How does one get to know things? How do people get told of the ongoings of a town? It could technically be any communication platform. In fact, social media was the main source nowadays, the whole country looked at it daily to make sure they knew exactly what to criticize that day. This had a whole lot of consequences, such as the news put out that day having the chance of having been misleading and therefore not portraying the real world to those millions of people. Not that most cared, taking the news stations at face value.
Because why wouldn't they. They were the news station. The ones meant to bring people updates about the most important things they could think of. Yet, it might not have always been the most important thing they said. Not Cassandra, at the very least, though that might have been due to her own opinions not matching a good part of the population. Importance was entirely subjective in the end, and some people would be left in the dirt while others flocked in awe at just what that celebrity said about that thing. How could they have criticised that picture of a biologically engineered dog? The dinner-plate-sized eyes surely made them cuter!
It was infuriating sometimes, knowing so much of what had been said was blown out of proportion to make them, but Cassandra had learned to live with it. When everything was to terms, it wasn't like there should have been an expectation in the end. The news stations of the day were more aptly called entertainment stations. Every piece of their broadcast was engineered to make people interested. Anything dull, anything boring, anything that could make people click off was cut out. If that meant that the more vital pieces of information, those that actually mattered in the end, were cut out, then the stations would take it standing. Everything was about attention, after all, and attention didn't come from being boring.
And sometimes it went further, stations making up lies, blowing things up just a bit too much, or maybe showing a few recordings that were perhaps best kept under the radar. It wasn't too common for the bigger stations to do things like that, the companies behind them having too much to lose at their levels. But the smaller stations? The ones that were in desperate need of viewers? Well… a lie or two never hurts, right? And then when the lies were what gave them attention, they would never truly stop, never truly show off exactly what was actually meant to the truth. And those same small stations were known for copying each other, never having the time to fact-check anything.
When you mixed inflation of truths with blatant copying of other media, what would come out of it? The result was a perpetual motion machine strapped into itself, creating a bigger and bigger amount of crap at an exponential rate. And just enough people believed it all to make it serious, some of those people at higher positions than they deserved. When that happened, chaos truly unfolded as those well-meaning tried to subdue it all before the assumed disaster would hit the mainstream. It was all the big mess it could be, only held back from a few stations having enough fear in their hearts to stay silent.
That wasn't the case when you switched over to other forms of communication, however. The rules were different, the words were different, and the ways that it all spread was different as well. When it came to it, there was one method of communication that had been used for years, decades, and millennia. It was one without rules, without oversight, and without any chances to truly make sure the truth was being spoken. It was the weapon best used when one wanted to turn a feather into a farm of chickens.
Who could really tell who had said what? When one gathered a flock of people together, nobody could really be sure who said anything, who commented on it, and who inflated it into a whole other problem entirely. The conversation itself was just a long-drawn shift of topic, wasn't it? Nobody starts it and nobody ends it. The conversation just fizzles out by itself, nobody truly at fault. In the end, it was just another byproduct of group-thinking, the human mind made to be acceptable about this behaviour, not questioning it too deeply.
Cassandra would have loved it if people questioned it, though. She might even have been happy if those happy good-does could actually remember which house they had been at for tea, who they had heard that crazy rumour from, and who exactly had encouraged them to go down and have a look at the street of broken windows. The story was exactly the same with so many people that had come around that it just had to have been fake, right? That was the only way. They had planned it all to make her angry, to make her scream in their faces, to make her slap their eyeballs out of the bloody-
‘I think you need to rest for a bit. Your blood pressure is not looking viable for any work at all,’ Jules said from inside, sitting exactly where Cassandra had ordered it to be. The thing had been thrown away from the position of questioning people alongside the woman after it started to become more casual in its question if that word fits what exactly the damned thing had done.
Jules, in all its mental wisdom, had thought it a good idea to reveal just how much it already knew about the person, and had attempted to use more forceful questioning methods on that basis. The woman beside the piece of junk had not felt that a good idea, no matter how quickly people talked after that and had therefore ordered it over to the car of shame, to sit in the seat of shame, and to be as silent as somebody who could actually feel shame. The last task was seemingly not heard, since the thing had been in the process of sending her very loud messages.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
‘I don't believe anybody wanted your opinion on the matter,’ Cassandra sent back, nonetheless taking a few calming breaths to make sure her pulse went down by a few. Even if the mass of people had shrunk with her questions coming around, there were still enough to cause a commotion if she went on a verbal rant. Her mask needed to be kept, and no face close to hers could be anywhere near red. She was to be the calmest in the room.
People were still giving her glances. More than a lot, actually. It might have been due to her angry look at the car further into the street, yet Casandra couldn't get herself to believe that they had all noticed it. People seemed warier than they normally were. Maybe the questioning had created it? Some had left when she got close, so a general mood could have been created because of it. Her brief moments spent looking angry couldn't have helped either, now that she thought about it. Best to get it over soon, then, lest nothing would be gained at all.
‘Well, you got it anyway. I’m just perfect like that,’ Jules said, ending off the conversation. Maybe it realised that Cassandra had no intention of answering at that point or maybe it just lost interest with her fading blood pressure. Nobody could be sure what exactly the thing was thinking, least of all the person who had spent the most time with it.
Looking through the current crowd, Cassandra did her best in choosing out somebody that she hasn't interviewed before. Not literally, of course, almost all the people she had even spoken to already had fled almost running. No, she meant it in the way of body type, age, and general looks. The ultimate technique was called profiling if that makes anything more understandable. Or that’s how it worked back in the day. Nowadays, it was close to making the system database look through the different faces and make it choose one that didn't live in the same area as the ones asked before. Most of the ones asked before had been middle-aged ladies, so Cassandra was really hoping for somebody other than that.
Maybe a middle-aged man or an actual old lady. Or maybe even somebody who wouldn't give her an answer that would make her fight to not grind her teeth within audible levels. It was hard to ask, sure, but Cassandra truly did have a greater desire for-
There it was, One young man named Elton, nineteen years of age, and looking like he wanted to be anywhere but within the eye-sight of Cassandra. They looked more uncomfortable than most new tourists at a misidentified nudist beach and the perfect prey for the information-seeking cop.
“Excuse me, sir. Would it be alright if I asked you a few questions,” Cassandra said, walking over to the younger man while wearing a prize-winning smile. It might even have made it less obvious that the young man in question did not have a choice about whether he would answer the questions. “I can assure you it will take no time at all.”
Fully intending to bring out full force on her act, Cassandra held her back straight as she brought out the notepad with an attached pencil. Never before had she actually used it for anything other than mindless scribbling, but it did somehow make people talk more so she didn't question it. Whatever made them talk was the right choice.
“Ah, I actually have to-” the young man began, already having taken a step back from her, but Cassandra wasn't letting him go that easily.
“I can assure you that it will only be a minute or two,” the kind and gentle Cass said with a look that would make puppies fall over in cuteness-overload. The obvious desire to pull out a knife might have counteracted the other emotion on some, however. “There is no reason not to cooperate.”
And… there it was. The magic word was called Cooperation. When any officer said it, there was no need to wonder if the civilian would sit still and talk or not. Most feared the magic word too much to do anything else. If they were a criminal, it wasn't like they could run away or anything, after all, since the police were always able to get them before the seventh step. Cassandra could even remember some ad about that estimate, though she couldn't remember where it was from.
“I-I guess I can stay for a minute,” the young man called Elton answered, not happy about it at all but too fearful to do anything else. “What do you need to ask?”
“I was just curious about one single thing,” Cassandra said with a smile, looking a bit happy that she had gained cooperation in the younger generations. Not that she had expected anything else with her skills in persuasion but whatever. “Why exactly did you visit this crime scene today?”
“Uhm… a friend told me that something was going down here, so I wanted to see it for myself. There weren't any videos of it yet, you know?” Elton answered with uncertainty in his voice. Cassandra gave a quick nod while scribbling down the lyrics to some song she had heard twenty years ago. Slime it all away or something like that. It was hard to remember.
“Quite understandable,” Cassandra said, finishing up her scribbling in the span of under ten seconds, normally known as the optimal amount of time to optimise somebody being uncomfortable instead of bored. The young man seemed all too happy about her lowering the notepad, to the point where he almost began walking away. The officer, with a smile still on her face, was happy to stop that immediately. “Just for the sake of further investigation, what would the name of your friend be? More specifically the one who told you about this place.”
Here was the breaking point. The young man stopped, looking at her with uncertainty and then with a more blank look for a few seconds. Cassandra wasn't too sure what to make of it, other than the silent defeat. Here it would go again, nothing gained with the only actual result being the time lost.
“I am sorry, officer, but I don’t know his name,” Elton answered, making the officer in question almost look more than mildly annoyed.
Cassandra supposed she couldn't have expected that much more. Who else was there to ask? There was a small group of older women huddling together close by. With how they had been eavesdropping since the start, the cop guessed they could have had some background information on it all. Not likely but it was still better than-
“Nobody actually knows his name since he refused to give us one. I could tell you where he hung out if you want, though. Might even still be there since I only left a few minutes ago.”
The officer who had never had a use for the notepad suddenly found a use for the device. Brining it out for real, she looked the young man straight in the eye.
“Tell me where it was and give me a physical description. Keep it brief.”