I had a mystery on my hands. Emily was right. Pamela must have had some other funding source, or she wouldn’t have turned down her father Dave’s offer to fund her entire movie.

I began my investigation into Pamela’s finances, as one does, by hacking the storage cluster containing the output of the house’s video cameras. I spent the next six nights scanning the video for any recordings of Pamela speaking.

My search was fruitless. By all appearances, Pamela had been trying as hard as she could to solicit investors. She was pretty relentless. I didn’t get the impression that she had found the money elsewhere.

She made sure to drop in a McDunn’s Single Malt Whiskey product placement into her banter now and again, I supposed to stay on my father’s good side, as she was aware he owned the exclusive rights to livestream from my home.

One painful effect of watching so much of the stored video was a growing awareness of how rare it was for me to appear on my own livestream. And when I did appear, I did not come across well.

It was awful. I looked like an antisocial freak.

I vowed to try harder to seem likable in front of the cameras. I would make a greater effort to reciprocate the kind gestures made by my pretend friends, and to interact more with the creepy strangers Pamela liked to bring over.

I could change my image. I simply needed to turn on the old Terrence charm.

In the meantime, I needed to move my investigation forward, so I raised the topic of Pamela’s movie funding with Jim one evening. All he had was a question.

“Did you ask her?”

“No,” I confessed. “She already thinks I’m her father’s shill. If I start asking about how her fundraising is going, she is bound to see right through me. So….would you ask her for me?”

Jim sighed and shook his head

“We’ve been through this,” Jim replied. “I keep you safe. Nothing more. If you want someone to do a bunch of little errands for you, hire a personal assistant. Emily would probably be in favor of the idea.”

It struck me as a remarkably good idea. Why hadn’t I thought of it? I liked the idea of having someone I could send out to tackle uncomfortable situations for me. That’s an excellent service for someone to offer.

The following morning I placed a call to Emily and pitched the personal assistant idea.

I gave her my best plea, ending with, “I could benefit from some help accomplishing a few things.”

“You need help accomplishing…nothing?” Emily marveled. “What do you need help with?”

“I just thought it would be nice to have someone who could organize things around the house, and make my life a little easier.”

Emily laughed derisively.

“In my estimation, your life is easy enough, Terrence,” she scolded me. “If anything, it’s probably too easy.”

“I don’t think it is a good idea for you to hire a personal assistant,” Emily concluded, passing judgment. “I’m going to say no.”

Why did everyone think my life was so easy? I was ‘imaginary rich’ and ‘real-world broke.’ My existence was turning me into an international laughingstock. I had no control over my own home. Things were miserable.

“Please at least think it over,” I begged.

“Fine,” she agreed, then hung up on me.

I spent about an hour that morning draining myself into an emotional void by engaging with a group of influencers sitting in my living room. I felt like I had gone to the zoo and fallen into an exhibit. There wasn’t a single thing we had in common.

That put an end to my brief attempt to look better on my livestream. It was not worth the effort. I was resolved to a life of unrelenting web goblinhood. And I was o.k. with it.

That afternoon, as I was in bed drinking coffee and reading about the history of modems, I received a text message from my neighbor Dave.

“Why no progress with Pamela?”

“I’m working on it,” I explained.

“Work harder or I will withdraw my offer.”

With that, Dave disappeared, leaving me a nervous wreck. I needed my bargain with Dave to be rock solid. I had been counting on clearing my house of unwanted guests and never having to deal with Grensfeld Industries again. If Dave withdrew his offer, my life would be so much more difficult than it needed to be.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I decided to meet Dave in person, to firm up our partnership. I could deliver his daughter back to his arms, but he needed to give me sufficient time.

That evening, when the livestream was over and the crowd had dispersed, I noticed Jim had become engrossed by a weightlifting competition he was watching on his phone. Taking advantage of the momentary lapse in surveillance, I slipped out of one of the French doors and onto the long veranda wrapping around the back of my house.

Pausing, I listened intently, trying to determine if my escape had been detected. I was relieved to hear nothing from inside. Jim was off in muscle-land, and I was free.

I hugged the side of the house, staying out of view of the windows, moving stealthily down the veranda in the direction of Dave’s house.

A sizable stand of turf grass stood between my house and Dave’s. Seeing a stately oak that grew near the boundary of our properties, I steeled my nerve and set off at a dash in its direction. I could hide by the tree waiting for Dave to step outside.

I instinctively ran in an ‘S’ pattern, as I had been taught by the movies. Halfway to the tree, it dawned on me that people ran that way to avoid bullets, and nobody was shooting at me. Somewhat chagrined, I completed my breathless dash in a straight-line sprint.

After 15 minutes spent in the gathering darkness of evening, I finally observed Dave.

He was moving oddly past the corner of the house, headed in the direction of his car. I say he moved ‘oddly’ because he almost appeared to be sneaking around, on his own property.

I watched him slip past, no more than ten feet away, and praised my good fortune at being provided with such a perfect opportunity to speak with him privately. I greeted him with a hearty hello.

He shook violently, flailed his arms about, and let out a sharp cry. An enormous clatter arose as a bag full of golf clubs slammed down on the paved driveway.

It would seem Dave had failed to notice me standing under the tree as he passed. Mine had been an unexpected voice out of the darkness. He appeared to dislike unexpected voices out of the darkness immensely.

He looked enraged.

“Oh. It’s you,” he growled through clenched teeth. I began to wonder if my decision to exclude my bodyguard Jim from our meeting had been a mistake.

Fortunately, there would be a witness to any potential assault, for at that moment a woman’s head popped out of an upstairs window of Dave’s house and looked down on the scene with disapproval.

“David Elmer? Are you taking your golf clubs out after I forbade you from playing tomorrow? You have to attend Veronica’s baby shower. You have no choice! No golf!”

With that, she slammed the window shut.

Dave turned back to stare at me, the way a grizzly bear stares at a hunter who has just fired his last shot and missed.

“What do you want?” he asked menacingly.

It was not the rollicking start to the festivities I had rehearsed. It was only stage one, and I was already off-plan. I did my best to recover.

“I just wanted to give you an update on the Pamela thing. I am making progress. I have scoured all the videos recorded in my house and made inquiries. All that’s holding me up is getting approval to hire a personal assistant.”

“For what?” Dave asked, astonished. “Why can’t you just ask my daughter to leave?”

“Because I’m pretty sure she has another source of funding. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. So even if I ask her to leave, she might not come back to you.”

“O.k. Did you ask her if she has an investor?”

“You mean, did I just walk right up to her and ask? Out of the blue? Wouldn’t that be incredibly awkward?”

I was slightly horrified by the thought.

Dave looked at me with greater than his usual level of disgust. He pondered the situation.

“That would explain why she’s been doing sales for your father’s whiskey on your livestream,” he muttered.

“My father?” I gasped. “You think my father invested in Pamela’s movie?”

Dave pulled out his cell phone and placed a call.

“And a very warm welcome to you, too,” he grumbled to the person on the other end, before becoming interrogatory. “Tell me, Pamela, would Terrence’s father happen to be investing in your movie? Terrence wants to know, but he’s too dense and cowardly to ask. No, I will not be nicer to him. Maybe you meant what are the top ten things wrong with him? It doesn’t seem like you want to answer my question. Is Terrence’s father paying you?”

Dave listened to his daughter speak for a moment, then said goodbye and returned the phone to his pocket.

“So your father thinks he can come between me and my daughter, does he?” Dave muttered darkly, staring at me without blinking. I wondered if I should call out for Jim.

“Well I can play dirty too,” he threatened.

“By the terms of the sweepstakes, I can keep you traveling for the next four months. So that’s what I’m going to do, Terrence. If your father is going to keep my daughter away from me, I’m going to keep his son away from him.”

“No, please,” I begged, “don’t do this to me. Let me talk to my father. Maybe we can still work things out.”

As the words poured from my lips, I began to picture my house, always so annoyingly full of strange people, and for a moment I wavered.

Maybe life on the road would be better? In the end, I might get more time alone.

Then I realized I might have to transit Dallas/Fort Worth Airport during my travels.

“You can’t do this to me!” I shouted, panic creeping into my voice. “It’s completely inhumane!”

“Just watch me,” Dave huffed, and picked up his golf bag.

“Please, Dave. Let me fix this.”

My words didn’t matter. Dave ignored my entreaties and stomped his way back into his house.

I made my way back home, and crawled into bed, full of dread about what was to come.

A mysterious text message arrived from Emily.

“I thought it over. It was a good idea. He starts tomorrow at eight.”

“Sorry, what?” I typed, puzzled.

“Your PA. Do you not remember begging me for one this morning? Are you unwell? How much time did you spend in the sun today?”

Oh yeah, the personal assistant idea. It was far too late for that. I didn’t need anybody to talk to Pamela any more thanks to Dave.

“I changed my mind. I don’t need one.” I replied.

“It’s too late for that. He has already been hired. His name is Reggie. He will be at your house first thing in the morning.”

I was horrified. The last thing I wanted was yet another person pestering me.

“Please call him and tell him not to come. I DO NOT WANT HIM!” I virtually howled.

Rarely in my life had I ever resorted to texting in all caps, and I hoped Emily understood the gravity of my gesture.

“Goodbye, Terrence. Be nice to him.” she texted.

It was the first time Emily had ever concluded one of our conversations with a goodbye instead of going silent or hanging up on me. I was rendered textless.