out there? Anyone can bitch and complain. But only a few of us can invent cool things.”

Joe thought he heard something in the distance and he sat up straight. Price began to talk again and Joe reached over and clamped his mouth shut.

“Shhhh,” Joe whispered. “Listen.”

Price’s eyes got wide, as if saying, Listen to what?

Joe let go. He closed his eyes and strained to hear. He knew that even on a bitterly cold night without wind the forest could be a noisy place. Trees froze and split open, captured snow dropped from branches to the ground below, wildlife moved restlessly through the trees.

Then he heard it again: a whinny.

“That’s a horse,” Joe mouthed. He pointed to the south where he thought it had come from.

Price shook his head. He hadn’t heard it.

Joe gestured that the two of them should go back inside the cabin. He thought that since the stove had been doused and there were no interior lights, it was very possible the Thomases might simply pass by in the timber. If it was the Thomas clan out there, and if what he’d heard was indeed a horse.