Chapter 7

“A Fool’s Game.”

J2’s brow crumples as he read a curious article he found while browsing the internet. He was on the imageboard site “The Elephant Room” and a certain thread topic had peaked his interests. The thread link read “Ever heard news of street racers?” and he immediately clicked upon reading the sentence.

A Fool’s Game

Bring any machine you want

We’ll give you the time and place

And you do the rest.

The first step is knowing where to click.

The sentence is superimposed on a background of the city’s night sky on a full moon. On the foreground was a road that led into a blind corner of a downhill slope, it was dark but inviting and it contrasts the brilliant glimmer of the metro on the mid ground with the rich dark navy sky reflecting the faint glow of the moon. J2 instinctively clicked on the moon’s image but nothing happened. ‘You’re supposed to tilt the screen.’ Said a voice behind him.

‘How long have you been standing there?’

‘Long enough…’ Said Val as she sips on a steaming cup of coffee. ‘Slacking off again?’

‘Well it IS a Monday, technically there is no work…’ J2 replied.

‘Tuesday…’ Val replied, tapping her watch as she raised an eyebrow towards her partner.

‘Oh…’ He responds, brushing the conversation off as he turns back on the screen of the Ticket station’s computer screen while he stretched his back with a deep satisfied yawn. ‘Tilt the screen?’

‘Yes…’ She said as she watched J2 move his head around to shift his view. ‘You can’t tilt it though…’ He stops looking as if he had found something on the image. ‘It’s a google maps link…’

He tried to highlight the text with his mouse pointer but the text seemed to be embedded in the photo, he reached for the box of pens that they kept under the counter and writes down the link on a piece of paper where he then copied on the address bar on his browser. Upon hitting the enter key the screen loaded the maps page and to his surprise it loaded up a map of the Manila bay area on his screen.

‘Huh? So what now?’ J2 asks Val while she rolled her eyes at him. ‘I’m gonna go get a Tally to go with my coffee. You go figure that out bud…’ She says as she hops around the counter and disappears out of sight leaving J2 scratching his head while blankly staring at the screen. He looked again at the picture to see if there was any clue he could get to figure out what to do but he didn’t know where to look. He scans the city for any distinct text as he tilts his head around the screen to see if there were any more hidden messages on the picture but there were none. He went back to the previous page to check out the replies to the thread post but sadly most of the people there had no clue on what the puzzle was all about, although there were some that found the answers to the puzzle but they weren’t very keen on telling the others how to do it and thus making him feel hopelessly frustrated with himself in failing to solve it. He goes back to the picture once again to check if there was anything he missed as tries to think of the relationship of the image and the link and the “what” that he needs to click on to proceed. The picture was simple enough as it depicts the Manila night sky on a cloudless evening with the stars shining brightly in the image which prompted him to click on them with no result as he thought it strange to find stars in a picture of the city where its brightness almost always dilutes the night sky. He takes a step back to identify where the picture was taken but thinks the better of it as the image might be edited from a myriad of photos using a photo editor and thus ruling out that possibility of a location. He studies closely the miniscule signposting that he could identify in the picture, mostly around the image of the city to see if there were any hidden messages posted around it and right at the edge of the image he found a sign board that said “click the city” in its poster as he felt the rush of a eureka moment when he clicks it and the screen loads up another page.

THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING

(good eye though… 20/20)

‘Well shit…’ He said as he stared at a white page containing nothing but the words. He got a second wind of hope and tires to click at every single letter on the page, even going as far as clicking every single pixel in his screen but to no avail his efforts received no results as he retires his head into his back rest and stretches out once again in despair. To celebrate he pulls out his gamepad from under the counter and plays a favorite game of his to take his mind off of things.

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‘So you didn’t figure it out I’m guessing?’ Said Val who had just returned with a full mug of tally on her hand. ‘Nope…’ J2 responded, keeping his eyes on the gamepad screen.

‘Figures... ‘ She replied as she hopped back behind the counter. ‘What’re you playing?’

‘Oh… umm… it’s called “Dreamland Simulator” you get to like… manage your own theme park and stuff. It’s very immersive really…’ He said, eyes still glued to the game’s tiny screen.

‘Is it fun?’

‘Very…’

‘Huh… funny…’ Val said with a salty tune as she looks around the glimmering lights of the arcade with all its sights and sounds and smells and tastes as she wonders the question “Why?’ before panning back to the game screen looking and feeling dumb. ‘Am I missing something here?’ She said, J2 on the other hand stays quiet.

‘Howdy!’ Said a voice from afar as the duo simultaneously tilted their heads up towards where it came from. ‘Well if it isn’t the messenger of happiness, I wonder what you have for us this time?’ J2 said after pausing his game. Val meanwhile, looks on, double fisting her tally and her coffee mug as she takes alternating sips from the both of them.

‘Hey Yukino!’ She greets her guest as she arrives at the ticket counter. ‘Hey good eve to the both of ya’ Yukino replies. She was still wearing her school uniform when she arrived and her pigtails looked as bouncy as ever even though it was already late in the evening. She greets them with a warm sunny smile as she extends her arms towards the duo with an envelope held between her slender fingertips. ‘So it’s purple glitter hearts this month. How cute.’ Val said, pointing at Yukino’s fingernails while she gracefully retrieves the envelope. ‘Yup! I did it myself this time but I’ve been practicing.’ Yukino replied ‘On who might I ask?’ Val questioned.

‘Well… naahh I don’t wanna tell…’

‘Alright it’s fine.’ Val responds with a smile as she walks back behind the door of the counter office. ‘Ooooohh I think Keeno’s got a boyfriend.’ J2 teasingly injects. ‘Oh shut up!’ She quickly punted ‘And don’t call me that! Only friends call me that. You using it makes you sound like a dirty old man.’

‘Well fuck me…’ He responds as Val shouts incoherently at J2 from the office behind. ‘I didn’t mean it that way idiot!’ He said as he sighed and resumed his game. Val comes out shortly after with her own envelope in hand and hands the object over to Yukino with a nod. ‘Thanks!’ She responds but before she could turn around and bid farewell. Yukino remembered something and halted midway in her steps. ‘I almost forgot!’ She said while she ruffled through her backpack. ‘Here… it’s from… Dad…’ Yukino said with an ominous tone as she handed over a small gift wrapped box with a yellow bow tied to it. J2 looks over suspiciously while pretending to play his game as he watched Val receive the box from Yukino. Her eyes looked quite surprised with receiving such a gift. ‘Thanks…’ She said with a confused smile as Yukino bid her farewell from the arcade. ‘Well i’ma go now, see yah guys next month!’

‘Yeah… see you…’ Val blankly responds, her mind clearly taken over by the box that she held in her grasp. ‘What do you think is in it?’ J2 asked. ‘I dunno…’ She replied. Val walks back to the office as J2 hears her rummaging through the stuff inside, emerging with a sharp pair of scissors in her hands as she cuts off the gift wrapping from the box leaving only the cardboard that envelopes the object.

She opens it gently.

Inside was blue foam padding that snuggly wraps around the object it protected: An old car key.

‘But why would he send you that?’ J2 asked again but this time Val stayed silent. In her mind she started to piece together everything that had been happening this past few weeks, every controversial Instagram post, every Facebook feed, and every Elephant room forum she had ever encountered. And at long last there was a light bulb that fired open in her mind that made her jump back onto the computer that J2 had worked on as she took a second look at the puzzle he was trying to solve.

She already had solved it before but the answer she got didn’t give her much concern. Only now after receiving her gift that she had made a terrible connection to what was really happening to her surroundings. J2 watched as she solved it. She went back on the maps page and scrolled far towards the eastern hills of the Marikina/ Antipolo area where she clicked on a marker that said Moon over the Castle Cafeteria where she was transported to another page with a password prompt. There she inputs the coordinates of the map marker where the cafe was at and alas in front of them was a website entry page that would transport them to the dark web.

It said:

BURNING THE MIDNIGHT OIL?

This is the last page you’ll ever see. Enter your name in the box.

There was a prompt box underneath the sentence for entering her name but instead she goes back to the main page from the elephant room link and zooms in on one of the building ads that litter the cityscape in the photograph. The ad was just beside the one J2 clicked on earlier and it said:

Burning the midnight oil?

YES!

She enters “YES!” into the prompt box of the entry page and upon hitting the enter key, a link appeared on the prompt box replacing her answer.

https://f00zlq4m3doyouwantohonexyz.poswk/

She copies and pastes the link to the address bar and is immediately transported to the dark web with no conditions and no third party sites to carry her over from her normal browser which made things oddly convenient for her.

The site reads:

Hi If your reading this. We are racing, and we are many. And now we are coming to YOU.

For years we have benn jumping from our host county to others that have potential. But time and time again we have been foiled. Now we see you and how free your’e country is and now we want to do wht we love here.

We are coming.

Join us.

J2’s eyes grew wide in excitement. For months he had speculated that a group was starting illicit events centered on street drag racing as he was seeing multiple posts on social media about the said acts but only now he had finally found concrete proof that such a thing exists. Val however, thought differently, her face had a concerned look as she continued to check page after page of text and pictures until she encounters a single line of text at the bottom of the “About us” tab.

A single line of text.

ToroDori - - - - - - ToroNana - - - - - - AshobasoAsobase - - - - - - Circa 1997

‘Shit…’ Val said as J2 looks back in confusion.

‘What?’ He responds.

‘That’s why Mister Asia called, you idiot…’ She replies as she hops out from the counter with a pack of cigarettes and her Tally in hand. Her coffee was left on the ticket counter. ‘Val wait…’

‘Stay and watch the place… I’m going to the balcony…’ She said as she disappears from sight.

J2 stands confused as he watches her leave. He then turns his attention to the box that had the keys and inspects it. He takes them and flips them around to see if there were any significant things he could allude to. The key had no emblem as it was a plain old fashion set of car keys but as he looked closer on the handle he finds a symbol etched on it.

‘Nissan?’ He said as he scratched his head.

‘Weird, I thought she already owns the only one left?’.