Dylan microwaved a pizza because making mac and cheese seemed like a lot of work. The microwave’s glow lit his dark kitchen. Dylan hadn’t turned the lights on. There were too many dirty dishes in the sink.
The microwave beeped and he grabbed his plate of pizza, testing the middle with his finger. It was still cold but he didn’t want to wait any longer. Dylan headed back to his couch. He cozied back into a fortress of blankets and pillows he’d made to ensure he would have to move as little as possible. On his side table he’d prepped everything he’d need for a workday: Video game controllers, a 2 liter of soda, bulk-size chip bags, a tub of cake frosting with spoon and his laptop.
On his laptop screen was a new email notification. Sighing, Dylan clicked on it. Inside was a request from his manager. He had sent a spreadsheet and needed Dylan to configure the company’s system to read it. This would take ten minutes. Dylan took a bite of his pizza. He emailed back saying he’d have it done in a week.
Dylan uncapped the 2 liter. This was how he spent his office hours. Tomorrow, he’d likely have a similar exchange with his other manager at another company.
On his TV screen was the pause menu of his latest obsession. Space exploration, intergalactic warfare and mobs of robots made a shiny, complex multiplayer first-person shooter. He’d sunk weeks into the game already. Grabbing his controller and unpausing the game, Dylan dove back in.
His player character was decked out in the most powerful armor in the game, with a couple of the golden cosmetic items. He was close to collecting every piece of gear in the game and was currently replaying the same mission over and over.
At the top left corner of his screen, a box blinked and disappeared. One of his listed friends had come online. Dylan hadn’t seen this for a long time. He smiled and rushed to enable voice chat. Opening his friends list, his menu filled with everyone he had ever added: friends from high school, friends from college, friends from grad school. Each name was grey with inactivity.
The one username marked online read “Tromboner99.” Dylan quickly placed the name from high school midnight play sessions. The guy’s name was Austin and they’d been in the orchestra together. He’d gone to college in Texas to escape the Chicago winters. They hadn’t played since.
Dylan chose Austin’s name and activated voice chat. A bouncy little chime played before Dylan heard a click and open mic static. He waited for a greeting. When none came, Dylan tried one himself.
“Hey dude. Long time, no play.”
From the other end came a small child’s voice, “Hello?”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Dylan forgot. He’d had a kid.
The kid said another small “Hello?”
After it came a voice Dylan recognized, “Who are you talking to, Ben?”
As fast as he could, Dylan found the voice chat menu and signed off. He turned the game off too, just to be safe. Dylan rubbed his stubble.
All of a sudden Dylan felt hot. He threw off his blankets and without thinking, rummaged for his phone. He grabbed it and opened one of his social feeds, soothing back into the couch.
He hadn’t opened his phone since the night before. Normally he did as soon as he woke up he’d been shooting robots until first light. And when he did wake up, still on the couch, there had been more robots to shoot.
The last thread he’d been on was still open. Picking back up where he left off, Dylan scrolled through video after video of nature documentaries where animals gored each other. He couldn’t stop. Each showing of primal behavior begged for another.
Time passed. With his eyes now thoroughly devoid of moisture, Dylan headed to Twitter. His feed was all tech news and video game stuff. He mostly just followed whoever was funny.
Dylan scrolled through, half-reading any given tweet. If he didn’t see any words he cared about, he moved on. He kept scrolling. And scrolling. Slowly he noticed a lot of the tweets he skipped were talking about art. And more tweets than normal seemed to be passionate about some event Dylan didn’t know. He hit a meme. Some character he didn’t know from a show he didn’t watch was holding a spray paint can and shrugging at the camera.
It wasn’t until Dylan scrolled through more odd tweets and hit another meme, this time of a spray painting Bart Simpson, that he absorbed some information. Someone had graffitied a famous artwork.
Interested, Dylan searched the news. The headline he read cracked his skull open: “Eleven Famous Artworks Defaced Around The Globe.”
“Holy crap,” he said out loud.
Eleven was a lot. More outrageous was the set of photos. A Picasso, a Klimt, a Monet, a Magritte, each with a large graffiti tag scarred across their surfaces. Done in eye-searing yellow, the symbol was the same and sprayed in one quick movement. It looked like a four-pointed sparkle with the top cleaved open. This created a kind of spiky, demented emoji. Like a star with devil horns or a misshapen bat.
Dylan read the article greedily.
The cause for this coordinated attack is unknown. No recorded terrorist group has claimed responsibility. A strike of this scale is unprecedented. The motivation for such an assault on so many culturally significant works is unclear. One thing is clear, however. Whoever is responsible has the world’s attention.
Dylan lowered his phone. He vowed to stop learning about major world events through memes.
A knock came from his apartment door. Dylan cocked his head and wondered which of the packages he’d ordered that would be. He headed to the door and peered through the peephole. He froze. On the other side of his door were two policemen standing behind a woman in a dark suit.
Through the peephole, Dylan watched the woman rap her fist against the door. He felt her knock through the door. What would the police want with him? Suddenly nervous, he cleared his throat. The woman's eyes snapped directly to Dylan. No pretending not to be home.
Dylan opened the door and was met with a scene he thought only happened in movies. The suited woman, smiling pleasantly, held up an ID and said, “Hello. I’m with the FBI.”