The Takedown(10)

“Agreed,” Sharma said as Fawn wiped at her cheeks.

This was the third time she’d cried. As calmly as possible, for the hundredth time, I said, “First of all, I wasn’t keeping secrets. Second, Fawnie, there’s nothing to celebrate.”

“Got that right.” Sharma nodded at her mammoth wall screen, where the video’s YurTube page idled.

Since Sharma’s mom was a heart surgeon and her dad was an emergency room nurse, their differing schedules meant they were rarely home at the same time, or ever. This meant if Sharma was at her Fort Greene brownstone, she was usually alone. Also, that her parents’ guilt in turn bought her every high-end gadget on the market. Sitting in front of Sharma’s wall screen was equivalent to being first row at a movie theater. Needless to say, despite it equaling a marathon walk from Park Prep and all our houses, we were at Sharma’s a lot.

“Three thousand three hundred and thirty-four views,” Fawn intoned. “That’s…Sharma, math.”

“One eighteen.”

“One hundred and eighteen new views in three minutes.”

On the ride to Sharma’s—Audra pinged an Elite, What, like anyone wants to walk to Fort Greene right now?—Fawn flagged the video. I didn’t expect YurTube to remove it. If anything, they’d slap an NC-17 rating on it, which was almost worse. Now Sharma swiped the video from YurTube into PostProduction. On the wall screen my right eye was magnified by 300 percent.

“Eye see you, too, Sharma,” Fawn giggled.

Sharma leveled a look at her, then said, “No obvious mask or filters. No color discrepancy. No motion disjointedness.” Now the video went into an HTML program. It was like the JFK Terminal Five of HTML. Code flew in; code flew out. “No breaks in code.”

“I’m telling you.” I crossed my arms. “It’s fake.”

Sharma took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Kylie, this isn’t like someone FaceSwitched you. Remember the HG trilogy from the two thousand teens? That actor died during production of the third film and they superimposed him into scenes and it was all-caps and italics OBV? Current vid-editing tech hasn’t progressed much beyond that.”

Sharma was breathless with so many words. Whenever she spoke more than one sentence at a time, a little of her mom’s Indian inflection infused her words. When she was angry, it was her dad’s Jamaican accent that crept in. It was adorable.

Fawn inched away from me on the couch and snuggled in next to Audra instead.

“Meaning this video, which isn’t of me, has to be of me.”

“Essentially, Y-E-S.”

“Audy,” I said. “You know that’s not me, right?”

Audra had been suspiciously silent since she’d helped kidnap me from school. Splayed out on the chaise section of Sharma’s huge wraparound couch, she was all-caps ABSORBED in her Doc, like she refused to even acknowledge the video. Now she gazed at me. And, completely un-Audra-style, she took a moment to consider her words.

Finally, carefully, she said, “I know you’re not a liar. So if you say it’s not you, I guess I have to believe you. Which means, for the record, this isn’t like Boobgate, because I never denied that was me in those pics. But it doesn’t matter what I think. By now it’s been downloaded onto so many Docs and hubs, pads, pods, and personals it can live as long as it wants to. So I think what needs to happen, whether it’s you or not, is that you have to accept, embrace, and move on.”

Embrace? How was I supposed to embrace something like this? And she guessed she had to believe me? Audra was my best friend. No matter what the evidence said, believing me ought to be a prereq.

“And now,” she said, “can we please take that thing off the screen? I mean, why are we even still watching it when we have an unscheduled day off and Unicorn Wars has new episodes?”

“No. Look,” Sharma said. “Audra, you’re wrong. You can’t download it. There’s only one true posting. Everything else is a link. It’s an unbreakable DRM.”

We all watched as Sharma tried to copy the video to her Doc. An error message immediately popped up.

“A DRM?” I asked. “Translate.”

“Digital rights management,” Sharma replied.

“Translate again,” Fawn said.

“An anticopying system.” Sharma pulled up an Encyclo page on DRMs. “Lets you watch, stream, or link to a vid, but not copy it. So only the person who posted it benefits. Notice the ads.”

A continuous barrage of ads kept popping up along the top of the video, blocking out Mr. E.’s pompadour, making him look oddly bald. Most were for different sexy apps, things like Get Girls Meeting Girls and Play Undress Her Now!!!! One popped up for an expensive shampoo, and I couldn’t decide if that meant my hair looked great or needed help. Annoyingly, one even flashed for the Bra&Panties chick. Something about a New Year’s Eve app.

“So I only need to shut down this one video, right? That’s a good thing.”

“No.” Audra sprawled across Fawn’s lap so Fawn would scratch her back. “A DRM means you need to physically delete the source material from the Doc of whoever ‘made’ this. Otherwise, if YurTube shuts it down, the same person who posted it will retitle it, and it will be back up a click later.”