One by One(101)

“I don’t want to sue,” I say reflexively, without even thinking about it, but as the words leave my mouth I am sure of the rightness of them. I don’t want to. It was hard enough going through all this once. I am not putting myself through it all again in a court of law, let alone dragging in Topher, Tiger, Rik, and everyone else to give evidence.

“Nah, neither do I really,” Danny says, looking down at the screen, with a little sigh. “Coulda done with the squids though. Well, as me old ma would say, if wishes were horses and all that.” He sighs again, and then says, “Shall I serve up? Butternut squash soup with hazelnut gremolata and charred fougasse.”

“Sounds delicious,” I say, trying for a smile. “I can’t wait.”





ERIN


Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

Listening to:

Snoopscribers:

After lunch Danny and I sit down in front of the TV and I get out my phone. I’ve become slightly addicted to watching my Snoopscribers tick upwards. There’s nothing like news getting around that you’ve been almost killed to send your numbers rocketing. And I like checking up on Topher, Rik, and the others too. Rik’s username is Rikshaw and he doesn’t have nearly as many Snoopers as Topher, but I like his music taste a lot more. He was listening to some amazing Cuban rap the other day.

But when I open up the app, there’s nothing there, just a blank home page.

For a second I think I’ve accidentally logged out, but no—I’m still signed in, and there is my profile picture in the top right, Little My from the Moomins scowling out of the screen. But there is nothing in my recently played list, no suggestions of people to follow, no Snoopscriber list—in fact even my numbers have disappeared. Is the internet down again? But I remember when that happened before, and it wasn’t like this. Have I been banned?

“Danny,” I say. Danny is scrolling through Netflix. He speaks, without looking away from the screen.

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”

“Danny, is your Snoop working?”

“Yeah, why?” he says, and then opens up the app to check. “No, wait, what? I’ve lost all my subscriptions and all my favorites. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. Has this ever happened before? Have we been banned?”

“No…” Danny is scrolling through menus. “No, I don’t think so… I mean, there’s nothing they can ban you for. It’s not like Twitter where you can post far-right shit. There’s nothing you can do apart from follow people. I think… I think this did happen before, ages ago, when they were starting up and they didn’t have enough servers. I remember a few days where the whole app just crashed, and it was like this. Just a blank screen. Maybe they’re having server problems their end?”

“Maybe.”

I pull up Google, and type in is snoop down.

Article after article comes up. BREAKING reads the first one. British tech start-up Snoop files for administration.

And another one: Snoop users received a rude shock when they logged into their favorite app today to be met with a blank screen, after the company shut down servers following a declaration of bankruptcy by founder and CEO Topher St. Clair-Bridges.

“Fuck.” I can see from his face and the way he looks up at me that Danny has just made the same search, and is reading the same article—or one just like it. “Fuck, they’ve gone under. Rik was right.”

I let out a long breath, and a tension that I didn’t realize I had been holding rolls off me. It’s not that I’m glad that Snoop has gone bankrupt—far from it. The thought of Inigo, Tiger, Carl, and all the rest of them out of a job, not to mention all the people I never met behind the scenes—that gives me zero pleasure. But it sets my mind at rest over a decision that has been gnawing at the back of my mind for three weeks now. What to do about Eva’s video.

Because that was the one question that we never resolved before the Snoop team left St. Antoine. On the one hand, there was Topher’s strenuous argument that telling the truth would make no one better off, and would damage Snoop beyond repair, and probably cost hundreds of innocent people their jobs.

But on the other hand, that equation was precisely what made keeping the secret so uncomfortable. We were not doing what was right, we were doing what was profitable, a fact that Tiger stressed again and again in the increasingly bitter arguments that repeated themselves the last few nights of their stay in the hotel in St. Antoine.

“Are you telling me,” Topher raged, “that if it weren’t for Snoop you’d put Eva’s family through all that? Would you deliberately add another body to Liz’s account, open all those old wounds that poor man’s family thought they laid to rest years ago, torment Arnaud with something he never needs to know? Is all of that really worth sacrificing for the truth to come out when everyone concerned is already dead?”

“No!” Tiger cried. “But that’s the point, we’re not weighing all that against the truth, we’re weighing Snoop against the truth, that’s what makes this so problematic! Topher, you can’t go through life expecting everyone to sacrifice every principle they have for your company’s vision—it doesn’t work like that. It just makes you sound like an arrogant entitled—”